GAMESCENES

EVENT: MACHINE VIOLENCE (MAY 5 - 31 2023, NEW YORK)

MILTOS MANETAS, RGB, 1998, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 in 101.6 x 121.9 cm (MM0001)

 

Machine Violence
May 5 - 31, 2023
Opening reception Friday, May 5
6 - 8pm  Postmasters 4 Bond Street, 10012, NYC

press release

Featured artists: Chando Ao, Damjansi, Huntrezz Janos, Gracelee Lawrence, Miltos Manetas, Eva and Franco Mattes, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw,Eddo Stern

Postmasters 5.0 is a moving target - our next exhibition will occupy a spectacular ground floor space on Bond Street in downtown Manhattan.

Machine Violence is a show for this moment, a visually stunning exhibition of topical relevance. It will bring together works in all media from software to painting.  Several historic projects by digital pioneers (McCoys, Matteses, Manetas) will be presented alongside current works of the new generation (Huntrezz, Damjanski).

Machine violence invariably fosters fear and disruption on an individual or societal scale. As artworks in this exhibition attest, it is left to humans - artists, in this case - to redirect, subvert, and/or transcend the literal narrative.

Fitting the current moment of intense uncertainty along the art-technology axis, this show can potentially triangulate two significant museum exhibitions currently on view in New York: Signals at MoMA and Refigured at The Whitney Museum.

The exhibition location, a former carpentry shop with skylights, brick walls and a 20 foot-tall ceiling, will be cleaned but otherwise left “as is” - raw - freeing the artists’ projections, screens, sculptures, prints and paintings from the homogeneity of a white box. Art can survive anywhere. Joining a salient history of co-opting raw spaces for art: Gavin Brown's Harlem space, Triple Candie, The Project, Sculpture Center - we will continue this countering flow at the moment of extreme showroom effect.

The exhibition centerpiece will be Horror Chase (2002) by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, who have worked collaboratively since early 2000 (Kevin McCoy is also widely recognized for creating the first art NFT in 2014). Newly remastered into 4K, Horror Chase is based on the climactic chase sequence from the film Evil Dead 2 re-enacted on a custom stage set. Each shot is digitized individually and processed by a custom computer program that selects clips randomly. The chase becomes a continuously variable incarnation of an endless - and futile - escape attempt. The images are projected on a cinematic scale, and the computer hardware is installed in a black briefcase which forms a part of the installation. Given the recent explosion of interest in generative art, the McCoy's piece may be one of the earliest examples of algorithmically created cinematic footage - a software/hardware combination of object and projection.

EVA AND FRANCO MATTES, Freedom, 2010, single-channel video(color, sound), monitor, inflatable mattress, cables, media player(optional), dimensions variable; running time: 8:56 mins, edition of 3 (#2/3), (EFM072)

 

Eva and Franco Mattes are the notorious Italian artist's team working with internet and digital media since the late 1990s. One of their most iconic works, Biennale.PY, Perpetual Self Dis/Infecting Machine (2001-2003) is an aesthetically alluring, customized computer encased in plexiglass, with all parts exposed. It only has two software programs installed:  the virus that the artists made in 2001 for the Venice Biennale, and the "Norton Utilities" antivirus patch. The computer is in a perpetual mode of being infected, then disinfected, then rebooted; a machine locked forever in a fight between good and evil.

EDDO STERN, Vietnam Romance, 2003 digital video, NFT Time 19:09 (ES0018)

 

MILTOS MANETAS, Flames, 1997, digital video file, machinima, NFT, time 23:49, Edition of 3 (MM0002)

 

There will be three early key works of machinima in the show: Miltos Manetas’ Flames (1997) of Lara Croft committing suicide; Eddo Stern’s masterwork Vietnam Romance (2003) where key war scenes are recreated through video games like Grand Theft Auto and MASH; and Eva and Franco Mattes’ Freedom (2010), a haunting montage of death scenes from iconic first-person shooter games.

