GAMESCENES

GAME ART: CORY ARCANGEL'S roʊˈdeɪoʊ (2021)

Cory Arcangel

/roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ Let's Play: HOLLYWOOD

Greene Naftali Gallery, New York

March 5th - April 17th, 2021

"/roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ (pronounced like "Rodeo" in "Rodeo Drive") is a one of a kind Deep-Q machine learning super computing system which can play, and learn as it is plays, open ended RPG games. For the debut deployment — /roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ Let's Play: HOLLYWOOD — it will be playing Kim Kardashian: Hollywood, a casual free-to-play role-playing Android game where players aim to increase their reputation by gaining fans in order to become A-List celebrities. [...] 

/roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ has been in development since 2017 by the R & D division of the Cory Arcangel fine arts studio in Brooklyn, New York, and Stavanger, Norway, and delivers significant computational performance with its AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-core 32-Thread processor & (x2) EVGA 24G-P5-3975-KR GeForce RTX 3090 XC3 Ultra GPU's connected together by a Rog Crosshair Viii Dark Hero motherboard. Running NVIDIA Compute Unified Device Architecture accelerated YOLO real-time object detection on a Darknet neural network framework with Dark Flow tensorflow interfacing with custom Deep-Q learning software, /roʊˈdeɪoʊ/ can "see" games, make choices, and evaluate those choices.

LINK: Cory Arcangel's roʊˈdeɪoʊ (all images courtesy of the Artist)

GAME ART: TOTAL REFUSAL'S CIRCUMVENTING THE CIRCLE OF DEATH (2018)

Total Refusal - Digital Disarmament Movement is a collective comprising Austrian artists Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel and Michael Stumpf funded in 2018 which promotes a subversively pacifist approach to violent video games. The trifecta operates as an "ideological antidote, unveiling the regressive characteristics of contemporary gaming media and reopening them as playgrounds for practicing creative disobedience and dissent." As they write,

The vast majority of contemporary video games is characterized by combative gameplay. This seems especially remarkable now that video games have long arrived in the entertainment mainstream and have managed to drop the boy’s room stigmata. With gaming becoming both commercially and culturally more and more relevant, the question arises how artists can modify and make use of this media for their own  purposes. In “Total Refusal”, artists Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf aim to peacefully appropriate the existing mechanics of digital gaming media in order to find new use for their virtual combat zones. As such, “Total Refusal” is a pacifistic statement, realized in digital space.

Circumventing the Circle of Death is a performance - hereby documented as a machinima piece - in which the artists highlight the absurd behavior of some computer game algorithms. In this case, by keeping two armies of a real-time strategy game in constant motion so that they do not come in "frontal view" with each other and thus begin an armed confrontation, the game becomes something else, that is, a virtual dance (and potentially interminable) between two factions. We hear the soldiers shouting menacingly at each other, and yet shots are not fired. Destruction is replaced by distraction. Inspired by the tactics of the International Situationists, the artists sabotaged the game without tempering with the code: gameplay is subverted by exploiting the algorithm's "blindness". And yet, the almost comical dance is no less absurd that the urge to destroy and annihilate. If anything, the former produces sweat, while the latter blood. 

Total Refusal - Digital Disarmament Movement has produced several other performances, installations, and video pieces including Landscape for a Battle Panorama (64 Soldiers hiding from the Player), Sculptering a Peace Model, Operation Jane Walk, and the upcoming How to Disappear.

Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel and Michael Stumpf, Circumventing the Circle of Death, 2018, installation view.

LINK: Leonhard Müllner

Event: Ian Cheng's Emissary Forks At Perfection (May 24 - November 25, Venice Italy)

Ian Cheng

Emissary Forks At Perfection

May 24 - November 25

Espace Louis Vuitton

Venezia Calle del Ridotto 1353

Opening hours: Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 8.00 pm and on Sunday from 10.30 am to 8.00 pm. Open on public holidays. Free entrance

For its third exhibition produced in the framework the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Hors-les-murs” program, the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia is pleased to present American artist Ian Cheng’s Emissary Forks At Perfection. The Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Hors-les-murs” program showcases previously unseen holdings of the Collection at the Espaces Louis Vuitton in Tokyo, Munich, Venice and Beijing, thus carrying out the Fondation’s intent to realize international projects and make them accessible to a broader public.

The video installation Emissary Forks At Perfection (2015-2016) is the second chapter of the Emissaries trilogy created by Cheng between 2015 and 2017. These three episodes, located in the same space but addressing different eras, trace the evolution of ensembles of beings and the way they adapt to their environment. Each features an “emissary”, a “narrative agent”, whose actions will modify the course of events. With Emissary Forks At Perfection, Cheng leads us to question the human mind’s adaptive capacities and human evolution in the face of otherness, randomness and the unpredictability of an ever-changing world.

