GAMESCENES

EVENT: SARA SADIK'S XENON PALACE: CRYSTAL ZASTRUGA (FEBRUARY 22 - APRIL 28 2023, ROME)

Sara Sadik
Xenon Palace: Crystal Zastruga
February 22–April 28, 2023

Basement Roma
Viale Mazzini 128
00195 Rome
Tuesday–Friday
2:00 pm–6:30 pm

press release

Basement Roma is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Italy of the French artist Sara Sadik, Xenon Palace: Crystal Zastruga.

Born by a wide collaboration between public and private institutions, Sara Sadik’s exhibition will then move to the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, with a three-day performance (April 2023) before moving—with a second chapter of the show—to the Kunsthalle Lissabon at the end of June 2023.

Xenon Palace: Crystal Zastruga is a multimedia installation resembling a futuristic hookah lounge, a place far from the real world where the artist explores the magical dimension of childhood that takes shape in adulthood. Xenon Palace: Crystal Zastruga is a parallel and somewhat hallucinogenic world inhabited by fantastic smoky creatures, the Xenons, which appear from the fumes of hookahs. Through an immersive environment, packed with videos and sculptures, the exhibition takes us into the suspended dimension of Zetrei, the main character, played by Émile-Samory Fofana: a lonely man who has lost his family and friends, forced to live in a foreign, dystopian and alienated world, and that only by spending his days at Xenon Palace finds his haven of peace, capable of soothing the loneliness and sadness of his own existence.

“When speaking of Sara Sadik’s work, there is often talk of beurcore: in a sense, a reinvention of Afrofuturism based on the experiences and cultural references associated with the Maghrebin diasporas. But care should be taken not to reduce her work to an aestheticizing of urban cultures. This bias constantly threatens contemporary art by acting as a passageway between marginal or peripheral modes of life and the universe of commerce or publicity. How to pay justice to such work without tumbling into a descriptive exercise or a sociological explanation?” (Félix Boggio Éwanjé-Épée and Stella Magliani-Belkacem, Sara Sadik, CURA. 38, The Generational Issue, Spring-Summer 2022.)

Clearly focused on the themes of integration, identity, and marginalization in a still deeply discriminating society, Sara Sadik’s work features some of the central themes of social policies centered on institutionalized racism and its process of de-symbolization.

“The cultural and religious repression of the Islamophobic republic not only aims to exclude but also to foreclose any feeling of community conveyed by symbolism. This is the objective when the right-wing evokes so virulently and obscenely a Judaeo-Christian society: while the dominant benefit from a symbolic set of references, the oppressed are condemned to being stereotypes.” (Ibid.)

Halfway between fiction and documentary, everyday experiences, biography, video games, science fiction and French rap, Sara Sadik’s work creates initiatory stories in which young characters move eagerly within an identity process of physical and mental transformation.

Sara Sadik was born in 1994. She lives and works in Marseille. Recent exhibitions include Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (DE); Biennale de Lyon (FR); Crèvecœur, Paris (FR); CAC Brétigny (FR); Manifesta 13, Marseilles (FR). Her work is included in various institutional collections, including Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin / Fondation Lafayette Anticipations, Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Centre National des Arts Plastiques. In 2023, Sara will be part of L’Almanach 23, Le Consortium, Dijon (FR).

LINK: Xenon Palace: Crystal Zastruga

 

EVENT: BASSAM AL-SABAH'S IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS (FEBRUARY 12 2022 - MAY 3 2023)

Bassam Al-Sabah

IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS

February 12 2023 - May 3 2023

The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin 2 D02 PN40
Ireland

press release

In IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS, Al-Sabah transforms the gallery into a fantasy dreamscape embracing the shape-shifting potential of computer-animated worlds with a series of new sculptural works and a new CGI film at its centre. Al-Sabah builds a world in which selfhood and queer possibility intersect, where multiple intersectional “glitches” occur within the body, gender, and within internal and external worlds and ever-present technology. These glitches, or forms of discontent and unravelling, push and challenge preconceived narratives and habitual perceptions of masculinity, taking viewers through a spellbinding journey of metamorphosis and fluidity.

