GAMESCENES

EVENT: AN UNREAL UNITY (MAY 16-30 2019, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA)

Game Design...the Game: Welcome to Inspiration, Now finish the damn game!. PC game, created in Unreal Engine. Courtesy UCLA Design Media Arts.

An Unreal Unity

May 16–30, 2019 

Opening: May 16, 5pm 

UCLA New Wight Gallery 
Broad Art Center, Suite 1100 
240 Charles E. Young Drive
Los Angeles, CA 

An Unreal Unity features screen-based and interactive artwork, large-scale installations, and immersive projection. Themes include the Anthropocene, corporeal estrangement, speculative interventions, and emotional inquest. Participating artists are Hye Min Cho, Kit Kirby, Sara Drake, Isabelle Chen, Lena NW, Phazero, Maru Garcia, Carlos “L05” Garcia, Sam Congdon, Julian Stein, and Paul Carlo Esposito.

Opening reception Thursday, May 16 at 5pm. The exhibition will be open weekdays from 10am to 5pm through May 30.

This event is free and open to the public.

LINK: AN UNREAL UNITY

EVENT: RUPTURES IN VIDEO GAME CULTURE (MAY 15 2019, TORONTO, CANADA)

Ruptures in Video Game Culture

May 15 2019

From 7 to 10 PM

Toronto Media Arts Centre, 32 Lisgar St

Toronto, Canada

As part of the Unfeeling Capitalism series at the Toronto Media Arts Centre, this evening talk brings together game workers, players and artists confronting capitalism, white supremacy, and misogyny in real and virtual worlds. Presented in collaboration with Hand Eye Society, Dames Making Games, Toronto Media Arts Centre, Unifor National, and Game Workers Unite, Ruptures in Video Game Culture features Paolo Pedercini, Gaby Aveiro, SpekWork, and Jordan Sparks.

LINK: Ruptures in Video Game Culture

GAME ART: FERNARDO VILLELA'S DAMN, TIME FLIES (2018)

Fernando Villela, Damn, Time Flies, Installation video, shot, edited, and displayed on a cracked iPhone SE, 2018.

A new work by Fernando Villela, the artist behind Procedural Generation, an in-game photography project developed with Grand Theft Auto V.

Fernando Villela is a photographer from São Paulo (b.93), currently living and working in New York. A diligent observer, his subject matter is the everyday, the living experience, the shared existence. He believes it is here to be witnessed, to be observed. With interests in existentialism, urban life, and the systems that operate (the invisible hands that orchestrate), Fernando looks and aims his camera to the action unfolding around him, surveying the sidewalk, the buildings, the day and its inhabitants.

LINK: Fernando Villela

EVENT: PLAY.GROUND II: VIDEO GAME ART FROM HONG KONG (MAY 10-AUGUST 18, CHICAGO)

PLAY.GROUND II: Video Game Art from Hong Kong
Curated by IP Yuk-Yui
May 10 - August 18, 2019

VIDEO GAME ART GALLERY

2418 W Bloomingale Ave Apt 102
Chicago, IL 60647

Opening Reception Friday, May 10, 6-9pm

With its distinctive urban landscape and rich cultural legacies, Hong Kong has always been a great source of creative inspiration for video games. Hong Kong is one of the most frequently depicted locations in video games, alongside New York City and Tokyo. As both a physical place and a cultural icon, Hong Kong unquestionably occupies a unique position in the video game imaginary.

Against this cultural context, PLAY.GROUND II features a collection of video game and game-inspired artworks by five Hong Kong-based media artists: HUI Wai-Keung, IP Yuk-Yiu, Vvzela KOOK, Alan KWAN and Edwin LO, providing an extended showcase and a creative overview of the distinctive state of Hong Kong video game art and its recent development. Originally shown in Tokyo Arts and Space, this is the first exhibition of its kind to tour to North America.

