GAMESCENES

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS 2023: CINEMATIC AND VIDEOGAME ARCHITECTURE MARCH AT THE BARTLETT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, UCL (LONDON)

Jerome Ng, Metabolist Regeneration of a Dementia Nation, 2019

Cinematic and Videogame Architecture MArch program

The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
22 Gordon St
London WC1H 0AY
United Kingdom

The first programme of its kind in the UK, the Cinematic and Videogame Architecture MArch course teaches students to employ innovative architectural design methods using cinematic, animation and gaming technologies. Students will critically situate their work in relation to new developments in time-based digital media and how they shape our culture, identity and politics.

What is the programme's focus
Architecture has a long history of acting as an underlying structuring device for both film and videogames. From the construction of film sets to developments in film compositing techniques and innovations in computer graphics, the depiction of space has been a key challenge in arriving at our contemporary media landscape of film and videogames. In turn, the narrative and storytelling power of time-based and interactive media are reshaping not only how architecture is constructed and represented, but also how it is conceived and experienced.How will the programme be delivered
Taught by internationally renowned experts in cutting-edge digital technologies, the programme will be based at UCL's new campus, UCL East, and make use of new, state-of-the-art facilities with shared specialist media and workshop spaces. The programme is founded on a strong and experimental practice-led studio element, where practical learning is supported by robust theoretical research. Students will engage with theoretical concepts through lectures and introductory design projects, supported by digital skills modules.

This cross-disciplinary approach allows students to test ideas and invent new research methods, leading to the production of architectural design projects that are developed and realised through films, video games and hybrid digital-physical environments.

The programme will be led by Prof Penelope Haralambidou and Dr Luke Caspar Pearson. Penelope's teaching and research employ an innovative practice-led methodology that uses, drawing, modelling, digital film and immersive environments to investigate spatial culture. Luke is co-founder of You+Pea, a design research studio working between architecture and videogames, and the Videogame Urbanism studio which examines how games can help shape the future of cities 

How will the programme equip people for future careers
Students will gain technical skills and explore time-based, storytelling and interactive media as new platforms for engaging with the design and production of space, from the domestic to the urban. Graduates will develop advanced skills applicable in the fields of architecture and architectural visualisation, and gain expertise that can form the foundation for careers in immersive environments, film and videogame industries. Through regular visits by academic and industry experts, graduates will develop an understanding of how to position and present their work for future careers in many different creative disciplines.

Who should apply
We are looking for applications from graduates and professionals from architecture, but also from other backgrounds – including design, filmmaking, film studies, anthropology, geography, fine art, videogame design, graphic design, animation and computer-generated imagery design – who are interested in studying the relationship between architecture, cinema and videogames, and show evidence of a strong record both academically and/or in practice.

Read more: Cinematic and Videogame Architecture programme page

 

GAME ART: MARIO MU'S SITES OF ENCOUNTER (2022)

Sites of Encounter is composed of three short films exploring the intersection between spatial memory and architecture within games. The narrative follows an intimate dialogue between a group of characters as they navigate contemporary labour conditions, using spatial structures to activate an archive of memories. The structure of the work in many ways resembles a theater piece. There are three acts divided into three scenes. Each part of the trilogy is a self-contained dramatic unit, although the endings of the first two acts lead naturally into the play that follows them. Sites of encounter deals with issues related to contemporary work conditions, video games and man-made environment, whether it is architecture or space of video games themselves.

The artistic practice of Croatian artist Mario Mu revolves around projects which are often constructed as extended gaming platforms. In addition to sound and drawing, his preferred media often include elements of game design, 3D animation, and performance. A student of Hito Steyerl, Mu received an MFA in Berlin from the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin in 2017, a BFA with a major in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in 2015, and an MA from the Faculty of Graphic Arts in 2012 from the same institution. Between 2016 and 2017, Mu was an active member of the Research Center for the Proxy Politics in Berlin. He has been working on several LARP events as an author, collaborator and/or performer at Play Co London and Zagreb, Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, Galerie gr_und, Acud, and UdK in Berlin. Mu is currently working on a new game project initiated by the Portuguese artist Odete and supported by Maat Museum and Boca Bienal.

