GAMESCENES

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

Call for submission: Vector Festival 2018 (deadline: 12/23/2017)

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Vector Festival 2018
Topic: Born Digital
Deadline: Saturday, December 23rd 2017 (midnight)

Now entering its sixth year, Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented event showcasing artistic practices that engage critically with new media and digital game technologies. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, panels, and workshops, Vector Festival acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice. In recent years, the festival has broadened its scope to include a wider spectrum of works critically engaging with many aspects of emerging digital technologies. The festival is proud to be a participatory and community-oriented initiative organized by InterAccess in Toronto, Ont. 

Since 2013, Vector Festival has developed an active presence in regional and international communities related to co ntemporary art and critical game cultures. Curators Martin Zeilinger and Katie Micak invite you to contribute artworks for consideration toward festival programming, which will include a feature exhibition at InterAccess throughout the month of July and August, along with off-site screenings, performances, workshops, and panels from July 12-15, 2018. Note that Vector Festival does not charge submission fees to artists applying to participate.

This iteration of the festival turns its focus on the births (and deaths) of the digital. What might it mean to witness the birth of a new technology, or to be ‘born digital’? How does the term ‘digital native’ function in relation to this? How can technologies mold or inform identity? How do artists adopt, advance, hack, or dismantle digital technologies, to critically reflect on their meanings and implications? How does analogue detritus live on in the digital? What comes after the digital, how do post-human ist, post-digital, and post-Internet artistic perspectives inflect these questions?

Invoking everything from endlessly spawning game avatars to ‘permadeath,’ from media-archeological excavations to futurological speculation, from generative digital creation to the digital purgatories of discussion boards and spam, we invite emerging and established artists from diverse perspectives and backgrounds to contribute their critical explorations of these and related concerns and interests.

The curators seek works for the following programs:

Flagship Exhibition:
Artworks (including interactive installations, experimental game mods, sculptural work, screen-based work, sound art, etc.) for the festival flagship exhibition

Online Exhibition:
Digital artworks that can be exhibited online

Festival Screening:
Film/video/machinima works for the festival screening

Performance: 
Performance-based propos als (including sound art, live coding, chipmusic concerts, as well as performances and interventions in virtual and public spaces.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

1. Project description and artist statement (2 pages maximum)
2. Documentation (maximum five images and one video; ideally, please provide an online streaming link)
3. Detailed description of technical requirements (please outline materials provided by the artist and materials expected from the exhibiting venue)
4. Current CV (3 pages maximum)
5. Artist biography (100 words)

Send your submissions by Saturday, December 23, 2017 at midnight to [email protected] using the subject line VECTOR 2018 SUBMISSION. Attachments should not exceed 15MB. Please indicate which program your submission falls under. All artists selected for participation will receive artist fees, as well as support to apply for external funding.

About Vector Festival
Founded in 2013, Vector F estival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, and workshops, Vector acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice.

About InterAccess
Founded in 1983 as Toronto Community-Videotex, InterAccess is a non-profit gallery, educational facility, production studio, and festival dedicated to emerging practices in art and technology. InterAccess’s mission is to expand the cultural significance of art and technology by fostering and supporting the full cycle of art and artistic practice through education, production, and exhibition. Annually we execute multiple exhibitions, a full curriculum of skill-building and critical theory workshops, and a broad range of discursive events that explore the impact of technology on the social, political and cultural aspect s of contemporary life. Our studio space facilitates the circulation of skills and techniques required to produce the work we exhibit in our gallery space.

InterAccess Gallery Hours

Tuesday - Saturday, 11-6
Open until 8pm each Wednesday
Admission is always free
9 Ossington Ave.
Toronto, Ontario

For more information contact:
Festival Curators, Martin Zeilinger and Katie Micak
[email protected]

Deadline: 2017-12-23 23:12:00

LINK: Vector Festival

Event: HyperPavilion (May 12 - October 30, 2017, Venice, Italy) [UPDATED]

HyperPavilion
A large scale exhibition during the 57th Venice Biennale (Arsenale Nord)
Preview days May 9 – 12, 2017
Open to the public from May 13 – October 30, 2017

The upcoming Biennial of Art in Venice, Italy will host the very first HyperPavilion, focusing on the latest and greatest in digital art. Expect, not necessarily in this order, large scale projections; a 360° immersive cinema, a hologram theatre, multi-screen installations, and hybrids artworks.

