Art Game: Personal Cinema's "Banoptikon" (2013)
Banopticon (or Banoptikon) is an online single-player 3D computer game developed by the media arts collective Personal Cinema addressing the issue of immigration to and within the European Union. Under development since January of 2010, the game will be released at the end of April 2013. Personal Cinema collective includes Yannis Skoulidas (artist-programmer), Ilias Marmaras (media artist), Xenia Koliofoti (script co-writer and editor) Daphne Dragona (New Media curator) and the collaborators, Dimitris Fotiou (sculptor-3D designer) and Alex Salapatas (programmer). The game has been in development since 2010 as part of a MIG@NET, a E.U's research project, coordinated by Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences (UPSPS), Centre for Gender Studies and includes partners from seven European countries as: University of Bologna, Department of Politics, Institutions and History, Symfiliosi (SYM), Cyprus, Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme (FMSH), Paris, University of Hamburg, Institute for Sociology (UHH), Utrecht University, Department of Media and Culture Studies/Graduate Gender Programme (UU), The Peace Institute, Institute for Contemporary Social and Political Studies (PI), Ljubljana, University of Hull, Department of Humanities, UK. Previous projects developed by Personal Cinema include Balkan Wars.
Full description:
"Taking the city of Athens as an example, Banopticon critically examines different aspects of current migrational politics and comments on the power relationships that are being formed between migrants, "local" citizens and the authorities on today's european ground. The game simulates different urban or non-urban environments, such as the city center, the harbor, the detention camp or the border zone and presents their interconnection and continuous de-terriorialisation and re-terriorilisation process. The player is invited to experience this fluid yet intense reality while interacting within the game and viewing videos, sound recordings, web pages, images and texts that have been integrated in the environment. Banopticon shows the passage from the city, conceptualized as a cell being invaded by "alien and hostile forces" to an interconnected network of mobilities. . It examines how migration in the city is not anymore centered, but distributed and diffused just like technology itself is." (Personal Cinema)
A longer walkthough is available here:
Personal Cinema's manifesto:LINK:
"Videogames can be either media or games. But sometimes they can be both. As media, they may carry an idea from one place to another. As games, they establish a set of conditions within which humans play. Any meaning or message that comes out of the game is generated by the players, and was not necessarily enclosed in the game's design." (Personal Cinema)
Submitted by Matteo Bittanti