GAMESCENES

GAME ART: MIKHAIL MAKSIMOV'S INFINITE GRAVEYARD: RESURRECTION DELIVERY (2023)

Mikhail Maksimov's latest game Infinite Graveyard: Resurrection Delivery - a sequel to Infinite Graveyard - casts the player in the role of the pilot of a cemetery delivery drone tasked to deliver coffins to uninhabited graves, dodge obstacles, collect power-ups, and compete against players from around the world with an online leader board.

I cannot think of a more timely project and a (not so) nuanced critique of current events.

The original game, Infinite Graveyard, was presented on VRAL in 2020 in machinima format.

Mikhail Maksimov is an artist and filmmaker whose practice revolves around game engines, 3D graphics, algorithms, and neural networks. Among his most recent (and radical) projects is SAR, Sanatorium Anthropocene Retreat! (formerly known as MOMAM, Museum of Modern Art Massacre), a dystopian first-person shooter set in the artworld and inspired by the writing of Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway. After graduating in Architecture from the Moscow State Construction University and receiving an MFA from the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, Maksimov took part in several exhibitions and festivals, including the Moscow Modern Art Biennale, Venice Biennale of Architecture, New Horizons International Film Festival, the Moscow International Film Festival, Manifesta, Kansk Video Festival, the International Festival of Cinematographic Debuts “Spirit of Fire”, Locarno Festival, Hamburg KurzFilmFestival, Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, and many more. Maksimov lives and works in Moscow.

LINK: Infinite Graveyard: Resurrection Delivery

LINK: Mikhail Maksimov

GAME ART: ALEX MACKIN DOLAN'S FULLY FUNCTIONAL GAMBLING AMUSEMENT MEDAL MACHINES (2022)

In his 2022 solo exhibition Really New God at Davis Lewis Gallery (November 4, 2022 - December 22, 2022), Alex Mackin Dolan presented custom-built video game machines that illuminate the addictive and extractive techniques of modern media. The show's title refers to the acronym RNG, or Random Number Generator, an algorithm that determines random outcomes in video games and computer programs. RNG is colloquially known in the machine gambling industry as Really New God.

The machines in the show, handcrafted from wood and spare parts, are modeled after "medal games"—a type of amusement machine popular in Japan that involves exchanging money for tokens without the ability to convert tokens back to cash. Though lower stakes than casino games, medal games simulate and normalize machine gambling. As Dolan's work suggests, these types of games share DNA with today's ad-driven apps and websites, which employ addictive design to capture user attention and "bleed" funds over time.

Alex Mackin Dolan, Untitled (Really New God), Computer components, paint, wood, 45x 26 1/2 x 29 in, installation view at David Lewis Gallery 2022

Through his constructed arcade cabinets, Dolan draws connections between gambling mechanics, algorithmic systems, and the extractive attention economy of digital media. Blurring recreation and addiction, his works reveal the underlying programs that fuel obsessive consumption. Ultimately, the exhibition imagines algorithmic code as the new omnipotent force shaping social behaviors and desires.

Additional information about the exhibition is available here.

Dolan (b. 1990, Colorado) is based in New York. His work has been exhibited globally, including at the Serpentine Gallery, Swiss Institute, LUMA Westbau, and the Park Avenue Armory. He was featured in Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland, and Ulrich ObristHann's book Age of Earthquakes: A Guide to the Extreme Present.

LINK: Alex Mackin Dolan (All images courtesy of the Artist)

EVENT: CORY ARCANGEL'S ERRORS AND OMISSIONS (NOVEMBER 3 2023 - JANUARY 31 2024, SHANGHAI)

Cory Arcangel

Errors and Omissions

Lisson Gallery

3 November 2023 – 31 January 2024
2/F, 27 Huqiu Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai

Lisson Gallery is delighted to present Errors and Omissions, Cory Arcangel's highly anticipated second show in Shanghai, following his 2019 solo exhibition, Topline, at CC Foundation. This thought-provoking exhibition is curated as a focused survey of the artist's work, showcasing a diverse array of multimedia projects that span video games, single-channel video, inkjets, and industrially-coated aluminum 'paintings.' Arcangel employs cutting-edge techniques, including AI, machine learning, and machine code, to push the boundaries of art and technology.

