GAMESCENES

EVENT: FIRAS SHEHADEH (SEPTEMBER 7 - 21 2023, ONLINE)

Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal

Single-channel video (color, sound, narrator: Mamusu Kallon), 14’ 19”, 2023, Palestine

Created by Firas Shehadeh

Originally commissioned by Singapore Art Museum

 

Part of Shehadeh’s ongoing research into video games and Palestinian youth culture, Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal combines found-footage of Twitch streamers and custom game mods for Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games, 2013). Unpacking video game mods as a form of contemporary archive — and therefore digitizing historic and contemporary architectural sites in addition to seemingly ubiquitous objects — the artwork proposes Los Santos, a virtual replica of Los Angeles, as the biblical “land of milk and honey”.

Firas Shehadeh is a Palestinian artist and researcher exploring issues of identity, meaning, and aesthetics in the digital age. Currently based in Vienna, his interdisciplinary practice engages with post-colonial effects, technology, and history through the lens of worldbuilding and internet culture. Shehadeh holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he is currently a PhD candidate. His education also includes studies in conceptual art, video, and architecture in Vienna, Barcelona, and Amman. Investigating topics like colonial legacies, memory, and belonging, Shehadeh creates speculative narratives that reveal unseen structures and realities. His research-focused practice utilizes and subverts the visual languages of new media, examining how technology transforms society’s relationship with knowledge and power. His work, which has been exhibited internationally, offers a critical perspective on the role of the internet and digital imaging in shaping contemporary identities, histories, and ways of world-making.

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MOD: 2GIRLS1COMP'S F*** THE POLICY (2023)

The rumors are true. The elusive collective 2girls1comp strikes back with a new mod for Grand Theft Auto V that makes the police read the player's rights - that is, Rockstar Games' End User License Agreement (EULA)-  when their avatars are being actively sought by the cops. We can't think of a more punitive measure.

Download the mod here and start informing your best friends about this very important policy because they might be infringing it without even knowing it (imagine that!).

Live life at its fullest potential: embrace modding. 

Last but not least, if you enjoy this kind of tactical subversion via popular culture, we strongly recommend Robert Sikoryak's masterful graphic novel Terms and Conditions.

previously, by 2girls1comp: Every Thing, Towards and Philosophy of the Photo Daddy and The GTA V Piano of the Dead. 

LINK: F*** The policy

MOD: 2GIRLS1COMP'S EVERY THING (2023)

Developed by the elusive collective 2girls1comp - a tragic pun on the infamous 2girls1cup meme - "Every Thing" is a modification for Grand Theft Auto V "that sequentially spawns every object from the game's prop database until the program ultimately crashes under the weight of every thing". Basically, it's a reverse Katamari Damacy. The antithesis of Jenga. Also: this Every Thing is not to be confused with David O'Reilly's Everything. The video above shows Every Thing in action and it's a trip.

 

 

As usual, 2girls1comp documented the process with a series of making-of videos. Here are two:

 

 

You may remember 2girls1comp's previous exploits, including the hilarious Towards a Philosophy of the Photodaddy, a mod inspired by Vilém Flusser and boomer photographers, and the equally meta Piano of the Dead, all released in 2023.

 

For the record, users of GTA5-Mods are going insane in the membrane. Here are some comments: "This must be most weird mod in the site :D", "Contemporary Art", "One must be fully drowned in LSD to make such a script." and "I want to smoke what you're smoking".

 

Try Every Thing at our own risk and do share your videos with us.

 

P.S: We're eagerly awaiting the collective's upcoming project F** THE POLICY.

 

LINK: 2girls1comp

EVENT: HUGO ARCIER (JULY 14 - 27 2023, ONLINE)

Ghost City

originally, two-channel video installation, 22’ (loop), 2016, France

hereby presented as a single channel video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 22’, 2023, France

Created by Hugo Arcier

WORLD PREMIERE

 

Ghost City, an immersive installation inspired by Lucretius’s De rerum natura, blurs the boundaries between reality and virtuality, presenting a captivating reinterpretation of Los Santos, the iconic setting of Grand Theft Auto V. With a masterful blend of architectural and graphic elements, the viewer is immersed in a hauntingly desolate landscape, devoid of human presence. As the camera explores this evocative environment, the city’s structures fade away as if consumed by an invisible force. Through the juxtaposition of architectural details, the deliberate removal of living presence, and the render-like aesthetics, Ghost City invites viewers to contemplate the interplay of memory, the digital domain and the epistemological foundations that shape our perception of the world. 

