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: ANDY HUGHES' PLASTIC SCOOP (2019)

Andy Hughes' monumental Plastic Scoop examines the relationship between virtual environments and ecological issues though the filter of GTA V. Created using the Rockstar Editor, Plastic Coop mixes images from the videogame with found footage and archival moving image. The video opens with the soothing atmospheres of an ocean at sunset, but the voiceover - extolling the merits of nuclear weapons and plastic ("plastic... plastic... plastic...") - and rockets penetrating the surface soon disrupt the tranquility. Suddenly, an astronaut emerges from the water...

Plastic Scoop draws on contemporary narratives to express the ways in which our anxiety and fears about ocean pollution, plastic waste and global heating are presented. The film features gleaned archival moving image material and cinema footage from early ocean exploration, including nasa sound recordings with his own created and directed in-game Grand Theft Auto machinima. Working in cooperation with Dr Mandy Bloomfield and the English faculty students at the University of Plymouth through discussion and workshops the film was co-developed through the exchange of ideas and concepts.

Hughes’ photographic work explores the littoral zone and the politics of waste. In 2013 he traveled to Alaska, invited as part of an international team of artists and scientists to work on the project Gyre: The Plastic Ocean. This project was a world first and unique project that explored the integration of science and art to document and interpret the issue of plastic and human waste in the marine and coastal environment. 

LINK: Andy Hughes (All images and video courtesy of the Artist)

GAME ART: KARA GUT'S INTIMACY MOD SUPERCUT (2019)

Intimacy's Mod is a series of mods by Kara Gut created with the aid of the “Immersive Lover’s Comfort” by flexcreator for Skyrim. By using this mod, the artist distorts the games' original narrative and replaces it with an in-game performance carried out by the Gut herself (via her avatar) and one NPC (Non Player Character). Through the Intimacy Mod, Gut wanted to highlight the "cynicism and brutality (unintended or otherwise) of modding culture as a metaphor for our post-digital society at large, creating arresting situations of forced intimacy within a hyper-real space." The project began in 2016 and recently Kara released a supercut video. 

Kara Gut (b. 1989 is a multidisciplinary artist with an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She is the recipient of the Peter MacKendrick Endowment for Visual Artists, and her work has been collected by Cranbrook Art Museum as well as numerous private collections. Her work was recently featured by Refigural Magazine, The Unstitute, and the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography. Kara currently lives and works in Columbus, Ohio. She investigates the new shape of human intimacy formed by internet lifestyle, constructed detachment from reality, and the power dynamics of the virtual. Using image and screen-based media, she explores the necessity of certain digital spaces. She is specifically interested in how the patriarchal conversation within these spaces can be subverted to generate new meaning.

LINK: Kara Gut 

GAME ART: MARK FINGERHUT'S ART IN FALLOUT (2015)

A delicious twist on the "paintings in video games" trope. 

Mark Fingerhut is an artist, a computer user, a hacker, a performer, a singer, a video-maker, a writer, a juggler, a gamer, and a friend. He worked with Ian Cheng and Peter Burr, among others. He graduated from  Pratt Institute. He lives in New York. He does not maintain an artist's CV.

LINK: Mark Fingerhut

EVENT: FRIENDLY FIRE (OCTOBER 22 - NOVEMBER 11 2019, LINZ, AUSTRIA)

SYMPOSIUM: Desertion from digital war zone

A Symposium on October 24 2019, between 10:20 - 20:00

Art University

Domgasse 1, Room Ex-Post Music, 4th floor

Linz, Austria

free entrance

Exhibition: Friendly Fire

October 22 - November 14 2019

MEMPHIS Artspace

Lower Danube Lands 12, Linz, Austria,

Opening: October 22 at 19:00 

Website

How can video games be used as artistic material as one of the world's largest entertainment medium? What appropriation strategies do artists and communities develop to parasitically reuse the growing cities, war landscapes and worlds of video games?

In an interdisciplinary symposium, the borderland on the digital battlefield will be left behind. Scholars from various disciplines, including cultural anthropology (Ruth Eggel), media and cultural studies (Margarethe Jahrmann, Benjamin Beil, Philipp Bojahr, Helmut Lethen, Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel, Michael Stumpf), cultural history (Stephan Schwingeler, Ernst Strouhal) and applied sciences (Ulrich Brandstätter) will discuss the issues from different angles. Furthermore, artistic positions (Jona Kleinlein, Total Refusal) will be integrated into the discussion.

The practical follow-up is the simultaneous exhibition Friendly Fire by the artist collective Total Refusal, which deals with artistic intervention in current video games. The event will be introduced by the performance Wonderboy by Barbi Markovic.

Leonhard Müllner works as an artist in the public and digital space and is currently writing his doctoral thesis at the Linz Art University at the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies.

Robin Klengel works in Graz and Vienna as an interdisciplinary artist, illustrator, cultural anthropologist and vice president of the Forum Stadtpark.

