GAMESCENES

CALL FOR ENTRIES: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2020 (DEADLINE: DECEMBER 1 2019)

MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2020

March 2020

IULM University

Via Carlo Bo 2,

20143 Milano, Italia

WE ARE DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE OUR OFFICIAL CALL FOR ENTRIES FOR THE THIRD EDITION OF THE MACHINIMA FILM FESTIVAL, SLATED FOR MARCH 2020.

The third edition of the MACHINIMA FILM FESTIVAL will take place at IULM University (Milan, Italy) in March 2020 during the Milano Digital Week. Sponsored by the City of Milan, Department of Digital Transformation and Public Services, the Milano Digital Week celebrates the driving forces that are reshaping work, leisure, and learning.

Filmmakers and video artists engaged in the practice of appropriation, repurposing, and creative remix of video games are encouraged to send us their work for consideration. All submission will be judged by an international panel of jurors and a selected number will be featured in the main program. A Critics' Award will be awarded during the ceremony. 

Screenings of selected works will be curated around different themes, to be announced. The most interesting submissions are those which seek to capture or highlight a specific facet of contemporary life - from politics to art, from violence to creativity, from technology to ideology - through the aesthetic lenses of digital gaming. The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2019.

The full program will be announced in February 2020.

Please carefully read our simple submission guidelines and requirements below before sending your work.

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INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL FOR NEW MEDIA ARTWORKS

GUIDELINES:

The Milan Machinima Festival defines machinima as any digital video made using video games technology (game engines, game tools, assets such as characters, items, environments etc.).

Submissions must feature machinima made with specifically with video games (not virtual worlds, e.g. Second Life).

Submissions must be 10 minutes or less in length. The minimum duration is 1 minute.

Submissions must have been produced between January 1, 2019 and December 1, 2019.

Multiple versions of the same machinima will not be considered.

Acceptable submission formats: Digital video files only.

Acceptable exhibition formats: mp4, avi, mpg, Quicktime file (ProRes 422).

All applicants must complete the official festival submission form located on filmfreeway.com.

One-time, nominal submission fee: $15 or 15 euros payable via PayPal to the festival organizers.

The applicant holds the sole responsibility of copyright clearance of any copyrighted material in the machinima.

The submission must include an accompanying artist statement/description no longer than 500 words.

The MMF is under no obligation to provide comments regarding submitted machinima to any applicant.

Submission deadline: December 1, 2019.

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LINK: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL

LINK: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2019

LINK: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2018

GAME ART: FRANÇOIS QUÉVILLON'S ALGORITHMIC DRIVE (2018-2019)

Algorithmic Drive is an interactive installation and performance created by François Quévillon inspired by autonomous cars and dash cam compilations. As Quevillon explains,

On their side, dash cam videos display accidents or spectacular events that portray roads as spaces where the unexpected occurs. The works play with the tension generated by confronting the technologies used by mobile robotics with the unpredictable nature of the world.  The interactive installation and performance entitled Algorithmic Drive is the core of these works. I built a database of recordings with a camera that is connected to my car’s on-board computer. The videos captured are synchronized with information such as location, speed, engine RPM, stability and the temperature of various sensors. They feed a sampling system that uses signal processing, data analysis and computer vision algorithms to sort the content statistically. It assembles an endless video by modifying parameters related to images, sounds, the car’s activity and the environment in which it’s located. A controller displays data related to each scene and allows people or a performer to interact with the system. 

This fascinating project looks like an interactive version of one of my favorite documentaries of 2018, Dmitrii Kalashnikov's The Road Movie. It's the ultimate racing game.

Equally interesting is Quévillon's Retroviseurs, which seems like an unofficial adaptation of McLuhan's famous theory about the rearview mirror syndrome (it's not, but remains intriguing nonetheless). it's a rear view mirror with a monitor, a backup camera and ultrasonic parking sensors, all recontextualized in the exhibition space.