Mario Mu, Sites of Encounter, video installation, color, sound 1920 x 1080 3 × 18', wood panels, 2022 (images courtesy of the artist) Solo exhibition Gallery Nova, Zagreb. WHW Collective , Curated by Ana KovacicPhoto credits Sanja Bistricic

LINK: Mario Mu

EVENT: GAME UP (JUNE 1-26 2022, BERLIN, GERMANY)

Elaine Hoey, A Blind Eye, 2021

GAME UP

Open: June 1 - 26 (Preview: 18:00 - 21:00, Thursday June 2)

Wednesdays – Fridays 13:00 - 19:0

Saturdays & Sundays June 11:00 - 19:00 

Free entrance

transmediale studio

Gerichtstrasse 35

13347 Berlin

Germany

 

This is a killer exhibition. Highly recommended. (MB)

 

press release

GAME UP seeks to get under the skin of our increasingly digital planet as a springboard to new thinking and new action through the work of  artists, Alan Butler, Elaine Hoey, Conor McGarrigle, Rosa Menkman,  David OReilly and Paper Rad/Cory Arcangel. GAME UP is a reckoning, a rear mirror view and a look at the future of our hyper-connected world.  

What are the rules of engagement in this electronic superhighway and who is policing them?  What of our digital shadow and its instantaneous monetisation? How are race and gender played out in the digital space? By turning the technology on itself, the artists in GAME UP create ways to consider and expose this hidden world. The viewer is brought deep into virtuality by means of narratives and experiences that question and confront the digital contract.

Conor McGarrigle, practicing artist and lecturer in Fine Art in the Technological University, Dublin, reminds us in his Electronic Superhighway (2022) of the richness of historical material, even in the short decades since the internet was founded and early ‘70s telemental art.

Artist and  lecturer in Fine Art at The National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Elaine Hoey’s walk-in VR installation/performance brings the viewer awkwardly face to face with an Oracle far removed from its Delphic forebearer who might predict a different kind of future.

Alan Butler represented Ireland at the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021, as a founding member of the collective of artists and architects, Annex. GAME UP presents Alan Butler’s 20 minute video Mondo Cane (2018), a journey through a sumptuous John Berger-like sequence of images and sounds mined from Grand Theft Auto.

Rosa Menkman is an artist, lecturer and pioneer of glitch art. Her work Glitch Studies Manifesto promises hope for what glitch might offer by suggesting disintegration might democratize society.

LA-based David OReilly works with animation, Augmented Reality and gaming. For GAME UP, the artist presents 4004 (2021), a free-standing resin monolith in which an Intel microchip - The Intel 4004 originally released by Intel Corporation in 1971 – has been preserved, resembling a factice out-of-place. The sculpture also exists as an NFT.

Chiptuner Paper Rad and video and game artist Cory Arcangel’s work, Super Mario Movie (2005), is a 15-minute movie programmed onto a Mario Brothers cartridge, in which we see the plumber evolving in a chaotic, corrupt and glitchy world.

 This exhibition is supported by Culture Ireland and curated by Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, with assistance from transmediale Festival of Art and Digital Culture, Berlin.

LINK: GAME UP

EVENT: SERIOUS FUN. ARCHITECTURE & GAMES (MARCH 17 - MAY 9 2022, WIEN, AUSTRIA)

Serious Fun: Architecture & Games
Architekturzentrum Wien - Exhibition hall 2
Museumsplatz 1 1070 Vienna
Thu 17.03.2022 – Mon 05.09.2022
daily 10:00-19:00
Official website

Opening of the exhibition
Wed 16.03.2022
19:00-21:00

Curator: Mélanie van der Hoorn
Project coordination Az W: Katharina Ritter
Exhibition design: DWARS ontwerp (Mark Schulte & Miriam de Lange)

In cooperation with FOTO WIEN

The exhibition features a terrific series of talks and workshop, including "Simulation and Reality — How do we play Architecture?" Wednesday April 27 at 7 pm.

press release

We are all familiar with the classic architecture games, from building blocks that become daring structures to board games where the players compete for spatial-strategic advantages. What are, though, the architecture narratives invested in doll's houses, along which guidelines do cities grow in computer games, and what kind of buildings shield ego-shooters from their assailants? The exhibition 'Serious Fun' shows and examines architecture games and toys, inviting you to be astonished, to play and to reflect.

