GAMESCENES

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS 2023: CINEMATIC AND VIDEOGAME ARCHITECTURE MARCH AT THE BARTLETT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, UCL (LONDON)

Jerome Ng, Metabolist Regeneration of a Dementia Nation, 2019

Cinematic and Videogame Architecture MArch program

The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL
22 Gordon St
London WC1H 0AY
United Kingdom

The first programme of its kind in the UK, the Cinematic and Videogame Architecture MArch course teaches students to employ innovative architectural design methods using cinematic, animation and gaming technologies. Students will critically situate their work in relation to new developments in time-based digital media and how they shape our culture, identity and politics.

What is the programme's focus
Architecture has a long history of acting as an underlying structuring device for both film and videogames. From the construction of film sets to developments in film compositing techniques and innovations in computer graphics, the depiction of space has been a key challenge in arriving at our contemporary media landscape of film and videogames. In turn, the narrative and storytelling power of time-based and interactive media are reshaping not only how architecture is constructed and represented, but also how it is conceived and experienced.How will the programme be delivered
Taught by internationally renowned experts in cutting-edge digital technologies, the programme will be based at UCL's new campus, UCL East, and make use of new, state-of-the-art facilities with shared specialist media and workshop spaces. The programme is founded on a strong and experimental practice-led studio element, where practical learning is supported by robust theoretical research. Students will engage with theoretical concepts through lectures and introductory design projects, supported by digital skills modules.

This cross-disciplinary approach allows students to test ideas and invent new research methods, leading to the production of architectural design projects that are developed and realised through films, video games and hybrid digital-physical environments.

The programme will be led by Prof Penelope Haralambidou and Dr Luke Caspar Pearson. Penelope's teaching and research employ an innovative practice-led methodology that uses, drawing, modelling, digital film and immersive environments to investigate spatial culture. Luke is co-founder of You+Pea, a design research studio working between architecture and videogames, and the Videogame Urbanism studio which examines how games can help shape the future of cities 

How will the programme equip people for future careers
Students will gain technical skills and explore time-based, storytelling and interactive media as new platforms for engaging with the design and production of space, from the domestic to the urban. Graduates will develop advanced skills applicable in the fields of architecture and architectural visualisation, and gain expertise that can form the foundation for careers in immersive environments, film and videogame industries. Through regular visits by academic and industry experts, graduates will develop an understanding of how to position and present their work for future careers in many different creative disciplines.

Who should apply
We are looking for applications from graduates and professionals from architecture, but also from other backgrounds – including design, filmmaking, film studies, anthropology, geography, fine art, videogame design, graphic design, animation and computer-generated imagery design – who are interested in studying the relationship between architecture, cinema and videogames, and show evidence of a strong record both academically and/or in practice.

Read more: Cinematic and Videogame Architecture programme page

 

EVENT: MICHAEl LUO - YOU MAY THINK THEY LOVE YOU FOR YOUR GAMES, BUT ALL THEY ACTUALLY WANT ARE SPECTACULARLY WEIRD TOYS FOR THEIR SHINY, BRAND NEW 8K QLED SMART SCREENS (APRIL 12 - 14 2022, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA)

Michael Luo, Dark Days, interactive game

Michael Luo, Addiction Center, interactive game

MICHAEL LUO - YOU MAY THINK THEY LOVE YOU FOR YOUR GAMES, BUT ALL THEY ACTUALLY WANT ARE SPECTACULARLY WEIRD TOYS FOR THEIR SHINY, BRAND NEW 8K QLED SMART SCREENS.

DMA SOLO EXHIBITION

UCLA DMA Graduate Gallery
Broad Art Center 1st Floor, 240 Charles E. Young Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90095

April 12, 2022, 5:00 pm

This is a show featuring three new computer games/interactive media made by Michael Luo about art, game, game art, game design, warped pasts, lost futures, and digital ghosts. 

