Game Art: IP Yuk-Yiu's "Another Day of Depression in Kowloon" (2012)

A machinima reminiscent of Jon rafman's semi-ethnographic studies of Second Life, Another Day of Depresson in Kowloon is described by its author, IP Yuk-Yiu as "a virtual study and a digital portrait of Hong Kong as seen through the lens of contemporary popular culture incarnated in the forms of video game and screen media." The 15-minute machinima was created by appropriating the map "Kowloon" from Call of Duty: Black Ops (Activision, 2010). The artist' goal was to conduct "a yearlong virtual fieldwork: playing, observing and documenting “Hong Kong” as simulated in the video game world." As Yuk-Yiu explain

"Hacking and displacing the logic of the game, Another turns the violent first-person shooter into a series of vacant, uncanny and yet meditative tableaux, unearthing a formal poetry that is often overlooked during the original gameplay. Another combines methodologies from both the observational and assemblage film traditions in raising questions about cultural representations in contemporary popular media, while at the same time creating evocative metaphors for a post-colonial Hong Kong through the reworking of media materials. Another is a “found” landscape film, a ballad for a post-colonial Hong Kong seemingly trapped in endless downpours of murky political dismal." (Ip Yuk-Yiu)

IP Yuk-Yiu is Assistant Professor at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His works have been shown extensively in international festivals such as the Image Festival, Transmediale, CinemaTexas, Ann Arbor Film Festival, European Media Art Festival, Viper Festival, New York Film Festival, Yamagato International Documentary Film Festival and more. His recent work explores performative and computational forms of cinema. He is the founder of the art.ware project, an independent curatorial initiative focusing on the promotion of new media art in Hong Kong.

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Submitted by Matteo Bittanti