GAMESCENES

GAME ART: BRENTON SMITH'S STOP FOR A MOMENT (MARCH 7 - 17 2019, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA)

Brenton Alexander Smith, Stop for a moment, machinima, 4' 42", color, sound, 2019

BRENTON ALEXANDER SMITH

STOP FOR A MOMENT

SCRATCH ARTSPACE

67 Sydenham Road Marrickville NSW 2204

Sydney, Australia

John Chamberlain meets the digital uncanny. In Brenton Smith's solo show at SCRATCH ARTSPACE in Sydney, Australia, stop for a moment, James Graham Ballard, video games, and automobiles collide and collude to create situations that appear both familiar and bizarre. Smith gives machinima a third dimension using crushed automobile parts welded together and electronic parts to bring them to simulated life. The automobiles' viscera are on display, both on the screen and in the gallery space. Both virtual and physical, these organic/mechanic/machinic creatures know and crashforms evoke Shinya Tsukamoto's cyborgian entities.

Stop for a Moment underpins an endeavour to explore the potential for nonhuman entities to elicit an affect in human viewers. The car accident is a central theme using the driving simulator video game BeamNg.drive, known for its ability to realistically simulate car crashes. By pushing the limits of what the game engine allows, Brenton Alexander Smith forces the game into a crash scenario that would be impossible in the real world producing organic-chaotic shapes in response to the extreme input, coupled with strange twitching movements that afford them a sense of nonhuman liveliness referred to as ‘crashforms’. The title of the show invites the viewer to not only take a moment to view the work but to take a break from the pressure to perform in today’s technologically driven society. Like the crashform, it invites the viewer to allow a certain vulnerability for just a little while.

Brenton Alexander Smith’s practice emerged from an interest in the relationship between humans and machines. His work explores the point of connection and disconnection between humans and the artificial in the cycle of technological renewal. He frequently draws from abandoned and damaged technical artifacts, such as crashed cars, to create works that seek to elicit an affective response in the viewer. Many of his works aim to arouse feelings of sympathy for broken or discarded machines. Smith’s practice takes form in a variety of media. In several works, the residue of car accidents acts as a sculptural material that echoes the organic through mechanical forms. These sculptures are part relic and part creature, inert yet imbued with a faint sense of liveliness. Smith graduated from the Sydney College of the Arts with honours in 2014. Since then, he completed an artist residency in Iceland, where he held his first solo exhibition at the Akureyri Art Museum. The same year Smith received the Freedman Foundation Travelling scholarship. He is currently working on an MFA at UNSW Art and Design in Sydney.

LINK: Brenton Alexander Smith (All images and videos (c) Brenton Alexander Smith)

GAME ART: CORY ARCANGEL'S DUNK (2017)

Cory Arcangel “Verticals” installation view at Galerie Thaddeus Ropac, Salzburg, 2019.  Courtesy: Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, London · Paris · Salzburg. Photo: Ulrich Ghezzi. © Cory Arcangel

Cory Arcangel's DUNK (2017) is a laser animation that depicts the motions of a stylised basketball player from an NBA video game throwing a ball into the basket. The artist drew the animation by hand into a computer using a Wacom tablet. It is projected onto the wall using a Kvant Laser projector Clubmax 800. The slam dunk represents both an aesthetic and performative gesture and an ideological motif of America's neo imperialism.

LINK: Cory Arcangel

EVENT: VACATION SPOT IN GENT (BACK TO ROME) (FEB 14- 21 2019, ROME, ITALY)

Fcderica Di Pietroantonio

VACATION SPOT IN GENT (BACK TO ROME)

February 14-21 2019

 

RUFA Space

Via Degli Ausoni, 7

Rome Italy

 

Vacation spot in Gent is an attempt to dismantle the perceived safety we experience in our daily lives and a search for meaning in traveling. The project also questions the role of painting and the artist’s function in society. Developed with EA's The Sims and shared via Instagram, Vacation spot in Gent is an ongoing dialogue between Rome, her hometown, and Ghent, in Belgium, where she spent four months, organizing play dates and meetings in order to collaborate with local artists and expand her project, both in real life and in the virtual realm. After the first stage in Ghent, the second takes place in Rome between February 14 and 21. For the last round, in March, she will return to Gouvernement Atelier.

Rome-based Federica Di Pietrantonio is trained as a painter and temporarily moved to Ghent for further investigation of her thesis project. While always on the verge of virtual reality, her artistic research focuses on the chiasm between the virtual world and tangible reality and evokes painting’s classic iconography. She experiments with different media such as painting and installation art, oscillating between virtual worlds and web design. 

LINK: Federica di Pietroantonio

EVENT: DIGITAL CITIZEN - THE PRECARIOUS SUBJECT (JAN 24 - JUNE 16 2019, NEWCASTLE, ENGLAND)

DIGITAL CITIZEN - THE PRECARIOUS SUBJECT

24 January – 16 June 2019

Curated by Alessandro Vincentelli

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

S Shore Rd, Gateshead NE8 3BA

Newcastle, England

Featured artists: 

James Bridle/Alan Butler/Laura Grace Ford/ Peter Hanmer/Daniela Ortiz/Jonas Staal/Kate Stonehill/Petra Szemán/They Are Here/Alan Warburton

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Basically, the first unmissable Game Art exhibition of 2019, featuring the astounding On Exactitude in Science by Alan Butler and Petra Szeman's The world is contained within the reach of the Yamanote Line among others...

This exhibition draws on the imagination of contemporary artists to inspire a conversation on ideas of citizenship in the digital age. We are said to live in the era of ‘fake news’ – online propaganda which significantly endangers democracy.

Sophisticated AI and CGI technologies have irreversibly blurred the distinction between reality and simulation. We voluntarily subject ourselves to constant surveillance of our online presence, while enjoying the apparent anonymity which grants us the illusion of freedom and encourages the upsurge of internet trolling.

In the time of unprecedented speed of information circulation which has weakened the importance and integrity of the public space, have we lost the ability for informed political action? Are we still able to form a community or has the fragmentation of the present moment deprived us of the capacity of being active enabled citizens? Digital Citizen - The Precarious Subject investigates new possibilities of digital tools and networks for rethinking historical forms of nationalisms and citizenship.

The exhibition revels in digital avatars, game environments and ‘total worlds’ that open up new spaces for creation and fluid gender identities. It asks the question of whether it is still possible to foster new transnational forms of togetherness and activism in the digital realm.

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Alan Butler, On Exactitude in Science, 2017. Two-screen HD video, 5.1 audio. Koyaanisqatsi (© IRE 1983, All Rights Reserved) Courtesy of Godfrey Reggio and the Institute for Regional Education.

Petra Szeman, The world is contained within the reach of the Yamanote Line (2018), still from video

Alan Warburton, Trollolololologram, 2019 Lenticular print. Courtesy the artist.

LINK: DIGITAL CITIZEN - THE PRECARIOUS SUBJECT

Digital Citizen – The Precarious Subject installation view. BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. Photo: Colin Davison © 2019 BALTIC

GAME ART: HANNAH PIPER BURNS'S INTERIOR STROLL (2016)

Interior Stroll is a mixed-media interactive installation created with Unity "designed to collapse physical space and memory space, body and consciousness. More walking meditation than walking sim, it is set in a symbolic cavespace shaped by the psychic runoff from years of malignant intimacy". The artist has created an innovative interface ​featuring a silicon toy + silicon putty that reminds me of Cronenberg's gamepod in eXistenz.

 

A second controller manages the player's gaze. It's an appropriated trackball, cyberskin toy, and a chalcopyrite clitorissphere:

Hannah Piper Burns is a multidisciplinary time-based artist based in Portland, Oregon, She has spent the better part of a decade actively and collaboratively organizing art events, curating exhibitions and programming experimental media. In 2015 she co-founded Compliance Division, a project space operating out of her home in Portland, OR. Recently, she has exhibited work at Tritriangle in Chicago, IL, Reed College in Portland, OR, Indie Bits in Columbia, SC and online at ACRETV.org.

LINK: Hannah Piper Burns (photos: Courtesy of Hannah Piper Burns)

GAME ART: MATT PYKE'S EMERGENCE (2018)

Emergence is an open-world environment that reminds me of Gustave Le Bon's seminal book on crowds and mass behavior. This immersive VR environment incorporates more than 5000+ human behaviours according to the designer. The project was created in collaboration with Chris Mullany (developer), Simon Pyke (sound design), Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin. To me, this looks more compelling and interesting that the vast majority of Triple A games coming out this year. Emergence will be on display at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Matt Pyke is a UK-based media artist and designer. He is the founder of the digital art/design studio Universal Everything. His work explores the tension between abstract and figurative form and the synesthesia of sound and image. It has been exhibited at Media Space (London), MoMA (New York), V&A Museum (London), Central Academy of Fine Arts (Beijing), Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture (Moscow), La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), and ART HK (Hong Kong).

LINK: Matt Pyke

GAME ART: LARRY ACHIAMPONG AND DAVID BLANDY'S GENETIC AUTOMATA (2019)

GENETIC AUTOMATA

Larry Achiampong | David Blandy

12.00pm, Thu 24 January 2019 - 6.00pm, Sat 30 March 2019

Arts Catalyst
74-76 Cromer Street
London
WC1H 8DR

Commissioned by Arts Catalyst, Genetic Automata (2019-) by Larry Achiampong and David Blandy forms the first part of an ambitious new body of works by the artists, exploring race and identity in an age of avatars, video games, and DNA Ancestry testing.