Duration: April 12 (Tuesday) 5 PM ~ April 14 (Thursday) 5 PM, 2022
Daily hours: Tuesday 5 PM - 9 PM, Wednesday 12 PM - 5 PM, Thursday 9AM - 2 PM, 5 PM - 8 PM
Opening: April 12, 2022, 5 - 9 PM

Michael Luo is a game maker & artist. Born as an anchor baby in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and grew up in Southwestern China, he spends most of his time making weird computer games about Chinese/American identity conflicts, hallucinations, contemporary history, and anything that doesn't fit with the industry standards. He promises that his games will offer something alternative to the usual gaming experience and that there will be no knights in his works. He's a member of UCLA GAME LAB and a current MFA candidate of Media Arts at UCLA. He received a BA from the same program in 2020.

LINK: Michael Luo; itch.io

EVENT: BLEND&BLEED: ON TRANSREALITY AND PERVASIVE PLAY, LUCA SCHOOL OF ARTS (JULY 2021)

BLEND&BLEED: ON TRANSREALITY AND PERVASIVE PLAY

ORGANIZED BY LUCA SCHOOL OF ARTS, July 2021

“Transreality” describes the blending of physical and virtual space, and “pervasive games” are said to blur the boundaries between game and life. In live action role-playing (LARP) terminology, “bleed” refers to a gray zone somewhere between fiction and reality, where the border between player and character becomes transparent.

The online symposium “Blend&Bleed” was committed to showing the fragility of that boundary and to understanding collective dynamics in the construction of real and fictive worlds. Hosted by the Inter-Actions research unit of LUCA School of the Arts C-Mine, it linked to their research on the hybridization of performance and online gaming. The workshops and conversations conjured synergies among the fields of game design, performance, LARP, and media theory. With a strong focus on interactive formats, “Blend&Bleed” presented playful experiments around digital presence as well as the psychological, social, and political implications of distance. It looked at the critical use or abuse of game-like structures to sketch the world we live in—now reconfigured as “Gamespace.”

The virtual and the imaginary share a perceptual lightness in that they do not seem bound to earth or material facts, and yet they have hard, physical consequences. While consensual reality seems increasingly fractured and the appetite for appealing fictions and alternative facts is apparent in contemporary media and politics, we need not mourn the loss of a “common world” that sustains itself by satisfying hegemonic norms of “order.” Taking the underlying theory of multiple worlds as a point of departure, the symposium offered exercises in collective worlding." (Carina Erdmann)

McKenzie Wark (she/her) is a writer and scholar based in New York and born 1961 in Newcastle, Australia. Wark is known for her writings on media theory, critical theory, new media, media art, and the Situationist International. She is the author of Gamer Theory (Harvard University Press, 2007), A Hacker Manifesto (Harvard University Press, 2004), and The Spectacle of Disintegration (Verso, 2013), among others.

Her latest writing includes Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? (Verso, 2019), which describes a new ruling class that gains its power through the ownership and control of information; Reverse Cowgirl (Semiotext(e), 2020), a new genre for another gender and an auto-ethnography of the opacity of the self; and Sensoria (Verso, 2020), a transdisciplinary survey of the key thinkers and ideas that are rebuilding the world in the shadow of the Anthropocene. In 2019, she was awarded the Thoma Prize for writing on digital art. She teaches at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in New York.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”

Omsk Social Club is a “futuristically political” (i.e., unrealistic) immersive action group. Omsk proposes contents and makings as forms of post-political entertainment in an attempt to shadow-play politics until the game ruptures the surface we now know as Life. In the field, this is called “Bleed.”

Omsk Social Club forks traditional methods of live action role-play (LARP) through immersive installations and into real game play (RGP) to induce states that could potentially be fiction or a yet-unlived reality. Everything is unique and unrehearsed: Omsk works closely with networks of viewers, and the living installations they create examine virtual egos, popular experiences, and political phenomena. This allows the works to become a dematerialized hybrid of modern culture alongside the participants’ unique personal experiences. In the past, Omsk Social Club’s RPG immersive environments have introduced landscapes and topics such as otherkin, rave culture, survivalism, catfishing, desire&sacrifice, positive trolling, algorithmic strategies, and decentralized cryptocurrency. They have exhibited across Europe in various institutions, galleries, theaters, and off-sites. In 2021, they will cocurate the 7th Athens Biennale with Larry Ossei-Mensah.