LINK: VIDEOGAME ART GALLERY

GAME ART: LETTA SHTOHRYN'S ALGORITHMIC ORACLE (2018-2019)

stills from Algorithmic Oracle, 9 channel moving image installation on screens or tablets or a single channel video., 2018 -2019, 8:12 min

In one of the most sophisticated projects with The Sims (the third chapter, to be precise) since Angela Washko's Free Will Mode (2014-2017) and Jacky Connolly's Anhedonia (2017), Letta Shtohryn tackles algorithmic narratives and what if? scenarios:

Algorithmic Oracle attempts to grasp multiple realities at the same time. Letting a simulation game algorithm decide according to its own standards how a real-life event could have unfolded. One of the scenarios was witnessed IRL. SIMS3 used here as a way to employ a "higher" algorithmic power to find out possible "what-if" scenarios of the experienced event. All the players in the video are crafted to fit their real characteristics and looks. The game starts every scenario with the single directed action, controlled by the player. After the action is completed the game runs scenarios based on its own probability algorithm without interference resulting in a multitude of outcomes. The work is available on Daata Editions.

Letta Shtohryn works predominantly with media art,sculpture, installation, text and intervention. Her academic background is in Photography (Art School Vienna); Philosophy and Sociology (University of Vienna); MFA Digital Art (University of Malta, 2016).

LINK: Letta Shtohryn

GAME ART: IP YUK-YIU'S S FOR SISYPHUS (2015)

A contemporary update and a creative reworking of Albert Camus’s “The Myth of Sisyphus”, S for Sisyphus is an experimental video game project by Ip Yuk-Yiu that explores, meaning, and human intentionality via a simple animated and playable experience. It consists of two related but standalone versions: S for Sisyphus ¬ (playable version) and S for Sisyphus ∞ (machinima version), each articulating the key theme with a slightly different accent and experience.

LINK: IP YUK-YIU

EVENT: BRENTON ALEXANDER SMITH'S I FEEL LIKE A NERVOUS WRECK (APRIL 1-30 2019, ONLINE)

Brenton Alexander Smith

I feel like a nervous wreck

Closed on Monday gallery 

April 1-30 2019

Closed on Monday Is an online gallery that is experienced like a video game. It is a 3D space that the ‘player’ can move around in to experience the works. You can visit the gallery right now at closedonmondaygallery.com. Brenton Alexander Smith's exhibition I feel like a nervous wreck is showing in the gallery until the end of the month, and will likely be accessible in the archive section of the website afterwards. Here, his crashforms have been extracted from the environment of BeamNg.drive and placed into the new context of this gallery. These crashforms begin to move as you approach them, returning an element of interactivity to how they are experienced. 

LINK: Brenton Alexander Smith

GAME ART: THEO TRIANTAFYLLIDIS, PAINTING (2018)

Theo Triantafyllidis, Painting, 2018
Print on plywood, laser cut acrylic, construction fencing, video (color, sound), screen, performance documentation
71 x 142 x 1 in / 180.3 x 360.7 x 2.5 cm, video: Bitforms Gallery

Greek artist Theo Triantafyllidis uses 3D modifies 3D models from role playing fantasy games to create virtual performances that are often accompanied by site-specific installations. In his ongoing series, Triantafyllidis performs as a queer character that is "80% muscular, 30% pregnant, and 10% Ork". Painting is a 12 minute movie that corresponds to the time it took for the artist to made the painting as the Ork in VR. Read more about the project here.

Theo Triantafyllidis (b. 1988, Greece) is an artist and architect based in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA from UCLA, Design | Media Arts, where he presented a guide called “how to everything” as his thesis, under scholarships from UCLA and the Onassis Foundation. He also holds a diploma of architecture from the National Technical University of Athens. Humour, lush visuals and gaming tropes provide an entry point to his work. Computer simulations, improvisations and failures, awkward interactions and precarious physics are employed to produce visual gags. By manipulating emerging technologies, he is searching for their potential emotional impact and the designated limits of their use, often trying to break them. Webpages, virtual and augmented reality, games and interactive installations are his mediums of choice for this. He has shown work in museums, including the Hammer Museum, the Armory Arts Museum, LA and various galleries such as Sargent’s Daughters, Young Projects, New Wight and Intelligentsia Gallery in North America, Europe and Asia. He has also participated in multiple online shows including thewrong.org, cloaque.org, and h0000ff.

LINK: Theo Triantafyllidis (images courtesy if the Artist)

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