GAMESCENES

EVENT: WORKSHOP: ANIMATION & DIGITAL GAMES. INTERSECTIONS, AESTHETICS, PRACTICES (JUNE 9-11 2022, ONLINE)

The workshop about the intersection of games and animation is a collaboration of the workgroups AG Animation and AG Games within the German Society for Media Studies (Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft (GfM)) and is organized by

• Julia Eckel  // Ruhr-University Bochum // AG Animation
• Christopher Lukmann // FU Berlin // AG Games
• Andreas Rauscher // University of Freiburg/Institute for Media Culture Studies // AG Games // AG Animation
• Hanns Christian Schmidt // University of Cologne // Macromedia University for Applied Sciences Cologne // AG Games

Registration is open until June 8 20220.

Full program:

LINK: ANIMATION & DIGITAL GAMES (Thanks to Prof. Dr. Hanns Christian Schmidt)

EVENT: ELISA SANCHEZ (MAY 27 - JUNE 9 2022, ONLINE)

AU-DELÀ DU DÉSERT FLOU, PLUS AUCUNE SAUVEGARDE N’EST POSSIBLE

Digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound 43’, 2021, France

Created by Elisa Sanchez

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

Born in Toulouse, France in 1997, Elisa Sanchez is likely France’s most well known artiste-astronaute and a recent graduate of the Haute école des arts du Rhin Mulhouse, Strasbourg. In 2021, she completed her thesis project, Le Cowboy et Le Astronaut under the supervision of Anne Foret. Her first machinima, Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde n’est possible, was screened at the international film festival Cinéma du Réel in March 2022.

“I’m tired of playing cowboy” says Elisa Sanchez, referring to her experience with Red Dead Redemption 2. To make spice up things, she uses cheat modes and modifies the original game. Such intervention allows her to discover weird architectures, bizarre landscapes, and bottomless rivers, among other things. So she begins a metaphysical journey into the Wilder West to escape her concrete “house arrests” due to the Pandemic lockdown. The result is a slow, contemplative, meditative machinima situated at the intersection of video art, video essay, and video diary. A warning: if you cross the blurred desert, you won’t be able to save your progress.

WATCH NOW

EVENT: GAME UP (JUNE 1-26 2022, BERLIN, GERMANY)

Elaine Hoey, A Blind Eye, 2021

GAME UP

Open: June 1 - 26 (Preview: 18:00 - 21:00, Thursday June 2)

Wednesdays – Fridays 13:00 - 19:0

Saturdays & Sundays June 11:00 - 19:00 

Free entrance

transmediale studio

Gerichtstrasse 35

13347 Berlin

Germany

 

This is a killer exhibition. Highly recommended. (MB)

 

press release

GAME UP seeks to get under the skin of our increasingly digital planet as a springboard to new thinking and new action through the work of  artists, Alan Butler, Elaine Hoey, Conor McGarrigle, Rosa Menkman,  David OReilly and Paper Rad/Cory Arcangel. GAME UP is a reckoning, a rear mirror view and a look at the future of our hyper-connected world.  

What are the rules of engagement in this electronic superhighway and who is policing them?  What of our digital shadow and its instantaneous monetisation? How are race and gender played out in the digital space? By turning the technology on itself, the artists in GAME UP create ways to consider and expose this hidden world. The viewer is brought deep into virtuality by means of narratives and experiences that question and confront the digital contract.

Conor McGarrigle, practicing artist and lecturer in Fine Art in the Technological University, Dublin, reminds us in his Electronic Superhighway (2022) of the richness of historical material, even in the short decades since the internet was founded and early ‘70s telemental art.

Artist and  lecturer in Fine Art at The National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Elaine Hoey’s walk-in VR installation/performance brings the viewer awkwardly face to face with an Oracle far removed from its Delphic forebearer who might predict a different kind of future.

Alan Butler represented Ireland at the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021, as a founding member of the collective of artists and architects, Annex. GAME UP presents Alan Butler’s 20 minute video Mondo Cane (2018), a journey through a sumptuous John Berger-like sequence of images and sounds mined from Grand Theft Auto.

Rosa Menkman is an artist, lecturer and pioneer of glitch art. Her work Glitch Studies Manifesto promises hope for what glitch might offer by suggesting disintegration might democratize society.

LA-based David OReilly works with animation, Augmented Reality and gaming. For GAME UP, the artist presents 4004 (2021), a free-standing resin monolith in which an Intel microchip - The Intel 4004 originally released by Intel Corporation in 1971 – has been preserved, resembling a factice out-of-place. The sculpture also exists as an NFT.