LINK: Ian Cheng

LINK: Espace Louis Vitton

Event: Beautiful new worlds Virtual realities in contemporary (November 11, 2017–April 8, 2018, Friedrichshafen, Germany)

Press release

Beautiful new worlds
Virtual realities in contemporary art
November 11, 2017–April 8, 2018 

Zeppelin Museum 
Seestraße 22 
88045 Friedrichshafen
Germany 
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 10am–5pm 

The introduction of virtual reality has led to a pictorial revolution that is radically changing not only our perception of images, but also our relationship with reality. Accessible illusionary worlds conjured up in virtual spheres provide visitors with a very concrete experience. As secluded from the outside world as possible, they become immersed and physically involved in the pictorial spaces by means of interactive elements and additional devices. 

Widely compatible technologies, such as VR headsets and 3D projectors, play an increasingly important role in everyday life. Different fields of application, such as the 3D-supported monitoring of operations, video games, trauma therapy, and the digitization of lost cultural goods, are proof of the ongoing impact virtual spatial images have in various fields of life. 

The exhibition is dedicated to this evolution in image technology and explores the interconnections between virtual and real contexts. The socio-political dimension of these technologies is a key aspect. Within the tension field of illusion and critical distance, the artists reflect their application in fields such as forensics, the porn industry, and modern warfare. After all, the control over virtual space always goes hand in hand with the control over real space. Thus, virtuality and reality are closely intertwined. 

The immersion into illusionary worlds is by no means unprecedented. Moreover, it is rooted in a long tradition. Panoramas, dioramas, or stereoscopes serve as tokens of the century-old interest in immersive media. Consequently, stereoscopic photographs as footage on the history of the Zeppelin from 1900 until the 1930s are the starting point of the exhibition.

The show reflects the different varieties of virtuality. Visitors explore the exhibition and experience the merging of virtual and real worlds along a course developed in collaboration with the Berlin based architecture firm Kooperative für Darstellungspolitik. The display ranges from simulated reproductions of real environments to 3D videos and Virtual Reality which generates an all-encompassing spatial illusion with the aid of VR headsets. The artists represented in this show acquire immerse visual media and work together with programmers to refine technologies, thus invigorating the interdisciplinary interface between art and technology. 

Participating artists: Halil Altindere, Salome Asega & Reese Donohue & Tongkwai Lulin, Trisha Baga, Banz & Bowinkel, micha cárdenas, Harun Farocki, Forensic Architecture, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Florian Meisenberg, The Nest Collective.

LINK: Beautifil New Wolrds

Brent Watanabe's San Andreas Community Cam (2017)

Brent Watanabe's follow up to San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam (2016) is titled San Andreas Community Cam, a live video stream from a computer running a modded version of Grand Theft Auto V, hosted on Twitch.tv. It's painful to watch (lots of crying involved) and yet uncannily compelling. It was made for post-human viewers in mind. The side comments are obviously an inherent part of the artwork and, like the activities of the AI controlled characters, are unscripted. Fascinating.

As the artist writes:

The mod follows the citizens of San Andreas, a fictional state in GTA V based on California. The citizens are programmed to control themselves and make their own decisions, with no one actually playing the game. The citizens are 'playing themselves', with all activity unscripted.  The piece is presented as a live stream on sanandreascommunitycams.com. 

LINK: Brent Watanabe

Event: OPEN CODES: Living in Digital Worlds (October 20, 2017 – August 5, 2018, Karlsruhe, Germany)

Open Codes
Living in Digital Worlds
October 20, 2017–August 5, 2018 

Opening: October 19, 7pm 
ZKM_Foyer 

ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe 
Lorenzstr. 19 
76135 Karlsruhe
Germany 

The exhibition Open Codes reflects on the world we live in today; a world that is created and controlled by digital codes. From communication to transportation (of people, goods, and messages), from design to production, from political economy and capital regimes, our contemporary societies are guided by codes written in programming languages that use electromagnetic waves and computers.

The all-encompassing digitization of the world, which has spawned disruptive technologies that have revolutionized traditional industries and ways of life, is due to two key lines of development: progress in mathematics and in physics. Specifically for the exhibition designed artworks and scientific works based on digital as well as on analog codes are presented in the exhibition. The works visualize and explain the complex dynamics and genealogy of digital codes, and the way in which they are increasingly shaping the way we live and how we perceive the world. Open Codes explores these advances together with their material and immaterial manifestations. The exhibition will help to understand the world we live in and inhabit. The exhibition traces the ingress of codes into our daily lives and the structures of knowledge they generate. By analyzing the latest developments in machine learning, emerging forms of governance, labor and production, economic shifts including cryptocurrencies and new business models, as well as the ways in which immersive visual and sound design influences our perception, Open Codes demonstrates the far-reaching and complex dynamics of our present-day, which is founded on codes and algorithms.