 

Damjanski will present his app, Bye, Bye Camera (2020), the AI-powered camera for the post-human era, which automatically removes people from any picture someone takes. The tool digitally detects and erases body shapes, but keeps human traces like shadows. The app will be shown along with photographic prints of Post Human Dog (2020),  his pandemic-time series of dogs with no owners.Gracelee Lawrence will present two large scale, 3D-printed sculptures of fragmented, battered bodies.

 

Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw  are making a lamp, a huge, functioning, fruit flies - killing zapper encased in plexiglass.

 

Chando Ao’s kinetic sculpture in the show will be a computer driven chair/cradle for grownups that belies its mean and ominous torture device look, to soothingly rock the sitter.

 

Huntrezz Janos will show - as AR - two Instagram filters that recast the user as armored, warrior-like characters and a related 3-D printed sculpture.

 

Also on view will be Miltos Manetas still life paintings of computer components from 1998-2010. A mid-show performance is planned where Manetas will, via WhatsApp and a local assistant, paint a still life remotely from Bogotá.

 

LINK: MACHINE VIOLENCE

CALL FOR ARTWORKS: THE ART OF GAMES IN GREECE 2023

The Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) and the Game Developers Association of Greece (GDA Greece) are organizing The Art of Games in Greece (A.G.G.) 2023, inviting creators to reimagine digital games in Greece.

This joint project aspires to promote game development in Greece and contribute to the recognition of digital game as a form of contemporary art while encouraging creators and audiences to engage in this field. A.G.G. consists of three complementary parts: the “Crown” and “Blossoms” competitions, and the “Pollen” series of seminars and workshops.

The competition section is focused on games related to the theme of ADAF 2023, “Welcome to the Uncanny”. Both competitions are exclusively for digital games made in Greece, accessible from computers. Winners and finalists, selected by a five-member jury, will exhibit their works on the festival’s online platform, where the audience can play and vote for their favorite games.

CROWN
Crown invites developers with existing games, which they have already announced or published, related to the theme “Welcome to the Uncanny” to submit them through the relevant form to claim mentions and promotion on the festival’s online platform during the event.

BLOSSOMS
Blossoms invites developers to create new games inspired by the theme of ADAF 2023 and claim a cash prize of €1000, in addition to the awards and the promotion on the online platform of the festival.

POLLEN
Pollen, the educational component of A.G.G., consists of a series of sessions aimed at introducing new creators to game development by established professionals in the field. These sessions will be freely accessible on the festival’s online platform.
The detailed program of Pollen will be announced soon.

 •••

The Athens Digital Arts Festival and the Game Developers Association of Greece are working together to highlight the digital game as a work of art. The Art of Games in Greece aspires to create a new point of interest for the development of digital games in Greece and promote them both locally and internationally.

Find more information click here

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*/ The Art of Games in Greece 2023: Κάλεσμα Συμμετοχής

Το διεθνές φεστιβάλ ψηφιακών τεχνών της Ελλάδας, Athens Digital Arts Festival (ADAF) και ο Σύλλογος Δημιουργών Ψηφιακών Παιχνιδιών Ελλάδος (GDA Greece) διοργανώνουν το The Art of Games in Greece (A.G.G.) 2023 και καλούν τους δημιουργούς να επανοραματιστούν το ψηφιακό παιχνίδι στην Ελλάδα.

Η κοινή αυτή δράση φιλοδοξεί να προωθήσει τη δημιουργία ψηφιακών παιχνιδιών (game development) στην Ελλάδα και να συμβάλει στην ανάδειξή τους ως μορφή σύγχρονης τέχνης, παροτρύνοντας συγχρόνως δημιουργούς και κοινό να εμπλακούν με το πεδίο των ψηφιακών παιχνιδιών. Το A.G.G. απαρτίζεται από τρία συμπληρωματικά μέρη: τους διαγωνισμούς “Crown” και “Blossoms”, και τη σειρά σεμιναρίων και workshops “Pollen”.

Το διαγωνιστικό κομμάτι αφορά σε παιχνίδια που σχετίζονται με την θεματική του ADAF 2023 “Welcome to the Uncanny”. Και οι δυο διαγωνισμοί είναι αποκλειστικά για ψηφιακά παιχνίδια made in Greece, προσβάσιμα από ηλεκτρονικούς υπολογιστές. Νικητές και φιναλίστ, που θα επιλεγούν από πενταμελή κριτική επιτροπή, θα εκθέσουν τα έργα τους στην διαδικτυακή πλατφόρμα του φεστιβάλ όπου το κοινό θα μπορεί να παίξει και να ψηφίσει τα αγαπημένα του παιχνίδια.