François Quévillon is an artist from Montreal, Canada. He develops an interdisciplinary practice through installation, video, photography, sound and digital technologies. His work explores phenomena of the world and perception by the implementation of processes sensitive to their fluctuations and to the interference of contextual elements. He examines the operational dimensions of images, sounds and other media through the elaboration of systems with unstable parameters, compressed or endlessly evolving spatiotemporal structures. Engaging both scientific observation and a contemplative state of mind, his pieces propose ambiguous experiences through which the ungraspable manifests itself. He investigates how technology affects or redefines human cognition, culture, the environment, our relationships to space, to time and to one another. He holds a Master’s degree in Visual and Media Arts from UQAM and was involved with several artist-run centres and research groups. Frequently developed during artist residencies, François Quévillon’s work has been presented at exhibitions and events dedicated to contemporary art, cinema and digital creation. Among them, Sundance’s New Frontier exhibition (Park City), Spaces Under Scrutiny – Quebec Digital Art in NY at the Knockdown Center (Queens), International Symposium on Electronic Art (Gwangju, Dubaï and Albuquerque), Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica (São Paulo), IndieBo (Bogotá), LOOP Barcelona, Plug-In at Contemporary Istanbul, Show Off Paris, Festival de la Imagen (Manizales), European Conference on Computer Vision (Munich), Mois Multi (Québec), Espace [IM] Média (Sherbrooke), FIMAV (Victoriaville), NeurIPS, RIDM, Elektra and International Digital Art Biennal (Montréal).

LINK: François Quévillon (all images and videos courtesy of the Artist)

GAME ART: KIT KIRBY'S LADY RUGS COMPILATION (2019)

A new project by Kit Kirby, a student in Eddo Stern's phenomenal UCLA GameLab:

As Pablo Picasso once observed, "There are two kinds of women: Goddesses and Doormats." Lady Rugs riffs on this expression through a series of rugs depicting actual women from history who respond when the rugs are stepped on. Each woman--Harriet Tubman, Hillary Clinton, Roberta Williams, and Gertrude Stein--is a pioneer in a traditionally male dominated field, but is often overlooked, underappreciated, even despised. Each rug has a fabric pressure sensor, which triggers audio clips of voices explaining why each woman has been devalued. The voices also explain why fields such as the military, politics, video game development, and fine art remain part of "a man's world. Created by Kit kirby.

Kit Kirby is a designer, artist, half-troll madwoman who employs absurdity and dark humor to create art about identity and expectation. A recent arrival from the east coast, Kit has a degree in Graphic Design from Boston University and a Post-Baccalaureate in Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Arts. Just like the Kirby Nintendo character, she is round, adorable and utter chaos in Super Smash Brothers. (UCLA Gamelab)

LINK: Kit Kirby

EVENT: SCRAPBOOK (OR, WHY CAN’T WE LIVE TOGETHER) (AUGUST 16. 2019, NEW YORK)

foci + loci, Affordable Engines: Bramble, 2015-2019

Scrapbook (or, Why Can’t We Live Together)

July 12 – August 19, 2019

Microscope Gallery 
1329 Willoughby Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11237
T: (+1) 347 925 1433

Featured artists:

Zoe Beloff, Bill Brand, MV Carbon, Diane Dwyer, Bradley Eros, foci + loci, Morrison Gong (w/ J. (Jialing) Shih), Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Marni Kotak, M. Lamar, Le’Andra LeSeur, Jeanne Liotta, Simon Liu, Bruce McClure, Julian Louis Phillips, Tenzin Phuntsog, Raha Raissnia

The highlight of the exhibition is foci + loci's performance Affordable Engines: Bramble (2015-2019) on Friday August 16. Below is a sneak preview :

Friday August 16, 7:30pm
Scrapbook: foci + loci, MV Carbon
Live sound and visual performances

Microscope is very pleased to present an evening of live sound and visual performances by foci + loci (Chris Burke & Tamara Yadao) and MV Carbon as the 9th of 10 performance events taking place as part of our exhibition “Scrapbook (or, Why Can’t We Live Together)”.

