GAMESCENES

GAME ART: LARRY ACHIAMPONG AND DAVID BLANDY'S GENETIC AUTOMATA (2019)

GENETIC AUTOMATA

Larry Achiampong | David Blandy

12.00pm, Thu 24 January 2019 - 6.00pm, Sat 30 March 2019

Arts Catalyst
74-76 Cromer Street
London
WC1H 8DR

Commissioned by Arts Catalyst, Genetic Automata (2019-) by Larry Achiampong and David Blandy forms the first part of an ambitious new body of works by the artists, exploring race and identity in an age of avatars, video games, and DNA Ancestry testing.

In the artists' new video installation combining animation, spoken word and text interspersed with microscopic topographies of varied shades of skin, digital renditions of skin from video games, and film footage of taxidermied bird life from Darwin’s bird skin collection at the Natural History Museum. [...]

Weaving together imagery and narratives from various popular cultural interpretations of genetic manipulation, from Metal Gear Solid to Resident Evil to Final Fantasy and the Metroid series, the artists will explore the legacy and language of concepts around eugenics and human agency.

Read more on Arts Catalyst, a nonprofit contemporary arts organisation that commissions and produces transdisciplinary art and research located in London.

An Artists Talk is scheduled for February 20 2019.

LINK: Genetic Automata (Images courtesy of Arts Catalyst)

EVENT: POLYMORPHISM: QUEER ENCOUNTERS OF INTIMACY IN GAMES (JANUARY 18 - APRIL 28, 2019, CHICAGO< USA)

Ali Krouse, KMG Tournament: Kiss More Girls

Polymorphism: Queer Encounters of Intimacy in Games
Curated by Brice Puls
January 18 - April 28, 2019
2418 W Bloomingdale Ave Apt 102, Chicago, USA

Opening Reception Friday, January 18, 6-9pm

VGA Society Private Cocktail Preview and Tour: 5-6pm 

Intimacy in games has been traditionally conceived by developers as a means to reward the player, as relationships can often only be developed after completing a given task. Within this largely heteronormative lens, games frame emotional bonding and sexual intercourse as a goal to be achieved, rather than positioning relationship development as a core mechanic of the game itself. While these experiences can expand and develop the language of romantic narrative in games, it may also obscure the medium’s ability to directly engage with the mechanics of attraction and desire.

This exhibition explores the burgeoning field of interactive queer art, which gamifies the mechanics of intimate relationships and reinterprets traditional game concepts as a means to experience affection, desire, and love. While queer desire has been marginalized and pathologized in the mainstream, within LGBTQIA+ culture, a more inclusive acceptance of kink and diverse relationship structures is being articulated. Whether in the context of long-term romance, intimacy with multiple partners, or casual sex, these artworks place the practice of acting on attraction in the hands of the player, furthering our ability to express the personal experiences of an underserved culture and drawing a wider audience into conversations about gameplay and desire.

Artists in the exhibition include:

• Salem Dockery
• Ryan Rose Aceae and Heather Robertson
• Anna Anthropy
• Ali Krouse
• Pierre Corbinais
• Eddie Cameron
• RiotJayne_
• empty fortress
• Kara Stone
• Robert Yang
• Fernando Ramallo
• Sean Wejebe
• Tale of Tales

*NOTE: Please be advised that this is an explicit show and content warnings may include nudity, sex, violence, mental illness, and suicide.

LINK: Polymorphism: Queer Encounters of Intimacy in Games

See also: RAINBOW ARCADE

EVENT: RAINBOW ARCADE – A QUEER HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES 1985-2018 (DEC 14 2018 – MAY 13 2019, BERLIN, GERMANY)

RAINBOW ARCADE – a queer history of video games 1985-2018

Curated by Sarah Rudolph (herzteile.org), Jan Schnorrenberg (Schwules Museum) and Dr. Adrienne Shaw (Temple University, LGBTQ Game Archive).

Dec 14 2018 – May 13 2019.