CROWN
Tα Crown προσκαλούν developers με ήδη ανακοινωμένα ή δημοσιευμένα παιχνίδια που σχετίζονται με τη θεματική “Welcome to the Uncanny” και διαθέτουν δωρεάν demos να τα καταθέσουν μέσω της σχετικής φόρμας για να διεκδικήσουν μνείες και προβολή στην διαδικτυακή πλατφόρμα της διοργάνωσης κατά την διάρκεια του φεστιβάλ.

BLOSSOMS
Tα Blossoms καλούν τους developers να δημιουργήσουν νέα παιχνίδια που εμπνέονται από τη θεματική του ADAF 2023 και να διεκδικήσουν χρηματικό έπαθλο της τάξης των 1000€, επιπρόσθετα με τα βραβεία και την προβολή των έργων στην online πλατφόρμα του φεστιβάλ.

POLLEN
Tο Pollen, το εκπαιδευτικό τμήμα της διοργάνωσης, θα αποτελείται από μία σειρά συνεδριών με σκοπό την εισαγωγή νέων δημιουργών στην παραγωγή ψηφιακών παιχνιδιών (game development) από καταξιωμένα άτομα του χώρου. Οι συνεδρίες αυτές θα είναι προσβάσιμες δωρεάν στην διαδικτυακή πλατφόρμα της διοργάνωσης.
Το αναλυτικό πρόγραμμα του Pollen θα ανακοινωθεί σύντομα.

 •••

Το Athens Digital Arts Festival και ο Σύλλογος Δημιουργών Ψηφιακών Παιχνιδιών Ελλάδος συνεργάζονται για να αναδείξουν τα ψηφιακά παιχνίδια ως καλλιτεχνικά έργα. Το The Art of Games in Greece φιλοδοξεί να δημιουργήσει έτσι μια νέα κοιτίδα ενδιαφέροντος για την ανάπτυξη του ψηφιακού παιχνιδιού στην Ελλάδα και την προώθησή τους τόσο σε εγχώριο όσο και διεθνές επίπεδο.

Περισσότερες πληροφορίες για τη συμμετοχή σας μπορείτε να βρείτε στο online.adaf.gr/GDA_the_art_of_games_in_greece_2023

EVENT: THOMAS HAWRANKE AND LASSE SCHERFFIG (JANUARY 6-19 2023, ONLINE)

COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE – THE MOVIE

Digital video (1024 x 1024), sound, color, 55’ 33”, 2022, Germany  

Created by Thomas Hawranke and Lasse Scherffig

January 6 - 19 2023

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

An adaptation sui generis of an early text-based adventure games, Colossal Cave Adventure - The Movie remediates the program developed by Will Crowther in 1976 based on the architecture of the Mammoth Cave complex in Kentucky. The original game used text to describe the environment whereas the animated film uses AI-generated visuals. Every eight seconds, the AI system receives a new textual description, taken from Colossal Cave Adventure’s source code, comprising 379 inputs ranging from narrative descriptions of nature to jargon from the vocabulary of speleologists to single words meaning an object, a compass direction, or an exclamation. The camera constantly moves downwards, digging through geological layers and exposing new cave spaces again and again.