Chiptuner Paper Rad and video and game artist Cory Arcangel’s work, Super Mario Movie (2005), is a 15-minute movie programmed onto a Mario Brothers cartridge, in which we see the plumber evolving in a chaotic, corrupt and glitchy world.

 This exhibition is supported by Culture Ireland and curated by Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, with assistance from transmediale Festival of Art and Digital Culture, Berlin.

LINK: GAME UP

EVENT: GRAND THEFT ARTAUD (MAY 29 2022, ATHENS, GREECE)

Sam Crane

Grand Theft Artaud: Live performance and spectatorship inside online video games

May 29 2022, 6 PM

Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) FutuRetro

Athens, Greece

What happens when you try to perform Shakespeare inside Grand Theft Auto Online, a game space notorious for its aggression and gratuitous violence? You might expect the other players in your server to respond with heavy weaponry, perhaps a mini SMG, or a compact grenade launcher. And indeed, this is often what happens. Yet occasionally you may come across someone who responds in an entirely unexpected manner … In this talk Sam Crane will show how, by integrating the world of classical theatre with the chaotic, youthful and truly diverse realm of online gaming, we can open up fascinating new dramatic frontiers for both artists and audiences.

Sam Crane (UK) is an award-winning video artist and actor. In a theatre career spanning twenty years he has been critically acclaimed for his performances at the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, in The West End and on Broadway. In the guise of his alter ego, Rustic Mascara, he attracted over 50 thousand views in two weeks to his radical attempts to perform Shakespeare inside GTA online. His films have been screened at contemporary art and film festivals worldwide. He won the Critics’ Choice award at Milan Machinima Festival MMXXII, and was longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize 2022. He has recently been awarded funding by the British Film Institute to make a documentary film about this work. He is one of six international emerging artistic researchers in the PEERS pre-PhD programme of the Department of Performing Arts and Film at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHDk).

The Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) is an annual international festival dedicated to exploring the relationship between art, science, and technology. Showcasing contemporary digital art forms from a diverse global community of artists and scientists, ADAF has been representing Greece internationally in digital arts since 2005 and is the first institution of its kind to be established in the region.

LINK: Grand Theft Artaud

LINK: Sam "Rustic Mascara" Crane

NEWS: VRAL IS NOW ON PATREON

We are happy to announce that online platform VRAL is now available through Patreon. Here's the curators' spiel:

We are using Patreon to build a community for all appreciators of machinima and game videos situated at the intersection of video art, experimental cinema, contemporary art, and avant-garde gaming: we believe that Jack Conte's platform is ideally suited for bringing together people sharing the same passions and interests.

Our primary goal is to produce a deeper, broader understanding of machinima as an artform and through Patreon we will make VRAL more sustainable in the long term, provide a compensation to all artists involved while maintaining full creative and curatorial independence from external sources, such as institutions and/or sponsors.

Although our monthly program comprising two VRAL exhibitions accompanied by an-depth interview will remain freely accessible on vral.org, we will significantly expand our critical and curatorial efforts by introducing exclusive, platform-specific content, such as articles, essays, video essays, interviews, and a variety of perks, including discounts for books and special events, such as the Milan Machinima Festival. Currently we offer three subscription options corresponding to different tiers (official, all-access, VIP) priced at 3, 6 and 9 euro per month respectively (sorry we do not accept cryptocurrencies at the moment). The content is in English.

Introduced in April 2020 amidst a global pandemic, VRAL is a uniquely curated game video experience, offering screenings of machinima selected on their cultural relevance, artistic achievement, and innovative style. Often presented only in the context of new media art festivals, film retrospectives, and exhibitions, these works best represent the variety, ingenuity, and creativity of game-based video practices. An online space that provides access to a range of diverse voices supplementing/expanding the Milan Machinima Festival, VRAL celebrates a new generation of digital filmmakers and artists.

So far, we curated two seasons comprising 43 exhibitions overall. In 2021, we published a book collecting all the interviews. The second volume in the series will be available soon and we will share a sneak preview through Patreon.

Finally, VRAL Season 03 dropped May 13 2022 with Felix Klee's My paws are soft, my bones are heavy.

This season will be going more experimental than ever. You have been warned.

The VRAL subscription platform on Patreon is accessible here.

EVENT: PASCAL GRECO, PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO GAMES (MAY 21 2022, GENEVE, SWITZERLAND)

The Centre de la photographie Genève

Pascal Greco’s Performance

Schedule: 6:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m. & 9:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m.

Discussion with Pascal Greco and Danaé Panchaud

Schedule: 9:00 p.m.