Highlights:

Cory Arcangel, Modded Tetris game cartridge, 2004

• Super Slow Tetris (2004): In a mesmerizing twist, Arcangel hacks an original copy of the Nintendo Entertainment System game Tetris, slowing it down to the extent that it takes nearly a day for a group of blocks to fall to the bottom of the screen. This unique reinterpretation of a classic game remains playable while offering a captivating new experience.

• /roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ Let’s Play: HOLLYWOOD (2021): In a modern take on extended gameplay, Arcangel introduces a bespoke Deep-Q machine-learning super computing system to play the casual Android game 'Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.' This captivating 3-hour single-channel screen capture video, recorded on December 14, 2021, provides an engaging commentary on celebrity culture and digital entertainment.

• Things I Made: In this new series, Arcangel transforms various webpages from coryarcangel.com into prints on paper, incorporating pages ripped from an HP Deskjet 2710e manual. These prints serve as a retrospective, tracking Arcangel's creative journey over the past two decades. Notable works like Photoshop Gradient and Smudge Tool Demonstration (2007) and Self-Playing Nintendo 64 NBA Courtside 2 (2011) take center stage, demonstrating his evolution as an artist.

• Alus: Diamond Plate (2023): The exhibition concludes with a remarkable floor installation and a series of aluminum paintings called Alus. These pieces feature abstract shapes and signatures cut by a robotic CNC fiber laser cutting machine, offering finishes reminiscent of Apple's product lines for both casual and professional users. Industrially painted in hot pink, each work is unique, with inspiration drawn from the iconic tracksuit motif, a long-standing interest of Arcangel.

About Cory Arcangel:

Cory Arcangel, born in Buffalo, NY in 1978 and currently residing in Stavanger, Norway, is a multi-faceted artist, composer, curator, and entrepreneur. His work explores the potential and failures of both old and new digital technologies, emphasizing their obsolescence, humor, aesthetic attributes, and their intriguing influence on contemporary life. Arcangel employs a semi-archaeological approach to investigate the structural language of video games, software, social media, and machine learning, treating them as both subject matter and medium. Notable works in his extensive portfolio include Totally Fucked (2003), Permanent Vacation (2008), Drei Klavierstücke op.11 (2009), Working on my Novel (2009), Various Self Playing Bowling Games (2011), and Flatware (2018-). His most recent and ongoing projects include Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age, exhibited at renowned institutions worldwide.

LINK: Errors and Omissions (press release)

EVENT: NO QUARTER 2023 (NOVEMBER 17 2023, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)

NO QUARTER 2023

November 17 2023, 7 PM

New York University

370 Jay Street

2nd floor bvallroom

Brooklyn, New York

press release

On Friday 17th of November No Quarter returns once more to Brooklyn, New York. With just a month to go before the big day we are thrilled to announce the details of the 2023 creative cohort which includes… Arcade Artist – Ben Blatt, Game Designer – Blake Andrews, Artist and Game Designer Everest Pipkin and Architecture Studio – You+Pea.

Every year No Quarter commissions new work from leading artists working in games and related fields. These works premiere for one night only as part of the iconic No Quarter exhibition.

The No Quarter 2023 exhibition will take place at 370 Jay Street in Brooklyn on Friday November 17th and will be open from 7pm to 11pm. It is free to attend, but RSVPs are essential.

No Quarter 2023 is curated by Marie Foulston with artwork and visual identity by Will Anderson.

