Great video essay on game photography by eurothug4000, which quotes, among other things Eva and Franco Mattes's 13 Most Beautiful Avatarsand Leo Sang's Virtual Reality Photography project which was featured in the TRAVELOGUE exhibition in 2016.
LINK: The Art of Video game Photography (Via Critical Distance)
SCRNPRNT was founded by twins Milan and Neilson to work with video game engines and virtual worlds to form new connections between the screen and the self. Their work has shown internationally at festivals such as A MAZE, Now Play This, VIFF, Independent Games Festival, IndieCade, and Ludicious.
LINK: SCRNPRNT
Edwin Lo
Crucifixion and Epiphany
October 2 - October 15
VRAL
Introduced by Luca Miranda
vral.org
A follow up to Those Who Do Not Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It (2020) and The Rupture of Promised Land (Or We Can Never Get There) (2020), Crucifixion and Epiphany is a commentary on religious iconography through the lenses of video games and archival materials. Using the format of desktop documentary, Lo disrupts the conventional dichotomies – real vs. simulacral, fiction vs. fantasy – to visually articulate the “downfall of mankind” narrative. Following Kevin B. Lee’s dictum that desktop cinema has cinematic aspirations but operates as a blank canvas, Lo’s screen performance is a captivating and multi-layered visual experience. Crucifixion and Epiphany is a creative (re)mix of multiple sources, a hybrid of machinima, desktop cinema, and archival footage. A study in media res, this work is the outcome of an experimental practice that resembles the vernacular obsession for narrativizing the so-called lore of popular fantasy video games on YouTube and Twitch.
Edwin Lo is an artist and researcher working with sound in various contexts and media such as performance, text, recording, video, installation and video games. Lo received a Master of Arts from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His work was exhibited in several countries, including Hong Kong, United States, Berlin, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Paris, Brazil, Switzerland, Sweden, and Shanghai. His work was presented by the Goethe-Institut and Para/site in Hong Kong, the Tokyo Arts and Space, the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, Loop in Barcelona and Meinblau Projektraum in Berlin. His artist residencies include China, Germany, Japan. Lo lives and works in Hong Kong.
the wulf. is an experimental collective featuring Lil' Jürg Frey, Liam Mooney (a.k.a. lmoo, 266437144916648607844), a composer, performer, and instrument maker based in Los Angeles and Isaac Schanklerand. Among other things, they make experimental music with video games. In their latest performance, they reimagined and reorchestrated the music of Erik Satie within the world of Nintendo's Super Mario Maker 2.
Here they are making music in Animal Crossing: New Horizon:
Also check out Liam Mooney's SELECTED HOT GARBAGE, a suite of noisy musical landscapes constructed within the world of Nintendo's Super Mario Maker 2.
Finally, check out these cool music instruments:
The latest project by avantgarde game collective Outlands - i.e. Gabriel Helfenstein and Tristan Neu - is You Are Weak, "a game about community and change in a fractured world.", meant to be played in one sitting. The game is available for Windows.
LINK: You Are Weak
THOMAS WEBB
EXERCISE IN HOPELESS NOSTALGIA – WORLD WIDE WEBB
14 August 2020 – 14 August 2021
EXERCISE IN HOPELESS NOSTALGIA is part of the exhibition series THE ARTIST IS ONLINE, curated by Anika Meier and Johann König, which focuses on art in the digital age. The exhibition can be experienced via the app KÖNIG GALERIE and the following link: https://webb.game/ There's an ad hoc app for the iPhone
Thomas Webb is an artist, hacker and coder. His artworks question systems, social media and technology, identifying the consequences of our daily dependence on software and hardware. He harnesses electrical engineering and computer programming to create AI, deep learning, microelectronics and real-time data as mediums. He juxtaposes a reflection on technology and contemporary life to explore the social dynamics of the digital age.
The latest project by Rochester-based artist and curator Nilson Carroll is titled Untitled (Dragon Warrior glitches),
an evolving HTML hypertext collection of captured handmade hex glitches from the NES titles Dragon Warrior II, III, and IV paired with prose poems that explore game mechanics, narratives, and genre legacies, queering each through the glitch process. Themes questioned include heteronormativity, binary thinking, colonization, and the neoliberal values inherent in these and all games’ mechanics and goals. Not only are the games’ digital/physical boundaries broken and expanded, but the implied ones, too. The myth of the hero is shattered, the protagonist finally made vulnerable
The artwork was created as part of Carroll's digital art residence with Welcome to my Homepage, and it is the result of a month long exploration of Dragon Warrior's glitches.