Born in 1977 in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, Thomas Hawranke is a media artist and researcher whose practice investigates the influence of technology on society and the impact of computational logic onto human-animal-machine relationships. In his eclectic interventions, Hawranke operates at the intersection of performance and video art: a central concern of his is bringing to the surface the ideologies that inform everyday life. Hawranke graduated in Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and received a PhD from the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, Germany, with a dissertation on the modification of video games, also known as modding, as a method for artistic research. Since 2005, he has been a member of susigames, an independent art label founded in 2003 that investigates alternative gaming’s approaches, and he is the co-founder of the Paidia Institute in Cologne. His works have been presented at several exhibitions and festivals, including the zkm_gameplay in Karlsruhe and the RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES PARIS/BERLIN. Hawranke lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Lasse Scherffig is an artist and scientist with a background in cognitive science/machine learning and computer science. Scherffig is interested in the relationship of humans, machines, and society; cybernetics and the technological infrastructures of communication and control; and the cultures and aesthetics of computation and interaction. His work oscillates between computer science and experimental artistic practices, engineering and amateur/DIY methods, science and humanities. A professor of Interaction Design at Köln International School of Design, he previously served as the Department Chair of Art and Technology at San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught as assistant professor. Scherffig co-founded the artist group Paidia Institute and off topic, magazine for media art. His art projects have been shown at numerous exhibitions. Lasse holds a doctoral degree in Experimental Computer Science from KHM, Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

WATCH NOW

EVENT: VOLUNTARY ATTEMPTS TO OVERCOME NECESSARY OBSTACLES (SEPTEMBER 23 - OCTOBER 29 2022, NEW YORK)

Robert Yang, The Tearoom, Video Game 2017

Voluntary Attempts to Overcome Necessary Obstacles

On View: September 23 – October 29, 2022

Opening Reception: Friday, September 23, 2022, 6-8 PM

curated by Nicholas O’Brien

The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts
323 West 39th Street
New York, NY 10018
P: (212) 563 5855 x244
E: [email protected]

Featured artists

Pippin Barr
Jeremy Couillard
Charity Porpentine Heartscape
Nathalie Lawhead
Everest Pipkin
The Escape From Woomera Collective
Studio Oleomingus
Angela Washko
Robert Yang

press release (excerpt)

EFA Project Space presents Voluntary Attempts to Overcome Necessary Obstacles, a group exhibition of artists, designers, and developers exploring the boundaries of games as an artistic medium. This exhibition attempts to sidestep the reactionary debates of whether “games can be art” and instead highlights works that have already put an end to this question. By bringing these works together at EFA Project Space, curator Nicholas O’Brien, wants to show contemporary art audiences how games have been having parallel (or shared) conversations about politics, society, history, and identity in equally nuanced, poetics, and critical ways.

Studio Oleomingus, Folds Along a Separation, Video Game, 2022

LINK: Voluntary Attempts to Overcome Necessary Obstacles

EVENT: IAIN DOUGLAS AND MARK COVERDALE (AUGUST 5 - AUGUST 18 2022, ONLINE)

FACING THE WOLF

machinima/digital video (1600 x 900), color, sound, 19’ 26” (chapter I: 5’ 15”, chapter II: 5’ 21”, chapter III: 8’ 50”), 2021, United Kingdom.

Created by Iain Douglas and Mark Coverdale

 

Facing the wolf is a machinima trilogy produced over the course of 2021 by appropriating and repurposing Grand Theft Auto V. The artists decontextualized the characters and locations of the original video game to tell a story of redemption and reconciliation, so that an uneasy truce with the past may be reached. In broad terms, these three videos reflect on war, loss, grief, and class struggle, themes which never seem to be as far away as they ought to be. As war has now become a reality for millions of people in Europe, Facing the wolf can be seen as a cautionary tale. Or, perhaps, a premonition.

Iain Douglas is an artist working with machinima, game engines, film, and materials like paint and plaster. Iain’s practice explores the themes of cultural and individual loss. For more information, please visit his website.

Mark Coverdale is a widely published performance poet, writing from the picket line, art gallery, and the terraces. Mark’s poems for these machinima are drawn from his interests in domestic industrial decline and the troubled events of the New European East. He lives and works in London. For more information visit his website.

WATCH NOW

BOOK: FEDERICO SOLMI: ESCAPE INTO THE METAVERSE (2022)

 

The idiosyncratic artistic practice of Italian expat Federico Solmi is the subject of a new monograph from Black Dog Press. Entitled Federico Solmi. Escape into the Metaverse, it features contributions by Cleveland Johnson, Lawrence Weschler, Eleanor Heartney, and TokenAngels. Solmi was born in Bologna, Italy in 1973 and subsequently moved to New York. Around 2003, he began to experiment with video game and digital  technology, fascinated by the world-building possibilities of 3D  graphics, which he saw as a tool to create bizarre video animations mixing drawings and paintings. Federico Solmi. Escape into the Metaverse will be released in October.