LINK: No Quarter 2023

EVENT: AUX FUTURS ANCESTRAUX (OCTOBER 14 2023 - JANUARY 21 2024, BOUROGNE, FRANCE)

Aux futurs ancestraux

Curated by Isabelle Arvers

Rye de la Varonne

90140 Bourogne, France

 

Curated by Isabelle Arvers, Aux futurs ancestraux adopts a decolonial perspective, showcasing art and games from outside the Western canon to expand representations, narratives and cosmologies. Specifically, the exhibition seeks to decolonize imaginations and co-create narratives drawing from oral traditions, indigenous knowledge and video game worlds.

press release

“When we say that the future is ancestral, it has more to do with DNA than genealogy. It’s worldview: it’s the ability to go back to an event that created the world and is alive in you. We want a constant creation of everything and ourselves. This is what happens in DNA, the code handed down by our ancestors. This can reintroduce us to the constellation of life within the planet, where we stop being specialists and realize that we have a common origin”. Ailton Krenak, philosopher and leader of the Brazilian indigenous Krenak movement and author of the book Futuro Ancestral en 2021

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.

Featured artists and artworks

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

Liquid Forest, Isabelle Arvers (FR) Machinima Gaël Manangou, Sound creation (RDC)

Spectographie, VR film & installation : Carole Chausset Myriam Mihindou &Annie-Flore Batchiellilys, Daniely Francisque, Florence boyer / cie Artmayage

eFa, interactive installation by Technorisha Collective: Livia Diniz, Benjamin Abras, Bruno Creuzet, Michel Petris, Henri Tauliaut, M’vwâma Diop, Annabel Gueredrat, Isabelle Arvers.

La Puissance des arbres, vidéo portaits directed by Isabelle Arvers, Livia Diniz, Bruno Qual

LINK: Aux Futurs Ancestraux

ARTICLE: BITSY, THE SMALL GAME REVOLUTION (ARTNEWS)

An exhibition and online jam celebrate the game engine tool’s ambitiously modest aesthetics

Imagine a video game. Think of what that game might look like, how it might play, how long it might take to fully play through, how dense its content might be, how rich its world might be rendered. And now, strip away all of that. Remove any hi-fi graphics, pare down the game play to the most basic 2D movement and single-button interaction, scale it way back. Does it still feel like a video game? (Nicholas O'Brien)

LINK: ARTNEWS

EVENT: VIRTUAL TEXTUAL (OCTOBER 6 - DECEMBER 17 2023, LEICESTER, UK)

 

Virtual Textual

6th October – 17th December 2023

Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre
4 Midland Street
Leicester
LE1 1TG

press release

The exhibition Virtual Textual, explores the digital aspects of game-based poetry, bringing together artists from across the globe in an exhibition that champions innovative, but also careful uses of technology. All the pieces in the exhibition employ lower impact technology – low draw graphics, limited palettes, local-only connections – and easily accessible interfaces across a collection of ludic digital poetic works.

The works in Virtual Textualconsider the ways in which the reader is an essential part in how a text exists in space, and how that text can shift, becoming entirely new with each instance that it is encountered. Participants will discover that reading is no longer a passive act but a dynamic and immersive experience.

At the heart of the exhibition is the Playing Poetry and Phoenix co-commissioned work Wood Wide Web, a lo-fi cottage-commodore-core poetic walking simulator that senses its surroundings. Audiences can become co-creators in an ever-growing piece of poetic nature writing that alters itself depending on the happiness of the plants around it.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of workshops from visiting and local artists, opportunities for audiences to make their own games, and a published pamphlet delving into the exhibition and collecting new game-based works that readers can explore beyond the space.

The Playing Poetry team has emerged from many years in poetry publishing, producing live literature, and developing experimental games, with exhibitions at Somerset House, and commissions from The National Poetry Library, The Edwin Morgan Society, and Edgelandia. Led by Nick Murray, Playing Poetry has launched with Poetry Games, a poignant exhibition in partnership with the National Poetry Library in the Southbank Centre and a game poetry course with the Poetry School.