Hugo Arcier transcends the conventional boundaries of artistic practice, positioning himself as an “artist in a digital world.” Harnessing the expansive potential of 3D computer graphics, Arcier channels his creative vision into a diverse range of mediums, seamlessly weaving together videos, prints, and sculptures. While his initial foray into the artistic realm was through the realm of special effects for renowned feature filmmakers such as Roman Polanski, Alain Resnais, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, it is through this trajectory that he cultivated an unparalleled mastery of digital tools, particularly in the realm of 3D graphic imagery. Arcier’s artistic prowess has garnered global acclaim, with his works showcased in prestigious international festivals, including Elektra, Videoformes, and Némo. His creative explorations have further permeated the hallowed walls of Magda Danysz and Plateforme Paris, alongside art venues like the New Museum and the New Media Art Center of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. Notably, Arcier’s distinctive artistic voice has resonated across the global art landscape, finding a home in revered institutions like Le Cube, Okayama Art Center, and the iconic Palais de Tokyo. He lives and works in Paris.

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EVEN: OPEN SYSTEMS 1_OPEN WORLDS (MAY 4 - AUGUST 10 2023, SINGAPORE, ONLINE)

Open Systems 1_Open Worlds
May 4–August 10, 2023

Curated by Duncan Bass

curatorial text

Press release

Singapore Art Museum (SAM) launches Open Systems (OS), its first dedicated initiative exploring technology and virtual spaces as sites for exhibition and art production, focused on the examination of the impacts of contemporary digital culture on creative expression. OS presents online exhibitions, interventions and virtual programmes where the sites of their production—video games, creative code, the browser—serve as the locus for both artistic expression and inquiry.

From May 4 to August 10, 2023, audiences are invited to reimagine the metaverse through Open Systems 1_Open Worlds (OS1) at opensystems.sg, a browser-based art experience exploring the dynamics between real and virtual realms. Bringing together artists and thinkers who imagine scenarios challenging logics of enclosure, privatisation, and artificial scarcity imposed on virtual realms, OS1 maps the inequities that transfer between lived and digital realms, positing that video games, game engines and virtual environments may function as sites to rehearse alternative and novel modes of social, political, and spatial organisation.

Unfolding across six thematic chapters fortnightly, the artworks presented in OS1 seek to reframe virtual spaces as sites for practicing alternative modes of organisation within society, from the shared reality of global financial systems and major cities to the multiplicity of personal interactions and individual expression. As the boundaries between real and virtual spaces continue to degrade—another opening of worlds—interventions in virtual realities increasingly reflect upon our physical realities, for worse and for better. OS1opens possibilities of reimagining our shared spaces, investigating a world that is no longer a niche pastime.

OS1.1_Virtual Capital Available 4–17 May 2023

Alice Bucknell, Lawrence Lek, and Bahar Noorizadeh, Rudá Babau & Waste Paper Opera (Klara Kofen, James Oldham, Gary Zhexi Zhang, Anna Palmer)

Through satirical storytelling and science-fiction narratives, Virtual Capital demonstrates how virtual cultures simultaneously reflect and react to tangible impacts on real, lived experiences.

OS1.2_WoW, Unite! Available 18–31 May 2023

Cat Bluemke, Joshua Citarella & Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman, and Mario Mu

Exploring video games as unexpected sites for collective action and organisation, WoW, Unite! considers labour rights issues, exploitation, and organisational conditions in the video game industry.

OS1.3_Landscapes of the Political Imaginary Available 1–14 Jun 2023

Zheng Mahler, Shabtai Pinchevsky, and Firas Shehadeh

Through the concept of the nation-state as constructed by both physical environments and the collective imagination, viewers are invited to reassess their understanding of video games in Landscapes of the Political Imaginary and the underlying assumptions that are built into their virtual landscapes.

OS1.4_Unrealpolitik Available 15–28 Jun 2023

Yeyoon Avis Ann & George Chua, Grayson Earle, and Clemens von Wedemeyer

Focusing on the ubiquitous nature of violence in video games, Unrealpolitikunpacks the societal tensions and assumed neutrality of ideologies embedded in gaming software while highlighting the potential for intervention and political resistance in gamified environments.

OS1.5_Dematerialised Zones Available 29 Jun–12 Jul 2023

Antoine Chapon, Hayoun Kwon, and Total Refusal

Subverting stereotypical perceptions of violence often associated with video games by expanding on sites of conflict as liminal spaces, Dematerialised Zones illustrates how virtual spaces can serve as sites of healing.

OS1.6_Intimate Encounters Available 13–26 Jul 2023

Kara Güt, Sara Sadik, and Xáfier Yap

Intimate Encounters reflects on notions of nurturing one’s identity and intimacy within virtual spaces by drawing on old-school aesthetics, comparing character development in role-playing games to processes of personal identity construction.

A series of accompanying programmes featuring artists and collaborators titled OS Broadcasts will be hosted on the popular live-streaming platform, Twitch, and broadcasts of prior programmes can also be found on the Open Systems platform.