Michael Stumpf studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. He works as an artist, designer and cultural theorist.

Barbi Marković studied German literature in Belgrade, is a writer and artist and lives in Vienna. Wonder boy is a computer game from the year 1986, which was originally developed for gambling halls. In the performance of the same name, literature and computer games meet in a literary walkthrough.

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Symposium: Fahnenflucht aus digitalem Kriegsgebiet & Ausstellung Friendly Fire

Kunst Universität Linz, Österreich, Domgasse 1 (Raum Ex-Postmusik, 4. OG)

Eintritt frei

Ausstellung: Friendly Fire

24.10.2019, 10:20 - 20:00 Uhr

Eröffnung am 22.10., 19:00 Uhr

MEMPHIS Artspace Linz, Österreich, Untere Donaulände 12

Website

Wie lässt sich das Videospiel als eines der weltweit größten Unterhaltungsmedien als künstlerisches Material verwenden? Welche Aneignungsstrategien entwickeln KünstlerInnen und die Community um die wachsenden Städte, Kriegslandschaften und Welten der Videospiele parasitär umzunutzen? 

In einem interdisziplinären Symposium wird das Grenzland am digitalen Schlachtfeld abgegangen. Dabei diskutieren WissenschaftlerInnen aus kulturanthropologischer (Ruth Eggel), medien- und kulturwissenschaftlicher (Margarethe Jahrmann, Benjamin Beil, Philipp Bojahr, Helmut Lethen, Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel, Michael Stumpf), kulturhistorischer (Stephan Schwingeler, Ernst Strouhal) und angewandter (Ulrich Brandstätter) Perspektive. Weiters werden künstlerische Positionen (Jona Kleinlein,Total Refusal) in die Diskussion eingebunden.

Den praktischen Anschluss bildet dabei die zeitgleich stattfindende Ausstellung Friendly Fire des Künstlerkollektivs Total Refusal, das sich mit künstlerischer Intervention in aktuellen Videospielen beschäftigt und nun in Linz seine Arbeiten zu diesem medienkulturell so aktuellen Thema präsentiert. Die Eröffnung beginnt mit der Performance Wonderboy von Barbi Markovic.

Leonhard Müllner works as an artist in the public and digital space and is currently writing his doctoral thesis at the Linz Art University at the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies.

Robin Klengel works in Graz and Vienna as an interdisciplinary artist, illustrator, cultural anthropologist and vice president of the Forum Stadtpark.

Michael Stumpf studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. He works as an artist, designer and cultural theorist.

Barbi Marković studied German literature in Belgrade, is a writer and artist and lives in Vienna. Wonder boy is a computer game from the year 1986, which was originally developed for gambling halls. In the performance of the same name, literature and computer games meet in a literary walkthrough.

LINK: Friendly Fire

GAME ART: TOTAL REFUSAL'S SWINGS DON'T SWING (2019)

The latest work by Total Refusal (Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf) is a 4-channel video installation that brings to light the intrinsic contradictions of video game environments, i.e. the designers' obsession to achieve photorealism and the Potemkin Village-like syndrome which informs their representational logic. Far from being functional, several simulated elements are just props: they look "real", but they do not perform as one might expect. Specifically, the collective underlines the complete lack of usability of playground structures within shooter games, where the function of swings and slides is purely decorative. Hence, swings don't swing, slides don't slide and carousels don't... well, you get the idea. Far from being interactive, virtual playground spaces are "dead space". Swings don't swing was conceived as an installation in which four screens literally swing in the gallery room as to compensate for the counterintuitive stasis of their digital replicas. As they write in their accompanying text, "They document different attempts to interact with the dysfunctional objects, showing how difficult it is to actually play within a video game." It is somehow ironic that, in a shooter, playful structures are stripped of their playful affordances. The playground thus becomes an arena for violent conflict. Or artistic subversion, like in this case. In other words: if a video game totally refuses to play, Total Refusal plays with the video game. 

Total Refusal is Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, and Michael Stumpf.  In their practice, they critically analyze and appropriate digital game spaces and put them to new use. Moving within games but ignoring the intended gameplay, Total Refusal allocates these resources to new activities and narratives, in order to create “public” spaces imbued with critical, even subversive potential.

Leonhard Müllner works as an artist in the public and digital space and is currently writing his doctoral thesis at the Linz Art University at the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies.

Robin Klengel works in Graz and Vienna as an interdisciplinary artist, illustrator, cultural anthropologist and vice president of the Forum Stadtpark.

Michael Stumpf studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. He works as an artist, designer and cultural theorist.

LINK: Total Refusal

GAME ART: BIG PAUPER'S SAKURAGAOKA KIDS (2015)

A multimedia piece made by Big Pauper within a circuit bent Sega Dreamcast environment.

