GAMESCENES

MAGAZINE: RAID #1

A group exhibition turned magazine somewhere between games and design.

The original brief was: 
“RAID is a group zine/publication thing that joins graphic design (bad) and video games (good). The idea is to ask a bunch of my fav designers (you) to come up with a game idea and then design the logo for that game. Then I’ll (me) put all the entries into a booklet and send it out to everyone who participated.”

48 pp 
240mm × 190mm on 150gsm Gloss
2 colour [Black] + [Pantone 805C]
Saddle stitch with black wire

LINK: Raid v. 1.0

EVENT: CHRIS HOWLETT'S NEW STATEMENTS (15-17 MAY 2019, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA)

New Statements is a new media exhibition by Chris Howlett that showcases an installation of interactive and screen-based machinima works that were developed from 2016-19 for his PhD. This practice–led research project explores the operations of a ‘techno-stice’ that demonstrates digital technology's capacity to generate dissensual space in the form of new subjectivities and ethico-political perspectives in contemporary art.

Chris Howlett, Joystick Drama, 2017-2019

LINK: Chris Howlett

EVENT: 30 ANOS DE GAME BOY (MAY 22 - OCTOBER 11 2019, SARAGOZA, SPAIN)

30 años de Game Boy: Una consola en el mundo del arte @ ETOPIA
22nd may-11th october 2019 // Centro de Arte y Tecnología
Avenida Ciudad de Soria, 8. Acceso por Avenida Autonomía 7
Zaragoza, Spain

Tres décadas más tarde de que la consola Game Boy fuera objeto de deseo, cuyo fin era el entretenimiento, un ecosistema de pixeles y sonidos que marcaron nuestra infancia, se reúnen en torno a esta exposición a artistas internacionales de distintas disciplinas que enfocan sus creaciones desde una actitud irreverente frente al paso del tiempo, dotando a la exposición de cierta resiliencia tecnológica.

Las obras artísticas que aquí se presentan son procesos complejos multidisciplinares de creación. El telos de la consola ha cambiado; aquí el juego varía de lo objetivo a lo subjetivo, introduciéndose las variantes de la modificación, lo visual, lo sonoro y las adiciones tecnológicas. A través de los diferentes componentes de la consola y su modificación y adaptación, así como de la combinación, se ha conseguido obtener resultados complejos, comportamientos diferentes a nivel de acción en la pantalla, a nivel estético de resultado y a nivel metafórico y semántico.

La recreación, reutilización y reciclaje del soporte tecnológico son afrontados desde una visión holística, donde cada detalle, por pequeño que sea, cuenta, porque forma parte de un sistema semántico de reinterpretación del pasado para generar un nuevo producto artístico, ya no de consumo, sino de deleite estético-crítico.

En este contexto, la exposición reúne obras de los artistas Bubbyflish (Corea del Sur), Daniel Canogar (España), Jean Jacques Calbayrac (Francia), Paul Catanese (EEUU), Clint Enns (Canadá), Gijs Gieskes (Holanda), Maia Koening (Argentina), Raquel Meyers (España), Joey Michalina Mariano (EEUU), Dmitry Mozorov (Rusia), Davit Ruiz (España), Toriena (Japón) e Ira Torres (España).

LINK: 30 ANOS DE GAME BOY  (Thanks to Raquel Meyers)

EVENT: OPEN WORLD: VIDEO GAMES AND CONTEMPORARY ART (OCTOBER 19, 2019 - FEBRUARY 2, 2020, AKRON, OHIO)

Suzanne Treister, Fictional Videogame Still/Q, 1992 (via Akron Art Museum)

OPEN WORLD: VIDEO GAMES AND CONTEMPORARY ART

AKRON ART MUSEUM

ONE SOUTH HIGH

AKRON, OHIO 44308

United States of America

According to a 2015 Entertainment Software Association survey, 155 million Americans play video games. Visual artists are gamers too, yet video games are rarely examined as a major influence on contemporary art. Open World draws attention to this phenomenon through the presentation of artworks including painting, sculpture, textiles, prints, drawings, animation, video games, video game modifications and game-based performances and interventions by makers who self-identify as artists.

The artworks in Open World reference a broad cross-section of games, ranging from early text adventure and arcade games to modern massively multi-player online roleplaying games and first-person shooters. Participating artists are influenced by some of the most beloved video game franchises including Super Mario Brothers, The Legend of Zelda, The Sims and Final Fantasy.

