GAMESCENES

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: VECTOR FESTIVAL 2020 (DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 1 2020)

VECTOR FESTIVAL 2020: AFTER GAMIFICATION

TORONTO, ON | JULY 16-19, 2020

OPEN CALL FOR ARTWORKS AND CURATORIAL PROPOSALS 

Vector Festival is an annual media arts event dedicated to showcasing experimental art works that engage critically with digital technologies.
The festival is proudly participatory and community-oriented. Hosted by InterAccess and co-curated by Katie Micak and Martin Zeilinger, Vector Festival takes place at arts venues and in public spaces across the City of Toronto.

Since its inception, Vector Festival has been innovative in its inclusion of game-based digital art alongside other new media disciplines. Continuing this focus for the 2020 edition, the festival’s curators pose a deceptively simple question: what comes after gamification?

Now that game culture and game technologies have become so pervasive in popular culture, how do experimental media artists respond critically to the rampant gamifying of everyday life? From online social interaction to digital finance, from education to military conflict, from politics and environmental issues to the ways in which humans (and machines) express themselves creatively, what comes after gamification?

The Festival will take place between July 16-19, 2020, with the flagship exhibition extended until August 22, 2020.

Please note that Vector Festival does not charge submission fees to artists applying to participate.

All artists and curators selected for participation will receive fees in accordance with the up-to-date CARFAC Fee schedule, as well as support to apply for external funding.

We invite art submissions of digital – and post-digital – works for the following festival categories:

Flagship Exhibition
Digital and post-digital art works including interactive installations, experimental game mods, sculptural work, screen-based work, sound art, etc.

Online Projects
Web-based projects and digital artworks that can be presented online, including experimental interactive and time-based digital projects.

Festival Screening
Experimental film/video/machinima works.

Performance
Performance-based proposals including chiptune, sound art, live coding, A/V performances, and telematic performances for virtual and public spaces.

Site-Specific Outdoor Screening
To be presented on two large-scale (4.88 x 8.64 m) outdoor LED screens for a public audience of all ages.

GIFs
Animated GIFs intended for presentation on public screens across Toronto.

Curatorial Submissions
This year, we also invite curators/curatorial collectives to submit proposals for machinima screenings (on a theme of your choosing). If you are considering a curatorial submission, we encourage you to contact the Vector Festival team for additional practical details.

Deadline: February 01, 2020

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Please submit the following details using our online application form:

• Project description (approximately 300 words)
• Documentation (maximum of five images, and/or link to audio/video documentation)
• Description of technical requirements (please outline materials provided by the artist and materials required from the exhibiting venue)
• Artist biography (approximately 100 words)
• Please indicate if your work has a thematic, conceptual, or historical connection to Toronto, or if you have a biographic connection to the Greater Toronto Area
• Current CV

If you have questions about submitting your application please contact [email protected].

About Vector Festival
Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing experimental media art practice. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, and workshops, Vector Festival acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice. Vector Festival was founded in 2013 as the “Vector Game Art & New Media Festival” by an independent group of artists and curators: Skot Deeming, Clint Enns, Christine Kim, and Katie Micak, who were later joined by Diana Poulsen and Martin Zeilinger. In 2015 Vector Festival announced that longtime presenting partner, InterAccess, would be taking over responsibility for the festival as part of its regular programming.

About InterAccess
Founded in 1983, InterAccess is a non-profit gallery, educational facility, production studio, and festival dedicated to emerging practices in art and technology. Our programs support art forms that integrate technology, fostering and supporting the full cycle of art and artistic practice through education, production, and exhibition. InterAccess is regarded as a preeminent Canadian arts and technology centre.

For more information contact:
Festival Curators, Katie Micak and Martin Zeilinger
[email protected]

Follow us for updates!
facebook.com/VectorFestivalTO
twitter.com/VectorFestival
instagram.com/interaccessto

LINK: VECTOR FESTIVAL

GAME ART: HUGO ARCIER'S INLAND (2019)

Hugo Arcier, Inland, Audiovisual performance: live music, video in audio reactive 3D computer images, 2019 - Music: Annabelle Playe & Marc Siffert, music - video in 3D computer graphics with audio reactivity: Hugo Arcier

Passages, crossings and metamorphoses weave the odyssey of « inLAND | come back in broad day ».These universes are explored live as a 3D video game in which we wander. This exploration is carried out on site or remotely with Discord gamer tool. In these multiple spaces, perception is disturbed between reality, matter and appearance. Abstraction gives way to landscapes, echoes of the inner worlds that a narrator seems to unfold. The visions crumble, the image turns out to be an illusion. We then experience what can't be said or represented. (Hugo Arcier)

