TANK is an animated short film made by Stu Maschwitz inspired by classic vector games of the 1980s, like Atari's Battlezone. The video, which required more than 18 months from conception to production, is now available on Red Giant's site. Maschwitz also produced a terrific making-of-video, which can be watched below. TANK was developed entirely with Adobe After Effects.
Stu Maschwitz is a filmmaker, photographer, and writer, with a passion for kinetic storytelling. A graduate of CalArts, Maschwitz spent four years creating visual effects at Industrial Light & Magic before co-founding the legendary effects firm The Orphanage in 1999. Despite his visual effects background and unique command of filmmaking technologies, Maschwitz places an emphasis on performance, emotion, and story.
In Beyond The Mind, Dupuy Benjamin's latest machinima, a policeman discovers a strange place and makes an unexpected encounter that will bring him to overcome his greatest fears.
Dupuy Benjamin received a Master of Science in Computer Science at the Faculty of Toulouse, France and today mainly works as a web developer. "Cinema has been my passion since childhood. I love all genres, but I consider myself a die hard fan of fantasy, science fiction, and above all horror movies. I have always liked video games and when I discovered the GTA IV editor in 2008, I realized I could do some really interesting things, merging my passion for cinema with the possibility of games.". He started making machinima and collaborating with the members of a now defunct small online community, Machinigamers. Movies like Mathieu Weschler's The Trashmaster (2010) and Ezequiel Guerisoli's Mastermind (2010) convinced him of the potential of machinima as an art form. "I realized that it was possible to use games as platforms to bring to life stories more powerful, more interesting and evocative than a simple pursuit in the streets of Liberty City." The introduction of Grand Theft Auto V in 2013 was another milestone. "The game featured a powerful editor, but the real revolution was that the fans began making incredible mods, and after a few years of inactivity, I decided to return to machinima-making."
According to Benjamin, "machinima is fascinating because it allows any creator to make all sorts of narratives with a limited budget and with excellent visual quality if the craft is there. A filmmaker must understands the potential but also the limitations of the medium (e.g. the movement of characters, their facial expressions, the kinds of available places and scenery...), but playing with these constraints can be very interesting and constructive. Machinima makes it possible to express oneself in a way that is inaccessible to most of us outside this medium. The problem today is the vast majority of movies that are produced tend to mimic the original game's genre - for instance, the gangster movie for GTA V. With Beyond the Mind, I wanted to tell something else, to make another kind of machinima. I am convinced that the possibilities are there: one only needs to experiment." Asked about his personal vision as a filmmaker, Dupuy Benjamin says that "As a filmmaker, I have no specific goals for the moment but telling these stories I have in mind, have fun making movies, not only machinima. There is so much I want to discover and the room for improvement is huge."
Jakob Kudsk Steensen's AQUAPHOBIA is a stunning achievement, both on technical and conceptual levels. Created with Unreal Engine, AQUAPHOBIA is an immersive experience which allows the viewer to navigate through five different environments or "levels" seamlessly connected. These spaces form an ecosystem and include simple to water microbial surroundings and futuristic replicas of Louis Valentino Jr. Park and Pier in Red Hook, Brooklyn, developed in a scale accurately one to one. The "goal" of this non-game is to to overcome fear of water, hence the title, AQUAPHOBIA. The work features a voice-over narration by Rindon Johnson.
As the artist writes,
AQUAPHOBIA uses VR to connect inner psychological landscapes with exterior eco-systems. The work is inspired by psychological studies of the treatment of aquaphobia – fear of water- as an entry point to transform perceptions of our relationship to future water levels and climates. [...] While travelling through the landscape, an alien morphing aquatic entity follows you around and emit scuba diving sounds and recites a poem, which tell a breakup story between the landscape and its virtual visitor. Ultimately, AQUAPHOBIA uses VR to mixes past and future geological periods, and the work personifies a landscape through a break-up story.
You may remember Steensen's equally powerful work Primal Tourism, which we featured last year.
Below is a VR documentary created by Steensen:
Jakob Kudsk Steensen is a Danish artist and art director based in New York, specialized in VR and real-time virtual simulations of ecosystems. Through his practice, Steensen is concerned with how imagination, technology and ecology intertwine by developing futuristic virtual simulations of existing real-world landscapes. His work is at the forefront of real-time rendered virtual environments, and he develops projects through collaborations with science, technology and natural science divisions. Steensen also develop work through collaborations with artists from digital media industries, with the aim of bringing diversity in content, and opportunities to experimental developers. As a result, Steensen occupies a space in-between art, science and 3D studio production models.
Kerich's DKS is one of my favorite projects of the year. It's a cross between Arman and Ant Farm, in a digital space. Phenomenal:
"This project, inspired by the YouTube series Car Boys, involved the creation and destruction of kinetic sculptures in the driving game BeamNG.drive(with a few modifications). BeamNG is built to be a vehicle simulator and racing game, allowing its users to customize cars and race and crash them with realistic soft body physics. It also includes an editor, to allow players to create their own levels and scenarios to race in. To create this project, I abused the capabilities of the editor to create car-sculptures that often burst into flame immediately or caused the physics engine to severely glitch as soon as the simulation was started. By exploring conditions of the game that generally be considered unlikely for an average user (cars dropped from a great height with 100x gravity, cars existing inside of one another) a space of strange freedom is opened up inside of what is otherwise a relatively focused driving simulator. These zones of alternative creative production are extremely important in helping to explore and understand systems." (Chris Kerich)
Chris Keric, etk_i-series/cliff, 2017
Chris Keric, dh_sport_bike/derby, 2017
Chris Kerich is a programmer, artist, and "human being interested in systems, breaking systems, constrained art, information, critical science studies, games, media and studies". Kerich received his Master of Science at MIT in Comparative Media Studies and he is currently based in Los Angeles, California where he is pursuing a PhD at UCSC.
