Polina Lobanova and Josef Seidl are a Berlin-based artist duo whose work challenges the standardized, boring, flat aesthetic of modern computing by exploring the tactile and intimate dimensions of digital devices. Their practice moves beyond the conventional interfaces of contemporary technology, instead creating artifacts that evoke personal engagement, ambiguity, and layered meaning.
Polina Lobanova and Josef Seidl, computer is a feeling, web interface, aluminium case, wooden plate, 2024
Their projects often integrate custom-built electronics, mechanical components, and unconventional interfaces, fostering reflection on the ways we interact with technology. For instance, computer is a feeling (2024, above) reimagines computing as a deeply personal and affective experience, assembling an interface from fragments of the artist’s browsing history to explore how technology could be shaped by care rather than corporate design. Paktomat (2024) invokes a mix of magical thinking and mechanical ingenuity, presenting an automaton that grants wishes - at the cost of one’s soul - thus questioning belief systems in an era of technological commodification.
Polina Lobanova and Josef Seidl, multiple choice game, aluminium case, 2021
Their earlier works also investigate digital-human relationships with a critical and poetic approach. DEWISE FR-ND (2021, above) stages an interaction with a supposed digital assistant that gradually reveals itself as manipulative rather than helpful, exposing the exploitative underpinnings of AI-driven personal assistants. Pocket Stones (2022) introduces an element of chance and materiality through a vending machine that dispenses unique stones, encouraging users to reconsider their engagement with randomness and symbolic meaning. Meanwhile, Ordinary Object (2020) juxtaposes physical and digital representations of stones, questioning whether raw materiality or data-driven abstraction holds more reality.
Lea Van Hall, There are some things about places you just don’t realise until you leave them, 2024 ceramic, video game; sound: Éléa Brando, typography:Tigran Saakyan, installation view; photo: HFBK
Lea Van Hall, There are some things about places you just don’t realise until you leave them, 2024 ceramic, video game; sound: Éléa Brando, typography:Tigran Saakyan, installation view; photo: HFBK
Lea Van Hall, There are some things about places you just don’t realise until you leave them, 2024 ceramic, video game; sound: Éléa Brando, typography:Tigran Saakyan, installation view; photo: HFBK
Lea Van Hall’s There are some things about places you just don’t realise until you leave them (2024) is a multimedia installation that intertwines video game mechanics, ceramic sculpture, and personal reflection to explore the emotional resonance of digital spaces. The project is rooted in Van Hall’s research on life simulation games as sites of self-reflection, exploration, and the projection of queer desire. At its core, the work presents a video game set within an intricate digital reconstruction of Van Hall’s own apartment, where the avatar is modeled after the artist herself. The game is housed within a sculptural ceramic frame - a representation of her apartment building’s façade - physically grounding the digital world in a tangible object. Viewers interact with the game by navigating the virtual space, engaging with various objects in the apartment that trigger animations and fragments of text sourced from life simulation games.
The project draws inspiration from object-based digital toys such as Pixel Chix and Tamagotchi, evoking the intimate, domesticated nature of these early interactive experiences. Through this, Van Hall foregrounds the deeply personal and often nostalgic connections that players form with simulated environments. The work also reflects on gaming as a social and cultural phenomenon, referencing a phrase encountered on Tumblr - Real gamers don’t play video games - to question the nature of playful engagement. This notion ties into the artist’s own experiences of video games as both communal and deeply individual, recalling childhood memories of watching a friend play The Sims 2 before eventually immersing herself in the game alone. Van Hall’s work articulates how video games transcend their digital form to become emotionally significant spaces. By blurring the lines between virtual and physical, object and experience, her installation underscores how digital interactions - particularly those in life simulation games - materialize into real emotional responses, shaping identity and memory.
This graduation project is completed with sound by Éléa Brando and typography by Tigran Saakyan, enhancing the sensory and textual depth of the installation.
