GAMESCENES

EVENT: TORONTO GAMES WEEK 2025 (JUNE 11- 17 2025, TORONTO, CANADA)

press release

Come to Our Celebration of Playful Arts and Culture!

What makes Toronto Games Week special is that it’s a coalition of the most active and varied game orgs and groups active playing cooperatively, timing our autonomously-run events for the June week so that we can signal boost and support each other.

Last year we had 25 events and 3000 attendees going to workshops, conference talks, showcases, socials, parties, nighttime adventures and more! We flew in special guests like Xalavier Nelson Jr. and Trey Smith. Check out our photo recap from 2024 and 2023.

This year our poster art by Cuphead artist Caitlin Russell reflects our theme “beyond the frame” with an expansion of playful culture events past the digital like a Little Free Library-based RPG, a board game jam, and more. And as always we’ll take advantage of the summer weather to have outdoor events like tea parties, a beach screening of DOA: Dead or Alive and the trip into the forest for Night Parkcade.

Beyond Toronto’s awesome game community and events is the city itself. With so many ravines and green spaces (plus an island!) it’s called the City Within a Park. Our motto of Diversity our Strength is reflected in our rich multicultural arts landscape, producing constant bursts of creativity and collaboration. June also hosts Pride Month, NXNE, and a multi-arts festival, Luminato. Plus: right before TGW is the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, which attracts 25,000+ indie and alt comic fans and hundreds international creators to town for an amazing weekend of comic appreciation. 

“Going to Toronto Games Week confirmed something that’s already deeply apparent if you look at the host of game releases coming out these days – Canada features one of the most vibrant and innovative scenes around. It’s a deeply special time, and it left me excited for the future of gaming!” Xalavier Nelson Jr., 2024 Featured Guest.

LINK: Toronto Games Week 2025 (Thank you Jim!)

EVENT: NO QUARTER 2023 (NOVEMBER 17 2023, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK)

NO QUARTER 2023

November 17 2023, 7 PM

New York University

370 Jay Street

2nd floor bvallroom

Brooklyn, New York

press release

On Friday 17th of November No Quarter returns once more to Brooklyn, New York. With just a month to go before the big day we are thrilled to announce the details of the 2023 creative cohort which includes… Arcade Artist – Ben Blatt, Game Designer – Blake Andrews, Artist and Game Designer Everest Pipkin and Architecture Studio – You+Pea.

Every year No Quarter commissions new work from leading artists working in games and related fields. These works premiere for one night only as part of the iconic No Quarter exhibition.

The No Quarter 2023 exhibition will take place at 370 Jay Street in Brooklyn on Friday November 17th and will be open from 7pm to 11pm. It is free to attend, but RSVPs are essential.

No Quarter 2023 is curated by Marie Foulston with artwork and visual identity by Will Anderson.

LINK: No Quarter 2023

EVENT: LEVEL UP: PIXELS, PLAY & PROGRESS (JUNE 6 - SEPTEMBER 24 2023, ATLANTA, GEORGIA)

Level Up: Pixels, Play, and Progress delves into how game designers view their creations as avenues for fostering empathy, forging human connections, promoting healing, and driving activism. (Image courtesy: Liv Donaldson)

Level Up: Pixels, Play & Progress

June 6-September 24, 2023

Museum of Design Atlanta

1315 Peachtree Street Northeast
Atlanta, GA, 30309
United States

A new exhibition featuring a variety of indie games including Assemble with Care, Gone Home, Season: A letter to the future, Bury Me, My Love, Atuel, Eliza, Before Your Eyes, Endling. Extinction is Forever, Inua: A story in pixel and ice, The Artful Escape, Oxen Free, Thomas Was Alone, I Was A Teenage Exocolonist, Dots Home

press release

We think, remember, and convey our experiences through storytelling. The narratives we weave possess immense power—they inspire change, challenge norms, and shape our collective consciousness.

