GAMESCENES

EVENT: VECTOR FESTIVAL 2023: SHADOW WORK (JULY 6-16, TORONTO, CANADA)

Vector Festival 2023: shadow work

July 6–16, 2023

InterAccess
Unit 1
950 Dupont Street
Toronto ON M6H 1Z2
Canada

press release

Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices.

Vector Festival 2023: shadow work, curated by Mitra Fakhrashrafi, engages the formal and informal and mundane and arcane ways that classification systems attempt to contain the messy realities of our lives and shape our conditions. Confronting the work that both maintains and disrupts these systems, shadow work presents interventions on labour, the calculability of human life, the ungovernable, the echoes and reverberations of colonization and propositions for new, “life-giving” languages.

Through a hybrid online and in-person program of exhibitions, performances, screenings, and workshops, this 10-day festival invites artists and audiences to come together as we navigate the systems uninformed of our humanity.

Details will continue to be announced at vectorfestival.org

Program highlights

shadow work
Flagship Exhibition, July 6–August 5, 2023
Curated by Mitra Fakhrashrafi

Through AR, VR, solar power, and immersive projection, shadow workexplores classification systems in contrast with the messy reality of our lives.

Worldbuilding towards...
Game Jam, July 7–16, 2023
Curated by Bracy Appeikumoh

This participatory game jam encourages game makers to create worlds radically different from our current realities, ones that foster care, compassion, and community. Together, we’ll ask (and work to answer): what world would you like to live in?

Anthropo-digitalism
Multi-site exhibition, July 6–July 16, 2023
Curated by keiko Hart

How does the digital (re)animate our environments? How do we imprint our humanness upon the digital, and how does digitalness imprint upon us humans? Ruminate on your human/digital reflections with the anthropomorphic inventions of Marisa Fulper-Estrada, Jon McCurley, Kristin McWharter, Lorna Mills, Sunny Nestler, and Seth Scriver.

a language of bodies
Screening, July 12, 2023    
Curated by Fabiyino Germain-Bajowa

This screening brings together artists who are each transcending sealed forms and exploding the classification systems which govern “bodies”. By engaging physical bodies, bodies of water, and bodies of knowledge, these artists are working in the spaces between, celebrating the undefined and uncontrollable.

ponyHAUS performance
Performance, July 14, 2023
Curated by ponyHAUS

In true hybrid fashion, you're invited to a night of moving in and out of screen-based worlds. Contrast and draw parallels between our IRL and URL lives, supported by a selection of experimental music performances.

A Very Human Screening
Screening, July 15, 2023
Curated by Insomniac Film Festival

Go outside! Touch Grass! Logging off has become harder and harder to do. Our jobs, our social lives and our societal infrastructures have all moved online. Our identities, our bodies even, are shaped by the internet. So what now? Do we fight harder for our three-dimensional lives, or do we submit to the digital one we have? Joining us in pondering these questions with Insomniac in the genuine, outdoor, real life world.

Festival After Party
July 16, 2023
Details TBA, stay tuned.

Workshop series

SinkInSync: Creating Interactive VR with Brainwave Data
Online via Zoom, July 8
Facilitated by Tiange Wang and Xin Feng

Explore creating interactive and responsive VR environments leveraging brainwave data using Unity3D, Muse Headband, and Oculus VR Headset (Muse Headband or the VR Headset not required to participate). Upon completion of the workshop, participants will have created a 3D environment with dynamic visual elements responsive to data, and obtained the knowledge to independently implement neurofeedback VR experiences with commercially-available tools.

Tiling into AI
In-person, July 9
Facilitated by Blaine Cambell and Mohamed Somani

Patterning is an accessible activity regardless of age and skill that has deep roots across cultures. It is also a way for people to connect in verbal and non-verbal ways—in the moment of the activity but also across geographies and time. Join us in a freeform pattern making workshop where participants create individual or group patterns using various coloured cut geometric mat board shapes. These creations will be augmented by an AI model which will insert a collaborative “buffer” to connect our creations and create a cohesive, continuous pattern.