LINK: Transreality

CFA: M.A. IN EXPERIMENTAL GAME CULTURES (VIENNA, AUSTRIA, DEADLINE: JULY 30 2021)

Application deadline: July 30, 2021

Experimental Game Cultures

Academic degree: MA (Master of Arts)

Credits: 120 ECTS

Duration: 4 years

Language: Englisch und Deutsch/English and German

University of Applied Arts Vienna
Oskar-Kokoschka-Platz 2
1010 Vienna
Austria

T +43 1 711332160
[email protected]

The University of Applied Arts Vienna is introducing a groundbreaking Masters Progam in Experimental Game Cultures

which aims at critical reflection of the societal impact of games while at the same time applying it to the prototypical development of innovative game concepts and approaches. Therefore, the central aspect of the studies is formed by the development of innovative game concepts beyond the commercial game industry in interconnection with the critical reflection of games in their various historical, societal, and social contexts.

Research areas of the study programme are, among others, the use of games as an instrument for a better understanding of social, economic, and political interrelations and for a democratic shaping of their future (serious games, critical games, educational games, etc.).

The M.A. in Experimental Game Culture swill start in the Winter semester 2021/22 and offered at the Institute for Art and Society. It is lead by the legendary Margarete Jahrmann who said in a statement that

For me, artistic play is the experimental testing and subjective experience of alternative possibilities of the world and agency. Play as a participatory process can show us ways to positive change, new forms of future society, politics, and empathic coexistence. Through the conscious breaking of rules, the transformation of rule systems, the acceptance of ambiguity as a quality in play, a new understanding for the global challenges of our time can emerge. Our way there is the game!

Applicants are invited to develop/describe a project on of the following topics:

• game changer concepts,
• queer and non-colonial game mechanics,
• dark patterns of game design,
• body and game fashion,
• games for non-humans,
• games and nature.

Written applications can be submitted between July 1 to 30, 2021 via application.uni-ak.ac.at.

How to apply

Check out the available courses

LINK: Experimental Game Cultures

LINK: Margarete Jahrmann

EVENT: TIMES OF HANDS – GAMIFICATION VS PLAY (JUNE 11-12 2021, ONLINE)

Times of Hands is a two day event online initiated by Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World (ADKDW) Cologne, in cooperation with Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), School of Environment and Architecture Mumbai (SEA), Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM). The symposium took place on Twitch on June 11-12 2021.

It was organized by SAM HOPKINS, UBERMORGEN (HANS BERNHARD, LIZ HAAS)

with KAGONYA AWORI, CYNTHIA CHEPKEMOI, HYESEON JEONG, STEFFEN KÖHN + NESTOR SIRÉ, BETHUEL MUTHEE, OSCAR PEÑA

"One of the many effects of digitalization is the growing presence and significance of games. On the one hand we see them on mobile phones and laptops, as recreational activities and as a career, as a global practice. On the other hand gamification is used as a means of increasing productivity and efficiency and as a tool for learning. Considering how ubiquitous it is as a practice, it raises the question of whether games and gaming are not less a consequence of digitalization as they are much more a precondition for its success: is it possible to imagine contemporary digital fields – whether economic, social, cultural, or political – without playful, game-like features?

Defining the framework of the symposium are a broadened concept of digital work – i.e. every work that is produced through digitalization is digital work – and a new perspective on games. Nairobi is both a source of inspiration and the focus of these investigations. As an African tech hub, embedded in global finance and knowledge networks and rich in idiosyncratic digital practices, Nairobi is a space with complexity and contradictions in abundance.

The symposium examines themes like the global influence and local practices of Silicon Valley rhetoric, the presence of Chinese tech ideologies in the South and the North, the practice of offline file sharing in Nairobi, the emergence of the transcontinental professional gaming industry and the explosion of the ride-hailing industry in East Africa."

LINK: Time of Hands

LINK: Time of Hands on Twitch

PROGRAM: "WORLD AT PLAY" SUMMER SCHOOL (JUNE 21-26 2021, ONLINE)

Press release:

The WORLD AT PLAY summer school is a part of a Voluptas research project into the intersection between game design, architecture and ludic pedagogy.