 

You can pre-order the book here.

 

Read more about Federico Solmi

EVENT: VECTOR FESTIVAL 2022 (JULY 14 - 22 2022, TORONTO, CANADA + ONLINE)

VECTOR FESTIVAL 2022: GLITCH
July 14 – 24, 2022
Inter/Access
950 Dupont St., Unit 1.
Toronto ON M6H 1Z2 Canada

InterAccess is pleased to announce the program for Vector Festival 2022: Glitch. This year’s festival centres around the enticing, joyous, infinite possibilities offered by glitch. Drawing inspiration from Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism the festival considers glitch as a necessary, protective force for interrupting the machinic workings of patriarchy, capitalism, and racism. Counterintuitively, through its multitudinal ruptures and refusals, glitch becomes a generative site for envisioning new ways of existing beyond current sociopolitical operating systems. 

Through a hybrid online and in-person program of exhibitions, performances, screenings, workshops, talks, and community events, this 10-day festival invites artists and audiences to come together in celebration of failure and all its potentials.

All Vector Festival events will be offered for free or pay-what-you-can. Registration for all festival events will be released on July 4, 2022.

Vector Festival 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.

The festival was founded in 2013 as the “Vector Game Art & New Media Festival” by an independent group of artists and curators: Skot Deeming, Clint Enns, kris kim, and Katie Micak, who were later joined by Diana Poulsen and Martin Zeilinger.

Among the highlights are VECTOR's first-ever hybrid game and hardware jam, presented in partnership with Hand Eye Society and TRANZAC, an evening showcase of experimental musical performances by Erin Corbett, Myriam Bleau, and Hex-A-Decimal centred around gaming, identity, and future feminisms curated by Sofie Mikhaylova. Also not to be missed is Keep it Strange, a beginner’s workshop will delve into a buffet of tiny experimental programs that require little to no coding experience, such as Flickgame, Sok Worlds, and Bitsy. 

LINK: VECTOR Festival

EVENT: HOW TO WIN AT PHOTOGRAPHY (JUNE 23 - SEPTEMBER 25 2022, LONDON)

How to win at Photography

Photographer's Gallery

June 23 - September 25 2022

16-18 Ramillies Street, London

W1F 7LW England

How to Win at Photography will open June 23 2022 at The Photographer's Gallery in London and will remain open until September 25. A "multimedia exhibition" featuring 30+ artists, How to Win at Photography, "questions the very meaning and function of photography today". Expect a plethora of collateral events regarding all things post-photography - including in-game photography - starting with a killer conversation featuring John Hilliard and Justin Berry on June 24 202 about the ever-changing nature of photography.

Featured artists: Cory Arcangel, Aram Bartholl, Justin Berry, Alan Butler, Gloria López Cleries & Sive Hamilton Helle, Joan Pamboukes, Tabor Robak, Constant Dullaart, Yuyi John, Emma Agnes Sheffer, Coralie Vogelaar, Jon Haddock, Roc Herms, Sherrie Levine, Lorna Ruth Galloway, Ed Ruscha, Ai Weiwei, Harun Farocki, Dorothée Elisa Baumann, Dries Depoorter & Max Pinckers, Christopher Graves, John Hilliard, Steven Pippin, Ria Patricia Röder, Akihiko Taniguchi, Claude Cahun, Cibelle Cavalli Bastos, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Andy Kassier, Cindy Sherman, Petra Szemán, Danielle Udogaranya.

Read more

Check out the online supplement

EVENT: GAME UP (JUNE 1-26 2022, BERLIN, GERMANY)

Elaine Hoey, A Blind Eye, 2021

GAME UP

Open: June 1 - 26 (Preview: 18:00 - 21:00, Thursday June 2)

Wednesdays – Fridays 13:00 - 19:0

Saturdays & Sundays June 11:00 - 19:00 

Free entrance

transmediale studio

Gerichtstrasse 35

13347 Berlin

Germany

 

This is a killer exhibition. Highly recommended. (MB)

 

press release

GAME UP seeks to get under the skin of our increasingly digital planet as a springboard to new thinking and new action through the work of  artists, Alan Butler, Elaine Hoey, Conor McGarrigle, Rosa Menkman,  David OReilly and Paper Rad/Cory Arcangel. GAME UP is a reckoning, a rear mirror view and a look at the future of our hyper-connected world.  