Bassam Al-Sabah works across digital animation, painting, sculpture and textiles creating visions of resistance, transformation and queer possibility. He completed a BA in Visual Art Practice from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions include: I AM ERROR, Gasworks, London (2021), and De La Warr Pavilion, Sussex (2022); Dissolving Beyond The Worm Moon, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan (2019); and Illusions of Love Dyed by Sunset, The LAB, Dublin (2018). Recent group exhibitions include Queer Embodiment and Social Fabric at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2021-2022), The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon (2021) and Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2020). Recent screenings include the Barbican, London (2022), Transmediale, Berlin (2021), EX-IS, South Korea (2021) and Jeu de Paume, Paris (2021). His work is part of collections in IMMA, the Arts Council and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. In 2021 he received the Golden Fleece Award and he is currently a studio member at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. Al-Sabah lives and works in Belfast and Dublin.

LINK: IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS

EVENT: REFIGURED (MARCH 3 - JULY 3 2023, NEW YORK)

Rachel Rossin, still from The Maw Of, 2022. Web-based animation with augmented reality (AR). Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art for its artport website and Kunst-Werke Berlin Institute for Contemporary Art AP.2022.1. © Rachel Rossin

 

Refigured

Curated by Christiane Paul

March 3 - July 3 2023

Whitney Museum
of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
New York, NY 10014

press release

Refigured, opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on March 3, brings together five installations by leading artists working in the field of digital art to reflect on the ways technology intersects with and influences our ever-evolving identities, underscoring the dynamic between digital and physical artworks and blurring boundaries between them.

Featured artists include American Artist, Morehshin Allahyari, Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, Auriea Harvey, and Rachel Rossin. Drawing from the Museum’s collection and including digital video and animation, virtual sculpture, and augmented reality, the installations in this exhibition respond to the various forces that form identity and engage with the concept of “refiguring.” Sculptures are presented concurrently in digital and physical space alongside animations that escape the confinement of screens and reach into the gallery. Constructs of identity, self-representation, structures of oppression, and colonialism are explored through a variety of lenses and mediums. Some artists investigate the ways identity is reflected in the structures of artificial intelligence and computer interfaces, while others consider how selfhood transforms in online environments and ancient cultural myths.

Refigured will be on view March 3–July 3, 2023 in the Museum’s Lobby Gallery, a space that is accessible to the public free of charge and often highlights the latest emerging talent and innovation in American art. Three works in the exhibition are also accessible on artport, the Museum’s portal dedicated to Internet art and an online gallery space for commissions of net art, and can be directly launched through a QR code. This exhibition is organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

“Experimenting with the idea of ‘refiguring’ is at the core of the works presented in this exhibition,” says Paul. “Through practices of appropriating material forms and reinventing them, the artists are challenging what it means to construct or shape identity.”

“Under Christiane’s leadership, the Whitney has long been dedicated to building an important collection of digital art,” says Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “With Refigured we will shine a spotlight on this key area of our holdings and some of the most innovative artists working in the field today.”

American Artist is an interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates video, installation, new media, and writing to consider Black labor, visibility, and antiblackness within digital systems and the internet. Their legal name change to American Artist represents the basis for their practice and affirms blackness as descriptive of an American artist while simultaneously erasing identity in virtual spaces where “American Artist” remains anonymous online. Mother of All Demos III, American Artist’s installation in Refigured, alludes to the historical underrepresentation of the Black workforce in Silicon Valley. The installation features a mold of an Apple II computer—the company’s last model with a black home screen—coated in dirt, with liquid seeping out of the keyboard and handprints stamped on each side. The physicality of the computer sharply contrasts with the sleekness of Silicon Valley, commenting on how ideologies influence design choices and digital interfaces.

Morehshin Allahyari’s hypertext narrative The Laughing Snake was commissioned for artport in 2018 and will be presented in-gallery as an installation including a sculptural component. The work is based on the myth of jinn, supernatural creatures from Arabian mythology, to explore the status of women and the female body in the Middle East. Allahyari is an artist, activist, and educator whose work addresses the political, social, and cultural contradictions we face every day. Employing technology as a theoretical toolset, the work documents and reflects on collective life struggles faced today.