Architecture games and toys are a part of our cultural and technical heritage. They come made of wood, metal or cardboard, others are played on computers or consoles. Hybrid variations turn the city itself into a gameboard, creating an interface to parallel worlds. These games and toys are a part of social history, too. As a deeply expressive form of popular culture, they convey how we perceive our built environment and different ways of imagining it. Unlike representations with images, which we view from a distance, games can develop a strongly immersive character: Whoever participates in a game becomes part of it himself. This captivating power is not without ambivalence. On the one hand, the miniature scale is inviting, so people can actively participate in the development of buildings, towns or situations that they would never otherwise have had any access to in reality — which has made games popular as a tool in participatory processes. On the other hand, it is the developers who influence or manipulate the course and outcome of the games. Their decisions not only build whole worlds, they also shape world views.

The exhibition presents games and reflections on games. The exhibits, many of which are interactive, were created by architects, artists and game developers. The visitor’s gaze is frequently drawn to specific, sometimes strange but frequently innovative aspects of architecture games. What are the utopias and dystopias that they evoke, what are the values and ideas they convey, criticise or endorse? What kind of places, themes and ways of life are frequently left out, and which games fill these gaps? Visitors can take an alternative city tour through a videogame environment, they can dabble on the virtual London property market, experience doll’s houses as lurid minidramas or emancipatory narratives, stimulate the spatial experience of a blind person in a purely acoustic videogame, or develop eco-friendly city districts in collaboration with others.

The exhibition ‘Serious Fun’ invites visitors to play and to ponder. It provides an opportunity to become immersed in both familiar and in less familiar games, while it also encourages people to take a step back and to take a critical look at the world of games and the constructed worlds that they create. Games can both celebrate and trivialise architecture, they can delimit and they can de-limit whole worlds. They do not only integrate architectural practice, they also hold a mirror up to it.

© Critical Blocks, Maykel Roovers, 2012

@Microsoft, Minecraft, 2011

© MaerchenHaft, Sabine Bloch, photoartist, 2005–2006

© Excerpt from The Continuous City, Gareth Damian Martin, 2018

© Down and Out in Los Santos, Alan Butler, 2015–today

© Dust, Aram Bartholl, 2011

LINK: Serious Fun

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

DOCUMENTARY: GAMING THE REAL WORLD (2016)

Anders Eklund, Gaming the Real World, 2016

Can games change the world? Today public spaces and entire cities are being designed, planned and played through the medium of games. The result of this “civic gamification” is that city architecture and urban planning is being democratized. Cities have become the ground zero for digital innovation and the debate about how our cities evolve has suddenly gone viral.Released in April 2016, the film focuses on three stories; the video game Minecraft’ which is being used by the UN in the Block by Block initiative; City Skylines, a popular city building video game with a large community participation and ‘Block’hood’, the video game created by Jose Sanchez. Block’hood is featured as the architect’s story, were an independent development has introduced architectural ideas to the world of game design. The film follows the life of Jose Sanchez to understand  the environment in which these ideas have emerged and what is at stake at the moment of designing a project like this one.

Anders Eklund is a director and producer of television series and documentary films. His career in the TV business started 1998 at the Swedish production company Strix Television, editing TV shows like Survive, the Bar, Come Dine With Me and other prime time TV shows at the time. 2006 he started the production company Luckyday and since then he has been producing and directing non stop for clients like Discovery, BBC, SVT, Warner Brothers and Ericsson, creating  international shows like Nordic Cookery, Ibrahimovic - The Documentary and the feature documentary Gaming the Real World. Anders lives in Malmö, Sweden with his family.

LINK: Anders Eklund 

EVENT: HUGH DAVIES, HONG KONG ARCHITECTURE IN THE VIDEOGAME VERNACULAR (MARCH 2 2019, HONG KONG)

Photo: United Front Games and Square Enix London Studios, Screenshot from Sleeping Dogs (2012)

 

Hong Kong Architecture in the Videogame Vernacular

Hugh Davies in conversation with Marie Foulston, moderated by Ikko Yokoyama

March 2, 2019 (Saturday)