From oral storytelling to the written word, theater to film, and television to virtual reality, our capacity to tell and share stories has evolved hand-in-hand with technology. Video games mark a significant shift in this intertwined history. Game designers create realities that empower players to shape stories as they explore fantastical realms, experience different viewpoints, and embark on extraordinary adventures. 

The immersive nature of video games blurs the lines between the physical and digital. Contemporary games tap into human emotions and fill needs. They bring people together by transcending boundaries, building communities, and creating opportunities for collaboration across diverse backgrounds.

The stories told in video games — and how players interact with those stories — provide a lens into how humans navigate and understand the world. With this exhibition, we invite you to explore the potential of game design to make the world more empathetic, inclusive, and interconnected. 

Related events: Guided Tour of Level Up: Futuristic Fiction (August 20 2023) and Guided Tour of Level Up: Nature's Narratives (September 9 2023), both in person.

LINK: Level Up: Pixels, Play & Progress

EVENT: CONTROL ALT PLAY: LUDIC ALTERNATIVES ON CONTROL (MAY 12 - NOVEMBER 12 2022, ZARAGOZA, SPAIN)

CONTROL ALT PLAY: LUDIC ALTERNATIVES ON CONTROL

May 12 - November 12 2022

Curated by Luca Carruba and Eurídice Cabañes

Produced by Zaragoza City Council and the Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation, through Etopia Art and Technology Centre,

Vernissage: May 12 2022, 7:30 pm

eTopia

Avda. Ciudad de Soria, 8 50003 – Zaragoza, Spain

 

Control Alt Play proposes a journey through 24 works by national and international artists. From the interactive or playable pieces, visitors can extend their visit to the exhibition up to four hours and enjoy a multisensory experience through sight, hearing, smell and touch.The exhibition that is the result of a collaboration between Zaragoza City Council and the Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation, will be presented next Thursday at 9.30am by the Director of the Foundation, Daniel Sarasa, and its curators Eurídice Cabañes and Luca Carrubba, members of the ArsGames association. ArsGames is an international non-profit organisation that promotes and manages cultural projects related to video games and technology based on art, pedagogy, scientific research, inclusion and participation.

 

Patrick Lemiueux, Octopad, 2018

Antonin Fourneau, GhostPad, installation, 2009

About the notion of control in videogames by Luca Carruba and Eurídice Cabañes

Playing video games feeds the pleasure of learning to control complex systems in order to achieve certain predefined ends. We want the visitor to understand the different ways in which video games relate to control and how video games place players in an ambiguous tension between discipline and rebellion against the strict logic of the game algorithm. The practice of gaming, played by more than 2.7 billion players worldwide, demonstrates that there are multiple ways to coexist within this tension. With digital games it is possible to imagine new worlds and different ways of relating to each other: we can realise utopias of liberation but also stage fantasies of domination. Or we can break with all of them. The act of playing in virtual environments offers the possibility of being, at the same time, subjects and objects of control.

Credits of the exhibition
Curated by: Luca Carrubba and Eurídice Cabañes - Arsgames
Artists: Patrick Lemieux, Aida Navarro, Alejandro Cura, Mathias Klenner, Javier Laspiur, Robin Baumgarten, Foone Turing, Sofía Balbontín, Joan Lavandeira, Keiichi Matsuda, Mónica Riḱic, Román Torre, Antonin Fourneau, Galamot, Fictiorama, Luca Carrubba, Eurídice Cabañes, Maria Ibarra, Gianluca Saporito, AAA Collective, Guim Camps - Sindicado Virtual de Mods, Rabia Williams, Nidal Nijm Games, Jose Sanchez, David O'Really, Xavi Manzanares, Draw me a píxel, Arsgames.
Production Coordination: Blanca Perez Ferrer - FZC
Executive production and editing: Trazacultura
Editing: Municipal Brigades and Etopia maintenance officers.
Production assistants: Julieta Averbuj and Marga Avendaño
Exhibit Design: Kaori Project, Raquel Clemente Muñoz
Graphic Design: Buenu, Col-lectiva Gràfica
Communication: Laura Montañés- FZC
Technical coordination: Guillermo Malón-FZC
Education: Pilar Martín- FZC
Responsible for content: Elena Giner Smart City Service
Mediation: Noray Collective
Exhibition produced by Etopia Art and Technology Centre through the Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation.