A collaboration between artists Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, im here to learn so :)))))) is a four-channel video installation centered on a chatbot examining the politics of pattern recognition and machine learning. The chatbot was developed by Microsoft in 2016, and its

learning and language imitation were influenced by aggressive trolling on platforms like Twitter. Within hours, these influences led the chatbot to use genocidal, homophobic, misogynist, and racist language, and it was shut down. For the installation, the chatbot is resurrected as an avatar to reflect on life after AI death and contemplate the experience of being stuck inside a neural network and the “apophenic” pursuit of patterns within information and algorithms.

Debuting both online and in the exhibition, Auriea Harvey’s SITE1 is the latest commission for artport. SITE1 is an illusionistic online space and the origin site of sculptural characters the artist has been working on over the course of many years. This work will be on view alongside Ox and Ox v1-dv2 (apotheosis), the virtual and physical sculptures that represent the “origin story” of Harvey’s online identity. The sculptures embody the artist’s virtual avatar and her working process, which combines clay sculptures, digital 3D modeling, and video game and software development. Harvey’s digital sculptures are the core of the work, and she sees the physical sculptures as an extension of the virtual pieces.

Rachel Rossin’s THE MAW OF, a recent commission for artport that launched in 2022, is a transmedia story that unfolds across multiple platforms and formats and reflects on the alterations our bodies and minds experience with technology. Rossin, a multidisciplinary artist and established pioneer in the field of VR, blends painting, sculpture, new media, gaming, and video to create digital landscapes that focus on entropy, embodiment, and the effects technology has on our psyche. This work investigates the relationship between humans and machines, highlighting technology’s evolution from a tool to an extension of the mind and body.

LINK: Refigured

EVENT: TO ANCESTRAL FUTURES (JANUARY 25- MARCH 12, GUYANCOURT, FRANCE)

To ancestral futures
From ancestral knowledge to digital
26th of January – 12 of March 2023
Exhibit space of Guyancourt
Opening on the 25th of January

Curated by Isabelle Arvers

press release

The global games market is still dominated by Europe, the United States and Japan.The exhibition “Aux futurs ancestraux” adopts a decolonial perspective on art and games in order to echo works conceived on the periphery of this global and globalizing culture. “Aux futurs ancestraux” immerses us in other types of representations, cities, landscapes, narratives and cosmogonies, conceived and expressed in other languages, and seeks to decolonize our imaginary through the co-construction of narratives born of the encounter between oral tradition, endogenous knowledge and the virtual universes of video games.

This necessary dialogue between these different modes of knowledge requires a paradigm shift. Science and human thought are no longer the only sources of knowledge; it is now possible to think of knowledge “beyond the human” (Eduardo Kohn). “This implies that nature thinks, that animals think, and that non-humans can teach us techniques and knowledge, by changing our perspective. (Viveiro de Castro).

Between photo installations, drawing, performance, video installations, immersive, interactive and video game, an exhibition that invites us to reconnect with what connects us to our ancestral futures: the living.

Artists line up

High in the Sky and Beneath the Stars, Laura Palavecino, (AR), interactive installation

Laidaxai, Daniela Fernandez, (AR) video game

Paramo, Eulalia De Valdenebro Cajiao, (CO), Installation drawings video

Water Divinity, Henri Tauliaut (Martinique), Video game

Atuel, Matajuegos, (ARG), Video game

Coca para comer, Aniara Rodado, (CO), Installation, Performance

Epiculus Garden, Tania Fraga, (BR), Video Installation

Infinitree, Mbaye Camara (SN) & Isabelle Arvers (FR), Machinima

Isabelle Arvers is a French artist and curator whose research focuses on the interaction between art and video games. She studies the artistic, ethical and critical implications of digital gaming, and explores the creative potential of video game piracy. As a curator, she focuses on video games as a medium for artists. In 2019, she is touring the world of art and games in non-Western countries to promote notions of gender and sexuality diversity, as well as geographic origin, focusing on queer, feminist and decolonial practices.