 

LINK: OPEN SYSTEMS

GAME ART: YELTSIN PENADO'S GTA MODS (2021)

Yeltsin Penado, Portland Harbor, GTA 3 Mod, 2021

Yeltsin Penado, Yacht, GTA 3 Mod, 2021

GTA mods (2021) by Yeltsin Penado is

"A series of interactive modifications made for Grand Theft Auto's 3D Universe. The Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise has developed a theme and lore which spans an array of titles: GTA: 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas; The settings of GTA games are fictional parodies of American cities, through the lens of a thematic snapshot in time. This series of works utilizes an experimental software that opens the GTA game files which are loaded into a computer's memory; this allows anyone to use GTA 3D models, assets and textures to create their own landscape using the game as their empty canvas. The modifications were produced on a software named: MEd v0.32 which allows you to change environmental elements within the video game. Liberty City is a rendition of New York, Vice City is a rendition of Miami, and San Andreas is intended to span a whole state comprised of three major cities and regions: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. These landscapes are characterized by American stereotypes surrounding the local culture, monuments, distribution of wealth, proliferation of crime, corruption, false idols, excess, waste, and lawlessness. Through modding GTA, our blank canvas reveals methods of manipulation through simulating a narrative through an unreal setting." (Yeltsin Penado)

Yeltsin Penado is Salvadoran-American Artist Born 1990 in Los Angeles, California. He studied Fine Arts and Community Arts Engagement at Otis College of Art and Design. Pen ado uses emerging and experimental software and technology to produce audio and video narratives. Yeltsin got into modding by researching open-source solutions to 3D Animation. This prompted him to research mods and machinima and take a closer look into why people decide to modify video games. He draws inspirations from Warren Spector’s: Game Manifesto, and publications like The Machinima Reader and theoretical writings from Erik Champion.

LINK: Yeltsin Penado (all images courtesy of the artist)

LINK: Penado on modding

EVENT: WORLDBUILDING: VIDEO GAMES AND ART IN THE DIGITAL ERA (JUNE 10 2023 - JAN 15 2024, METZ, FRANCE)

Theo Triantafyllidis, Pastoral, 2019

 

Worldbuilding: Video Games And Art In The Digital Era

Centre Pompidou-Metz
1 Parvis des Droits de l'Homme
57020 Metz
France

Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director at the Serpentine Gallery, London

press release

Certainly, this exhibit focuses on an activity worth reckoning with. In 2022, 3.03 billion people—more than a third of the world’s population—played video games. As Hans-Ulrich Obrist asserts, this hobby has become “the biggest mass phenomenon of our time. Many people spend hours every day in a parallel world and live a multitude of different lives. Video games are to the twenty-first century what movies were to the twentieth century and novels to the nineteenth century”. Around a hundred years ago, in his book Homo Ludens, the historian Johan Huizinga theorized that play is a basic drive of humankind. Bringing people together in new ways, he contends, play is the source of culture.

More recently, in his book Games: Agency as Art, C. Thi Nguyen argues that games, particularly video games, are a distinct type of art which “let us experience forms of agency we might not have discovered on our own”. As such, gaming has the potential to unleash powerful psychic forces. Video games have proven to be an effective tool for the development of training and strategy. Indeed, scientists have made good use of video games simulating biological systems to speculate on the possible origins and destination of life. Accordingly, video games as a digital art form offer a means for an existential quest beyond the embodied physical world and into the multiverse. By their very nature, they open the potential to imagine and build new worlds.

Several of the featured artists in the exhibit began making work that refers to video games as early as the 1980s while most of the others were just born around that time. For the works in this show, artists have addressed video games in various ways. Some have adapted their themes and visual style to make videos. Others have modified, hacked, and subverted existing video games. Finally, some have created their own video games. As Hans-Ulrich Obrist writes, “traditionally, video games were created by a small and insular group of people…producing games with a very limited perspective. This is now changing rapidly… Artists are increasingly developing the technical ability to create [their own] virtual worlds of diversity and inclusion”. Through these means, the artists are taking this format beyond pure entertainment value to probe social, political, and aesthetic questions. While video games have been the topic of numerous exhibitions in recent years, most of these highlighted their legitimacy as an artistic medium or focused on aspects of “game art”.

Worldbuilding is the first transgenerational, multinational show of this scope to examine how contemporary artists are appropriating the aesthetics and technology of gaming as their chosen form of expression. In so doing, this exhibit presents a plurality of voices and a multitude of perspectives.