Check out the amazing projects on display

LINK: Virtual Textual

LINK: Playing Poetry

GAME ART: RINDON JOHNSON AND JACQUELINE KIYOMI GORK'S THE BELLS PURSUING ONE ANOTHER (2022)

Rindon Johnson with Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, The Bells Pursuing One Another, 2022. Video game, controllers, monitors, gaming chairs. Dimensions variable

Rindon Johnson, with Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, The Bells Pursuing One Another, 2022. Video game, controllers, monitors, gaming chairs. Dimensions variable

from press release

In their new (and first) video game, Johnson and artist Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork draw on fragmentary data to speculate a firsthand visual and acoustic account of the beaked whale’s hunting habits. Not unlike modern first-person shooters, gameplay is situated from the whale’s point of view; players use the joysticks of an Xbox controller to harmonize their sonic movements in attempts to catch their squid prey gliding between egresses of the deep submarine Great Bahama Canyon. Like other cetaceans, Cuviers use highly developed aural sensory organs to navigate their underwater environment. The whale’s sight, though poorly understood by scientists, is thought to be nearly vestigial. They see as an afterthought. The resulting visual design is stark and monochromatic, forcing players to rely overwhelmingly on the game’s immersive soundscape.

Rindon Johnson (b. 1990, unceded Ohlone and Coast Miwok territories, San Francisco, California) currently lives and works in Berlin where he is an Associate Fellow at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Johnson is the author of four books of essays and poetry, The Law of Large Numbers: Black Sonic Abyss (SculptureCenter/Chisenhale Gallery, 2021), Shade the King (Capricious Press, 2017), No One Sleeps Better Than White People (Inpatient Press, 2016), and the virtual reality book Meet in the Corner (Publishing- House.Me, 2017). Recent solo exhibitions include The Law of Large Numbers at SculptureCenter, New York and Chisenhale Gallery, London; and The Valley of the Moon at François Ghebaly, Los Angeles. His work has been featured at the New Museum, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the 2022 Whitney Biennial, New York.

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork has been working with the intersection of sound, sculpture and performance since 2002. She studied sound art, photography and new genres at the San Francisco Art Institute and researched the history of communication technologies, acoustics and computer music at Stanford University where she received an MFA. Kiyomi Gork has exhibited at Empty Gallery in Hong Kong, GES-VAC in Moscow, SFMOMA, The Lab and Queens Nails Projects in San Francisco, 356 Mission Rd, Machine Project and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. She has participated residencies at Skowhegan, EMPAC, Mills Collage and Schloss Solitude in addition to receiving multiple grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission, Center for Cultural Innovation and Joan Mitchell Foundation.

Read more

LINK: Rindon Johnson

LINK: Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork

RESOURCE: CURA. 41: NEW WORLD AGENCY™

CURA. 41

New World Agency™

Fall-Winter 2023-2024

press release

Through an extensive investigation of the new searches and work productions of international artists, the brand new CURA. 41, New World Agency™ raises questions related to the ability of art and artists to have a transformative role as regards the apparent irreversibility of the events that impact our present. In a shift between fiction and reality, New World Agency™ explores, with a transgenerational gaze, the artists who foresaw the building of new possible worlds and new modes of agency for alternative futures. Not only AI, CGI, videogames and virtual reality, but also highly advanced analog tools, animatronics, and mechanical devices are able to forge the imaginative, creative and narrative space of artists, founding new realities, in which mythology, ghosts, topoi, fables, childhood memories, technology, pop culture and magic intertwine, in the comprehensive illusion to be in different places and in part of it.

“A World is a super-organism you can believe in…Worlding is the art of an individual creating a World” —Ian Cheng.