LINK: Control Alt Play

EVENT: MATTHIEU CHERUBINI (FEBRUARY 4 - 17 2022, ONLINE)

36,000 feet

Digital video, color, sound, 7’36”, 2021, Switzerland 

Created by Matthieu Cherubini

February 4 - 17 2022

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

36,000 feet is a video game set aboard a commercial plane flying over Afghanistan. As a passenger returning to his country from a holiday abroad, the player can watch blockbuster movies such as American Sniper on his in-flight entertainment display or chat with other passengers. The topics of their conversations range from terrorism to the “end of France”, whether Obama is Osama and how the West is currently living under a “terrible dictatorship”. 36,000 feet was developed with Unreal Engine 4, MetaHumans and Blender. This single channel video showcases some salient conversations and is meant as a standalone piece.  

Matthieu Cherubini is a Swiss designer. After studying software engineering and media art/design, between 2012-2015, Cherubini joined a Doctorate program in the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art. His research examines the implications of artificial moral agents on mundane events and everyday lives, both today and in the near future. His projects have been exhibited at several international venues, including the Centre Pompidou (France), ZKM (Germany), the V&A Museum (United Kingdom), the Vitra Design Museum (Germany), the Mori Art Museum (Japan), the House of Electronic Arts (Switzerland), and the Nam June Paik Art Center (South Korea). Cherubini is currently working and living in Beijing, China.

 

WATCH NOW

EVENT: CHLOÉ DESMOINEAUX (NOVEMBER 26 - DECEMBER 9 2021, ONLINE)

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LIPSTRIKE

live recording of online performance

digital video (1280 x 720), sound, color, 10’, 2021 [2016], France

Created by Chloé Desmoineaux

vral.org

 

Originally created in 2016, Lipstrike is an online performance in Counter-Strike that uses an unusual device as a weapon: a lipstick. Each time the artist applies cosmetics on her lips, her gun unleashes a torrent of bullets. She broadcast her performances on Twitch, receiving thousands of snarky comments by angry gamers, which were subsequently collected and published in a limited edition booklet. Five years later, the artist has updated the original iteration for VRAL. One question remains: has anything changed since #Gamergate?

Interested in tactical media, hacking culture, and cyberfeminism, Chloé Desmoineaux creates media experiments through performances, installations, and hijacked video games. She is particularly concerned about the place given to women as well as dissident and “minority” people in the video game industry and she tries to create spaces of visibility and reflection to discuss these issues. She is a member of the Freesson Collective which focuses on supporting creative practices and electronic music. It also organizes events and workshops on digital art and culture. Co-organizer of the Art Games Demos (2017-2019) initiative with Isabelle Arvers, Desmoineaux has curated several exhibitions about the culture, aesthetics and ideology of gaming in the past decade. Her work has been exhibited internationally. She led several workshops on alternative controllers, glitch aesthetics, interactive animations, and video games. Desmoineaux lives and works in Marseille.

WATCH NOW

GAME ART: THE RUSSIANS PWNED THE 17TH BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE (MAY 22 - NOVEMBER 21 2021, VENICE, ITALY AND ONLINE)

 

 

In case you are wondering - I know you are - the answer is yes, Open—Russian Federation Pavilion is, by far, the greatest thing that ever graced the Venice Biennial of Architecture (May 22 - November 21 2021), which will end its majestic run in just a few weeks - game over is expected in less than a month from today, so you still have some time. A penetrating examination of the artistic, cultural and social role played by video games and digital environments in our society, the Russian Pavillion features not one, not two, but three outstanding artworks, specifically:

 

Sanatorium Anthropocene Retreat, a post-apocalyptic rendering of the Pavilion building itself, by artist Mikhail Maximov (don't miss the related Let's Play).