A machinima set within a seemingly alien landscape, The Unreal uses a first-person perspective to guide the viewer through the gleaming surface of an untouched mine. The ambient soundtrack, coupled with a soothing voice-over, cultivates a tranquil atmosphere that invites meditation, while subtly revealing the mineral origins of technology and the extractivist dynamics embedded within it. Employing a practice-based methodology, the artists have harnessed video game software to construct an artificial world and engage with the appropriation of visual and narrative conventions associated with techno-colonialism.
Gloria López Cleries works as an artist, educator and researcher at the intersection of artistic research, visual culture and pedagogy. Originally from Valencia (Spain), López is based in Gothenburg, where she teaches on the MFA Fine Art programme at HDK-Valand. She holds a Master’s in Contemporary Art History and Visual Culture (MNCARS, Madrid), as well as an MFA from HDK-Valand (Gothenburg University). Her work critically engages with neoliberal rhetoric surrounding emotional capitalism, online models of productivity, and the politics of care and collectivity. Through her projects, she challenges the vocabularies and iconographies of online social networks. Her recent work explores the spiritual discourses of materiality and techno-mysticism.
Sive Hamilton Helle is a filmmaker, visual artist, and lecturer based in Oslo. She holds an MFA in Film from HDK-Valand and a BA in Film from the London College of Communication. Hamilton Helle’s works have been screened and exhibited at venues such as The Photographer’s Gallery, Fotomuseum Winterthür and the Göteborg Film Festival. Known for her worldbuilding process, she often combines multiple perspectives and crafts narratives that blur the lines between fiction and reality. Recently, her work has focused on complex landscapes shaped by colonialism and industrial activity.
PROJECT HASHTAG 2024. Photo: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
Wish Office & Playing Art Method: PROJECT HASHTAG 2024 November 15, 2024–April 27, 2025
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul 99 Sejong-daero Jung District Seoul South Korea
press release
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA; director Kim Sunghee) is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition for PROJECT HASHTAG 2024, an open call initiative aimed at discovering promising creators and supporting interdisciplinary collaboration in the visual arts. The exhibition will take place from November 15, 2024 to April 27, 2025 at MMCA Seoul.
In partnership with Hyundai Motor Company, PROJECT HASHTAG was launched in 2019 and is now in its fifth year. The project has successfully established itself as a new platform for artistic creation, fostering collaboration among artists, curators, researchers, and other cultural practitioners. This year two teams, Wish Office and Playing Art Method, were selected from among 148 applicants representing diverse fields. Both teams have been working on their projects with the support of KRW 30 million and access to studio space at MMCA Residency Changdong.
Installation view of Wish Office, The Wishes, 2024. Photo: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
Wish Office (Kim Raeo, Seo John, Seo Jin kyu, Oh Saeol, and Titanium (Choi Joon Seong)) presents a project called Wish World—a metaverse environment where everyone’s wishes can be fulfilled. This project takes the form of a social experiment, reflecting on the often challenging realities of personal struggles in contemporary society through a game-like experience. Visitors to the exhibition have the option to submit their wishes to be processed through an AI classification system and delivered into the Wish World. The fate of this virtual world—whether it thrives or withers—depends on these submitted wishes. The project explores themes of frustration, desire, and hope, reflecting on the feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and need for recognition experienced by many people. It incorporates popular cultural concepts such as time travel, reincarnation, and transmigration, recently trending in webcomics and online novels. The project simulates what might happen if these “lucky breaks,” known as hoebinghwan (an amalgamation of the words hoegwi [regression], bingui [transmigration], and hwansaeng [reincarnation]), once reserved exclusively for protagonists, were extended to everyone, allowing participants to see the outcomes of these second chances.