Hugo Arcier is a French digital artist - or, rather, “an artist in a digital world” - who uses 3D computer graphics in various ways: videos, prints and sculptures. Initially interested in producing special effects for feature films, he worked on several projects with such directors as Roman Polanski, Alain Resnais, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. This practice has allowed him to gain a deep understanding of digital tools, in particular 3D graphic images. His artistic works have been exhibited at international festivals (Elektra, Videoformes, Némo), galleries (Magda Danysz, Plateforme Paris, etc.), art venues (New Museum, New Media Art Center of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Le Cube, Okayama Art Center, Palais de Tokyo, etc.), and contemporary art fairs (Slick, Variation)

LINK: Hugo Arcier

VIDEO: KRISTOFFER ZETTERSTRAND: A VIDEO ESSAY

An in-depth look at Kristoffer Zetterstrand's practice. The Swedish painter has been exploring the boundaries between art and paintings for more than a decade. As he explains on his website,

For some years I have experimented with virtual still lifes, often in the form of stage design in which I explore how two-dimensionality (and painting) relates to computer-generated 3D worlds. I am interested in visual spaces created online, in computer games and 3D programmes, and especially in what happens when the illusion is shattered and the underlying construction emerges - like when there is a bug in a computer game. I am interested in visual failures, which I try to use in my painting. Among other things, I have produced paintings based on the landscapes that you can see only if you are “dead” in the online game Counter-Strike, and paintings with motifs created by crashed landscape generators used in film and computer game production.

This long video essay by Solar Sands provides illuminating insights into his craft.

LINK: Kristoffer Zetterstrand

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

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

EVENT: SUPERNOVA FESTIVAL 2019 (SEPTEMBER 19-21 2019, DENVER, COLORADO)

SUPERNOVA returns for the fourth consecutive year to the Denver Theatre District in 2019, with exciting updates for festival programming and progressive community collaborations. The Festival boasts an expansive lineup of outdoor screens, with primary programs and the competition showcase presented simultaneously on a prominent wide-screen LED at the corner of 14th and Champa, a second public screen located on the 16th and Champa Pedestrian Mall at 16th and Champa, our temporary LED screen installed within the Denver Performing Arts Complex grand open-air Galleria, complete with seating and an outdoor bar, and for the first time ever on the massive ProMedica Screen located in Toledo, Ohio, in conjunction with their Annual Momentum Festival taking place the same weekend.

Additional animations are presented on a series of 4 well-placed Satellite screens throughout the day. And new for 2019, SUPERNOVA plans to “Go Viral” with the support of select screen hosts in the Denver community displaying SUPERNOVA content to further widen the public’s interaction with Digital Motion-Art.

SUPERNOVA offers substantial prize money to attract the best talent from around the world, with a proven track record that defines the vanguard of artists working in digital motion-art today. In 2019 SUPERNOVA will be more exciting than ever, dedicating over twice the previous levels of award money for artists selected to compete in the competition program, and initiating a new audience award supported by an even deeper network of venues and screen hosts across the community.

Below are some of the highlights, which include lots of machinima:

You can find the lineup (and everything else related to SUPERNOVA) here.

LINK: SUPERNOVA 2019

GAME ART: TABITHA NIKOLAI'S DOWNSTREAM A SHINING WIRE (2019)

Tabitha Nikolai

Downstream a Shining Wire

September 17 - November 1 2019

Open Signal

2766 NE Martin Luther King, Jr Blvd
Portland, OR 97212

opensignalpdx.org

 

Tabitha Nikolai is a visual artist from Utah who works in sculpture, text, video games, cosplay and earnest rites of suburban occult. Her work has been shown an the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, and Ganka Gallery in Tokyo. She was formerly the assistant and co-curator at Place, Surplus Space and Compliance Division in Portland, Oregon. She uses video games and virtual reality to create fictional worlds addressing themes such as the relationship between society and technology, sex, gender, and identity. 

For example, Utopia Without You transformed a gallery space into a gamer's den, and looked at video games as a means of isolation and a retrenchment from an adversarial society.

Shrine Maidens of the Unseelie Court (2017) is a journey into an uncanny environment for PC and Mac.

Ineffable Glossolalia (2017) is a virtual environment made in the Unity game engine for the HTC Vive virtual reality platform, as well as PC and Mac desktop.