The exhibition’s title refers to open-world video games, which allow a player to roam through a virtual world, freely selecting their objectives. The title also draws attention to the rich opportunities video games offer for creative expression. Through games, artists build immersive, alternate words. They use digital games to create meaning through imagery, music, sound effects, animation and narrative. The rules governing the experience of playing a video game can express a viewpoint and encourage critical thinking or empathy by directing the player’s attention to systems at work within the real world.

As part of Open World, the Akron Art Museum is calling for submissions of video games and table top games from developers, students and game-creators for Open World Arcade, a day-long indie game event held at the museum on Saturday, December 7, 2019. Click here for more Information or to submit your game. 

Tim Portlock, Clone, 2012, inkjet print. (via Akron Art Museum)

LINK: OPEN WORLD: VIDEO GAMES AND CONTEMPORARY ART

BOOK: TRAVELOGUE

TRAVELOGUE

by Matteo Bittanti
Release date: May 15 2019
Features: Softcover, 148 pages, color illustrations
Format: 6×9 in, 15×23 cm
Language: English and Italian
ISBN: 9780368668197
Price: $22.99

I'm very happy to announce that my latest book, TRAVELOGUE, is now available from Concrete Press in bilingual edition (English/Italian).

TRAVELOGUE is a survey of audiovisual artworks made with or inspired by video games. Using machinima and interactive installations, fifteen artists examine the virtual automobile as medium, message, technological commodity, status symbol, interface, and prosthetics. Created through a process of appropriation and remix, these works lie at the intersection of fiction and documentation, performance and simulation, video art and experimental cinema.

This book is an extended catalogue of the exhibition TRAVELOGUE that I curated between September 7- 11 2016, in Mantua, Italy as part of Festivaletteratura 2016, featuring artworks by Max Almy and Teri Yarbrow, Hugo Arcier, Dave Ball, William Beaudine, Bob-Bicknell Knight, COLL.EO, Clint Enns, Matthew Hillock, JODI, Kristin Lucas, Victor Morales, Leonardo Sang, Palle Torsson. Available in bilingual edition (English and Italian) TRAVELOGUE is the follow-up to MACHINIMA. 32 conversazioni sull'arte del videogioco, which was released in 2017.

You can purchase a copy of TRAVELOGUE on Blurb orAmazon US It will soon be available on Amazon Italy.

TRAVELOGUE è una rassegna di opere audiovisive – machinima ed installazioni – realizzate per mezzo dei videogiochi. Quindici artisti internazionali esplorano l’automobile virtuale, ivi intesa come mezzo e messaggio, tecnologia e status symbol, interfaccia e protesi. Frutto di appropriazione e remix, queste opere si collocano all’intersezione tra narrazione e documentazione, performance e simulazione, videoarte e cinema sperimentale. Questo libro è il catalogo ampliato della mostra TRAVELOGUE curata da Matteo Bittanti nel settembre 2016) a Mantova, nell’ambito di Festivaletteratura 2016, con opere di Max Almy e Teri Yarbrow, Hugo Arcier, Dave Ball, William Beaudine, Bob-Bicknell Knight, COLL.EO, Clint Enns, Matthew Hillock, JODI, Kristin Lucas, Victor Morales, Leonardo Sang, Palle Torsson.

LINK: TRAVELOGUE

GAME ART: SAVE ME OH'S MORE FOR ALMOST NOTHING (2019)

Buy more! Buy bigger! Buy better! "Now for sale in the SaveMe Oh shop at Marketplace. Fully 3D animated art for which you need not only a wall but also a floor. The animated Animesh SaveMe is included in the artwork." Available here.

