03/06/2025
02/24/2025
HOW TO WIN AT (LUSHFOIL) PHOTOGRAPHY
Experience detailed, true-to-life recreations of beautiful and diverse locations around the world. Trek through and explore environments to capture stunning vistas and landscapes with your fully-featured in-game camera. Each environment is filled with objectives to reward players that have a good eye for angles and perspectives, and hidden secrets for those who are patient and observant. The rich atmosphere of Lushfoil Photography Sim is enhanced by an ambient, ethereal soundtrack featuring licensed music from artists around the world.
Matt Newell is a 3D Environment Artist/Developer working in Unreal Engine. Also an avid photographer, currently based between Tokyo, Japan and Perth, Australia. His new game will be distributed by Annapurna.
LINK: Lushfoil Photography Sim
02/14/2025
GAME ART: LEYUAN LI’S HALF DAY TOUR (2024)
Leyuan Li, Half Day Tour, video installation, 2024, installation view, photo: HFBK Hamburg
Leyuan Li, Half Day Tour, video installation, 2024, screenshot, photo: HFBK Hamburg
Half Day Tour is a video installation by Leyuan Li, derived from a game he developed and recorded. In this work, the artist assumes the role of a guide, leading viewers through the mechanics of the game system. Set within a fictionalized natural environment, the game follows a boat - scanned by the artist after encountering it in Nigeria - that players navigate through a landscape shaped by his personal visual memories. As they progress, they encounter landmarks accompanied by whimsical, fictional background stories. Yet, any attempt to uncover hidden sites inevitably returns them to the starting point.
LINK: Leyuan Li
01/31/2025
EVENT: NATALIE MAXIMOVA (JANUARY 31 - FEBRUARY 13 2025, ONLINE)
Awaiting Oblivion
digital video, colour, sound, 20’ 23”, 2024, Russia
created by Natalie Maximova
World premiere
Awaiting Oblivion interrogates the collapse of simulated reality in The Last of Us Part II, uncovering spaces where the boundaries between representation and existence dissolve. As the digital world fractures into glitches and voids, it exposes the instability of meaning, unmasking the illusion of coherence, and confronting observers with absence that lies at the heart of perception. Maximova uses the embedded photo mode functions as a critical apparatus, transforming observation into an active engagement with the ungraspable. The poetic structure of her voice over amplifies the dissonance between digital precision and the fluid, ephemeral quality of ecological and philosophical questions, echoing the tensions between order and chaos in post-humanist discourse.
Natalie Maximova is an interdisciplinary artist and photographer based in London UK. She holds a Master’s degree from the ECAL/Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne and has also studied at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. Maximova’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions worldwide, including Now Play This festival, Sickhoes #6 imitate - manipulate – simulate at Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Milan Machinima Festival (VRAL), the 6th and 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Balagan!!! in Kühlhaus Berlin and others. Her work has been featured in various publications including Spectator, Il Giornale dell’Arte, Camera Austria, Bird in Flight, Calvert Journal, and Vice among others. She has also contributed to Screen Images In-Game Photography, Screenshot, Screencast, edited by Winfried Gerling, Sebastian Möring and Marco De Mutiis and published by Kulturverlag Kadmos in 2023.
01/13/2025
GAME ART: VOLNA’S THIRD CALL (2024)
Third Call is an innovative art-game developed by the VOLNA artists collective, created as part of the ongoing renovation of the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany. Commissioned for the theater’s 2025 season and spearheaded by its newly established Digital Theater division, the project offers players a unique opportunity to explore a reimagined interpretation of the theater's spaces. By merging architecture with gaming, Third Call invites audiences to engage with the evolving identity of the building through an interactive, artistic lens.
Built using Unreal Engine, Third Call transforms the theater’s architectural blueprints into a fully immersive, first-person journey. The game plunges players into a surreal, deconstructed version of the theater, where they navigate a looping quest to find their seat in a not-yet-revealed futuristic performance hall. This narrative structure echoes the ongoing renovation, creating a metaphorical and real-time reflection on the interplay between the building’s historical legacy, its present transformation, and its speculative future.