Curated by Philippe Riss-Schmidt, this group show will include several international artists whose works investigate the nature of simulation, virtuality, and simulacra: Aram Bartholl (Berlin), Vincent Broquaire (Strasbourg); Claude Closky (Paris), Frederik De Wilde (Bruxelles), Lab NT2 (Montréal), Lawrence Lek (London), Claire Malrieux (Paris), Théo Massoulier (Lion), Julien Prévieux (Grenoble), Paul Souviron (Strasbourg), and Theo Triantafyllidis (Athens).

All artworks are site specific and most of them were created specifically for this project. 

Claire Malrieux, Climat général, 360 generative, preliminary drawings

According to curator Philippe Riss-Schmidt, "Right now, we are standing at the edge of a new age where the synthetisation of the past into a ‘perfect’ (neo-)future has begun. Cultural artefacts, images and data are mined like new gold, for machines to extract. We will consume it until it all blurs. Past, present and future will melt into each other. The digital and the internet are neither over nor surpassed, they are not a medium – it is the new era. Post-digital art is everywhere".

What can I say, it sounds very hyper.

Expect a full report in the next few months. 

UPDATED ON APRIL 21 2017: The original line-up featured twelve artists. Andrea Crespo (New York); Ed Fornieles (Montréal); Angelo Plessas (Athens), and Julien Prévieux (Paris) are no longer included.

LINK: HyperPavilion

Game Art: Marshmallow Laser Feast's In the Eyes of the Animal (2016)

This is what happens when you mix The Endless Forest with VR.

Creative collective Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) delight in exploring the line between virtual and real-world experiences. In this work they use the mask of virtual reality to explore different perspectives of familiar landscapes. Through observing the function of animal sight - a dragonfly experiences life over 10 times faster than a human and in 12 colour wavelengths (a human in a combination of three) - the film & accompanying soundtrack are a speculation of an alternative reality. The forest & animals were captured using techniques such as lidar & CT scanning, photogrammetry and a bespoke-built 360º aerial camera. Footage was processed using custom software to create the landscapes explored in the work. The film is set to a binaural soundtrack using audio recordings sourced from the surrounding woodland.

LINK: Mashmellow Laser Fest

Game Art: Meleap's Hado (2015-)

Hado is both an augmented reality game and a virtual reality game developed by Japanese startup Meleap that transforms the mystical, new age concept of hado (a free-form energy, popularized by Masaru Emoto) into a game that evokes Dragonball-like fireball shots and Street Fighter combat. The equipment needed is conspicuous. Players wear a) a smartwatch, b) a head-mounted display and c) use a smartphone attached to the goggles. Interestingly, the HMD display works like Google Glass as it lets users see their environment with digital elements projected onto the camera feed. If it sounds convoluted, it is, but that's the (virtual) reality some now live in. On a purely aesthetic level, the result is oddly fascinating and weirdly psychedelic: playing Hado looks like dancing. As it happened with Microsoft Kinect and PlayStation Move, I think that hacking the system could produce much more interesting experiences than an expensive, high-tech game of tag. 

LINK: Meleap (via Bruce Sterling)

Event: Game On! (October 7–November 10, 2016, New Haven, United States)

19th annual City-Wide Open Studios: "Game On!"

October 7–November 10, 2016
Artspace 
50 Orange Street
New Haven, CT 06510

Check out the games here.

"Dubbed "an exhibition the size of a city," Artspace's annual City-Wide Open Studios festival creates platforms for artists and audiences to meet. Over each weekend in October, the geography of the festival changes and four New Haven neighborhoods take a turn at playing the role of host. Hundreds of typically off-limits spaces open—from private studios in artists' homes to shared work spaces in a former Erector Set factory and a historic 200,000 square foot Armory.  

For the 19th year, Artspace has produced a series of commissioned works that question the terms of participation within the visual arts festival model. These commissions invite ten artists and artist collectives to explore points of connection between the visual arts, sports and games. With "Game On!" as the theme, the festival recognizes that art, like sports, presents structures and rules for play. Here, the rules and structures are reimagined, challenged and broken.

The commissioned projects include:

Megan Craig's The Way Things Felt, an immersive touch-based installation that invites up to 40 viewers to simultaneously collaborate on the creation of a 3D work made of felt.

Christie DeNizio's Competitive Volume, a site-responsive installation that connects the defunct basketball hoops of a court previously used to host the National Championship Basketball Tournament for High School Students. 

Nadine Nelson's Harvest Mandalas, an art project, think tank, café, wellness lab and competitive game that turns food waste into works of art and encourages visitors to contemplate on their health.

Gordon Skinner's Urban Totems, a series of art-meets-milk crate basketball hoops installed in overlooked places around New Haven's historic Goffe Street Armory.  

Scott Schuldt's Journey of Discovery, a scavenger hunt rooted in the history of the Lewis & Clark expedition, which requires participants to talk to artists to find clues.