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic scenario: awaking to a deserted Russian Pavilion in Giardini, the game stages a fantasy-like performance in which the main character (the player) mutates between human and non-human entities – a robot, a virus, and a humanoid – navigating a derelict digital environment and trying to recollect what has happened.

Its Winter, 2019, a hauntological, first-player simulation of a post-Soviet suburban residential tower block during winter. This amazing sandbox game was developed by Moscow-based poet and musician Ilia Mazo and developer Alexandr Ignatov (aka sad3d).

 

 

Yuha’s Nightmares from Yuliya Kozhemyako (aka Supr). A simulation game about the nightmares that are tormenting the main character, Yuha, the virtual doppelganger of the game designer. This interactive dream disguised as a video game is set in a surreal world  full of strange things and unexpected events. The deeper part of Yua's consciousness is depicted through the "flip side" of the 3D world. The player is frequently stuck in textures, sees through mesh and wanders around at every level in «inappropriate» places. The glitches in the game are accordingly integrated to make for an intense and inusual experience.

 

For the past several months, the Russians also delivered an overwhelming amount of juicy video content, which is freely available on a variety of video streaming platforms including Vimeo, featuring, among other: Federico Campagna with Ilia Mazo, Paolo Pedercini aka Molleindustria, Keiken, and many more as part of their digital takes (DTO) program. There's enough material for three PhD dissertations, seriously.

 

Another highlight is Into the Sandbox, a three-part film program curated by Vladimir Nadein for Open exploring the interconnections between cinema, digital gaming worlds, virtual landscapes, and gamification, featuring modern masterpieces likeSwatted (2018) by Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis, How to Disappear (2020) by Total Refusal, Hotel (2014) by Benjamin Nuel, My Own Landscapes (2020) by Antoine Chapon, The Letters About the End of the World (2021) by Dina Karaman, FeatherFall (2020) by Total Refusal, Swamp City (2021) by Alice Bucknell, AIDOL (2019) by Lawrence Lek, Feel My Metaverse (2019) by Keiken + George Jasper Stone.

The 2021 Russian Pavilion is commissioned by Teresa Iarocci Mavica, director of the V-A-C Foundation; curated by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli in collaboration with curator’s team (Erica Petrillo, Giacomo Ardesio, Vladimir Nadein, Liza Dorrer, and Dasha Nasonova) and managed by Anastasia Karneeva of Smart Art.

Final score: A sheer display of Game Art super-power. A new benchmark. Actually, no: a brand new paradigm.

 

LINK: Open_Russian Pavillion at the 17th Biennale of Architecture in Venice

 

All images courtesy of The Russian Pavillion, photos by Marco Cappelletti

EVENT: HOMO LUDENS: VIDEOGAMES TO UNDERSTAND THE PRESENT (JULY 20 - OCTOBER 31 2021, MADRID, SPAIN)

Homo Ludens: Videogames to understand the present

July 20 - October 31 2021

CaixaForum Madrid

Paseo del Prado, 36
28014 Madrid, Spain

Curated by Luca Carrubba

Designed by Domestic Data Streamer studio

Produced by Fundación "La Caixa"

Opening Conference: July 20 2021

"The exhibition Homo Ludens proposes an anthropological journey through the playful dimension of human beings through video games, a cultural, aesthetic and artistic phenomenon that is essential in contemporary mass culture. It is currently estimated that more than 2.5 billion people are video game players. Starting from the centrality of the game in our lives, the exhibition's journey approaches video games in a broad and holistic sense, and addresses the role of play as a regulating practice of human activity, both in the history of culture and today. Rather than being a history of video games, the exhibition provides a basically anthropological vision, bringing together culture and technology, industry and art.