Visually, the game masterfully blends the precision of architectural renderings with the eerie atmosphere of liminal spaces, crafting an aesthetic that feels both familiar and otherworldly. Drawing inspiration from seminal works like The Stanley Parable and the cyberpunk ethos of Blade Runner, Third Call establishes its own distinct identity, fusing clarity and ambiguity into a cohesive artistic experience. The result is a space where storytelling, architecture, and digital media converge, inviting players to contemplate the theater not just as a building but as a living, evolving concept.
As part of the Badisches Staatstheater’s initiative to integrate digital innovation into performance art, Third Call reimagines what theater can be. By turning the theater’s physical metamorphosis into an interactive journey, the game blurs boundaries between audience and performer, space and narrative, reality and simulation. This bold exploration of the intersection of digital media, architecture, and performance art challenges traditional notions of what constitutes "theater" in the 21st century.
As The Third Call clearly demonstrates, game engines like Unreal are increasingly central to digital art production, enabling creators to push the boundaries of interactivity and immersion in ways previously unimaginable.
Formed in 2016 as a loose cooperative of architects, artists, engineers, cultural workers and artisans, VOLNA is based in Karlsruhe, Germany. We have an extensive track record of successful collaborations with major museums, theaters, festivals, biennials, educational institutions, grassroots cultural initiatives, nightclubs, and corporate clients. Whether it's mechanical flowers under your feet or intricate environmentally sustainable art objects in the Alps, a dramaturgically designed immersive light forest for a choreographic performance or interactive light mirrors for a university bus stop, light set-ups for underground music venues or the entire architecture for a festival with 15,000 visitors, or even a virtual Kunsthalle with lifelike lighting effects, in all of our projects VOLNA creates unique and exciting artistic environments that integrate organically into each site with own unique context and specifics.
For more information, visit VOLNA Media’s official website.
01/03/2025
EVENT: ONE TETHERED BIRD (JANUARY 17 - FEBRUARY 21 2025, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON STATE)
Brent Watanabe: One Tethered Bird
The Behnke Family Gallery at Cornish
1077 Lenora Street
Seattle, WA 98121
Jan 17th - Feb 21 2025
Brent Watanabe's upcoming solo show at The Behnke Family Gallery at Cornish will include work covering the past two decades, including his Grand Theft Auto interventions (San Andreas Deer Cam, Community Cam, Possessions), several computer controlled installations, MINE VR, his Animal Crossing intervention, and the two new works.
Brent Watanabe, San Andreas Community Cam, 2017, studies for computer-controlled installation, Modified version of Grand Theft Auto V
Brent Watanabe, Possessions, 2018-19, animation, animation, modified version of Grand Theft Auto V
Brent Watanabe, Animal Crossing: All Mine, 2020, video game intervention in Animal Crossing: New Horizon
Stay tuned for more news about this monumental exhibition!
Brent Watanabe’s art practice defies categorization, fusing traditional techniques with cutting-edge technology to create installations that are at once visually arresting and intellectually engaging. Drawing on his extensive background in drawing and sculpture, Watanabe uses computer programming and electronics to create kinetic sculptures that are at the forefront of a new wave of digital art. Watanabe’s work has been recognized both nationally and internationally, with his groundbreaking 2016 project, San Andreas Deer Cam, receiving over 800,000 visitors in its first three months alone and being featured in publications such as New York Magazine, the BBC, and WIRED. In addition to his solo work, Watanabe has participated in group shows and screenings around the world, including Through Machine Eyes at the NeMe Arts Center in Limassol, Cyprus, Game Changers at MassArt Art Museum in Boston, and Playmode at the MATT Museum in Lisbon, Portugal. With recent solo exhibitions at prestigious venues such as SOIL Art Gallery, McLeod Residency, Jack Straw New Media Gallery, Gallery 4Culture, Anchor Art Space, and the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival, Watanabe continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in the realm of digital art.
LINK: Brent Watanabe
EVENT: ANDY HUGHES (JANUARY 3-16 2025, ONLINE)
Shimmer
digital video, color, sound, 11’, 2024, United Kingdom
created by Andy Hughes
Shimmer creatively combines photographic assemblage, archival footage, and video game imagery, to interrogate the vitality and agency of materials, positioning pollution and climate change as pivotal concerns while destabilizing the dichotomy between animate and ostensibly inert matter such as “plastics”.