Caitlin Foley and Misha Rabinovich's Total Jump, an arcade-style game that invites up to eight people to jump and land at the exact same time. (Visitors can practice with the free app at www.totaljumplive.com)

Robert Gregson and Melanie Carr's Puzzle People, an improvised game that invites strangers and friends to strap on 40 x 40 inch foam puzzle pieces and attempt to connect.

Martin Chaput and Martial Chazallon of Projet In Situ's La Ronde, an immersive sensory audio tour that leads festival-goers to the Amory's most evocative spaces. (The project is co-produced by the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. Tickets are available for tours running from October 8 through 16.)

Site Project's Find It! Friend It!, an online Pokémon Go style hunting game that tests players New Haven street smarts. 

Adam Berkwitt and Phil Lique's Dr. Plinko, a collaboration between physicians and artists that contemplates the absurdity surrounding pricing and profiteering within the American healthcare system."

Adam Berkwitt & Phil Lique, Dr. Plinko, 2016

LINK: Game On @ ARTSPACE

Event: ENTER THE GAME @ Art-Science-Technology Festival (September 10-18 2016, Thessaloniki, Greece)

ENTER THE GAME

In collaboration with Associate Professor Manthos Santorinaios and the “MA in Art and Virtual Reality” of the Athens School of Fine Arts and Université Paris 8.

 

“Enter the Game” is an artistic approach to the world of gaming and an allegory on space, seen through the perspective of virtual reality – the space of thought, the space of the human body, the space of memories, emotions and perception. The art works / games, take place within a hybrid space, between the real and the virtual.

 

The event is part of The Art - Science - Technology Festival:

 

“Are you a Gamer; Change the World!”

The Art - Science - Technology Festival is a new project by Helexpo, presented within the 81st Thessaloniki International Fair, in the context of the European programme “Artecitya. Envisioning the City of Tomorrow (2014-2018)”.

 

 

Artecitya is a collaboration between 9 cultural institutions from 7 European countries (France, Germany, Slovenia, Poland, Cyprus, Czech Republic and Greece), co-funded by the Creative Europe - Culture programme of the European Union. Artecitya's main goal is to bring together artists, architects, town planners and citizens to re-create the cities we want to live in. The priority is to stimulate a vigorously innovative approach to the concept of urban life taking into account the sociological evolution and people's needs.

Helexpo ventures a new approach to the Artecitya idea, focusing on the relationship between art, science and technology, particularly on the investigation of the possibilities for social change that are embedded into all three fields. The inspiration behind this approach has been the greatly successful E-Gaming Festival organised by Helexpo since 2012, largely attended by mostly young audiences.

 

According to Jane McGonigal (Institute for the Future, Director of Games Research and Development) gaming can contribute to the creation of a better world, because of the special skills (superpowers as she calls them) that gamers develop: urgent optimism – belief into an immediate positive result that can be succeeded thanks to the action of the gamer; social fabric – individual players become communities that work together towards a common goal; blissful productivity – belief into hard work, endeavour and perseverance; and epic meaning – the search for an epic win. With these skills, the solution of complex, urgent problems looks feasible!

 

Moreover, through applications such as e-gaming or virtual and augmented reality, our perception of space and time expands, it becomes shifting and intermittent. The city –either as community (present) or as scenography (dystopic future or medieval past)– becomes versatile and flowing depending on the Gamer’s actions and movements.

 

Typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) are often applied to other areas of activity, typically as online marketing technique, to encourage engagement with a product or service (gamification). In the same manner, the use of such elements may be used for the reinforcement of the feeling of community among people from different backgrounds, the solution of social problems and the embracing of a healthier, sustainable way of life.

 

LINK: Enter the Game

Game Art: Silvia Dal Dosso's "The 1 Up Fever" (2013)

The Unstitute offers monthly screenings of experimental videos in its online Projection Room. From 15th March to 15th April, the main feature is Silvia Dal Dosso's The 1 Up Fever:

"In the Berlin city everyone is going crazy for a viral new app. Anyone with a smartphone can play a sort of Super Mario Bros arcade game in Augmented Reality and win Bitcoins by playing. One coin corresponds to 0.01 Bitcoins. Citizens' habits are tainted by the game. Coins are hidden all over the city, you can spot them just scanning around with your device, not always they are easy to grab." (Dal Dosso)

As Dal Dosso writes:

“My aim was to raise questions: Where is this money coming from? Who are the developers of the game? Why do you think they're giving you money? What are they using your jumping, data-roaming, and geolocation-tracking for?” (Dal Dosso)

LINK: Silvia Dal Dosso

LINK: The Unstitute

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti