GAMESCENES

EVENT: JENNA NG, MACHINIMA AND THE ALLURE OF EPHEMERALITY (MARCH 13 2019, MILAN, ITALY)

JENNA NG

MACHINIMA AND THE ALLURE OF EPHEMERALITY: GAMEPLAY, LIVE STREAMS & DIGITAL CULTURE

GAME TALK #2

March 13, 2019

Aula 135, IULM 1

Università IULM

Via Carlo Bo, 1

20143 Milan Italy

In this talk, Jenna Ng will address the explosion of interest in the live streaming of gameplay as witnessed in the popularity of Twitch, whose latest number of daily active users has reached 15 million, as well as other major platforms such as YouTube Gaming, Mixer, and Facebook Live. Specifically, the talk will link the current phenomenon of video game live streams with machinima and its origins in game demos and captured videogame play, arguing not only for live streams to be the next logical evolution for machinima, but also for a critical theorisation of screen media that pursues a realist trajectory, one which potentially works its way from neorealist cinema to drone culture.

Jenna Ng first trained as a finance lawyer in Singapore and London before switching to film studies, in which she obtained a PhD from University College London (UCL), and currently teaches film and interactive media at the University of York, UK. She is the editor of Understanding Machinima: Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2013) and her current book project, Undoing the Screen: Space, Spectacle, Surface (Palgrave), explores the effacing of screen boundaries in relation to contemporary display technologies and the resulting erasure between images, objects, surfaces and spaces.

Click here to register

Game Art: Joseph Delappe's Elegy: GTA USA Gun Homicides (2018)

Joseph Delappe's new project - developed in collaboration with Albert Elwin (coding) and James Wood (consultant), Elegy: GTA USA Gun Homicides, is a self-playing version of Grand Theft Auto V that - starting each midnight CST (Central Standard Time) - reenacts/recounts/represents the entire body count to date from January 1st 2018 in-game. 

 

In other words, the project visualizes real life gun-related homicides in the United States of America though the filter of a video game. (As NRA fanatics love to say, "Guns don't kill people, video games do.")

Each daily update represents - in a graphic, literal way - the body count reported by a gun violence website. The next day, the program scrapes the new data and starts again, in a perverse Groundhog Day-sort of way, while "God Bless America" - both the original version by Irving Berlin (1918) as well as Kate Smith's iteration (1938) - plays in the background. 2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the composing of this song.

 

"From the mountains

To the prairies
To the oceans
White with foam
God bless America
My home sweet home"

 

As the camera slowly recedes - a peculiar "kill cam" - all is left on the screen is trail of blood and agonizing avatars. Launched on July 4, 2018, Delappe's intention is to run Elegy 24/7 until July 4, 2019.

 

The message is clear: in the US, everyday is The Purge.

 

 

Delappe is live streaming Elegy on his Twitch channel.

There's a dash of Hugo Arcier's 11 Executions and a bit of Brent Watanabe's San Andreas Deer Cam.

 

Joseph DeLappe is Professor of Games and Tactical Media in the Division of Games and Art (School of Design and Informatics) at Abertay University in  Dundee, Scotland. He's also a bold, daring, and uncompromising American artist. 

LINK: Joseph Delappe

Event: CONTINUE? The Philosophy of Japanese Arcade Culture (May 31 2017, Los Angeles)

Oliver Payne, 2017. Photo: Curtis Buchanan

CONTINUE? The Philosophy of Japanese Arcade Culture
Wednesday May 31, 2017 7:30PM
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
Free entry and open to the public
Parking: Under the museum, $6 flat rate after 6 p.m. Cash only.

"Having recently collaborated with Japanese Pop art legend Keiichi Tanaami, Oliver Payne discusses Japanese arcade culture, specifically the manic and psychedelic “bullet hell games.” These niche arcade games—often considered the purest form of video games—follow a chaotic, complicated system of rules and patterns. Payne considers labor, play, identity, and art in gaming culture, and how it all informs his work."

The event is related to this exhibition, Hammer Projects: Oliver Payne and Keiichi Tanaami, on view until August 27.

Oliver Payne (b. 1977, London) lives and works in Los Angeles. As a duo with Nick Relph, his work has been shown internationally at such venues as Serpentine Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Zurich; and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo. He has had recent solo exhibitions at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York; NANZUKA, Tokyo and Hong Kong; STUDIOLO, Zurich; and Galleria Federico Vavassori, Milan.

LINK: CONTINUE? The Philosophy of Japanese Arcade Culture (via Things To Do In Los Angeles)

Webmagazine: The Art of Gaming (Arté)

"Professional gamers Melek Balgün and Trinity invite artists, scientists and enthusiastic gamers in each episode of ART OF GAMING to play and discuss computer games. Which emotions do computer games provoke? What is special about games compared to other art forms? What do we feel when we play? What is the impact of interactivity on aesthetic, artistic and psychological experiences? ART OF GAMING is a new online magazine that considers video games as works of art. There is a theme for each episode that is approached by the gamers and experts. Inspired by “Lets Play” every episode completely immerses us into the world of gaming – the only art form in which you have to act in order to be able to talk about it."

The first episode, on REALISM, is available now.