Utopics
In-person, July 13
Facilitated by Geoffrey Pugen

In this workshop Geoffry Pugen will demonstrate how to create a labyrinth as a 3d asset and export a rendered video walk through of the scene. Using Unreal engine 5.1 and Blender 3.5

Making a Solar-Server: DIY Web Design & Eco Media Art
In-person, July 22
Facilitated by Imogen Clendinning

Learn about DIY Internet technology and solar-powered media with one of Vector Festival 2023’s exhibiting artists. Participants will be led through the creation of a static HTML web server hosted on a Raspberry Pi microcomputer and a live demonstration on powering a microcomputer using solar energy.

Registration, more details, and updates with workshops soon to be announced. More programming announcements to come!

Keep in touch with us at @interaccessto on Instagram and at vectorfestival.org
If you have any questions about the Vector Festival or our programming, please email [email protected].

LINK: Vector Festival 2023

CALL FOR ENTRIES: FILE 2023 (DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 15 2023)

 

One of the most exciting digital arts festivals in the world, FILE - Electronic Language International Festival has recently launched its 2023. After a three years hiatus, FILE is back in grand style. Applications will be open from December 19th to February 15th.

 

The 22nd Edition of the Electronic Language International Festival will take place at the FIESP Cultural Center, in São Paulo, from July 5th to August 27th 2023. The selected projects will also be able to collaborate in parallel events in different states of Brazil, also taking place in 2023. The submission is free of charge.

FILE 2023 focuses on four  categories: Electronic Sound, Interactive Art, Digital Language (including video games and machinima, VR and AR) and Educational.

Click here for more information about the submission process. (Thank you Clarissa!)

CALL FOR ARTWORKS: HOPS AHEAD: THE ART OF ALTERNATE HISTORIES, PRESENTS, AND FUTURES (DEADLINE: JULY 31 2022)

The International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS) has released the 2022 Art Exhibition's call for work.

It's available here.

This year's curators are Clara Fernández-Vara and Nick Montfort, and the deadline is July 31.

This year's theme is "Hops Ahead: The Art of Alternate Histories, Presents, and Futures." It is inspired by the 60th anniversary of Julio Cortázar's novel Rayuela (in English, Hopscotch), which connected a well-known game with the novel in February 1963, inviting readers to encounter the text in more than one order. We welcome submissions that explore the potential of interactive narrative to envision alternate and future realities in the following themes

• Alternate histories, presents, and futures
•  Social connection and disconnection
• Cultural universals and differences
• Working across languages
• Playful words and languages

Artworks are welcome in (at least) the following forms and formats:

• Browser-based interactive digital art
• Electronic literature
• Parser-based interactive fiction
• Narrative-driven games
• Twine games/"Twines"
• Visual novels
• HTML5 narratives / games
• Bitsy games
• Art installations
• AR, VR, and XR works

 

LINK: Hops Ahead: The Art of Alternate Histories, Presents, and Futures

EVENT: UNREAL CITY (DECEMBER 8 2020 - JANUARY 5 2020, LONDON)

UNREAL CITY

An exhibition curated by Acute Art and Dazed Media

Tuesday 8th December 2020 - Tuesday 5th January 2021

London

Unreal City is London’s biggest public festival of AR art which features 36 sculptures arranged as a walking tour along the River Thames Organised by Acute Art and Dazed Media. The digital sculptures are arranged as a walking tour along the Southbank and river Thames. Artists featured: Olafur Eliasson, Tomás Saracena, KAWS, Alicja Kwade, Darren Bader, Nina Chanel Abney, Cao Fei, Koo Jeong A, and Bjarne Melgaard.

The above video was directed and produced by Kate Villevoye. Cinematography by Devin Yuceil. Production Assistant: Alice Ellis Editor Kate Villevoye. Dubbing Mixer: Guy Chase Music by Hector Plimmer.