LINK: To Ancestral Futures

EVENT: LUYANG ARCADE LIVERPOOL (APRIL 28 - SEPTEMBER 17 2023, LIVERPOOL)

LuYang show at the Zabludowicz collection, London. (Credit: David Bebber)

LUYANG ARCADE LIVERPOOL

April 28-September 17 2023

FACT Liverpool
88 Wood Street, Liverpool, L1 4DQ

 

Tokyo-based virtuoso LuYang astounds in a monumental opening of FACT Liverpool's 20th anniversary program with an exhibition of multimedia, playable video game works that transform the gallery into an interactive retrofuturist arcade. LuYang Arcade Liverpool invites visitors to embark on a journey through the prodigious artist's eccentric digital spaces, which merge the realms of anime, video games, and sci-fi. LuYang's interactive works are as entertaining as they are thought-provoking, immersing visitors in a world that is at once dark and bizarre. These works of art probe the concept of 'living on the internet,' inviting us to abandon binary understandings of identity, time, and space.

In LuYang's own words: "Creating a game is like constructing your own universe. The works exhibited in my solo show at FACT are interactive works - game works - from my art practices. The digital spaces I create are a meeting point of Buddhism, popular culture, and my research into neuroscience and technology, designed to stretch the exploration of morality, the mechanics of the human body and mind, and transcendence beyond the binary. Welcome to my worlds."

This upcoming exhibition is a testament to the power of video games as an art form, and a must-see for those interested in exploring the intersection between technology and art.

LINK: LUYANG ARCADE LIVERPOOL

EVENT: ALTERNATE PRESENCE (FEBRUARY 23 - APRIL 1 2023, LONDON)

Petra Szemán, David Blandy, Alternate Presence

23rd February – 1st April 2023

Seventeen Gallery

270-276 Kingsland Road

London E8 4DG

 

Still from Petra Szemán, Monomyth: gaiden / Master of two worlds, 2020
Single channel video with sound

Master of Two Worlds (2020) is the 4th and final installment of the Monomyth: gaiden tetralogy. Through an analysis of the position of the protagonist after having undertaken a grand journey through animated worlds, the video starts undoing the constraints of the narrative structure of the monomyth and calls for a lateral approach to storytelling. The Monomyth: gaiden project on the whole centers the space between the layers that make up our complex image-worlds, the holes in the digital landscape. By pushing these small gaps into focus, you can take up an ongoing ontological position, and rethink what constitutes a self or a mode of experience, Deborah Levitt puts it succinctly in her book The Animatic Apparatus: questioning ‘where images end and bodies begin, where truth or the real might reside, or on what side of this vestigial division between spectator and screen we find “life”.’

Still from David Blandy, Androids Dream, 2022
Single channel HD video with sound

In Androids Dream (2022), Blandy deconstructs the cyberpunk aesthetic first prototyped by Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and which has continued to be repeated and become ever more ossified. Formed of multiple simulacra, the work involves Unreal Engine assets, uses Kojima’s Snatcher - itself a replay of Blade Runner in videogame form - and even deploys an algorithmic mimesis of the artist's own voice. Breaking down the aesthetic form, the film in turn breaks down, repeats, refracts, and goes into reverse.

Commissioned by Petra Szemán for On Animatics for Saturday Morning Animation Club

LINK: Alternate Presence at Seventeen

LINK: Petra Széman

LINK: David Blandy

EVENT: ROCK BOTTOM: ABE SUGARMAN (MARCH 16-APRIL 25 2023, LONDON)

Abe Sugarman, still from Rock Bottom game, 2023. Commissioned by arebyte.

ROCK BOTTOM: ABE SUGARMAN

Curated by Rebecca Edwards

Part of arebyte 2022/23 programme Sci-Fi
Opening Event: Thurday 16 March 2023 6:30-9pm
Exhibition runs until 15 April 2023

arebyte Gallery London
Java House, 7 Botanic Square
London City Island, E14 0LG

press release

arebyte’s new exhibition Rock Bottom, by Abe Sugarman, transforms the gallery into an immersive game experience where the physical and the virtual collide. Set deep inside a cryptic ocean trench, a bottomless abyss that no light can penetrate, visitors embark on a choose-your-own-adenture journey composed of games, video works and sculpture.

The show represents the culmination of arebyte’s annual hotel generation programme, which is designed to mentor the next generation of UK digital artists during the critical early stages of their careers and whose 2022 edition was awarded to Abe Sugarman.

The exhibition explores concepts of queer and jellyfish temporalities, where restarting and rejuvenation become the metaphorical pointers to introduce the narrative of survival.

