GAMESCENES

EVENT: YOU + PEA'S PLAYING THE PICTURESQUE (JUNE 4 - SEPTEMBER 7 2019, LONDON)

Playing the Picturesque

4 June to 7 September 2019

Architecture Gallery, RIBA

66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD

Official website

Playing the Picturesque is an interactive installation exploring the boundaries between virtual and physical space created by You+Pea, the architectural design studio of Sandra Youkhana and Luke Caspar Pearson. Their work explores the integration of videogame technologies into architectural design, exploring how games can engage new participants in the design of cities. (for more information, check out their videogame urbanism projects).

LINK: YOU + PEA

GAME ART: VICTOR MORALES'S RAPID TRANSIT (in progress)

Victor Morales is working on a new, ambitious and intriguing project titled Rapid Transit, an animated science-fiction video and VR experience performed in a video game engine. As Morales writes,

It is about riding the NYC subway in  the 2050s, maybe later. High percentage of the riders wear vr/ar systems//things combined with electric stimulants or lectrics. The subway is the subway, people always  ignoring one and other, dancers doing elastic moves to rhythmless music/noise interrupted by beeps and synthetic shouts popping out of devices like rings and bracelets using holograms with hovering capabilities and sh!t. Homeless people giving advice, cursing In Rapid Transit, on a late weekday night,  a rider under the influence takes the subway, unbeknownst to what the ride will do to them.

Below are some prototype videos:

Stay tuned for several updates. 

LINK: Victor Morales

GAME ART: ZAYAO LI'S "THE MAN AND WOMAN WHO MARRIED THE INTERNET" (2018)

Zayao Li's The Man and Woman Who Married The Internet is a machinima about the post-internet generation developed with Unity. It was presented at the exhibition Aesthetics for New Realities, Fall 2018, NYU.

Zeyao Li is a queer coder and artist from China. He was born and raised in Beijing, studied and lived in New York, Prague, Seattle, and Shanghai. Having this multi-cultural background, Zeyao couples the technical skill that he acquires with observations from his surroundings. His work ranges from Analog Photography to Interactive Installation and Mixed Reality.

LINK: Zayao Li

GAME ART: LUYANG'S THE GREAT ADVENTURE OF MATERIAL WORLD (2019)

This looks phenomenal! A spin-off of Lu Yang's 2018 masterpiece Material World Knight, The Great Adventure of Material World will be released soon, according to the artist.

Lu Yang was born in 1984 in Shanghai and lives and works in Shanghai and Beijing. The artist received a BA as well as an MA in the New Media Art Department at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, near Shanghai. Lu Yang earned two degrees from the new media art department of the China Academy of Arts, and has been featured in important solo and group exhibitions at venues such as the UCCA in Beijing, Centre Pompidou, and DFB Performance Gallery (Chicago), Chronus Art Center (Shanghai), Momentum (Berlin), and Tampa Museum of Art. Some of her notable projects include Kimo Kawa Cancer Baby (2014), Uterus Man (2013), and Wrathful King Kong Core (2011), often in collaboration with performers, designers, experimental composers, and controversial figures such as Mao Sugiyama. Lu Yang's multimedia installations (often combining video, sculptural elements, lighting and soundtracks made in collaboration with different musicians) explore neuroscience, mortality, pop culture, technology, and religion. 

LINK: Lu Yang

EVENT: CHRIS HOWLETT'S NEW STATEMENTS (15-17 MAY 2019, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA)

New Statements is a new media exhibition by Chris Howlett that showcases an installation of interactive and screen-based machinima works that were developed from 2016-19 for his PhD. This practice–led research project explores the operations of a ‘techno-stice’ that demonstrates digital technology's capacity to generate dissensual space in the form of new subjectivities and ethico-political perspectives in contemporary art.

Chris Howlett, Joystick Drama, 2017-2019

LINK: Chris Howlett

GAME ART: MIKHAIL MAKSIMOV'S THE DEATH OF FATHER MEN (2018)

Mikhail Maksimov's The Death of Father Men is a "neuro crime-story" based on machine learning. The film focuses on the brutal assassination of the ecumenic Russian Orthodox priest, scholar and theologian Alexander Vladimirovich Men, aka Father Men, a controversial figure in Russia during the second half of the 20th century. The Death of Father Men was selected for the Locarno Film Festival 2018 and it's available for a limited time on the awesome online platform Vdrome. Also, don't miss  Vladimir Nadein's interview with the artist. Here's a salient passage:

VN: Speaking of your love for gaming and game development, being inside the game, experiencing it rather than walking it through—how important is it for you?