Lu Yang, Gigant DOKU (2020), Augmented Reality

Cao Fei, The Eternal Wave AR (2020) | Augmented Reality

LINK: UNREAL CITY

EVENT: BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL PRESENTS LFF EXPANDED (OCTOBER 7-18 2020, LONDON)

London Film Festival Expanded

October 7–18

A new strand of XR and immersive art and virtual exhibition space

Official link

Press release:

LFF Expanded is BFI London Film Festival’s new dedicated strand of XR and immersive Art. Using cinema as a jumping off point, LFF Expanded features virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and live immersive performance work from bold, innovative creators from around the world, using a range of creative techniques to ensure audiences are not in front of a work of art, a film or a performance, but in the middle of it.

While plans beyond 2020 include a large scale physical installation, the festival has innovated in response to social distancing restrictions this year by commissioning a bespoke, dynamic new virtual exhibition space, The Expanse. This brand new virtual exhibition space houses the LFF Expanded programme curated by Ulrich Schrauth.

The Expanse features a virtual gallery for the LFF’s twenty 360 video and immersive works, plus an auditorium which will house a line-up of live talks and events across the Festival. Audiences will be able to access The Expanse, connect with one another and view the works, using tethered and non-tethered (Oculus Quest) headsets. For those that do not have a headset at home, the Festival will have a number of headsets available for use at the BFI Southbank for attendees to book and experience the platform in-person. There will also be a 2D browser version of the platform for those wishing to explore the virtual space at home. To view the works outside of the platform, attendees can access the Festival’s 360 video programme via Oculus TV and the dedicated LFF 360 Player via WebXR, viewable in mobile VR-headsets or web browser. For tethered headset users, attendees will be able to download the Expanse from Viveport.

 

LFF Expanded will present a number of original and thought-provoking panel discussions and talks around the medium of VR as well as some very special opportunities to meet the artists and explore pioneering new works including Future Rites & Chaotic Body 1, where acclaimed choreographer Alexander Whitley will give an insight into two of his upcoming immersive dance projects; Artist talk: Brave New World with the artists behind Agence (Anna West and David Callahan) and To Miss the Ending (Pietro Gagliano)—two very different projects dealing with the dystopian possibilities of Artificial Intelligence; explore Baff Akoto’s poetic work Leave The Edges in the virtual auditorium and listen to the artist talk about his artistic practice, which combines film and immersive technology and Anti-Gone by Theo Triantafyllidis, offering audiences the chance to experience a new way of hybrid virtual theatre-making.

On Saturday, October 10 London-based artist and designer Es Devlin will talk about her ground-breaking work in an LFF Expanded Screen Talk, and The Immersive Art Revolution sees Rufus Norris, Director and Joint Chief Executive of the National Theatre, Nell Whitley, Executive Producer at Marshmallow Laser Feast and Jane Alison, Head of Visual Arts, Barbican, join BBC journalist and presenter Razia Iqbal to discuss the future of the immersive art sector.

Theo Triantafyllidis, Anti-Gone, 2020

As part of LFF Expanded, the LFF and StoryFutures Academy announced a new XR commission, Laika, directed by the Academy Award and BAFTA winning Asif Kapadia (Senna, Amy, Diego Maradona). Telling the story of the first space dog, Laika is Asif Kapadia’s first foray into immersive and XR filmmaking, and is a collaboration with award winning animation studio Passion Pictures. Laika is due for final completion in 2021.

There will also be an opportunity to experience LFF Expanded at the BFI Southbank exhibition in London. This exhibition must be pre-booked—tickets are free, but limited. Click here to pre-book. LFF Expanded is open throughout the BFI London Film Festival (October 7–18, 2020).