With works by Peggy Ahwesh, Rebecca Allen, Cory Arcangel, Ed Atkins, Meriem Benanni, David Blandy & Larry Achiampong, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Ian Cheng, Cao Fei, Basmah Felemban, Ed Fornieles, Sarah Friend, Kim Heecheon, Institute of Queer Ecology, Rindon Johnson, Keiken, Lawrence Lek, Gabriel Massan, Lual Mayen, Sondra Perry, Jacolby Satterwhite, Frances Stark, Sturtevant, Theo Triantafyllidis, Suzanne Treister, Angela Washko, Lu Yang, among others.

LINK: Worldbuilding

See also

EVENT: SIMONETTA FADDA (MARCH 31 - APRIL 13 2023, ONLINE)

GAME OVER

One channel video (SD, 676x540), color, sound, 4’ 27”, 2002 Italy

Created by Simonetta Fadda

March 13 - April 13 2023

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

Driving at night in the video game-like suburban French city of Enghien Les Bains can be an exciting or demoralizing experience, depending on the driver or, perhaps, on the filmmaker. Simonetta Fadda’s carscapes are both delirious and hyper-real, suggesting a toxic convergence of realities.

Born in Savona, Simonetta Fadda is an artist, educator, essayist, and translator. Her teaching activities include the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin and Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan. Since the Eighties, she has been working with video art. Her artworks are featured in public and private collections in Italy and in Europe. She participated in major international events such as Movimenta – Biennale de l’image en mouvement, projet Mondes Flottants: Grandes Images, Nice, France (2017) and Parallel Program of the 13th Istanbul Biennial, Institut Français d’Istanbul, Istanbul (2013). In Italy she was featured, among others, at Festival del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro, Pesaro – Italy (in We Want Cinema: cinema e video di ricerca 2018, and in Satellite 2016) and Bergamo Film Meeting, Bergamo – Italy (2010). A prolific writer and critic, Fadda is the author of the seminal Definition zero: origins of video art between politics and communication (Costa & Nolan, 1999), the first Italian study on video as a medium of art and political activism, which was reprinted in an expanded format in 2017 by Meltemi Edizioni. In 2020, Franco Angeli published her new book, Media and art. She also translated into Italian and edited Gene Youngblood’s seminal book Expanded Cinema.

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GAME ART: JULIUS HOFMANN'S VIDEO GAME-INSPIRED PAINTINGS

Glimpse into the surrealist universe of Julius Hofmann, a painter hailing from Göttingen, whose oeuvre encapsulates an unmistakable CGI finesse reminiscent of the pre-programmed, prescribed, predefined existence of genetic NPCs, that is, non-playable characters. Hofmann's geometrically abstracted forms invoke a sophisticated interplay of spatial depth, whilst his somber, earthy palette enlivened by rare eruptions of shocking pink and radiant purple transports the viewer into a realm of retro-futurism reminiscent of early video games. Hofmann's DIY aesthetic and glitch-infused visuals exude a spellbinding vitality, reflecting the dystopian societies imagined in popular games such as Grand Theft Auto. In his works, we witness a nuclear reactors exploding, amazons with sharp blades and RPG-like weapons, cops and robbers. Through his paintings, Hofmann challenges us to question the very core of the society we live in, highlighting the complexities of gaming's pervasive influence on contemporary aesthetics and the real meaning of a gamified life.

Julius Hofmann Oahh,Acrylic on canvas 74 4/5 × 74 4/5 in | 190 × 190 cm, 2022

Julius Hofmann, Escort, Acrylic on canvas 33 1/10 × 23 1/5 in | 84 × 59 cm, 

Julius Hofmann, Will of the Gods is Great Power - Galerie Kleindienst, installation shots, 2022

Julius Hofmann, Vertigini, Acrylic on linen 35 2/5 × 51 1/5 × 1 3/5 in | 90 × 130 × 4 cm, 2022

LINK: Julius Hofmann

GAME ART: MATEUSZ SARZYNSKI'S GAME PAINTINGS

If you follow GameScenes, you probably know that I am fascinated by artists who paint video games, that is, incorporate game aesthetics, tropes, or interfaces, in their artworks. The canvas an an ersatz screen. Some paint screenshots, while other appropriate and recontextualize game motifs and other elements within their compositions. This is why I'm sharing a handful of works by Polish artist Mateusz Sarzynski, whose paintings are often inspired by video games such as Grand Theft Auto V or first-person shooters, which he considers they byproduct of the inner violence and exploitation of capitalism.

Mateusz Sarzynski – Untitled 17, 2022 – Oil on canvas

Mateusz Sarzynski (Biłgoraj, Poland 1990) graduated from the Architecture Department of the Cracow University of Technology and then in graphic design from the University of Fine Arts, also in Cracow. During his artistic career, he has worked in a variety of media, including painting, tattooing, and graphic design.

LINK: Mateusz Sarzynski (Instagram link)