The content of the exhibition combines examples of video games with contemporary artworks by the following artists: Rasheed Abueideh, Anna Anthropy, Matteo Bittanti and the collective IOCOSE, Ricardo B. Brasilero, Daniel Canogar, Robbie Cooper, Jake Elliott, Bruno Federico, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, Roc Herms, Agustina Isidori, David Jaumandreu, Ge Jin, Tamas Kemenczy and Ben Babbitt, Josep Lago, Jorge Paris, Nadège Mazars, MesquitaFMS, Hamilton Mestizo, Juan Naharro Gimenez, Roman Pilipey, Everest Pipkin, David Ramos, Linnea Rheborg, Mario von Rickenbach and Christian Etter, Pietro Righi Riva, Monica Rikić, Skawennati, Octavi Serra, Bill Viola and USC Game Innovation Lab, and Robert Yang.

In the exhibition, themes such as the anthropological roots of the game that are transferred to the video game, its million-dollar industry, the influence of video game aesthetics in other disciplines such as art and design, identity in a world where the real coexists with the virtual, among other issues.

The exhibition invites to an interactive and participatory tour in which the viewer acts as a gamer, although without playing at any time with the video games on display. The viewer chooses the itinerary from a central square that acts as an antechamber and distribution space of the exhibition. The visitor can interact with the exhibition through a device -the Coin-, an object that allows the viewer to build his or her opinion as he or she answers a series of questions. The answers also allow a collective knowledge of the participation of all visitors. On the large screen installed in the last room of the exhibition, a community of avatars is projected, representing, in real time, the accumulated data of all the visitors to the exhibition.

In this way, the exhibition provides a new perspective on the concept of the gamer and shows a gamified world in which life and play merge and in which we are all, in one way or another, gamers. This hypothesis, based on the work of sociologist and game scholar Daniel Muriel, is reflected in the video essay "Gameworlds: the video-gamification of the real" by Luca Carrubba and Daniel Muriel, directed by LaviniaNext and produced by "La Caixa" Foundation.

The exhibition also includes a catalog (in Spanish) that presents in detail all the works installed and proposes a reflective framework for their interpretation. This publication, which I had the pleasure of thinking, coordinating and writing, also includes texts by guest authors such as Oliver Perez La Torre, Flavio Escribano, Luján Oulton, Eurídice Cabañes, Carlos Scolari and Daniel Muriel.

The exhibition will be traveling during the next  four years touring all major cities in Spain. So if you do not have time to get to Madrid you can see the exhibition soon in Barcelona, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Valencia, Palma, Tarragona, Girona." (Luca Carrubba)

LINK: Homo Ludens

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: VECTOR FESTIVAL 2020 (DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 1 2020)

VECTOR FESTIVAL 2020: AFTER GAMIFICATION

TORONTO, ON | JULY 16-19, 2020

OPEN CALL FOR ARTWORKS AND CURATORIAL PROPOSALS 

Vector Festival is an annual media arts event dedicated to showcasing experimental art works that engage critically with digital technologies.
The festival is proudly participatory and community-oriented. Hosted by InterAccess and co-curated by Katie Micak and Martin Zeilinger, Vector Festival takes place at arts venues and in public spaces across the City of Toronto.

Since its inception, Vector Festival has been innovative in its inclusion of game-based digital art alongside other new media disciplines. Continuing this focus for the 2020 edition, the festival’s curators pose a deceptively simple question: what comes after gamification?

Now that game culture and game technologies have become so pervasive in popular culture, how do experimental media artists respond critically to the rampant gamifying of everyday life? From online social interaction to digital finance, from education to military conflict, from politics and environmental issues to the ways in which humans (and machines) express themselves creatively, what comes after gamification?

The Festival will take place between July 16-19, 2020, with the flagship exhibition extended until August 22, 2020.

Please note that Vector Festival does not charge submission fees to artists applying to participate.

All artists and curators selected for participation will receive fees in accordance with the up-to-date CARFAC Fee schedule, as well as support to apply for external funding.