These dynamic shifts also profoundly impact what a museum represents. Global transformation of knowledge production and circulation because of advancing digitization are central to the debate on the functions and mission of a museum. This is why, with Open Codes, the ZKM has created a hybrid format of exhibition making, a mix of lounge and laboratory. Open Codes is designed as hub, a mixture of community and co-working spaces, an environment of coming together and sharing—for individual development and for reflection. It provides an infrastructure which facilitates creative working in different formats and a multitude of resources which offer essential information to facilitate understanding of the past, present, and future of digitization. This is an environment that encourages visitors to read, write, code, become participants, and engage in the imaginaries of art. The exhibition is a radical educational experiment. The entrance will be free and free drinks and snacks will be served to the public, because in future education should be rewarded and even paid.

With works by Jean-Michel Alberola, Morehshin Allahyari, Isaac Asimov, Lisa Bergmann, Michael Bielicky, Patrick Borgeat, James Bridle, Ludger Brümmer, Can Büyükberber, Emma Charles, Matthieu Cherubini, Arthur C. Clarke, Tyler Coburn, Max Cooper & Andy Lomas, Shane Cooper, Larry Cuba, Frederik De Wilde, Simon Denny, Götz Dipper, Constant Dullaart, Margret Eicher, Jonas Eltes, César Escudero Andaluz & Martín Nadal, Cerith Wyn Evans, Claire L. Evans, Harun Farocki, Thierry Fournier, Kristof Gavrielides, Jan Gerigk, Julia Gerlach, Julia Ghorayeb, Melanie Gilligan, Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, Manfred Hauffen, Daniel Heiss, Anton Himstedt, Yannick Hofmann, ICD/ITKE, Simon Ingram, Eduardo Kac, Helen Knowles, Beryl Korot, Anton Kossjanenko, Brigitte Kowanz, Marc Lee, Donna Legault, Jan Robert Leegte, Lawrence Lek, Armin Linke, Bernd Lintermann, Fei Liu, Christian Lölkes, Solimán López, Shawn Maximo, Tamara Mchedlidze, Rosa Menkman, Ben Miller, Chikashi Miyama, Andreas Müller Pohle, Jörn Müller-Quade, Greg Niemeyer, Helena Nikonole, Julian Palacz, Elizabeth Pich, Matthew Plummer-Fernandez, Julien Prévieux, Peter Reichard, Manfred Kraft & Michael Volkmer, Matthias Richter & Josef N. Patoprsty, Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan, Betty Rieckmann, Robotlab, Curtis Roth, RYBN.ORG, saai | Südwestdeutsches Archiv für Architektur und Ingenieurbau, Chris Salter, Karin Sander, Karl Sims, Adam Słowik, Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits, Space Caviar, Barry Stone, Monica Studer & Christoph van den Berg, Jol Thomson, Suzanne Treister, UBERMORGEN.COM, Ruben van de Ven, Harm van den Dorpel, Koen Vanmechelen, Danja Vasiliev, Ivar Veermäe, Nikolaus Völzow, ::vtol::, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Peter Weibel, Alex Wenger & Max-Gerd Retzlaff, Where Dogs Run, Dan Wilcox, Stephen Willats, Manfred Wolff-Plottegg & Wolfgang Maass, World-Information Institute.

Open Codes is conceived by Peter Weibel and curated by Peter Weibel, Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, Yasemin Keskintepe, and Blanca Giménez assisted by the external advisors Natalia Fuchs, Franz Pichler.

LINK: zkm.de 

Video: Alan Warburton's Goodbye Uncanny Valley (2017)

"It’s 2017 and computer graphics have conquered the Uncanny Valley, that strange place where things are almost real... but not quite. After decades of innovation, we’re at the point where we can conjure just about anything with software. The battle for photoreal CGI has been won, so the question is... what happens now?" (Alan Warburton)

LINK: Alan Warburton

Game Art: Harrison Kinsley's Charles (2017)

"Our AI friend here, Charles, is a convolutional neural network that learns to drive through deep learning. At the moment, Charles learns and takes all actions based on single frames at a time, and bases his decisions on just pixel data. Charles only sees exactly what you see. In time, I intend to give Charles some short-term memory to hopefully improve his driving." (Harrison Kinsley)

 

Stills from Harrison Kinsley's Charles streaming live on Twitch.tv

LINK: Harrison Kinsley