LINK:Chris Kerich (All images and videos courtesy of the Artist)
Tash Tully is a third year Illustration student at the University of Brighton, UK. She's also a talented machinimaker. Her short video Absence created with/within Grand Theft Auto V, is incredibly touching. A meditation of loneliness and anomie inspired by a quote from Theodore Roosevelt ("Absence and death are the same, only that in death there is no suffering") Absence is as far removed from the nihilistic tone of Grand Theft Auto V as one can imagine:
Using Grand Theft Auto V as my engine, I explored the city of San Andreas alone. Settings were allocated so there were no humans, no cars and the weather was miserable in attempt to convey the feelings of isolation and danger that come with being a lone person exploring a big city.
The latest project from Japanese collective tha ltd., currently comprising Kentaro Yama, Yoshinori Nishimura, Sachi Okuda, Koji Takahashi, and Yoko Shiga, is titled Humanity. It's a mesmerizing game about crowds and crowd behaviors developed with Unity. This short video preview looks like a crazy mix of Lemmings, the Tokyo underground during rush hour, and M.C. Escher's drawings. Expect Humanity to reach the screens sometime is 2018.2018.
Carlos Martorell is a sound artist exploring videogame engine possibilities for visual discourses in between machinima, topography, human relationships, film work and pre-2k aesthetics. His latest project is titled Silicone and was produced during a residency at Oudeis (Le Vigan/Ganges), France promoted by Eufònic and Institut Ramon Llull.
Silicone is based on a simple idea: acquire data to develop a new reality from it. After latest political developments in Catalonia and its press treatment, I felt I could explore how to bend reality to own interest. Twisting facts and manipulating reality is like medicine: it works when you get the right dose at the right time. Nothing new. Managed outcomes brought us to this post-political world, but at the end of the day, this process is inherent to human condition. We’ve seen this before in last USA election, Brexit, dictatorships, tulip mania, religious texts, cave paintings. Control of narrative is more important than narrative per se. [...] The final oniric world is a limbo of uncanny ambiences with pre-2k game aesthetics where local people is glitched and deformed by sound in front of well-known spots for them.
Federico Solmi's new work, The Great Farce, will be installed on the Frankfurter Schauspiel and the Opera in Berlin and will remain visible for the entire duration of the 2017 B3 Biennial of the Moving Image. Described as a biting parody of contemporary world history, The Great Farce is Solmi's latest iteration of an impressive video project that creatively re-uses game engines Here's a more detailed description, courtesy of B3:
The gaudily colored grotesque shows political leaders in an amusement park where historical events are re-enacted for their entertainment. Derived from Solmi’s unique approach that merges hand wrought elements with hyper-technical dimensions, the work pokes fun at how bedazzlement can supersede historical accuracy, while calling attention to the nexus of myth and legend, actuality and absurdity.
Below, a trailer:
Federico Solmi, The Great Farce, 2017 9-channel FullHD Video, facade projection, 106m x 6,39m Courtesy of the artist
Federico Solmi (Italy, 1973) currently lives and works in New York. His exhibitions, which often combine articulate installations composed of different media such as video, drawings, mechanical sculptures and paintings, use bright colors and a satirical aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present-day society. The artist was awarded a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2009. He is currently a Visiting Professor at Yale University School of Art. His work has been included in the Beijing Media Art Biennale (2016), Frankfurt B3 Biennial of the Moving Image (2015), and the 54th Venice Biennial (2011), among others, and featured in solo exhibitions at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo del Zulia Maracaibo, Venezuela (2017), the Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (2016), the Centro Cultural Matucana 100, Santiago, Chile (2015).
UCLA Game Art Festival returns with exciting, eclectic collection of games and game art One night only! Tuesday, November 14, 7-10 p.m. @ the Hammer Museum Festival to feature more than 50 playable exhibits Videogames, tournaments, live performances, board games, screenings, and more!
Los Angeles, CA – Now in its fifth year, the 2017 UCLA Game Art Festival returns with an exciting and eclectic collection of curated games and game-based art from around the world. Presented in a playful, festival format, the UCLA Game Art Festival will feature more than 50 digital and tabletop games, live performances, screenings, VR/AR works, and other game art installations. The festival will be held 7-10 p.m. Tuesday, November 14 in the Hammer Museum Courtyard in Westwood, CA. Admission is free. Sponsored by the UCLA Game Lab, the UCLA Game Art Festival will feature playable digital and tabletop games, large-screen projections of game art, a curated board-game lounge, a cinema installation, live stage performances, music, refreshments, and food trucks just outside the museum.
This year’s festival is curated and organized by Eddo Stern, Isla Hansen, Tyler Stefanich, and David O’Grady of the UCLA Game Lab. As with previous festivals, the focus remains on showcasing an eclectic mix of independent, game art projects that may not otherwise reach the public. To that end, more than 1,500 people attended the last festival in 2015—an indication for Festival Director Eddo Stern, UCLA Design Media Arts professor and artist, that the event is fulfilling its mission. “This year’s festival reflects our ongoing commitment to expanding the concept of what gaming means for many people,” Stern said. “The games we exhibit transcend conventional notions of digital gaming: many of them combine physical and digital media, employ new aesthetic language, or use one-of-a-kind controllers, to deliver political, polemical, and emotional play experiences—terrain often avoided by more industrial, mainstream games.”