Centre de la photographie Genève
Bac — Bâtiment d’art contemporain
28, rue des Bains,
CH — 1205 Genève

The Centre de la photographie Genève explores the changes in the practice of photography in the era of "virtual" worlds, during an evening devoted to in-game photography, a technique consisting of taking photographs in a video game. As we spend more and more time in digital spaces, on social networks, in metaverses or games, new forms of "photographic" documentation of certain environments, and more particularly landscapes in computer graphics, seem generate growing interest. Throughout the evening, the public will be able to observe the exploration of the photographic potential of the game Death Stranding on PlayStation 5 (on site and on Twitch) with Pascal Greco, performance linked to his Place(s) project which he will talk to us about also during a round table. A digital work produced during the evening, certified in the form of NFT, will be drawn among the public. He will also have the opportunity to experiment with in-game photography on site.

LINK: Pascal Greco

LINK: Photography and Video Games at the Centre de la photographie Genève

GAME ART: STEPHEN THORPE'S ARCADE PAINTINGS (2022)

Stephen Thorpe, The Over-soul, Oil on canvas, 60 x 52 in, 2022

Stephen Thorpe, Life is Heaven, Oil on canvas, 60 x 52 in, 2022

Stephen Thorpe, In Woods and Mountains I Roam, 60 x 52 in, 2022

Stephen Thorpe, One Needs Death to be Able to Harvest the Fruit, oil on canvas, 60 x 52 in, 2022

 

What can I say? I'm totally in love with Stephen Thorpe's bright and colorful "corner" paintings of classic arcades next to flamingos, vultures, seagulls, and ducks.

Here's an excerpt from the dreamlike press release accompanying his most recent show in New York, Boundaries of the Soul, at Denny Diming Gallery:

The edge of the canvas – depicting a room – bleeds into the gallery through thick layers of paint molded to the work’s frame – its own corner. Anachronistic objects question time and place, and ornate rugs, with designs drawn from a myriad of cultures, act as nostalgic calls to half-remembered sanctuaries, a tangle of real and self-constructed realities. Life-size arcades are personified yet switched off, inanimate objects; while the living birds of US naturalist and painter John James Audubon are the focus of lifeless, decorative wallpaper. Through these new works and an exhibition design conceived by the artist, Thorpe creates a setting that marks the boundaries of the soul, a platform for in-betweenness, and spaces through which to encounter the limits and distinctions between self and environment. 

Stephen Thorpe is currently based in Atlanta, Georgia. He received his MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London and is currently a Professor of Painting at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). He has been the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Basil H. Alkazzi Foundation Scholarship; Saatchi’s Showdown Prize, judged by Kristine Roepstorff and Matthias Weisher; prize winner of the 3rd Ward Open Call; and the Royal Scottish Academy’s The Skinny Award. Thorpe’s work is held in prominent private and museum collections and has been featured in solo and group exhibitions around the world at venues including Ora-Ora Gallery, Hong Kong; Denny Dimin Gallery, New York and Hong Kong; Saatchi Gallery, London; the National Museum, Gdansk, Poland; Copeland Gallery, London; Summerhall, Edinburgh; the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh; and Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, amongst others. He previously sat on the Selection Committee for the Basil H. Alkazzi Scholarship Award and the Ali H. Alkazzi Scholarship at the Royal College of Art, as well as the Outstanding Student Award in Hong Kong.

LINK: Stephen Thorpe

EVENT: FELIX KLEE (MAY 13 - MAY 26 2022, ONLINE)

My paws are soft, my bones are heavy

digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound (stereo), 4’ 57”, Germany, 2021

Created by Felix Klee, 2021

vral.org

 

Can an artificial intelligence dream? Apparently, yes. In this oneiric short, it imagines itself as a virtual mountain lion wandering through digital landscapes. After jumping off a cliff, the animal dives into the ocean, looking for some tranquility. Written by an artificial intelligence, narrated by a text-to-speech converter and shot within a modified video game, My paws are soft, my bones are heavy is blatantly post-human.

Felix Klee is studying documentary filmmaking at the University of Television and Film in Munich, Germany. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Munich — where he studied time-based media under Julian Rosefeldt and painting under Pia Fries — Klee previously studied painting under Thomas Hartmann at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and was a guest student at Universidad de las Artes Aguascalientes México. He co-founded the ReKollektiv, a collective of media artists and directors working towards the democratization of footage and a collectivist approach to film editing. From 2020-2022 he served as an advisory board member at Locarno Film Festival. Klee lives and works in Munich, Germany.