2:00 pm–5:30 pm

Function Rooms, 2/F, Hotel Stage

1 Chi Wo Street, Jordan

Hong Kong

Featured in over 150 titles, Hong Kong is curiously over-represented in videogames. Spanning nostalgic depictions of Kowloon Walled City to futuristic projections in the cyberpunk style, the visual reflections of Hong Kong exceed the territory on which they are based. What accounts for these prolific virtual depictions, and how do they correspond to the actual location? Discussing the intersection of the so-called ‘ludic century’ and the ‘Asian century’, this presentation explores representations of Hong Kong in digital games, and in doing so, reveals implications for the city as both a global hub and a cultural object. The presentation will be in English, with simultaneous interpretation in Cantonese

 

Hugh Davies is an artist and researcher who explores playful devices and the city as game board. Through practice-based research, he examines how play becomes a movable line separating games and the everyday, and reality and fiction. In 2014, he received a PhD in Art, Design and Architecture from Monash University, examining transmedia games. In recent years, he has researched Asia-Pacific game cultures as a funded researcher at Tokyo Arts and Space, and at M+ and Design Trust in Hong Kong. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at RMIT University. His previous writing on the ludic representations of Hong Kong can be found here.

 

LINK: Hong Kong Architecture in the Videogame Vernacular

Book: Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities (in progress)

Konstantinos Dimopoulos, a game urbanist, writer, and designer with a Ph.D in urban planning and geography with significant experience in game design (e.g. Seed MMO, The Sinking City), is collaborating with visual artist Maria Kallikaki to create a comprehensive encyclopedia of video game cities: Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities. This ambitious project will take the shape of a massive book published via Unbound. The project is currently accepting pre-orders/being crowdfunded here.

 

 

Virtual Cities: An Atlas & Exploration of Video Game Cities is a richly illustrated atlas documenting the deep and exciting history of game cities via a combination of original maps, ink drawings, and insightful commentary and analysis. The book covers over 40 game cities across literary and gaming genres, including detailed entries on Half-Life 2’s City 17, Grand Theft Auto V’s Los Santos, Yakuza’s Kamurocho, Fallout’s New Vegas, Silent Hill, Ant Attack's Antescher, and Shadowrun's Hong Kong. Dimopoulos's goal is to produce a 200-page tome with over 40 original maps, and more than 100 drawings.

 

You can read an excerpt here.

 

LINK: Game Cities

Magazine: Heterotopias #4

The latest issue of Heterotopias (#4) focuses on the theme of landscape in virtual worlds, its contraction, simulation, and exploration.

Below are the highlights:

004’s cover piece is on the forests of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which in this issue are shown in all their glory in an original photo series. In an accompanying feature Lewis Gordon explores how the game’s depiction of real-world landscapes connects to Polish and European folklore, as well as a history of political struggle. A new interview with core members of the CD Projekt Red team completes our series on this exceptional game.

Elsewhere in the issue Miguel Penabella explores the influence of scenography, in particular the work of Adolphe Appia, on Cardboard Computer’s tale of debt and decay: Kentucky Route Zero. Meanwhile Sam Zucchi looks at the relationship between depictions of landscape and colonialism through the lens of the classic Oddworld game, Stranger’s Wrath.

Other features include a photo series exploring the virus-like patterns of No Man’s Sky‘s procedural landscapes, Rosa Carbo-Mascarell’s beautiful watercolor maps of Proteus as well as features on the long forgotten proto open-world of Lego Island and the ecohorror of Night in the Woods.

Also featured are Eron Rauch's haunting glitchscapes, part of his World of Warcraft landscape photography.

LINK: Heteropias #4

RELATED: GARETH DAMIAN MARTIN on the aesthetics of analogue game photography

Game Art: Daniel Arsham's PlayStation (2015)

Daniel Arsham, PlayStation, 2015, concrete

New York based artist Daniel Arsham straddles the line between art, architecture and performance. Raised in Miami, Arsham attended the Cooper Union in New York City where he received the Gelman Trust Fellowship Award in 2003. Architecture is a prevalent subject throughout his work; environments with eroded walls and stairs going nowhere, landscapes where nature overrides structures, and a general sense of playfulness within existing architecture. Arsham makes architecture do things it is not supposed to do, mining everyday experience for opportunities to confuse and confound our expectations of space and form. Simple yet paradoxical gestures dominate his sculptural work: a façade that appears to billow in the wind, a figure wrapped up in the surface of a wall, a contemporary object cast in volcanic ash as if it was found on some future archeological site.

LINK: Daniel Arsham