Installation view of Playing Art Method, Playing Art Method, 2024. Photo: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
Playing Art Method (Cho Hoyoun, Kim Youngju, and Sei Rhee) is a collaboration between Parade & Patchwork, an exhibition planning group led by Rhee Sei, and Loopntale, a media art-based game production team consisting of Cho Hoyoun and Kim Youngju. Playing Art Method proposes a project under the same name to explore the questions that arise when “Video games” are exhibited in an art museum. Through exhibitions, workshops, and animated posters, they aim to generate meaningful discourse on these topics. This project reconsiders the position of games and game developers within the contemporary art ecosystem, establishing branding strategies for these creators. Learning materials that help visitors interpret the meanings within the games are displayed alongside the games themselves, and experts from a range of fields—including poets, game researchers, and art critics—provide insights into the project from various perspectives. These experts act as docents while also showcasing their current or long-term interests, interacting directly with visitors in the exhibition space.
This year’s program also includes a variety of related programs including live game streaming sessions, talks, docent programs, and game walk through workshops in collaboration with experts from different fields. To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the project, a special event featuring past PROJECT HASHTAG participants will also be held, offering a retrospective look at the significance of interdisciplinary collaboration over the past five years.
Kim Sunghee, director of the MMCA, notes, “Just as hashtags connect different subjects and people in our contemporary digital culture, PROJECT HASHTAG 2024 aims to bring together creators from diverse backgrounds to create new artistic synergies and expand the potential of contemporary art.”
Does the white man really not know that if he destroys the forest, the rain will stop? And that if the rain stops, he won’t have anything to eat or drink?” This question, posed by Yanomami activist and philosopher David Kopenawa in La chute du ciel, strikes at the heart of today’s ecological crisis. Scientist Antonio Donato Nobre, in his 2010 TEDxAmazonia talk, deepens this understanding of interconnectedness by describing how each tree “sweats,” releasing over 1,000 liters of water into the atmosphere daily—an essential part of what he calls vertical rivers. Without forests, these rivers vanish, and with them, water itself. This crisis is not confined to the Amazon. In West Africa and Madagascar, iconic baobabs — known for their spongy wood that acts as natural cisterns, storing water critical to local communities — have been dying at alarming rates over the past decade. Liquid Forest immerses viewers in these vertical rivers, offering a journey through baobabs and corals that dissolves binaries and unveils fluid, interconnected realities. The work invites audiences to inhabit a universe where everything is interlinked, delivering a sensory experience that highlights the fragile equilibrium of ecosystems and the pressing need to protect them.
Isabelle Arvers is a French artist, curator, and scholar whose pioneering work at the intersection of art and video games has shaped new media practices for over two decades. She holds a Ph.D. in Art & Games Decolonization, and her research focuses on the artistic, ethical, and critical implications of digital gaming. Arvers is widely recognized for her exploration of video games as a medium for artistic expression, particularly through machinima, which transforms video games into creative tools. As a curator, she has organized numerous exhibitions and festivals worldwide, from Playtime at Villette Numérique in Paris to Jibambe na Tec in Nairobi, and her work is deeply embedded in decolonial, feminist, and queer approaches to gaming culture. Arvers’s projects also focus on challenging borders – both digital and geographical – through initiatives like the antiAtlas of Borders exhibitions. In addition to her curatorial practice, Arvers’s activism and research have led her to collaborate with artists globally, particularly in non-Western countries. Her Art and Games World Tour sought to amplify the voices of marginalized game creators and explore how video games can serve as tools for resistance and alternative storytelling. Her association, Kareron, continues to produce projects related to cyber feminism and alternative media, including TRANS//BORDER, a tribute to Nathalie Magnan. Arvers has also contributed critical essays to a range of publications and curated workshops on machinima and game art to democratize these practices.
Originally conceived and performed as a live-coded audiovisual concert and real-time video game animation, Autoconstrucción was collaboratively created by Malitzin Cortés (CNDSD) and Iván Abreu. The project, executed through algorithms and unfolding across four distinct chapters, was performed in Mexico City (2022), Madrid (2023), Utrecht (2023), and Shanghai (2023). The segment presented on VRAL features a generated version of episode 2, entitled Floating City - Floating Population. This episode explores the concept of a transient population inhabiting cities, with AI creating hybrid architectural facades that reflect the empty character of many peripheral cities during the day.