“And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done”

(Bible, Genesis 2:2-3, New King James Version)

This summer school proposes the makings of a new cosmogony: the creation of a playable world in one week. Then we rest.

A limited number of students from different backgrounds (architecture, game design, programming, art, philosophy) will come together to build the genesis of a playable digital world. The elemental ingredients of this world will be provided by the architecture projects produced by the Voluptas design studio: their spaces, mechanics, images and desires.

For one week, the team will evolve towards the common goal by drawing from their specific strengths and individual learning backgrounds, tutored by Pippin Barr, Andri Gerber  and Francisco Moura Veiga.

Starting with a first day of theoretical input by the Voluptas chair,  Tracy Fullerton, Bob Sumner, Emily Short, and Stefano Gualeni students will gain an overview of the week‘s processes and the end goal. the week will continue with a series of daily exercises and discussions with the tutors feeding into the creation of the world. On the last day, the playable world will be presented to a group of architects, game designers, and artists.

Send your applications (a short portfolio and letter of motivation of maximum 4 MB) to Francisco Moura Veiga at [email protected]

Voluptas
Voluptas is the euphoric daughter of its time—the intoxicating offspring of measure and spirit. Amending the millenary Vitruvian ordinances of firmitas, utilitas and venustas, Voluptas initiates a transversal investigation on contemporary issues and sets combinatory dynamics as the channel of proliferating singularities. Its looping trajectory toward a saturation of problem settings aims at the empirical emanation of an alternative view of the urban condition. Enforcing desire as its prevalent agent, Voluptas is the elegiac display of residual energy.

It is the Charbonnet/Heiz design chair at the D-ARCH of the ETH Zurich.

LINK: WORLD AT PLAY

EVENT: BLEND & BLEED. AN ONLINE SYMPOSIUM ON TRANSREALITY AND PERVASIVE PLAY (MARCH 20 - MAY 30 2021, ONLINE)

Carina Erdmann,  a researcher at LUCA, research unit 'Inter-Actions' in Brussels, is the catalyst behind this phenomenal series of online symposia:

 

"This is an invitation to conspire.

The series of online workshops conjures synergies between the fields of performance, LARP, game design and media theory. The common inquiry will be the phenomenon of 'bleed', wherein the boundaries between fiction and reality, the virtual and physical world dissolve.

The symposium is hosted by the Inter-Actions department of LUCA school of Arts and links to their research on the hybridization of online gaming and performance. What can games teach us about the ways we construct worlds collectively?

We invite you to partake in a series of playful experiments around digital presence, embodiment and relationality. Reflecting on the psychological, social and political implications of distance we will explore virtual commoning practices and 'conspiratorial bleed'."

(Carina Erdmann)

Carina Erdmann, we have become used to magic, 2020.

 

Schedule

Day 1 March 20 2021

The workshop Hotel Bardo by Omsk Social Club sends you on a journey to explore

reality-making systems and what we can do to control our own narratives. McKenzie Wark talks about Early Transition as LARPing, how being a trans woman can feel like role play through the gaze of others and metaphorical bleed sometimes avoids literal bleeding.

Day 2 - March 28 2021

Magical Materialism: World Factory is a world-building workshop by Trakal that takes its cues from Psychoanalysis and a post-socialist perspective of Andrey Platonov's concept of the "literature factory“.

Day 3 – April 3 2021

The Interactions Group transdisciplinary thought band invites you to The Wonder Machine, an experiment in emergence at the level of collective intuition. Reed Berkowitz gives a workshop on guided apophenia and how to create your own conspiracy theories.

Day 4 – April 10 2021

In the workshop ‘The Dive’ by Nina Essendrop and Rozan van Klaveren we create a collective tale about the dying of nature and a path towards our inner worlds and wilds through LARP methods.