foci + loci
“Affordable Engines: Bramble”, 2015-2019

This newest iteration of foci + loci’s “Bramble”, is a two-channel custom video game environment which the artists operate in live performance. A ghostly musical instrument rises out of the shell of a broken down player piano in the desert. A bush made up of electrical wires and circuit boards grows algorithmically nearby. Day and night pass at an accelerated rate. As the performers navigate through and around the bramble, it blooms and evolves, while its underlying code makes as many choices as the musicians.

foci + loci’s practice is reliant on proprietary digital tools. We test a game engine’s limits by prodding, poking and breaking the system. The idiosyncrasies of the tested code allow us to create systems with high levels of machine agency, affording a relationship between the machine and the player/performers. This relationship emphasizes codified connections to events in a responsive numerical space, played out through an improvised, musical conversation with the system. — foci + loci

LINK: Microscope Gallery + Tamara Yadao

GAME ART: DAVID RAYMOND CONROY'S PROSU(U)MER (2015)

In 2015, British artist David Raymond Conroy curated a show titled Prosu(u)mer for Tallinn Photomonth '15 focusing on the somehow paradoxical gesture - a truly neoliberal imperative - of producing and consuming "content" at once, a mortifying neologism - prosumer, that is - that the Grand Vates of the so-called "participatory culture" cult elevated to a virtue, a performative gesture of boundless creativity or so we were told back when the internet was still perceived as "a cool thing". Among the works that Conroy included in his astute compilation are Karl Smith's in game photographs of Grand Theft Auto V. Such inclusion - which is also a displacement - is itself a clever commentary on appropriation and recontextualization practices, as any "photo" taken in Los Santos is a de facto property of the producer, Rockstar Games. I am also appropriating and recontextualizing Conroy's photo, via Rudolf Lingens, to make a statement about the dissipating notion of copyright in the digital age, or perhaps not, I just love the idea of elevating in-game photography to high brow, first class art thanks to its inclusion in the white cube ghetto. The medium is the massage. "Conroy's work examines the relationship between production, consumption and identity, how our subjectivity mutates and collapses as we experience the cultural output of other people," and that's really important.

LINK: David Raymond Conroy's Prosu(u)mer

LINK: Karl "Illsnapmatix" Smith

EVENT: SERIOUS GAMES (AUGUST 2 - NOVEMBER 2 2019, SHANGHAI, CHINA)

SERIOUS GAMES

August 2 2019 - November 2, 2019

How Art Museum

O 1, Lane 2277, Zuchongzhi Road

Shanghai, China

Artists: Alexis Mailles, Feng Chen, Harun Farocki, Jon Rafman, Kent Sheely, Andrew Luk, Lawrence Lek, Matthieu Cherubini, Payne Zhu, Peter Nelson, Wu Chi-Yu

Curated by Fu Liaoliao

Serious Games will present works and projects of both artists and game designers, casting light on the historical development of video games as a form and image, the tension between the mechanism of eSport competition and players from a bio-political point of view, as well as the critiques of spatial politics, historical truth, and future conflicts within the context of video games. Moreover, the exhibition is not limited to present the works directly related to video games, and it also attempts to extend the boundaries of people's notions of game by showcasing works from different perspectives.

The exhibition is accompanied by several events, including various panels, such as "Serious Games: Radical Field inside and out of Virtuality" (August 2), featuring Dr. Jiang Yuhui (Professor of philosophy, East China Normal University), Feng Chen (Artist), Payne Zhu (Artist), Wu Chi-Yu (Artist) and moderated by Fu Liaoliao (Curator of HOW Art Museum). Below is the full description:

As an ancient form of human activity, games have been undergoing drastic changes under the development of science and technology. Until the era of video games, its unprecedented connection with daily life has opened up new possibilities for cognitive space, images and life forms. It has even launched challenges to the present and future way of people's existence. The panel discussion starts from this radical field inside and out of virtuality.

