Game Art: Victor Morales' Esperpento (in progress)
Victor Morales' latest project is titled Esperpento, an immersive three dimensional space inspired by the aesthetic vision of Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Specifically the War Paintings and his famous, Caprichos series,
As Morales writes:
The project is a universe where tragedy, sarcasm, and comedy are portrayed as a deformed and apocalyptic mirror of reality; In this world, circumstance is the source of tragedy, and the grimace produced by this tragedy is what rules its form.
Esperpento is an exploration about the rejection of the different and the dehumanization of the stranger. Why the foreigner (who looks different) is often shunned, despised and criminalized?
This virtual universe will work primarily as an immersive interactive installation and performance its first iteration will take place in the Fall of 2018 at 3 Legged Dog Art and Technology Center in NYC.
Esperpento (a Spanish literary term for “monstrosity”) is a digital performance event - a charged visual performance that allows the viewer to see through a monstrous lens. Rather than using the “monster” to critique societal ills, Esperpento embraces strangeness and deformity in order to challenge conventions of beauty, familiarity, and what is “normal” or “native” to the human condition.
Esperpento is a series of 3D digital events which explores the dehumanization of the stranger. In a vivid sequence of natural and manmade disasters, rendered through a real-time video game engine, victims and perpetrators collide with increasingly interchangeable ethnic, class and cultural markers. These "Esperpento Events" are a digital meditation on the rejection of foreignness, and why we shun those who look (or appear to look) different from the people in the US.
Goya’s War Disasters and Black Paintings are, in substance and form, a template for Esperpento. These paintings are a testament of genuine protest, full of style and piercing opinion, that simultaneously document and comment on reality.
The Latino community and other minorities will be the main focus group for this production. The technology and the delivery of the animations are the major points for connection with these communities, basically promoting technology made by and for Latinos. (Victor Morales)
Morales has launched a crowdfunding project for Esperpento. As writes:
Esperpento is also a Play! "Two Black Lights and a Red One" written by the great Billy Burns! The show is about the vicissitudes of a Blind Poet "Max Starpower" in a strange ultra violent place called - you guessed - Esperpento. We need your help to make this happen, so we started a crowdfunding campaign, please help us create this piece. For the record, all the money collected is ONLY to pay all collaborators that are working on Esperpento, and if you are a friend of Billy Burns, notice that one of the perks is to bring him to New York from Berlin so he can help directing and polishing the play. Spread the word!
Victor Morales born in Venezuela, received a Law Degree from Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, in Caracas, in 1990. During his time there he was an active member of the University Theater Group, where he directed several plays, including writing and directing Mueca 23, for which he won the New Director’s Prize in the Festival de Teatro Para La Ciudad (Caracas). Based in New York City since 1991, he completed a Master’s degree in Technology Applied to the Arts at New York University’'s Gallatin Division, in 1992. He is a director, performer and designer, whose work includes video animation and design, text, sound design, and movement. Since 2003 he has been obsessed with the art of video game modifications and has implemented different game engines into most of the works he has participated in or created.
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