Andy Hughes is a British artist whose practice centers on the littoral zone and the politics of plastic waste, with a significant focus on machinima as a medium to explore the ecological and philosophical implications of pollution, materiality, and human-environment relationships. Hughes studied fine art at Cardiff University and received a scholarship to study photography at the Royal College of Art, London. He was the first artist in residence at Tate Gallery St. Ives. For more than thirty years, he has collaborated with scientists, curators, publishers, NGOs, academics, other artists, and many communities sympathetic to those aiming to examine and consider our relationships with plastic and pollution-related matters. Recent work aims to transcend the conventional trope of “raising awareness” about plastic pollution, instead utilizing machinima as a tool to explore the intersections of weirdness, magic, and Timothy Morton’s philosophical concepts. Through this medium, Hughes reconfigures ecological narratives, positioning them within a broader ontological and speculative framework.
12/20/2024
EVENT: GLORIA LÓPEZ CLERIES AND SIVE HAMILTON HELLE (DECEMBER 20 2024 - JANUARY 2 2025, ONLINE)
The Unreal
digital video, color, sound, 13’ 50”, 2019, Spain/Norway
created by Gloria López Cleries and Sive Hamilton Helle
December 20 2024 - January 2 2025
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
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.
11/21/2024
CALL FOR ARTWORKS: FILE SP 2025 (DEADLINE: JANUARY 15 2025)
FILE 2025 – Open Call – Art and Technology
FILE is now accepting applications for the 2025 edition, inviting artists, creators, developers and researchers to submit their projects. This is a unique opportunity to exhibit your work in São Paulo, from July 15 to September 7, 2025, at the renowned FIESP Cultural Center.
We seek innovative and creative projects that integrate art and technology, both national and international, covering diverse areas such as installations, robotics, CGI, virtual and augmented realities, animations, mobile art, games, kinetic art, public art and much more. We value proposals that explore interaction with the public and the use of Artificial Intelligence, in various formats of artistic expression.
As a non-profit cultural organization, FILE promotes experimentation and development in the field of Art and Technology, providing a platform for artists to connect with new audiences. In this 24th edition, the festival continues its commitment to exploring the boundaries between technology and art.
You can also take advantage of the chance to participate in the FILE LED SHOW, exhibited annually at the FIESP Digital Art Gallery, or to lead a session at the FILE WORKSHOP. Sign up using the form and check the guidelines in the regulations.
Project submission: until January 15, 2025
FILE SP 2025: from July 15 to September 7, 2025
11/08/2024
EVENT: LUKE CASPAR PEARSON (NOVEMBER 8 - 21 2024, ONLINE)
Reyner Banham Loves Los Santos
digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 5’ 15”, 2016, United Kingdom
created by Luke Caspar Pearson
Reyner Banham Loves Los Santos reimagines Banham’s original exploration of Los Angeles through the virtual lens of Grand Theft Auto V. In this adaptation sui generis of a 1972 BBC documentary, Banham’s vision of a city defined by mobility over monumentality is amplified within the sprawling, simulated metropolis of Los Santos. Just as Banham embraced the freeways and fluidity of LA’s urban fabric, Los Santos takes this mobility to an extreme, where the ability to instantly commandeer any vehicle represents a new kind of urban experience, rooted in speed, freedom, and fluid motion. Luke Caspar Pearson’s machinima reflects Banham’s fascination with the paradoxes of the city – its chaotic structure and capacity for personal liberation. The narrative juxtaposes Banham’s celebration of LA’s automotive culture with the lawless nature of Los Santos, transforming Banham’s intellectual engagement with LA into a playful yet critical examination of the intersections between urbanism, architecture, and video game spaces.
Luke Caspar Pearson is a London-based architect, academic, and co-founder of the design research practice You+Pea, where he explores the intersection of video game technologies and architectural design. As an Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, he founded and co-directs the new Cinematic and Videogame Architecture MArch programme, emerging from his work with the innovative Videogame Urbanism studio. His research focuses on how digital tools can engage new audiences with architectural design. Luke is the co-author of Videogame Atlas: Mapping Interactive Worlds (Thames & Hudson, 2022) and his work has been widely published in journals such as eflux Architecture, Design Studies and Architectural Research Quarterly. His design projects have been featured in exhibitions at venues like the Royal Institute of British Architects, Somerset House.