LINK: Save Me Oh

EVENT: OTHER FUTURES (JUNE 7, 2019, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA)

Just another killer show at LIKELIKE:

OTHER FUTURES

LIKELIKE
Friday June 7th, 2019
7-11PM During the Unblurred gallery crawl

205 North Evaline St
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Dystopias seem to dominate representations of future in videogames. Whether post-apocalyptic or cyberpunk, they provide a perfect backdrop for individualistic fantasies of destruction and survival. As the real world catches up with the most pessimistic predictions, we want to highlight games that prefigure better futures. Join us for a night of eco utopias, afro-futurist visions, cyberqueer adventures, joyful insurrections, and fully automated communisms. Works by Hyphen-Labs, Space Backyard, Colestia, Porpentine & Rook, Molleindustria, Pixel Pushers Union 512

LINK: Other Futures

GAME ART: MIKHAIL MAKSIMOV'S THE DEATH OF FATHER MEN (2018)

Mikhail Maksimov's The Death of Father Men is a "neuro crime-story" based on machine learning. The film focuses on the brutal assassination of the ecumenic Russian Orthodox priest, scholar and theologian Alexander Vladimirovich Men, aka Father Men, a controversial figure in Russia during the second half of the 20th century. The Death of Father Men was selected for the Locarno Film Festival 2018 and it's available for a limited time on the awesome online platform Vdrome. Also, don't miss  Vladimir Nadein's interview with the artist. Here's a salient passage:

VN: Speaking of your love for gaming and game development, being inside the game, experiencing it rather than walking it through—how important is it for you?

MM: It’s quite logical. As I said, it’s interesting to excerpt the chunks, the concentration of life and kind of hold it in your hands, examine it. GTA 5 has a non-linear video editor, it allows you to combine bits of life filmed on different cameras into one. By clicking REC in GTA 5, before working in the video editor, you can record the life of the whole state of California at that moment. And when you start editing, you work with this life. This state’s life piece is served to you like a piece of cake. And then any cat running down the street could catch your eye and you’d be able to work with that cat. That is the point: you film not the thing you want, but the whole imagery procedure and later when you realise why did you film it: not because your character bumped oddly into the corner, but rather because this cat hit you. So, you could focus your efforts on it. This game allows you to save moments in their rich diversity rather than in its flatness, it’s kind of pseudoscientific discipline. The pseudoscience of digital physics. Actually, there is such notion, it’s not pseudoscience, it has substantial grounds and advocates, including physicians.

Mikhail Maksimov manages almost impossible: he combines heavy Russian mysticism where theosophy and cosmism are intervened with the spirits of nature, with the contemporary form of glossy pop culture — 3D-graphics. It is this gap that creates wow-effect for the audience when you remain stuck to a video-work or computer game.

LINK: Mikhail Maksimo

EVENT: FUNCTION (MAY 24-25 2019, MALLORCA, SPAIN)

FUNCTION, a new Digital & Electronic Art Festival Mallorca at the Centre Cultural Casa Planas, will debut on May 24 2019.

This year’s theme is innocence:

Digital art focuses on how reality is modified by the growing influence in our daily lives of new circumstances closely linked to automatization. Ranging from critical perspectives to exploring the possibilities of magic through technology, digital art pushes at the limits of our experience and definition of art itself. Above all, it defines in real time our relationship with an omnipresent technology.

The festival showcases videos, performances, webart, sound art and much more.

COLL.EO, Reasonable, machinima, color, sound, 2018

The video section includes machinima from COLL.EO and Ignacio Bosch's project Travelling without moving, a videogame designed as an auto executable app or as an immersive RV videogame that invites the player/spectator to embark on an eternal journey where the combination between magic and the mythical join his/her exploration desires. During the path, the player/spectator will find different elements and situations that would generate a reflection on matters as nature, borders, loneliness and fear.

Ignacio Bosch, TRavelling without moving, 2018

LINK: Function

EVENT: AN UNREAL UNITY (MAY 16-30 2019, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA)

Game Design...the Game: Welcome to Inspiration, Now finish the damn game!. PC game, created in Unreal Engine. Courtesy UCLA Design Media Arts.

An Unreal Unity

May 16–30, 2019 

Opening: May 16, 5pm 

UCLA New Wight Gallery 
Broad Art Center, Suite 1100 
240 Charles E. Young Drive
Los Angeles, CA 

An Unreal Unity features screen-based and interactive artwork, large-scale installations, and immersive projection. Themes include the Anthropocene, corporeal estrangement, speculative interventions, and emotional inquest. Participating artists are Hye Min Cho, Kit Kirby, Sara Drake, Isabelle Chen, Lena NW, Phazero, Maru Garcia, Carlos “L05” Garcia, Sam Congdon, Julian Stein, and Paul Carlo Esposito.

Opening reception Thursday, May 16 at 5pm. The exhibition will be open weekdays from 10am to 5pm through May 30.

This event is free and open to the public.

LINK: AN UNREAL UNITY