LINK: arté

Interview: foci + loci

TREATING MAP EDITORS FOUND IN VIDEO GAMES AS VIRTUAL SOUND STAGES, FOCI + LOCI CREATE IMMERSIVE ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC SPACES WITH VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS AND TIMED AUDIOVISUAL EVENTS.

foci + loci (Tamara Yadao and Chris Burke) are a duo living and working in New York. Saving and replaying digital game data, camera movement in space can be disassociated from time, changing traditional filmic relationships. They are are interested in exploring the topological treatment of time and space afforded by game engines. They received a NYSCA grant in 2013 for their game performance installation Bal(l)ade and have given workshops at 8static in Philadelphia, the Babycastles Summit at the Museum of Arts and Design (NYC) as well as lecturing on game sound and mashup culture at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University and the New School. Among others, Chris and Tamara have performed at Babycastles, Centre Pompidou, Cluster New Music festival, CultureHub, DistENDed Cinema at Outpost, Diapason Gallery, Peter Kirn’s Handmade Music series, Joe’s Pub, Secret Project Robot, The Stone, Vector Game + Integrated Arts Festival in Toronto and Game Play Festival 2011 at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The video interview was produced by the students of IULM's Master's Program in Arts, Markets, and Cultural Heritage. Editing and Subtitles: Mariacristina Maffeo

foci + loci' F.T. Mari0netti is currently on display in the ASSEMBLAGE level of GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY.

Watch more interviews from Season 6 here.

LINK: foci + loci

Lecture: Bernie DeKoven's "The Well Played Game" @ NYU Game Center (2013)

LINK: Bernard DeKoven

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti

Event: "Vector Game Art" (Toronto, February 21-24 2013)

Vector
Game + Art Convergence
vectorgameartfest.tumblr.com

February 21-24th, 2013
Toronto, Canada

Tickets

 

Simply put, Vector is the Game Art event of the year.

With more than 70 artists from all over the world, killer programs, workshops and presentations, talks and interactions of all kinds, Vector Game + Art Convergence brings in the spotlight the sheer variety of game-based and game-inspired artistic practices of the 21st century. Kudos to the organizers, Team Vector.

The official Tumblr has tons of updates.

LINK: Vector Game Art

Previously mentioned here

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti

Event: "I'm N0t Playing" (January 29, 2013, Altes Finanzamat, Berlin)

Live gameplay extract from "I'm n0t playing" (2013), audiovisual performance for hacked videogame and real-time sampler.Video: Marco Mendeni marcomendeni.net Sound: Bob Meanza bobmeanza.net

We are huge fans of Marco Mendeni's work, which focuses on hacking 3D engines of first/third person shooters for audiovisual live performances. If you are lucky enough to be in Berlin on January 29 2013, don't miss his new show at Altes Finanzamat, "I'm Not Playing", developed with his partners in crime Bob Meanza and Filipe Dias De. This live performance deconstructs Activision's war game, reconfiguring both audio and video output. As Mendeni explains, 

"Through the years, videogames have influenced our perception of space/time and our concept of identity, and we have now reached a point where real and virtual worlds are merging. In this process, the videogame as a container of ideological power cannot be underestimated. I’m n0t playing addresses all this through a war videogame played every day by millions of people: Call of Duty." (Mendeni)

UPDATE: On Free Pixel, Michael Nitsche writes:

"As one player who is currently trapped in the Modern Warfare world himself, the sudden distance from the hero is something that is something that bothers me a lot in this rollercoaster-only-for-the-hectic-of-the-moment game. It does everything in the book to mediate war as a visual spectacle, but the virtual “me” is utterly irrelevant. Even in the set death moments I cannot bring myself to even remotely connect – instead I feel more than mildly annoyed." (Michael Nitsche, Jan 25 2013)

LINK: Marco Mendeni

related: Interview

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti

 

Game Art: Gameplay-driven Art, four examples

There is a long tradition, in Game Art, of transforming gameplay sessions into works of art. Lately, the trend has been accelerating and I have the feeling that in the next few years we will see an explosion of gameplay-driven art, i.e. artworks generated by turning in-game actions performed by players (humans/bots) into dots, lines, sequences, and/or performances. Thus, the ephemeral, mostly invisible gestures of the players and their avatars become visible traces. The aesthetics of game-based computation. 

One seminal example is Alison Mealey's Unreal Art (2005), a series of drawings (predominantly portraits) made with Processing based on Unreal Tournament bots' movements through a level design and created by the artist. Mealey's performance was detailed in GameScenes. 

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Alison Mealey, Unreal Art, 2005

A more recent example is Seb Lee-Delisle's Lunar Trails (2012), an interactive installation first commissioned by the Dublin Science Gallery for their GAME exhibition, running from November 2012 to the end of January 2013. As Lee-Delisle writes on his website, Lunar Trails "features a full size arcade cabinet running the vintage 1979 game Lunar Lander. As you play the game, the path that you take is rendered on the wall with a large hanging drawing robot". Truly fascinating. 

 

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Seb Lee-Delisle, Lunar Trails, 2012 Lunar Trails flickr set

Another amazing project comes from Dutch graduate student Sam van Doorn who recently hacked an old pinball machine to create STYN (2012), a peculiar drawing device that utilizes the flippers to control a ink-covered sphere that moves across a movable poster placed on the game surface. The outcome? A series of abstract, symmetric drawings. Stynning. Pardon, stunning. 

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Sam van Dorn, Styn, 2012

Last but not least, gameplay sessions have been visualized by many artists and designers in the last five years. One of my favorite is Jim Blackhurst's visualisation of the spatial clustering of death by impact in Just Cause 2. As Blackhurst writes, "The video is made up of over 11.3 million player death events, specifically, death by impact with terrain or objects" (2011). The result is mesmerizing. 

 

LINK: Alison Mealey

LINK: Seb Lee-Delisle

LINK: Sam van Doorn

LINK: Jim Blackhurst

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti (Lunar Trails was first spotted by Nicolo' Tedeschi; STYN was first mentioned by Lustik) All images courtesy of the artist