Malitzin Cortés (CNDSD) is a renowned musician, live coder, and creative technologist. Her multifaceted work encompasses live coding, live cinema, installation art, virtual reality, creative coding, sound design, experimental music, and sound art. In 2020, she was awarded the Latin American Prize for Virtual Reality “Realmix” for her immersive piece “Hyper_D.” Malitzin is currently a workshop instructor in live coding with functional programming using Tidal Cycles on the educational platform of CMMAS. She has showcased her work at prominent venues and events including the Multimedia Center, Alameda Art Laboratory, Ex-Teresa Arte Actual, Digital Cultural Center, Medialab Prado, Spain Cultural Center, CMMAS, Vorspiel, Spektrum Berlin, Transpiksel, Aural, Transmediale Berlin, ISEA, CYLAND MediaArtLab Saint Petersburg, ADAF, Ars Electronica, Currents, as well as MUTEK in Mexico, Montreal, and Japan. CNDSD’s soundscapes are crafted for experimental environments, characterized by granular landscapes, algorithmic vocal experiments, hypnotic noise improvisations, live coding, and asymmetric patterns, pushing the boundaries of musical and sonic exploration. Cortés lives and works in Mexico City.
Iván Abreu is an esteemed audiovisual artist and creative technologist based in Mexico City. His interdisciplinary practice spans a diverse array of media, including digital graphics, photography, electronic devices, software development, music and sound experimentation, expanded film and video, and industrial design. Abreu's innovative work has garnered numerous accolades and support from prestigious institutions. These include the Prix Ars Electronica (2012, Linz, Austria), the CINTAS Foundation Award in Visual Arts (2011-12, New York/Miami), and the ZKM Production and Research Residence – Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany (2021). He has also been supported by the National Fund for Culture and the Arts, through the National System of Art Creators (2012-2014, 2017-2019, and 2022-2025, Mexico). Abreu's audiovisual creations have been showcased at prominent international festivals dedicated to sound art, experimental music, and media art. His work has been featured at the International Conference of Live Coding in Madrid, Aural, Transmediale Berlin, MUTEK in Mexico and Montreal, the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), and the Asia Culture Center in Korea.
Watching the world go by, the expansive forest, snowy plains and castles fill my view. Wandering the arctic wastes I sit thinking of where to go next, an expanse in front of me. I hear voices and whispers in the wind, shadowy figures hidden in the snow. Something out there is calling me. I come to a town filled with people going about their day, farmers, blacksmiths and guards all turn to me as I arrive. I pause the game to make sure I'm still on track each person is now frozen in time, apart from me, sitting there controller in hand.
Baltimore-based artist and activist Aaron Berry’s Fourth Era created in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, pulls from observational film tradition investigating the digital landscape with earnestness and intimacy. Berry sketches out an impression of Tamerial’s fourth age through bustling towns and isolated valleys. The emperor has died, and the throne sits empty. Authoritarian regimes try to maintain power as bandits, demons and corruption subjugate the general population. Focussing on the details of the landscape Berry attempts to retell the narrative of the game's story. The uncanniness of Skyrim paired with the honesty of the player camera highlights the game's otherness and suggests existence when we are not there.
A machinima film in the style of slow cinema Fourth Era pays tribute to James Benning’s California trilogy. In Benning’s trilogy (El Valley Centro, Los, Sogobi) each film is constructed in the same way 35 shots, 2 minutes and 30 seconds in length on a static 16mm camera. Berry imitates the form with 15 shots all 90 seconds in length (note 1), using this formula in this new untapped, untainted virtual world.
A close-up of jagged ants journeying across the screen, the sharp contours of the polygonal landscape highlighting the world's fabrication. Whispers of merchants selling goods and soldiers repetitively chopping wood, a place of worship atop a mountain - the emptiness and serenity present when the player simply does not play. This stillness pays great respect to the people and the environment of this digital world and makes it feel alive, the wind, the rain breathing life into the artificial land.