CURA. 41 presents 4+1 covers with works’ premiere by: Diego Marcon introduced by Travis Diehl; Mark Leckey presented by a long mixtape of undead voices created by Charlie Fox; Cécile B. Evans presented by Asma Barchiche; plus a cover story and an insert by trans woman artist and activist Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), photographed by Myles Loftin. Anticipating the special cover coming out in December, Jordan Wolfson, in conversation with Caroline Busta and Lil Internet, reveals the production and what goes on behind the scenes of his third animatronic sculpture. Essays, interviews, and projects include an introductory text by Ian Cheng; a focus on the pioneering work of the American artist Mike Kelley, presented by the double gaze of the curator of La Bourse in Paris, Jean-Marie Gallais, and the artist, raised in his myth, Matt Copson; a conversation between Agnieszka Kurant and Hans Ulrich Obrist, investigating the evolution of culture and also “the relationship between predicting the future and how this is impacting the actual future”; new narratives, articulated in the visual essay conceived by Helen Marten. Furthermore, we present the new film and corpus of work by Martine Syms, introduced by the British curator Ben Broome; a special section curated by Countersubject that introduces us to the work of the multi-disciplinary art collective Bernadette Corporation; Anna Uddenberg’s totemic sculptures, presented by David Andrew Tasman; a photo shoot commissioned to the New York-based fashion duo of artists and activists Women’s History Museum which is introduced by a conversation with Ada O’Higgins. The New Now section also features the work of Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, with a text by Wong Binghao (Bing), of Gabriel Massan, investigated by Tamar Clarke-Brown, and Alice Bucknell in conversation with Sarah Johanna Theurer. The Portraits’ section features the work of Pete Jiadong Qiang with a text by Tadej Vindiš; Shuang Li with a text by Lina Martin-Chan; Gray Wielebinski presented by Francesca Gavin; Omsk Social Club with a text by Estelle Hoy; Ndayé Kouagou presented by Madeleine Planeix-Crocker.

Publishers and Editors in Chief: Ilaria Marotta, Andrea Baccin.

CURA. 41 will be available from mid-October 2023.

LINK: CURA. 41

EVENT: THE SEASHORE OF ENDLESS WORLDS (NOVEMBER 1 - 19 2023, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND)

 

The Seashore of Endless Worlds – Art & jeux de société

 

Le Commun, Geneva, Switzerland

exhibition: from 1st to 19 novembre 2023

online symposium: 20, 21 November

 

featured artists: 0x Salon, Ahmed Isam Aldin, David Blandy, Joshua Citarella, Crude Futures, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Simon Denny, Andreas Dobler, Giulia Essyad, Axelle Grégoire, Half Earth Socialism, Olivia Hernaïz, Rok Kranjc, Paul Loubet, Finn Massie, Constanza Mendoza, Cullen Miller, Moving Castle, Nicolas Nova, OMSK Social Club, Sara Rutz, Kirill Savchenkov, Sammy Stein, Trickster-p, Ilaria Vinci, Elsa Werth, Paulo Wirz

 

press release

 

The Seashore of Endless Worlds considers games as a decisive global and current phenomenon, and calls for societal issues to be put into play by exploring the current conditions, arising from game theory and gamification, of widespread and planetary crises. Beyond mere entertainment and distraction, we see games as a process capable of probing and understanding the world. Not only do games make up a major part of the cultural industry and generate popular aesthetics, they are also now recognised for their powers of simulation, training and generating physical, social, economic and political realities. Between movement and constraint, participation and subjection, identity and avatar, the deployment and mutual redefinition of these terms is open to research by artists, collectives and researchers. The participants are working on different ways of using games to make present-day situations and issues tangible: diversity, the economy, the environment, geopolitics, digitisation, etc. Their games are a dynamic way of exposing and rethinking the rules and shared goals that shape society.

 

As the title suggests, in reference to Rabindranath Tagore’s poem about children playing on the shore, play conjures up potential spaces where the imaginary and the real inform each other as creativity, solidarity and care. Games accompany the fundamentally trans-human process of hominisation, reinscribing the existing in extension with its outsides through which it invents itself - materials, technical objects, more than human… Rather than constituting a category of defined objects or fixed, universal and timeless features specific to all cultures, games enable them to evolve through realities that they both describe and shape.

 

While games support the construction of worlds as sets of relationships and systems of rules - more or less arbitrary, contingent and changing - they are also set in motion by processes that open them up (room for maneuver) or even go beyond them (off-games, hidden rules) and put in tension as world-engine and meta-games. What games are being played? Who produces the rules? Are the players being played? At the intersection of materialism and speculation, instruments of power but also engines of emancipation, they allow us to expose and question logics and rationalities that have become increasingly polemical and deterministic, and proceed from eminently aesthetic questions and resolutions.

 

FTW, Christian Bili & Samuel Wagen-Magnon, 2 October 2023

 

Click the image below to access a set of resources related to the exhibition

 

 

LINK: The Seashore of Endless Worlds (special thanks to Christian Bili)