MM: It’s quite logical. As I said, it’s interesting to excerpt the chunks, the concentration of life and kind of hold it in your hands, examine it. GTA 5 has a non-linear video editor, it allows you to combine bits of life filmed on different cameras into one. By clicking REC in GTA 5, before working in the video editor, you can record the life of the whole state of California at that moment. And when you start editing, you work with this life. This state’s life piece is served to you like a piece of cake. And then any cat running down the street could catch your eye and you’d be able to work with that cat. That is the point: you film not the thing you want, but the whole imagery procedure and later when you realise why did you film it: not because your character bumped oddly into the corner, but rather because this cat hit you. So, you could focus your efforts on it. This game allows you to save moments in their rich diversity rather than in its flatness, it’s kind of pseudoscientific discipline. The pseudoscience of digital physics. Actually, there is such notion, it’s not pseudoscience, it has substantial grounds and advocates, including physicians.

Mikhail Maksimov manages almost impossible: he combines heavy Russian mysticism where theosophy and cosmism are intervened with the spirits of nature, with the contemporary form of glossy pop culture — 3D-graphics. It is this gap that creates wow-effect for the audience when you remain stuck to a video-work or computer game.

LINK: Mikhail Maksimo

ART GAME: JEREMY COUILLARD'S SOMETIMES TO DEAL WITH THE DIFFICULTY OF BEING ALIVE I NEED TO BELIEVE THERE IS A POSSIBILITY THAT LIFE ISN’T REAL (2019)

This is really intriguing: Sometimes to Deal With the Difficulty of Being Alive I Need to Believe There is a Possibility that Life Isn’t Real is a new simulation/game by Jeremy Couillard to be released in May 2019 for Steam and itch.io. Music by X-Coast & Brenecki.

Couillard's work has been written about in VICE, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Blouin Art Info, Art in America and more. He was also recently awarded a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Digital Media. Couillard is also Associate Professor of New Media at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York.

LINK: Jeremy Couillard

KILLER KOMBO: BOB BICKNELL-KNIGHT'S BEYOND THE DOOR (2019)

Beyond The Door, curated by Bob Bicknell-Knight for Daata Editions, featuring Bob Bicknell-Knight, Peter Burr, Kara Gut, Tomasz Kobialka, Cassie McQuater, Georgie Roxby Smith. 

Daata Editions commissions artist video, sound, poetry and web. This new, logical and innovative way to collect art is designed as a native platform to a new generation of artists who work with moving image and sound. Limited edition artworks can be viewed and acquired as digital downloads. 

LINK: Daata Editions

GAME ART: PETER SHEEHAN'S WARIO WORLD WAR III (2019)

Peter Sheehan is an artist and designer currently enrolled in the BFA program in Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, concentrating in Electronic Time Based Media (Minor in Game Design). One of the most intriguing projects he has developed/is developing is Wario World War III, a commentary of the state of the world in 2019. As Sheehan writes, Wario World War III is "a disturbing world of fascism and greed. Wariors have invaded Banalia, and in celebration, the POTUS, Wario, visits." Expect naked dictators with small penises, sacred cows, and lizard people. America is full of Wariors - says Sheehan - so ask yourself twice if you really want to join the Party...

LINK: Peter Sheehan (Thanks to Angela Washko for the heads up)

GAME ART: THEO TRIANTAFYLLIDIS, PAINTING (2018)

Theo Triantafyllidis, Painting, 2018
Print on plywood, laser cut acrylic, construction fencing, video (color, sound), screen, performance documentation
71 x 142 x 1 in / 180.3 x 360.7 x 2.5 cm, video: Bitforms Gallery

Greek artist Theo Triantafyllidis uses 3D modifies 3D models from role playing fantasy games to create virtual performances that are often accompanied by site-specific installations. In his ongoing series, Triantafyllidis performs as a queer character that is "80% muscular, 30% pregnant, and 10% Ork". Painting is a 12 minute movie that corresponds to the time it took for the artist to made the painting as the Ork in VR. Read more about the project here.

Theo Triantafyllidis (b. 1988, Greece) is an artist and architect based in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA from UCLA, Design | Media Arts, where he presented a guide called “how to everything” as his thesis, under scholarships from UCLA and the Onassis Foundation. He also holds a diploma of architecture from the National Technical University of Athens. Humour, lush visuals and gaming tropes provide an entry point to his work. Computer simulations, improvisations and failures, awkward interactions and precarious physics are employed to produce visual gags. By manipulating emerging technologies, he is searching for their potential emotional impact and the designated limits of their use, often trying to break them. Webpages, virtual and augmented reality, games and interactive installations are his mediums of choice for this. He has shown work in museums, including the Hammer Museum, the Armory Arts Museum, LA and various galleries such as Sargent’s Daughters, Young Projects, New Wight and Intelligentsia Gallery in North America, Europe and Asia. He has also participated in multiple online shows including thewrong.org, cloaque.org, and h0000ff.

LINK: Theo Triantafyllidis (images courtesy if the Artist)