An experience known to the Skyrim player base, the role playing game lulls the player into slowing down. There is no mount or way of traversing the landscape other than walking in the initial sense, the game forces you to travel by foot across its landscape. The environment is filled with small details that convey a real alive world, present in each step you take.
Slow cinema is a kind of worship, an image on the screen, the object of our gaze absorbing our devotion: the everyday acts of Jeanne Dielman, the fishing boat in Leviathan, the desert of El Valley Centro. This form being remediated here through machinima, questions the digital environment and the transcendental elements of “nature”.
More than anything, I see a bigger connection between death and life throughout the world. It starts with a shot of the dead elk, and ends on top of a mountain where a dragon circles around the peak. I guess one can see a bit of transcendence or afterlife imagery through that lens. The idea of nature as a transcendence from the struggles of man and closeness to the divine goes back to Thoreau’s Walden. James Benning is fully aware of this, invoking Walden several times throughout his films. At the time of making Fourth Era, I was still an atheist and was fascinated by nature on an aesthetic level. Now, as someone who is more agnostic yet has found solace in African-American spiritualism, I definitely see where the lines of prayer and nature meet. ~ Aaron Berry (note 2)
Within Skyrim there is an overarching religious belief of the Nordic Pantheon made up of various deities, relating to different aspects of the world, gods of birth, death and time. Journeying through these landscapes and towns you can feel their presence within Fourth Era. Each shot feels like an ode to these deities, gods of the digital realm. The empty towns and rolling hills stages for their appearance, which never comes. Without the prophetical main player character “the Dragonborn” these areas of action and miracle are left deserted. Is this world better for it, no divine being, no unquestionable force?
With such earnestness, it is hard to disregard the possibility of their existence, these walking lines of code and fictitious mythologies. Watching the wind blow through these “uninhabited” landscapes feels as if I am searching for something or someone, the way my eyes dart around the screen looking for something. Maybe what I am looking for is something unknown, invisible to my eye.
I know when I turn the game off it stops, but it doesn't feel like it does, the image permeates and continues to play in my mind, on and on.
Harry Bayley is an artist and curator, blending his expertise in film and screen media with curatorial skills. His diverse experience, from designing CRM systems to curating film programs, reflects his commitment to enhancing audience engagement and his capability to handle both creative and logistical aspects of projects. Currently advancing his academic research in machinima film practice at Birkbeck University London, Bayley contributes to the arts community through his innovative approaches to curation and exhibition management. Bayley works and lives in London
Game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine have transcended their initial confines in video game development, evolving into versatile platforms that now influence a wide array of creative and scientific fields. These powerful tools are not just limited to gaming; they have reshaped Hollywood visual effects, virtual production, and even pre-visualisation of movie sets, as well as contemporary art and architecture. Game engines are also utilised to create training simulations for various industries, including the military. As these engines standardise aesthetic and functional practices, they simultaneously raise critical questions about artistic authorship, expressive diversity, accessibility, environmental sustainability, and the impact of increased digital consumption.
Entitled Game Engine Culture(s), this international research initiative aims to critically examine the contemporary use of game engines within the visual arts. It seeks to explore the convergence of media studies, game studies, platform studies, curatorial practice, and art history. Through in-depth analysis and prototyping under the guidance of artists and practitioners, the project investigates methods to preserve authorship and foster critique within complex digital ecosystems. Our objective is to collaborate with scholars, artists, curators, critics, and practitioners to generate new insights into the social, aesthetic, and technical dimensions of game engines.
Call for papers details
The Department of Art, Media, and Performance “Giampaolo Fabris” at IULM University, Milan, the School of Digital Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University, and the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London, under the guidance of Matteo Bittanti, Valentino Catricalà, and Paolo Ruffino, invite scholars, artists, developers, and practitioners to submit abstracts for a forthcoming publication and series of collaborative research activities centered around the theme of Game Engine Culture(s).