Her new show, Downstream a Shining Wire, opens September 17 at Open Signal, in Portland, Oregon.

Downstream a Shining Wire sifts through today’s dystopia to create something hopeful. Using virtual reality, Open Signal New Media Fellow Tabitha Nikolai and friends revisit a demolished shopping mall from her childhood. The exhibition incorporates interactive video games, medieval illustrations and video projection art featuring scenes from Richard Adams’ classic novel Watership Down.

Tabitha Nikolai is a visual artist originally from Utah who works in sculpture, text, video games and cosplay. She created Downstream a Shining Wire during her winter 2019 residency as part of Open Signal’s New Media Fellowship in collaboration with Zanna Kerrigan, Cassandra Gladwin, sam, Lilium Kobayashi, Allynn Carpenter and Kelly Thomas.

LINK: Tabitha Nikolai (all images and videos (c) Tabitha Nikolai)

GAME ART: CHRIS HOWLETT'S DESERT STORM LOGIC (2018-2019)

CHRIS HOWLETT, DESERT STORM LOGIC, 1-3 channel synched, HD video (16:9), Stereo, PAL. Duration: 20:13 mins

In Chris Howlett's Desert Storm Logic, a naked Bart Simpson's like creature roams the desert of the real. Both a simulacrum and a bricolage  - "an assemblage of human, cartoon, toy, and art-historical parts that were first developed from a life-size sculpted figure that were photogrammetrically captured and digitised into a 3D animated avatar" - the creature is, according to Howlett, a machinimator, both a character in a fictional story and the artist's alter ego, as creator. Doomed to repeat the same inconsequential actions in an environment that look realistic but does not behave like concrete reality, the machinimator is simultaneously at home and lost in a world of floating signifiers and deranged memes. Desert Storm Logic is unfinished, or rather, ongoing. A collection of screen-captured clips generated from Unreal engine, photogrammetry, and 3D scans, Desert Storm Logic adopts the logic of the update to redefine the notion of the upgradable work of art, firstly championed by Walter Benjamin. 

LINK: Chris Howlett

OPEN CALL: GAMES FOR WINDOWS (DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 1 2019, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK)

Still from Hygiene1 by Cody Filardi

 

GAMES FOR WINDOWS: Experiments with Video Game Footage

 

a store-front video exhibition curated by Nilson Carroll

 

October 4 - November 17, 2019

 

Liquor Store Rochester, New York

 

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
Experimental video art made with video game footage.

This can take the form of a more traditional machinima piece, or something completely different. We want to see a Stan Brakhage film made on a Game Boy , or the N64 Flaming Creatures. Surprise us, make us weep.

We encourage submissions that experiment with the splicing of game footage with other content (personal or appropriated). If you make interesting games, consider making video art within them.

We're also open to ROM hacks and homebrews that can run in attract mode.

Works are preferably between 1 - 10 minutes.

Due to the nature of the storefront installation, audio is currently limited. Don't let this hinder you!

WHO SHOULD APPLY
ANYONE. Formally trained artists, hobbyists, game designers. The goal of this exhibition is a subversion of both games and cinema. We are especially interested in pro-affection, anti-fascist, feminist artworks that challenge our notions and systems.

NO FEE TO APPLY.

Any questions or concerns, please contact Nilson at [email protected]

If you cannot upload or send your video, please use the above email to contact us!

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DEADLINE: Sunday, September 1, 2019 (All day)

EXHIBITION DATES:  Friday, October 4, 2019 (All day) to Sunday, November 17, 2019 (All day)

LINK: GAMES FOR WINDOWS

GAME ART: JONNE HANSSON'S HEAVY THOUGHTS (2019)

In his latest machinima shot with/in Grand Theft Auto V, Swedish artist Jonne Hansson casts virtual bodybuilders to discuss the politics of gamification, the life as a simulation hypothesis, the nature of game rules, and much more. A day in the life of three avatars working out their bodies and their minds (Richard Guy Slatter, Gazi Mrah, August Ballgren). Yes, it's very meta. Killer sound design by Daniel Westman. Heavy Thoughts is a follow up to the brilliant The Convenience Store (2018), 

Jonne Hansson uses computer game graphics and different game elements, often leaning towards gamified life-coaching. A recurrent theme in his work is the crossover between digital games and reality, where pixels, polygons and the world of atoms are mixed together. He uses media such as machinima, installations, prints, drawings and other things that fit the work’s oeuvre.

LINK: Jonne Hansson