Schwules Museum
Lützowstraße 73
10785 Berlin

Description

For the first time worldwide, the queer history of video games will be explored in a major exhibition: RAINBOW ARCADE will open at Schwules Museum Berlin in December 2018 and features a wide variety of exhibits spanning over 30 years of media history, including playable titles, concept drawings, modifications written by fans themselves and documentations of online communities. The exhibition will be taking stock of contemporary pop cultural questions of representation, stereotypical and discriminatory narratives in entertainment media, and our cultural memory. For the first time, research by the LGBTQ Game Archive will be presented in a museum.

It is remarkable that while video games have become a natural part of our contemporary culture, almost every new release that doesn’t portray LGBTIQ* people and the realities of life in a negative way is quickly celebrated as groundbreaking or discredited as sudden ideological politicization. Yet there are a few examples of mainstream titles from the 1990s featuring relatively sensible coming-out storylines and same-sex marriage & flirting options. RAINBOW ARCADEasks not only how social discourses and developments have been reflected in video games and if there has been any major progress in regards of LGBTIQ* representation in entertainment media. In addition, the exhibition explores issues regarding our digital memory and the unique challenges posed by digital culture to archives and institutions and the archival absence of contemporary queer media history. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive supporting programme with international developers, artists and researchers. A crowdfunding campaign to fund the catalog can be found here.

The exhibition features an entire section dedicated to Robert Yang's games, Anna Anthropy’s Queers in Love at the End of the World, Brianna Lei’s dating game about chaotic bisexual teens, Butterfly Soupand Dietrich Squinkifer’s Dominique Pamplemousse among others. The Guardian has published a detailed walkthrough.

LINK: QUEER ARCADE

GAME ART: BIRDWATCHING IN RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2

This project does not qualify as Game Art, no matter how elusive the definition is. Nonetheless, it is one of those performative fringe activity that take place within a video game that evoke many of the attributes of the artistic gesture. There's video, there's photography, there's documentation, there's whimsical obsession and playful seriousness... And it's definitely more interesting than torturing suffragettes. Birdwatching in RDR2 reminds me of Jonne Hansson's machinima, Outcast.

As Audubon's contributor Nicholas Lund writes,

I spent most of my time finding birds, and was impressed with the breadth and relative accuracy of the species represented. Birds change with habitat: Roseate Spoonbills and Great Egrets feed in the bayous of Saint Denis. Laughing Gulls and Red-footed Boobies roost along the coast, while eagles and condors soar over mountain peaks. Each of these are crafted with accurate field marks and habits. There are dozens of species I couldn’t even find, including Carolina Parakeets, Ferruginous Hawks, and Pileated Woodpeckers. Like real life birding, you’re never guaranteed to see anything.

I wonder what Jonathan Franzen would make of birdwatching in gaming.

LINK: Birdwatching in Red Dead Redemption (via Kottke)

ARTICLE: DIA LACINA ON IN-GAME PHOTOGRAPHY

Click the above image to read a great article by Dia Lacina on in-game photography. Lacina mentions, among others, Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama to suggest that a camera is a tool, but a naturalized way of seeing. A very insightful commentary on a fringe practice in gaming that has now become mainstream. Also from Lacina, another excellent piece on the same topic, also published by Waypoint/Vice magazine almost a year before. Here's the inevitable barthesian "winter garden" moment in the new essay:

Deep in that box of old family photos, I found a four shot spread of the seasons puzzle from Secret of Mana. Behind the large black Mitsubishi television, and over top of a blue-grey silk couch with thin pale pink and lighter blue stripes there is snow outside the window. And without a date imprint, I know it’s Christmas, 1993 The photo from across the room of me seated in reverie on maroon high-pile carpet in front of a colossal, wood-paneled CRT shrine to Simon's Quest, the titular Belmont locked in the clearly doomed trajectory of a jump. They weren’t practiced photographs. Taken on various automatic compact cameras, some with embedded date stamps, flash bouncing off the glass of the television, always on Kodak Gold 400 (the foolproof workhorse of family snapshots)—they were messy, but evocative. Some capturing the reflection of our family’s golden retriever seated next to me, others with my own mother over my shoulder, her sleek black Olympus Stylus Infinity in hand. (Dia Lacina)

LINK: on game photo modes

ART GAME: CONCRETE GAMES'S MATTER (2018)

Matter is a first-person platformer set in a mystic and expressive world by Concrete Games, a small indie studio located in Brittany, France. As the Thomas Rougeron, Corentin Derbré, and Mathieu Labelle explain

We wanted to make this game in a short production process - three months from prototyping to release - and give our best to make it an enjoyable trip. Our intentions were to express abstract and metaphorical ideas through a simple yet intense gameplay. Last but not least, we focused heavily on giving artists what they deserve : a place where they can fully express their sensitivities.