The installation expands the gameplay into the physical space through life-size characters and theatrical props, encouraging players to become entangled in game worlds both virtual and physical. The gallery is divided into zones dedicated to different areas of investigation within the exhibition: Northern values and patriotism, the transitory Jellyfish life cycle, and reconciliation of the dual fear and temptation of the unknown.

The exhibition explores how ecological disasters can form new bodily relationships with futures and survival. Familiar and otherworldly locations, from the depths of the River Calder Valley to the Jellyfish Fields, reflect a time of instability, with unfolding crises of the environment, gender stereotyping and the silencing of cast-aside voices. Encouraging us to understand worlds we don’t yet know, Rock Bottom verges into science fiction in its imagining of major environmental change and exploration of the meaning of time at the bottom of the ocean.

Our protagonist’s descent into the darkest ocean trench reveals the inherent struggle towards escape when we truly hit rock bottom. When we interact with the characters that we find there, they reveal death drive behaviours and sentiments through strange conversations, actions, and emotes. It becomes apparent that within the struggle and darkness of localised and planetary pain, light and optimism will emerge through the rethinking and recontextualising of spacetime.

The judging panel for the 2022 edition of hotel generation consisted of artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Head of Digital Arts Computing BSc at Goldsmiths Rachel Falconer, cultural producer Yinka Danmole and curator of Digital at the V&A Melanie Lenz. This exhibition concludes arebyte's 2022/23 programme Sci-Fi which looks at fictioning and alternative futures through a series of exhibitions, live performances, online experiences and educational activities.

Rock Bottom is accompanied by a booklet featuring texts by arebyte’s curator Rebecca Edwards, academic Jack Halberstam and artist Abe Sugarman.

A programme of talks, online gameplay events and workshops accompanying the exhibition can be viewed here.

Abe Sugarman is a multimedia artist based in West Yorkshire, who operates as an agent within a game. Abe uses their political proposal ‘Jellyfish temporality’: as a non-linear model of queer time and survival against geological stratification. Abe combines the circular and entwined web of bodies and systems that exist in the bio-membrane, where a diagrammatic tissue of lies and life cycles emerges through reverberation, compulsion, and restarting. In this newly formed ‘Anthrobussy’, the rehearsal assembles. Abe enjoys SpongeBob SquarePants, cuttlefish, and Gordon Riggs Garden Centre. Abe graduated from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Previous solo and group exhibitions include: Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London; Ruskin Project Space, Oxford; Five Folds, London.

Abe Sugarman, still from River Calder Roblox game, 2023. Commissioned by arebyte.

Abe Sugarman, still from Rock Bottom game, 2023. Commissioned by arebyte.

Abe Sugarman, still from Jellyfish Fields film, 2023. Commissioned by arebyte.

All images courtesy of arebyte

LINK: Abe Sugarman

LINK: ROCK BOTTOM: ABE SUGARMAN

EVENT: JAKE COURI (FEBRUARY 10 - 23 2023, ONLINE)

A PRECARIOUS NIGHT AT PLUMB POINT

Digital video (2160 × 3840), sound, color, 24’ 04”, 2023, United States

Created by Jake Couri

Sound Design: Kris Force

Environment Artist: Francou Bosch

Voice Artist: Matthew Curtis

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

February 10 - 23 2023

vral.org

 

A Precarious Night at Plumb Point finds our lead character positioned at sea, guided by the innate voyeurism hard coded into the world of gaming. Possessed by an internal dialogue, the viewer is presented with an assemblage-like simulation indicative of first-person exploration games, survival adventures, and cinematic trailers. Structurally based on the tragic fate of the first cruise ship intended for pleasure voyages, the SS Prinzessin Victoria Luise reached its unexpected demise the night of December 16th, 1906, after crash landing at Plumb Point Lighthouse. We follow our lead character aboard a modern-day cruise ship as he traverses through a series of environments led by the result of his perceived reality.

Jake Couri’s practice leverages digital space, employing computer-generated characters, environments, and conditions for the viewer to navigate. The artist examines the relationship between digital and physical reality, leaning on the possibility of making sense of the human condition through CGI avatars, cinematic effects, and theatrical sound composition. After completing a BFA in Fine Arts from Syracuse University, Jake Couri moved to San Francisco, where he received his MFA in Fine Arts with honors at California College of the Arts. His work has been shown at Superposition Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2019), Public Records in Brooklyn, New York (2020), and 4Culture in Seattle, Washington State (2021). He completed an artist residency at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village, Colorado (2019). He currently lives and works in New York City.