PLAY SOCIETIES: WOLVES, LYNX AND ANT
(JUNE 16–SEPTEMBER 9, 2020, HYUNDAI MOTORSTUDIO BEIJING, BEIJING, CHINA )
Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing
Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, E-1, 798 Road
798 Art Zone, Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District
100015 Beijing, China
Hours: Monday–Sunday 10am–7:30pm
motorstudio.hyundai.com.cn
T +86 10 5394 5200
Curator: Chen Min & Zhang Yehong (Winner of "Creativity" Hyundai Blue Prize 2019)
Artists: Angela Washko, Chen Baoyang, Chen Xin & Huang Yuwen, Lao Jiahui, Loopntale, Molleindustria, Nicky Case, Pied la biche, Tang Chao, Yao Qingmei, Zhang Wenxin, Zhao Bang, Zheng Da, Zhou Pengan
The award-winning exhibition of the 2019 Hyundai Blue Prize—Play societies: wolves, lynx and ants had its grand opening on June 16, 2020 in the Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing. This exhibition is curated together by Chen Min & Zhang Yehong, who won the “Creativity” prize in the 2019 Hyundai Blue Prize .
Since its establishment in 2017, the Hyundai Blue Prize, hosted by Hyundai Motor Company, has always been pursuing the vision of cross-border sharing, national innovation and enjoying life. It sparks a public discussion on art, innovation and technology, while bringing the public closer to the emerging art ecology. The Hyundai Blue Prize serves as a foothold for outstanding young curators to step onto the world stage and stands as a vanguard of supporting young curators in China.
The exhibition aims to take audiences on a journey from the time when personal computers became ubiquitous, through the beginning of the Internet in the 1990s to the current era of smart devices, thereby exploring the social interaction/social intelligence problems faced by individuals. The exhibition uses play as a behavior and a medium, asking whether we can imagine a kind of "pan-intelligence" that combines human, animal and artificial intelligences.
The two curators said, “Playing is an instinctive act for animals and humans alike, and is the method as well as the medium of this exhibition. As Johan Huizinga once wrote, play predates culture and society; civilization arises in and as play. But what we have seen today is screens reducing desires into symbols and signs, game rules taking the place of intuition, data replacing the individuals, and algorithms eliminating chance. By constantly revising and iterating the rules inherent in collective plays, artists hope to introduce an incalculable quality to different communities and society overall, so that play and games will no longer be dominated by rules of competition and conflict, but filled with purer liquidity and spontaneity. At the same time, play is undoubtedly sociable; even “players” in the “console games” can talk to the creator (the game designer) through the game’s interface. Group plays help humans to explore the rules of how the world works, learn from each other and achieve unity through group collaboration.”
The three animals—wolves, lynx and ants—which symbolically represent the human society are shown through the different developmental stages of media technology, revealing the contradictions between the interconnected society and individuals. Meanwhile, “superhighway,” “refuge island,” and “arcade” are taken as cues for the overall design of the space. The exhibition is composed of artworks by 14 artists and game designers both from mainland China and abroad, and uses different interpretative forms, such as video art, paper painting, multimedia interactive installations, video games and other forms of interaction to show the concept of “play.”
Cornelia Schneider, the head of Global Experiential Marketing, mentioned “This exhibition will display many artworks with deep interaction and collective participation among audiences who can play, watch, or even do both simultaneously to experience the interactive electronic games designed by the artists.”
Meanwhile, to control the number of visitors attending the offline exhibition amid current travel restriction, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing has launched a virtual reality exhibition that overcomes the limitations of time and space. (press release)
LINK: Play Societies
If you have not had the chance to check out GAME PLAY VIDEO GAME CULTURE, you have until August 30. This excellent exhibition organized by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Spain (an extended adaptation of Gameplay. The Next Level, designed by and first presented at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe) and curated by Jérôme Nguyen and Óliver Pérez Latorre is accompanied by an array of events, workshops, videos, and conversations round the notion of games, art, politics, and identity. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the new version of the exhibition GAMEPLAY replaced the in situ interactives with original audiovisual contents which can be accessed online. The interactive part of the project, the selection of games, new activities, debates and workshops can be found here.
The available online games include:
Photo by Marti Berenguer, (c) CCCB, 2019
Although some events did raise some eyebrows - like the involvement of the Emperor of Midcult himself, Alessandro Baricco - most are terrific, like this conversation between Mary Flanagan and José Louis de Vicente, titled "New Perspectives on Digital Leisure"
Also check out the inevitable film/game connection here.
LINK: GAMEPLAY