LINK: Serious Games

GAME ART: CODY FILARDI'S WALK THROUGH 1 (2017)

In Filardi's works, video game imagery - alongside other pop culture elements - is a recurrent trope. The juxtaposition of sequences from video games (from Doom to Super Mario) and live footage creates a continuum rather than an antinomy. Sometimes, as it happens in Hygiene part 1 and 2, idealized images of women are appropriated from the mediascape (advertising, games) and playfully recontextualized. 

Cody Filardi is an interdisciplinary artist based in Rochester, NY. With a focus on materiality and the politics of the personal, she/they create and entangle physical manifestations of identity and queer space. Cody received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts from SUNY Buffalo State.

Cody Filardi, Walk Through 1, stills from video, 2017.

LINK: Cody Filardi

OPEN CALL: GAMES FOR WINDOWS (DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 1 2019, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK)

Still from Hygiene1 by Cody Filardi

 

GAMES FOR WINDOWS: Experiments with Video Game Footage

 

a store-front video exhibition curated by Nilson Carroll

 

October 4 - November 17, 2019

 

Liquor Store Rochester, New York

 

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
Experimental video art made with video game footage.

This can take the form of a more traditional machinima piece, or something completely different. We want to see a Stan Brakhage film made on a Game Boy , or the N64 Flaming Creatures. Surprise us, make us weep.

We encourage submissions that experiment with the splicing of game footage with other content (personal or appropriated). If you make interesting games, consider making video art within them.

We're also open to ROM hacks and homebrews that can run in attract mode.

Works are preferably between 1 - 10 minutes.

Due to the nature of the storefront installation, audio is currently limited. Don't let this hinder you!

WHO SHOULD APPLY
ANYONE. Formally trained artists, hobbyists, game designers. The goal of this exhibition is a subversion of both games and cinema. We are especially interested in pro-affection, anti-fascist, feminist artworks that challenge our notions and systems.

NO FEE TO APPLY.

Any questions or concerns, please contact Nilson at [email protected]

If you cannot upload or send your video, please use the above email to contact us!

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DEADLINE: Sunday, September 1, 2019 (All day)

EXHIBITION DATES:  Friday, October 4, 2019 (All day) to Sunday, November 17, 2019 (All day)

LINK: GAMES FOR WINDOWS

GAME ART: JONNE HANSSON'S HEAVY THOUGHTS (2019)

In his latest machinima shot with/in Grand Theft Auto V, Swedish artist Jonne Hansson casts virtual bodybuilders to discuss the politics of gamification, the life as a simulation hypothesis, the nature of game rules, and much more. A day in the life of three avatars working out their bodies and their minds (Richard Guy Slatter, Gazi Mrah, August Ballgren). Yes, it's very meta. Killer sound design by Daniel Westman. Heavy Thoughts is a follow up to the brilliant The Convenience Store (2018), 

Jonne Hansson uses computer game graphics and different game elements, often leaning towards gamified life-coaching. A recurrent theme in his work is the crossover between digital games and reality, where pixels, polygons and the world of atoms are mixed together. He uses media such as machinima, installations, prints, drawings and other things that fit the work’s oeuvre.

LINK: Jonne Hansson

GAME ART: CHRIS HOWLETT'S HOW TO GET AN EDUCATION (2016-2019)

CHRIS HOWLETT, How To Get An Education, 2016-19, 1-channel synched, HD video (16:9), Stereo, PAL. Duration: 6:00 mins

Chris Howlett uses interactive video, performance and sound art, site-specific sculpture, machinima, and painting to explore a number of fundamental questions around the way in which new technologies affect society. In How To Get An Education, the artist uses the image of a carpet as a canvas, or rather, a screen, onto which he projects memes, gifs, images, game characters and animation, symbols and corporate logos, to explore the geopolitical reality of global warfare that effects and drives online video gaming and trends.