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EVENT: ART IN THE AGE OF THE METAVERSE (MARCH 10-12 2023, AMSTERDAM & ONLINE)

Artwork: Kévin Bray. Graphic Design: Clara Lezla.

AGE IN THE AGE OF METAVERSE

International Conference
10 – 12 March 2023
De Balie, Amsterdam & online

Hartwig Art Foundation
Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten
Memory Gems

A new technological universe has created new artistic landscapes. During this conference, artists, curators, activists and industry professionals who work at the intersection of contemporary art and digital technologies, will take us deep into the metaverse, a shared space at the nexus of the virtual and the physical that is gaining increased attention as a space for artistic production and experiences. How are we interacting with it, and how can we shape its future direction in a more ethical and collaborative manner?

Through talks, discussions, and presentations, the speakers will share their insights and explore key questions such as: What are the forms of artistic practices at the intersection of the physical and the virtual? How do artists, using these technologies, engage with the ethical, social, and environmental implications? How can we counter big tech in deciding what the metaverse is and can become? And what role do we, as participants, play in shaping the future direction?

The conference will open on Friday at 8 p.m. at De Balie with the Dutch premiere screening of Ian Cheng’s Life after BOB: The Chalice Study, followed by a conversation with Ian Cheng.

Confirmed speakers include Morehshin Allahyari, Black Swan, Ian Cheng, Barbara Cueto, Ali Eslami, The Hmm, Trevor McFedries, Micaela Mantegna, Moving Castle (Arthur Roeing Baer+GVN), Marina Otero Verzier, Chao Tayiana, Shuruq Tramontini, and Veronica So. Further confirmed participants will be continuously added.

LINK: ART IN THE AGE OF THE METAVERSE

EVENT: THOMAS HAWRANKE AND LASSE SCHERFFIG (JANUARY 6-19 2023, ONLINE)

COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE – THE MOVIE

Digital video (1024 x 1024), sound, color, 55’ 33”, 2022, Germany  

Created by Thomas Hawranke and Lasse Scherffig

January 6 - 19 2023

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

An adaptation sui generis of an early text-based adventure games, Colossal Cave Adventure - The Movie remediates the program developed by Will Crowther in 1976 based on the architecture of the Mammoth Cave complex in Kentucky. The original game used text to describe the environment whereas the animated film uses AI-generated visuals. Every eight seconds, the AI system receives a new textual description, taken from Colossal Cave Adventure’s source code, comprising 379 inputs ranging from narrative descriptions of nature to jargon from the vocabulary of speleologists to single words meaning an object, a compass direction, or an exclamation. The camera constantly moves downwards, digging through geological layers and exposing new cave spaces again and again.

Born in 1977 in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, Thomas Hawranke is a media artist and researcher whose practice investigates the influence of technology on society and the impact of computational logic onto human-animal-machine relationships. In his eclectic interventions, Hawranke operates at the intersection of performance and video art: a central concern of his is bringing to the surface the ideologies that inform everyday life. Hawranke graduated in Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and received a PhD from the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, Germany, with a dissertation on the modification of video games, also known as modding, as a method for artistic research. Since 2005, he has been a member of susigames, an independent art label founded in 2003 that investigates alternative gaming’s approaches, and he is the co-founder of the Paidia Institute in Cologne. His works have been presented at several exhibitions and festivals, including the zkm_gameplay in Karlsruhe and the RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES PARIS/BERLIN. Hawranke lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Lasse Scherffig is an artist and scientist with a background in cognitive science/machine learning and computer science. Scherffig is interested in the relationship of humans, machines, and society; cybernetics and the technological infrastructures of communication and control; and the cultures and aesthetics of computation and interaction. His work oscillates between computer science and experimental artistic practices, engineering and amateur/DIY methods, science and humanities. A professor of Interaction Design at Köln International School of Design, he previously served as the Department Chair of Art and Technology at San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught as assistant professor. Scherffig co-founded the artist group Paidia Institute and off topic, magazine for media art. His art projects have been shown at numerous exhibitions. Lasse holds a doctoral degree in Experimental Computer Science from KHM, Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

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