Day 5 - April 7 2021

Francis Patrick Brady and Rilla Khaled let you explore possible futures through the card game DOHL and speculative play methods framed by the worlding of a fictional conference: The Congress of Future Love & Connection

Day 6 – April 23 2021

In her workshop Erotic Sociability, Isabel Lewis shares ideas around sociality and embodiment through the metaphor of the "unambitious stripper". The performative lecture Vaporized, dispersed, made particulate by Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė collages folkloric narratives, landscape -natural or constructed- and molecular entanglements.

Day 7 – May 1, 5, 8 2021

Theatre as Laboratory: Experimentation with Non-Human Partners in Expanding Dramaturgies is a three part workshop developed by Rebecca Rouse and Carl von Winckelmann letting you experiment with technologies and other non-human entities through the frameworks of partnership and play.

Day 8 – May 9 2021

In And what about those who prefer not to appear? Simon Asencio and Martina Leeker explore different modes of presence to reflect on publicness and anonymity as well as hyper-affirmative performing on topics of digital culture as a critique.

Day 9 – May 14 2021

Susan Ploetz and Ju Row-Farr share experiences in building speculative worlds, letting you explore somatic telepathy within the fictional institute PSY-SOMA-TEK and by discussing 2097: We Made Ourselves Over a project that worked with diverse communities to develop a journey into an imagined future.

Day 10 – May 23 2021

In the Prediction Error workshop by Brody Condon we perform as a predictive coding model and simulate delusion formation in the brain introduced by neuroscientist Philip Corlett. With Hito Steyerl we move to predictive neural networks of machines and the hallucinations they create.

Day 11 – May 30 2021

The LARP Accomplices bleed by Carina Erdmann and Nick Koppenhagen is based on the 1909 novella “The Machine Stops” and atmospheres found in cinematic fragments. It lets players view their own situation through the lens of historic visions of the future.

Sometimes we need fiction to show who we truly are.

 

All sessions are free and open for participation. Places are limited.

Full program

Registration

University page

Download the brochure (PDF)

VIDEOS: LOOKING FOR GOOD

 

Looking for Good (LFG) is a student-run group at the University of Florida facilitated by Kyle Bohunicky, Assistant Professor of Digital Arts and Sciences at University of Florida. LFG produces live-streams on Twitch addressing artistic,  technical, social, and cultural topics across the arts and computer sciences while playing relevant games. Each stream features a video game that the students play while discussing relevant topics. It's a terrific resource for anybody interested in understanding the relationship between games, art, and culture.

 

Here are some examples:

 

Digital Museums and Art Curation with Kristopher Purzycki, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Game Design and Sexuality with Anna Anthropy, DePaul College of Computing and Digital Media:

The Physics of Masculinity with Dr. Amanda Phillips, Georgetown University

Queer Representation in Digital Games with Dr. Bo Ruberg, University of California Department of Informatics

CURTAIN and Queer Futures with Dr. Edmond Chang, Ohio University

LINK: LOOKING FOR GOOD (Twitter)

LINK: LOOKING FOR GOOD (Twitch)

EVENT: AN UNREAL UNITY (MAY 16-30 2019, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA)

Game Design...the Game: Welcome to Inspiration, Now finish the damn game!. PC game, created in Unreal Engine. Courtesy UCLA Design Media Arts.

An Unreal Unity

May 16–30, 2019 

Opening: May 16, 5pm 

UCLA New Wight Gallery 
Broad Art Center, Suite 1100 
240 Charles E. Young Drive
Los Angeles, CA 

An Unreal Unity features screen-based and interactive artwork, large-scale installations, and immersive projection. Themes include the Anthropocene, corporeal estrangement, speculative interventions, and emotional inquest. Participating artists are Hye Min Cho, Kit Kirby, Sara Drake, Isabelle Chen, Lena NW, Phazero, Maru Garcia, Carlos “L05” Garcia, Sam Congdon, Julian Stein, and Paul Carlo Esposito.

Opening reception Thursday, May 16 at 5pm. The exhibition will be open weekdays from 10am to 5pm through May 30.

This event is free and open to the public.

LINK: AN UNREAL UNITY

Course: Federico Solmi at Yale University: "The Art of The Game"

 

Artist Federico Solmi is now teaching a class on videogames and art at Yale University, The Art of the Game:

LINK: Federico Solmi