We invite art submissions of digital – and post-digital – works for the following festival categories:

Flagship Exhibition
Digital and post-digital art works including interactive installations, experimental game mods, sculptural work, screen-based work, sound art, etc.

Online Projects
Web-based projects and digital artworks that can be presented online, including experimental interactive and time-based digital projects.

Festival Screening
Experimental film/video/machinima works.

Performance
Performance-based proposals including chiptune, sound art, live coding, A/V performances, and telematic performances for virtual and public spaces.

Site-Specific Outdoor Screening
To be presented on two large-scale (4.88 x 8.64 m) outdoor LED screens for a public audience of all ages.

GIFs
Animated GIFs intended for presentation on public screens across Toronto.

Curatorial Submissions
This year, we also invite curators/curatorial collectives to submit proposals for machinima screenings (on a theme of your choosing). If you are considering a curatorial submission, we encourage you to contact the Vector Festival team for additional practical details.

Deadline: February 01, 2020

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

Please submit the following details using our online application form:

• Project description (approximately 300 words)
• Documentation (maximum of five images, and/or link to audio/video documentation)
• Description of technical requirements (please outline materials provided by the artist and materials required from the exhibiting venue)
• Artist biography (approximately 100 words)
• Please indicate if your work has a thematic, conceptual, or historical connection to Toronto, or if you have a biographic connection to the Greater Toronto Area
• Current CV

If you have questions about submitting your application please contact [email protected].

About Vector Festival
Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing experimental media art practice. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, and workshops, Vector Festival acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice. Vector Festival was founded in 2013 as the “Vector Game Art & New Media Festival” by an independent group of artists and curators: Skot Deeming, Clint Enns, Christine Kim, and Katie Micak, who were later joined by Diana Poulsen and Martin Zeilinger. In 2015 Vector Festival announced that longtime presenting partner, InterAccess, would be taking over responsibility for the festival as part of its regular programming.

About InterAccess
Founded in 1983, InterAccess is a non-profit gallery, educational facility, production studio, and festival dedicated to emerging practices in art and technology. Our programs support art forms that integrate technology, fostering and supporting the full cycle of art and artistic practice through education, production, and exhibition. InterAccess is regarded as a preeminent Canadian arts and technology centre.

For more information contact:
Festival Curators, Katie Micak and Martin Zeilinger
[email protected]

Follow us for updates!
facebook.com/VectorFestivalTO
twitter.com/VectorFestival
instagram.com/interaccessto

LINK: VECTOR FESTIVAL

GAME ART: ANDY HUGHES' PLASTIC SCOOP (2019)

Andy Hughes' monumental Plastic Scoop examines the relationship between virtual environments and ecological issues though the filter of GTA V. Created using the Rockstar Editor, Plastic Coop mixes images from the videogame with found footage and archival moving image. The video opens with the soothing atmospheres of an ocean at sunset, but the voiceover - extolling the merits of nuclear weapons and plastic ("plastic... plastic... plastic...") - and rockets penetrating the surface soon disrupt the tranquility. Suddenly, an astronaut emerges from the water...

Plastic Scoop draws on contemporary narratives to express the ways in which our anxiety and fears about ocean pollution, plastic waste and global heating are presented. The film features gleaned archival moving image material and cinema footage from early ocean exploration, including nasa sound recordings with his own created and directed in-game Grand Theft Auto machinima. Working in cooperation with Dr Mandy Bloomfield and the English faculty students at the University of Plymouth through discussion and workshops the film was co-developed through the exchange of ideas and concepts.

Hughes’ photographic work explores the littoral zone and the politics of waste. In 2013 he traveled to Alaska, invited as part of an international team of artists and scientists to work on the project Gyre: The Plastic Ocean. This project was a world first and unique project that explored the integration of science and art to document and interpret the issue of plastic and human waste in the marine and coastal environment. 

LINK: Andy Hughes (All images and video courtesy of the Artist)