Drew McIntyre (known as Big Pauper in some parts of the world) is a multimedia artist, toolmaker and sound designer based in Portland, OR.   Drew’s own artwork engages with the mercurial moods of his own modified technologies, presumed dead media & cultural artifacts left by the wayside of history.  His video work and their corollaries are distinctively disorienting, and their mysterious humor belies subtle (and not-so-subtle) censure of our novelty driven consumer culture.  Drew also designs glitch video circuitry as BPMC.

LINK: Big Pauper

GAME ART: SU HYUN NAM'S SURROGATE_ BEING II (2019)

A fascinating take at simulation vs. representation, memory vs. concreteness. 

Surrogate Being is an interactive virtual environment exploring possibilities of affective relationships between humans and machines and mindful approaches in the computation process for their sustainable coevolution of human and technology. This work negotiates the discrepancy between memories and digital data of a nostalgic place through the process of recreating the artist’s hometown in Korea. The heterogeneity of algorithmic digital images and affective memories are interwoven in the 3D environment.

This virtual space bridges my mind and digital technology and invites participants to explore the mediated landscape with curiosity. As memories remain indistinct and disintegrated until we recollect, the landscape is destructed when no participant is engaged. If a participant is approached to the fragmented image and stand in front of it, it turns into a navigable landscape. As s/he moves her/his head to look at the other side of the landscape, the virtual camera in the scene changes its direction responding to the participants' movement. This interaction suggests a potential depth in the digital landscape we can look into, thus the monitor or the projected image becomes a portal into the mediated memory space.

As the virtual environment is transformed based on input data of participants' movement, the participant's body is affected by reactive virtual images again. In this way, their interaction begins to flow in the feedback loop and ultimately makes the human mind and algorithmic process indistinguishable.

Su Hyun Nam investigates the complex emerging identity and implicit conflict of a foreign being by reconstructing familiar landscapes as uncanny digital images. Living as an immigrant, I experience and observe multiple incongruities in the seemingly coherent public world - generated by competing social norms and clashing cultural perspectives, and my digital images mediate those fragmented heterogeneous experiences of the society. In this process, digital technology inspires my own personal searching in a creative and mindful way, and consequently, the computation process becomes meditative beyond the canonical rule-driven approach.

LINK: Su Hyun Nam

GAME ART: BIG PAUPER'S RENTAL CAR, OAHU 2007 (2012)

A multimedia piece made by Big Pauper within a hacked Sega Saturn gaming environment.

Drew McIntyre (known as Big Pauper in some parts of the world) is a multimedia artist, toolmaker and sound designer based in Portland, OR.   Drew’s own artwork engages with the mercurial moods of his own modified technologies, presumed dead media & cultural artifacts left by the wayside of history.  His video work and their corollaries are distinctively disorienting, and their mysterious humor belies subtle (and not-so-subtle) censure of our novelty driven consumer culture.  Drew also designs glitch video circuitry as BPMC.

LINK: Big Pauper

EVENT: LAST STOP (OCTOBER 4 2019, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA)

LAST STOP

At LIKE LIKE gallery

Friday October 4th, 2019
7-11 PM
During the Unblurred gallery crawl

205 North Evaline St
Pittsburgh, PA

A show featuring New Urbanist Games for Transit-Oriented Teens. Celebrate public transportation as portrayed / idealized / fetishized by videogames. Take an infinite bus ride! Ride an infinite bus! Master the controls of a handsome Deutsche Bahn ICE 3M class 406! Plan the most efficient subway system! Drive a trolley in a whimsical world! Plan your commute on a future-Pittsburgh transit map!

Works by: Turnfollow /// Dinosaur Polo Club /// Alexander Perrin /// Holly Gramazio /// Dovetail Games

 LINK: Last Stop

EVENT: GAMES FOR WINDOWS (OCTOBER 4 - NOVEMBER 17 2019, ROCHESTER, NY)

Games for Windows: Experiments with Game Footage

Curated by Nilson Carroll

The Liquor Store

128 W. Main St.

Rochester, New York

Games for Windows: Experiments with Game Footage is a new exhibition curated by Nilson Carroll. Expanding the tradition of cinema and games, these artists use various gestures of play to create experimental video art from video game footage. This event is part of the Rochester's Current Seen, an art biennial that takes place in small venues. 

Participating Artists:
Sandra Araújo (Brazil) 
Jordan Baruch (Long Island, NY)
Rob Cigna (Rochester, NY)
Heidi E. Cooper (Vietnam)
Kasey Edgerton (Rochester, NY)
Cody Filardi (Rochester, NY)
Kara Gut (Ohio)
Thomas Hawranke (Germany)
Alex Hovet (New York, NY)
Matthew Keff (Brooklyn, NY)
Ryan Keller (Long Island, NY)
Robin Mendoza (Albany, NY)
Drew Mounce (Long Island, NY)
Karl Munstedt (Brooklyn, NY)
Tara Nelson (Rochester, NY)
Joshua Thorson (Rochester/Brooklyn)
Bloody Noes (Rochester, NY)

LINKS: Games for Windows