What are the rules of engagement in this electronic superhighway and who is policing them?  What of our digital shadow and its instantaneous monetisation? How are race and gender played out in the digital space? By turning the technology on itself, the artists in GAME UP create ways to consider and expose this hidden world. The viewer is brought deep into virtuality by means of narratives and experiences that question and confront the digital contract.

Conor McGarrigle, practicing artist and lecturer in Fine Art in the Technological University, Dublin, reminds us in his Electronic Superhighway (2022) of the richness of historical material, even in the short decades since the internet was founded and early ‘70s telemental art.

Artist and  lecturer in Fine Art at The National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Elaine Hoey’s walk-in VR installation/performance brings the viewer awkwardly face to face with an Oracle far removed from its Delphic forebearer who might predict a different kind of future.

Alan Butler represented Ireland at the Venice Architecture Biennale, 2021, as a founding member of the collective of artists and architects, Annex. GAME UP presents Alan Butler’s 20 minute video Mondo Cane (2018), a journey through a sumptuous John Berger-like sequence of images and sounds mined from Grand Theft Auto.

Rosa Menkman is an artist, lecturer and pioneer of glitch art. Her work Glitch Studies Manifesto promises hope for what glitch might offer by suggesting disintegration might democratize society.

LA-based David OReilly works with animation, Augmented Reality and gaming. For GAME UP, the artist presents 4004 (2021), a free-standing resin monolith in which an Intel microchip - The Intel 4004 originally released by Intel Corporation in 1971 – has been preserved, resembling a factice out-of-place. The sculpture also exists as an NFT.

Chiptuner Paper Rad and video and game artist Cory Arcangel’s work, Super Mario Movie (2005), is a 15-minute movie programmed onto a Mario Brothers cartridge, in which we see the plumber evolving in a chaotic, corrupt and glitchy world.

 This exhibition is supported by Culture Ireland and curated by Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, with assistance from transmediale Festival of Art and Digital Culture, Berlin.

LINK: GAME UP

ART GAME: STEAMBAO COLLECTIVE'S CLOUDBOX (2022)

A sound-focused interactive installation experimenting with differences in viewer interpretation and experience, Cloudbox is the latest project by Steambao Collective, featuring Kyrin Chen (Sound/Concept), Vi Trinh (Visual/Concept), and Ning Sun (Programming). As Chen explains:

The players navigate through different sound zones with arrow keys, and though they play the same game and see the same scenery the experience itself is entirely contingent on the viewer's interpretation, exposing the ability of sound to create nuance and interactivity. The piece puts audiences in between disconcerting dichotomies - the duality of present serenity and past violence; the disorientation from both being in and out of control; the discombobulation between sight and sound; the philosophical demarcation between video games and art. While breaking the traditional hierarchy in sensory experiences, the work continues the poignant social commentary of Susan Sontag - that art serves both as a source of catharsis or spiritual enlightenment, and as a mouthpiece of war propaganda or military recruitment.

Cloudbox can be downloaded here.

This interactive installation reminds me of Chen's previous work, So What Happened the Other Day (2020), a short interactive virtual spatial experience using sound to explore the permeability of acoustic environments, and its relationship with the sonic presence of the moving body.

Kyrin Chen lives and works in London. Informed by their interdisciplinary theoretical framework, Chen’s practice seeks to explore the spatial ‘dialogue’ between body and site through attentive auditory and haptic perception in various media, including interactive games, printmaking, fiction, physical workshops/performances, multi-media installation and beyond. Chen’s works interrogates the tension between supposed dichotomies, exploring the spaces between belonging and dislocation, intimacy and alienation.

LINK: Cloudbox (all images and videos courtesy of the Artist)

LINK: Kyrin Chen