LINK: LFF Expanded

GAME ART: KEB CERDA'S SUPER NARDO (FALSE PROFITS) (2019)

"Venturing into more creative possibilities in the integration of traditional art forms and new media, young Filipino contemporary artist Keb Cerda introduces his latest set of works as components of an augmented reality adventure game. Paintings turn into virtual playgrounds or battlefields where viewers can participate and perform actions through a mobile application developed especially for his works. Each piece represents a stage of a game, progressing and culminating as the player completes tasks and collects bounties. The ultimate reward comes in the form of a catalogue and a limited edition toy sculpture from the artist. These explorations aim to take the interactive platform to another level in his artistic practice, and interlink the manual production of images to the language of digital technology." (Keb Cerda)

2-2 Hometown, oil on canvas, 2019, 60” x 60” (152 cm x 152 cm)

Keb Cerda is a Filipino Asian Modern & Contemporary painter who was born in 1991. Their work was featured in exhibitions at the Nunu Fine Art.

Also from Cerda

I Bet Some Bastard Will Beat That, oil on canvas, 2018, 60” x 48” (152 cm x 122 cm)

LINK: Keb Cerda

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: VECTOR FESTIVAL 2019 (DEADLINE FEB 01, 2019)

Vector Festival 2019's Open Call for Submissions is now up!

Deadline: February 01, 2019

An event organized by

950 Dupont St., Unit 1.
Toronto ON M6H 1Z2
Canada

LINK: Vector Festival 2019

EVENT: GAMERZ 14 (November 8 - December 15, Aix-en-Provence, France)

Festival international des Arts multimédia GAMERZ 14ème édition

AIX-EN-PROVENCE | MARSEILLE, FRANCE

NOVEMBER 8 – DECEMBER 2018

http://www.festival-gamerz.com 

 

The excellent Multimedia Arts Festival GAMERZ returns for its 14th edition from 08 November to 15 December 2018 in Aix-en-Provence and Marseille. Curated once again by M2F Creations | Lab GAMERZ, the Festival is scattered across several locations, including the Vasarely Foundation, the Ecole Supérieure d'Art, the Méjanes Library - in Aix-en-Provence and the Grands-Bains Gallery Showers of the Plain in Marseille. The 2018 edition is about developing different practices and artistic strategies as alternatives to escape the digital footprints. The full program will be unveiled soon, so stay tuned. 

 

LINK: GAMERZ

Event VIDEOGAMES: DESIGN/ PLAY/ DISRUPT (September 8 2018 - February 29 2019, London, UK)

VIDEOGAMES: DESIGN/PLAY/DISRUPT

The Victoria and Albert Museum

London

Curated by Marie Foulston

8 September 2018 - 24 February 2019

Advance tickets: £18. Tickets go on sale today.

The Victoria and Albert Museum will host one of the most ambitious exhibitions about videogames, art, and design of the last decade.

Titled Videogames: Design/ Play/ Disrupt, the show will open in the Fall of 2018 and will examine the most diverse and eclectic manifestations of gaming, including indie productions, eSports, and politics. The stated goal is to fully and deeply explore the social, cultural, and artistic impact of games. It is a relief to hear that the exhibition won't follow a chronological order, opting instead for a thematic display of artworks. Artifacts will cover a twenty year period (2000-2018).

Organized into three sections - hence the subtitle, Design, Play and Disrupt - the exhibition will cover aspects related to the production of innovative original narratives like The Last of Us and Journey, the ascent of bedroom and indie coding, the new DIY arcade scene (represented, for instance by Robin Baumgarten's Arcade Backpack), and the typologies of game spaces.

Cardboard Computer, Kentucky Route Zero, 2013-.

It will also juxtapose traditional/modern art with modern interpretations, for instance Rene Magritte’s 1965 painting La Blanc Seing will be shown beside a section of the 2013 Cardboard Computer's game Kentucky Route Zero, which it inspired. There will be also interactive installations of spectacle and performance.

The exhibition will feature several games focusing on themes such as sexuality, capitalism, and globalization through the lenses of indie projects like Nina Freeman’s How do you do it?– in which a young girl explores sex using plastic dolls – and Molleindustria’s Phone Story – which focuses on child exploitation and worker suicide within the production of Apple smartphones. The game, as you know, was banned by Apple in a typical Silicon Valley autocratic move a few years ago. 