As the Howlett writes,

How to Get An Education is an allegory of conquest. The depiction of the Iraq War is the dominate feature of the first half of the film using Afghan war rug style, while the second half explores meme culture through a modern IKEA designed carpet. Furthermore, I wanted the projected image to map onto the body of the spectator as they walk across the field of colour and to function as another screen. The viewer’s body underneath the projection is now directly implicated in the larger context of a global-technological conflict, geopolitics, or consumerist behaviours. What does it mean to participate as an actor on this stage filled with digital explosions, weird pixelated video game icons, corporate logos, memes, masks, or western and eastern carpet design? Where does their responsibility lie in preventing war, facilitating it, ignoring it, or resisting it? What role can internet culture play in this scenario?

Howlett graduated with a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 2000. His works have been exhibited internationally in festivals including the GamerZ in Marseille, France, Inter-Society of Electronic Arts in Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm; Videoholica International Video Art Festival in Bulgaria; Los Angeles Freewaves Festival of Film, Video and New Media and exhibited work at the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California. His solo and collaborative works have also been exhibited locally at the Gallery of Modern Art, Institute of Modern Art, the QUT Art Museum, The Arc Biennial for Art & Design and interstate at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Hobart Art Gallery, Cairns Contemporary Art Space and Blindside Artist Run Space in Melbourne. His public art commissions include “KICK OFF” which was a curated screen-based program at the new Metricon Stadium Homeground of the Gold Coast Suns and Australia’s largest public art canvas the QUT billboard project. In 2012, he was part of the DJ Culture: Contemporary Australian Video Art, screening in the Cinémathèque at Gallery of Modern Art and in 2013 underwent a residency in Armenia at Tumo – center for creative technologies where he completed a series of Alternate Reality Games called ARGARMENIA. He is currently based in Brisbane, Queensland.

LINK: Chris Howlett

GAME ART: TOTAL REFUSAL'S CIRCUMVENTING THE CIRCLE OF DEATH (2018)

Total Refusal - Digital Disarmament Movement is a collective comprising Austrian artists Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel and Michael Stumpf funded in 2018 which promotes a subversively pacifist approach to violent video games. The trifecta operates as an "ideological antidote, unveiling the regressive characteristics of contemporary gaming media and reopening them as playgrounds for practicing creative disobedience and dissent." As they write,

The vast majority of contemporary video games is characterized by combative gameplay. This seems especially remarkable now that video games have long arrived in the entertainment mainstream and have managed to drop the boy’s room stigmata. With gaming becoming both commercially and culturally more and more relevant, the question arises how artists can modify and make use of this media for their own  purposes. In “Total Refusal”, artists Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf aim to peacefully appropriate the existing mechanics of digital gaming media in order to find new use for their virtual combat zones. As such, “Total Refusal” is a pacifistic statement, realized in digital space.

Circumventing the Circle of Death is a performance - hereby documented as a machinima piece - in which the artists highlight the absurd behavior of some computer game algorithms. In this case, by keeping two armies of a real-time strategy game in constant motion so that they do not come in "frontal view" with each other and thus begin an armed confrontation, the game becomes something else, that is, a virtual dance (and potentially interminable) between two factions. We hear the soldiers shouting menacingly at each other, and yet shots are not fired. Destruction is replaced by distraction. Inspired by the tactics of the International Situationists, the artists sabotaged the game without tempering with the code: gameplay is subverted by exploiting the algorithm's "blindness". And yet, the almost comical dance is no less absurd that the urge to destroy and annihilate. If anything, the former produces sweat, while the latter blood. 

Total Refusal - Digital Disarmament Movement has produced several other performances, installations, and video pieces including Landscape for a Battle Panorama (64 Soldiers hiding from the Player), Sculptering a Peace Model, Operation Jane Walk, and the upcoming How to Disappear.

Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel and Michael Stumpf, Circumventing the Circle of Death, 2018, installation view.

LINK: Leonhard Müllner