We welcome submissions that explore, but are not limited to, the following themes:
The transformative impact of game engines on visual culture and artistic expression;
Critical analyses of aesthetic standardization and homogeneity in production management and 'pipelines' across different fields;
The circulation of digital assets across diverse fields of cultural production;
Platformisation tendencies and commercial interests driving game engine development;
The role of game engines in promoting or hindering diversity and accessibility in digital art and culture;
Case studies on specific artists (e.g., Ed Atkins, Alice Bucknell, Ian Cheng, Jacky Connolly, Lawrence Lek, Lu Yang and many more);
The use of game engines beyond gaming, including in film, architecture, and other creative industries;
The accessibility of game engines for diverse populations and their role in democratizing digital art creation, including related narratives and discourses;
The techno-ideologies and geopolitics of game engines;
Sustainable practices and the challenge of e-waste in the context of game engine proliferation;
Strategies for preserving artistic authorship and originality within game engine ecosystems.
Game Engine Culture(s) is fully funded by IULM University, ensuring comprehensive support throughout its development. The resulting publication, scheduled to be released in English, will be published by a leading academic publisher, guaranteeing wide dissemination and accessibility within the scholarly community. To accompany the release of the book, we are planning various events, including conferences, talks, screenings, and more.
Important dates
Abstract submission deadline: September 15, 2024
Notification of acceptance: October 15, 2024
Full paper submission deadline: December 15, 2024
Publication date: 2025
Submission guidelines
Abstracts: Should be between 300-500 words, clearly outlining the research question, methodology, bibliography, and potential contributions to the field.
Biographies: Please include a brief biography of the author(s) with the abstract submission.
Full papers: Should be between 6,000-8,000 words, including references and footnotes, formatted according to MHRA style. Please use British English.
Format: Submit your chapter as a .docx or .pdf file.
Submission email: Send submissions to [email protected] with the subject line “Game Engine Cultures Submission”.
This call seeks to foster innovative research trajectories both conceptually and methodologically, promoting an original and interdisciplinary approach to studying the impact of game engines on contemporary visual culture. By bringing together experts from various disciplines and creative sectors, this project not only aims to map the state of the art but also to delineate new future research directions.
We look forward to receiving your contributions and to fostering rich discussions and insights into the complex nexus of game engines and contemporary visual culture.
digital video (1920 x 800), color, sound, 6’ 29”, 2024, Switzerland/Italy
created by 2girls1comp
In Dancing Plague, a mod for Grand Theft Auto V, the game’s traditionally gendered choreography is subverted, forcing every male NPC to dance feverishly whenever the player holds the H key. This intervention spotlights the inherent gender biases within the game’s animation system, where dance moves are primarily designed for female performers, often objectified as sex workers. By redirecting these choreographies to male characters, the mod disrupts the rigid gender binaries coded into the game, creating a spectacle where masculinity is both liberated and challenged. Interestingly, the male NPCs’s hypersexualized dance is mostly ignored by the female characters. Such an outcome becomes a playful and potent critique of the game’s inherent gender politics. To enhance the mod’s immersive experience, Azu Tiwaline, a French Tunisian musician known for blending contemporary electronic music with sub-Saharan trance traditions, was commissioned to create the soundtrack. Her work underscores the mod’s themes of ritual, trance, and liberation, providing a sonic backdrop that deepens the critique of gendered biases in digital spaces.
2girls1comp is a modding duo founded in 2023 by Marco De Mutiis (Italy, 1983) and Alexandra Pfammatter (Switzerland, 1993). Their work changes the logic of video games as an act of creative counter-play, revealing the social and economic fabric in which they are immersed: from reclaiming global digital infrastructures to commenting on free labor within the capitalist ideologies of the gaming industry, to showcasing the way play can influence its subjects through its mechanics. Their projects are distributed within the gaming and modding community, as well as cultural and artistic contexts.