LINK: Concrete Games

ART GAME: STEFANO GUALENI'S HERE (2018)

Stefano Gualeni's new game is an interactive exploration of the notion of indexicality, the idea that the meaning of a certain sign can depend upon the context in which it occurs. The game

challenges its players to engage with- (and be puzzled by-) the philosophical notion of indexicality. More specifically, it poses the question of what it means when the word 'here' is used in a computer game... Or, rather, of how many meanings of 'here' can co-exist in a computer world. 

The all star production team includes, in addition to Stefano, Rebecca Portelli, Riccardo Fassone, and Diego Zamprogno. Voice over is provided by Emily Short, Pippin Barr, Krista Bonello Rutter, Jasper Schellekens, and Stefano. 

Here can be downloaded for free for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Stefano Gualeni's work, both as an academic and as a game designer, explores the use of virtual worlds as ways to materialize thought experiments and to practically (and maybe even playfully) pursue philosophical ideas. He is the author of Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015).

LINK: Stefano Gualeni

VIDEO ESSAY: RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 AND THE HUDSON RIVER SCHOOL OF PAINTING

In this short video essay, Polygon's contributor Clayton Ashley describes the relationship between the Hudson River School style of landscape painting and the vistas of Rockstar Games' Red Dead Redemption 2. It's more about ideology than aesthetics: art is not neutral. He discusses light and perspective, documentation vs. representation (manifest destiny), observation vs. immersion (opera glasses as proto-VR goggles), among other things.

As Clayton writes:

Red Dead Redemption 2 can’t avoid a connection to these paintings because it can’t avoid its connections to the cultural history that created the western genre. Or as Wendy Ikemoto, associate curator at the New-York Historical Society, put it in our video, art is not “a passive reflection or document of history, but it is, rather, an agent of history.”

File under: comparative media studies.

Kudos to Clayton and Polygon.

LINK: Painting styles in Red Dead Redemption 2

GAME ART: COLL.EO'S REASONABLE_2 (2018)

New from COLL.EO: the second machinima in the ongoing series, REASONABLE developed with Grand Theft Auto V.

The duration is four hours and thirty minutes.

Artist statement below:

COLL.EO is a collaboration between Colleen Flaherty and Matteo Bittanti established in 2012. COLL.EO currently operates in San Francisco and Milan.

LINK: COLL.EO

EVENT: IN A GAMESCAPE. LANDSCAPE, REALITY, STORYTELLING AND IDENTITY IN VIDEO GAMES (DECEMBER 15, 2018–MARCH 10, 2019, TOKYO JAPAN)

IN A GAMESCAPE. LANDSCAPE, REALITY, STORYTELLING AND IDENTITY IN VIDEO GAMES

An exhibition co-curated by DOI Nobuaki and TANIGUCHI Akihiko

December 15, 2018–March 10, 2019, 11:00am–6:00pm 

NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] Gallery A

Tokyo, Japan

OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Among other works, video games as a form of contemporary culture are being awarded at the Japan Media Arts Festival, and continue to exert an ever-growing influence on society. As a matter of fact, video games reflect the present state of society, and one can say that they also serve as a means for predicting future developments.

With a particular focus on indie games and video game art as two distinctive recent trends, this exhibition inspects the latest video games along with the original culture they help define, to see what hints they may offer regarding social currents and individual positions.

The term gamescape as used in the exhibition title was coined to refer to the (social) landscape mapped out through games, and to express the novel views and values that video games inspire in their creators and players alike.
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ARTISTS:

LINK: IN A GAMESCAPE