Nina Freeman, How do you do it?, 2014

Alongside the exhibition, the V&A will be hosting a video games residency for a UK-based artist or designer involved in the videogames scene who wishes to develop their practice through working with the V&A’s curators and learning team in order to develop new work and engage with the public. Additional information on that can be found on the museum’s website. 

The exhibition will be previewed on Saturday September 7 2018. More details here.  

Read an interview with curator Marie Foulston here. 

 

FULL EXHIBITION OVERVIEW

The first section of the exhibition will examine the design inspirations, craftsmanship and creative practice behind a series of individual games. These are created by a new generation of designers from large established studios to solo independent designers, as well as from a range of other creative disciplines such as new media and music composition. Highlights include character design sketches, a motion capture suit, animations and working notes of the creative director from The Last of Us from Naughty Dog. A visually stunning post-apocalyptic blockbuster, this title is comparable to a Hollywood production in ambition and scope. Other exhibits include prototypes, design drawings and desert research footage from Journey, a smaller independent game, demonstrating how videogames can evoke emotional concepts of friendship, connection, positivity and love. Also shown will be works that have influenced creators such as Magritte’s painting Le Blanc Seing, the inspiration for the parallax scenography of Kentucky Route Zero.

Videogames have the potential to consider complex and sensitive subject matters such as representation, race, sexuality and geo-politics. As tools to make games have become more available and distribution has broadened, game designers have begun to engage more widely with social and ethical debates. The next section will present interviews and opinion from influential game makers and commentators who are leading this discussion such as developer Rami Ismail and advocate Tanya de Pass. Here ideas about videogames and what they should be are challenged – as well as how this relates to society as a whole. A selection of works will illustrate such themes including how do you Do It, a semi-autobiographical game by Nina Freeman which tackles the discovery of sexuality through dolls and Phone Story by Molleindustria, a satirical mobile video game which invites players to consider negative effects of their consumption on people in the globalised world.

The third section celebrates the dazzling imagination and collaborative creativity shown by videogames players in real and virtual communities, transcending the role of the designer to democratise design on a vast scale. The double-height exhibition space in this section will feature a dramatic and immersive installation that explores the role of the player as co-creator. This will show the astonishing feats of engineering and construction undertaken in Minecraft from the recreation of the continent of Westeros in Game of Thrones to the mass spectacle of esports tournaments such as League of Legends World Championships. There will be examples of fan art and cosplay created by enthusiasts who interpret the medium in their own style and create costumes and accessories to represent themselves, or even their pets as characters.

The playful finale will look at the rise of the grassroots DIY arcade scene, showcasing handmade arcade cupboards and interactive installations of spectacle and performance. Unusual and remarkable games made by DIY enthusiasts and creatives will be shown such as Bush Bash by SK Games, played in a sedan car cut in half and fitted with a display for two players to shoot and drive. Visitors can also play games such as Line Wobbler by Robin Baumgarten. Created from a custom-made spring controller and a several metre-long ultrabright LED strip display, it was inspired by a viral video of a cat playing with a door-stopper spring.

LINK: Victoria & Albert Museum

Call for Projects: ART GAMES DEMOS #4 Borders and migration

A new call for projects from Isabelle Arvers and Chloe Desmoineaux for the ongoing series ART GAMES DEMOS, France's hottest Game Art initiative:

As part of the Nuage Numérique Festival in connection with the presentation of TALOS, a show by Arkadi Zaides, on December 16, 2017 at the Subsistances in Lyon, Art Games Demos launches a new call for projects dedicated to the theme of borders and migration.

We are looking for creations in the following categories: video creation; 2D, 3D, 4D, VR;  machinima; glitch, hacks, alternative controllers; independant/experimental/under development videogames; installations; prototypes; performances; music. 

Send your proposals to: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

 

LINK: ART GAMES DEMOS #4