WATCH NOW

VRAL is now on Patreon

EVENT: CONTROL ALT PLAY: LUDIC ALTERNATIVES ON CONTROL (MAY 12 - NOVEMBER 12 2022, ZARAGOZA, SPAIN)

CONTROL ALT PLAY: LUDIC ALTERNATIVES ON CONTROL

May 12 - November 12 2022

Curated by Luca Carruba and Eurídice Cabañes

Produced by Zaragoza City Council and the Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation, through Etopia Art and Technology Centre,

Vernissage: May 12 2022, 7:30 pm

eTopia

Avda. Ciudad de Soria, 8 50003 – Zaragoza, Spain

 

Control Alt Play proposes a journey through 24 works by national and international artists. From the interactive or playable pieces, visitors can extend their visit to the exhibition up to four hours and enjoy a multisensory experience through sight, hearing, smell and touch.The exhibition that is the result of a collaboration between Zaragoza City Council and the Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation, will be presented next Thursday at 9.30am by the Director of the Foundation, Daniel Sarasa, and its curators Eurídice Cabañes and Luca Carrubba, members of the ArsGames association. ArsGames is an international non-profit organisation that promotes and manages cultural projects related to video games and technology based on art, pedagogy, scientific research, inclusion and participation.

 

Patrick Lemiueux, Octopad, 2018

Antonin Fourneau, GhostPad, installation, 2009

About the notion of control in videogames by Luca Carruba and Eurídice Cabañes

Playing video games feeds the pleasure of learning to control complex systems in order to achieve certain predefined ends. We want the visitor to understand the different ways in which video games relate to control and how video games place players in an ambiguous tension between discipline and rebellion against the strict logic of the game algorithm. The practice of gaming, played by more than 2.7 billion players worldwide, demonstrates that there are multiple ways to coexist within this tension. With digital games it is possible to imagine new worlds and different ways of relating to each other: we can realise utopias of liberation but also stage fantasies of domination. Or we can break with all of them. The act of playing in virtual environments offers the possibility of being, at the same time, subjects and objects of control.

Credits of the exhibition
Curated by: Luca Carrubba and Eurídice Cabañes - Arsgames
Artists: Patrick Lemieux, Aida Navarro, Alejandro Cura, Mathias Klenner, Javier Laspiur, Robin Baumgarten, Foone Turing, Sofía Balbontín, Joan Lavandeira, Keiichi Matsuda, Mónica Riḱic, Román Torre, Antonin Fourneau, Galamot, Fictiorama, Luca Carrubba, Eurídice Cabañes, Maria Ibarra, Gianluca Saporito, AAA Collective, Guim Camps - Sindicado Virtual de Mods, Rabia Williams, Nidal Nijm Games, Jose Sanchez, David O'Really, Xavi Manzanares, Draw me a píxel, Arsgames.
Production Coordination: Blanca Perez Ferrer - FZC
Executive production and editing: Trazacultura
Editing: Municipal Brigades and Etopia maintenance officers.
Production assistants: Julieta Averbuj and Marga Avendaño
Exhibit Design: Kaori Project, Raquel Clemente Muñoz
Graphic Design: Buenu, Col-lectiva Gràfica
Communication: Laura Montañés- FZC
Technical coordination: Guillermo Malón-FZC
Education: Pilar Martín- FZC
Responsible for content: Elena Giner Smart City Service
Mediation: Noray Collective
Exhibition produced by Etopia Art and Technology Centre through the Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation.

LINK: Control Alt Play

GAME ART: ALEX M LEE'S THE FOLD (2018-ONGOING)

The Fold: episode I & II is a non-linear interactive film and virtual reality-based art game involving rooms with doors containing a concept folding into other rooms with doors. Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' short story 'The Garden of Forking Paths', this VR-based 'escape the room' project highlights the similarities and differences of technics as it relates to Western (episode I) and Eastern (episode II) philosophy including structuralist & surrealist literature, sentient bodies, metaphysics, mathematics, the virtual object, Buddhism, Zen principles, Qi (氣), and problematizes the affirmation of technics, its outputs and technologies as anthropologically universal within the frame of VR, AI, 3D animation, and video games.

Alex M Lee is an artist who utilizes 3D animation, video game engines, virtual/augmented/immersive reality platforms, machine learning and the potential of simulation technologies in order to investigate contemporary modes of representation, artifice and technical images - culling from concepts within science, science fiction, physics, philosophy, and modernity. He received his BFA (2005) and MFA (2009) from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the USA.He is an associate professor at Clarkson University.

LINK: Alex M Lee