In the artists' new video installation combining animation, spoken word and text interspersed with microscopic topographies of varied shades of skin, digital renditions of skin from video games, and film footage of taxidermied bird life from Darwin’s bird skin collection at the Natural History Museum. [...]

Weaving together imagery and narratives from various popular cultural interpretations of genetic manipulation, from Metal Gear Solid to Resident Evil to Final Fantasy and the Metroid series, the artists will explore the legacy and language of concepts around eugenics and human agency.

Read more on Arts Catalyst, a nonprofit contemporary arts organisation that commissions and produces transdisciplinary art and research located in London.

An Artists Talk is scheduled for February 20 2019.

LINK: Genetic Automata (Images courtesy of Arts Catalyst)

EVENT: IN A GAMESCAPE. LANDSCAPE, REALITY, STORYTELLING AND IDENTITY IN VIDEO GAMES (DECEMBER 15, 2018–MARCH 10, 2019, TOKYO JAPAN)

IN A GAMESCAPE. LANDSCAPE, REALITY, STORYTELLING AND IDENTITY IN VIDEO GAMES

An exhibition co-curated by DOI Nobuaki and TANIGUCHI Akihiko

December 15, 2018–March 10, 2019, 11:00am–6:00pm 

NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC] Gallery A

Tokyo, Japan

OFFICIAL WEBSITE

Among other works, video games as a form of contemporary culture are being awarded at the Japan Media Arts Festival, and continue to exert an ever-growing influence on society. As a matter of fact, video games reflect the present state of society, and one can say that they also serve as a means for predicting future developments.

With a particular focus on indie games and video game art as two distinctive recent trends, this exhibition inspects the latest video games along with the original culture they help define, to see what hints they may offer regarding social currents and individual positions.

The term gamescape as used in the exhibition title was coined to refer to the (social) landscape mapped out through games, and to express the novel views and values that video games inspire in their creators and players alike.
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ARTISTS:

LINK: IN A GAMESCAPE

GAME ART: THEODORE DARST & COLLIN LEITCH, ALL MANNER OF THINGS SHALL BE WELL (2018)

Theodore Darst & Collin Leitch, All Manner Of Things Shall Be Well, 2018, 2-Channel HD Video, 9.45 minutes, Dimensions Variable

All Manner of Things Shall Be Well by Theodore Darst and Collin Leitch is a vertical video framed across two HD televisions about religion's aesthetics and ideology. The video incorporates footage from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. and 3D animation. As Ida Pruitt writes on the Brooklyn Rail:

Religious imagery punctuates the video’s landscape, which was partially built with footage lifted from the role-playing video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. This open-world game allows players to freely explore its virtual realm and shape their own narratives, a feature Darst and Leitch exploited in the tradition of Machinima (a filmmaking technique where players use the graphics engine of a game to capture footage for a cinematic production). The artists are in dialogue with this practice, but elaborate on the richly textured aesthetic of Skyrim with originally rendered 3D graphics, manipulated video sourced from the internet, digital painting, and other techniques too inventive to pin down. The result is a frenetic montage of imagery that either fragments or evolves as soon as it begins to make sense.

Theodore Darst & Collin Leitch, All Manner Of Things Shall Be Well, 2018, 2-Channel HD Video, 9.45 minutes, Dimensions Variable, installation view. King's leap Projects

Collin Leitch (b. 1993) is an artist and filmmaker living and working in New York. He earned a BA in Film & Electronic Arts at Bard college in 2016. He has participated in screenings internationally including Channels Video Art Festival in Melbourne (2017), Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn (2017), The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016), and has had a solo presentation of his work at Mothership, Woodstock (2016).

Theodore Darst (b. 1986) is an artist living and working in Manhattan. In 2017 he presented a solo show Cult Trash at Magenta Plains, NYC. Recently, Darst has presented work in “THIS KNOWN WORLD” at The Museum Of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, CA; and the Artists’ Film Biennial at Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, England. Darst has exhibited his work in New York at East Hampton Shed, 83 Pitt, Microscope, The Museum of the Moving Image and in Chicago at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roots and Culture, Public Works, and MANA Contemporary. His first book, Cult Trash, was published by Soft City Publishing on the occasion of his exhibition at Magenta Plains.

LINK: Collin Leitch & Theodore Darst 

GAME ART: KARA GUT'S WAYSHRINES I, II & III (AN AVATAR MANIFESTO) (2016)

Kara Gut's Wayshrines is a video essay about exploration, navigation, and getting lost in virtual worlds, constructed as a video essay/manifesto via split-screens and multiple windows. A fascinating assemblage of appropriated media, screen recordings, and performance in digital environments about the function (and dysfunction) of bodies that deserves repeated views. 

Also by Kara Gut: Intimacy Mods.

LINK: Kara Gut