GAMESCENES

EVENT: INDIGENOUS FUTURISMS: EXPLORATIONS IN ART AND PLAY (OCTOBER 2 2019 - JANUARY 31, 2020, DAVIS, CALIFORNIA)

Steven Paul Judd, Invaders, 2018

Indigenous Futurisms: Explorations in Art and Play

Gorman Museum at University of California, Davis

Oct 2, 2019 - Jan 31, 2020

One Shields Ave., Davis, California

Open Mon-Fri, noon-5 p.m., and Sun 2-5 p.m.

Admission is free.

Website: gormanmuseum.ucdavis.edu.

Indigenous Futurisms brings together graphics, comics, SF, and video games  to create a provocative space of engagement and thought about Indigenous futures and possibilities. The gaming section was curated by Ashlee Bird, a graduate student of Native American Studies at UC Davis, who writes:

The content and graphics involved with Native American and Indigenous representation in these genres are fraught with embedded stereotypes and in some cases, these depictions are viewed as deeply offensive and racist. Native American artists and game designers actively engage with these concerns by creating new spaces, environments and platforms for the expression of visual sovereignty. Games and artwork are created, mediated and informed from rich cultural foundations alongside technical media expertise.

Video game inspired art on display includes an enormous vinyl inkjet print created by interdisciplinary artist Sonny Assu which reimagines the original Nintendo Entertainment System controller and replaces the original directional pad with a copper, an indigenous shield shape that for Northwest coast tribes indicates status and wealth. The piece is exhibited as large inkjet on paper. 

Sonny Assu, Nuła̱mał Entertainment System, 2017, exhibition Copy: Inkjet on paper, 36 x 26 inches

Assu has previously made modified cabinet arcades such as Wreck-Consiliation! (2017) and Broken Treaties (2017) which both display a video of  Clayfighter (made by Brendan Tang) as a 81 second loop. The coin-op machines were exhibited in the context of the Ready Player Two exhibition at the Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, British Columbia between 25.05.17 - 03.09.17.

Sonny Assu, Wreck-Consiliation!, 2017 a, Maple, copper leaf, paint and video, 24w x 33.5d x 66.25 inches

Sonny Assu, Broken Treaties, 2017, Maple, copper leaf, paint, 73.75x25x28.25 inches

Nathan Powless-Lynes, Hold My Mand!, interactive game, 2019

Indigenous Futurisms also features interactive games playable with Xbox One controllers within the gallery space, including Nathan Powless Lynes's Hold My Hand!, a dual character puzzle platformer where the characters hold hands to help each other overcome obstacles.

Maize Longboat, Ray Caplin, Mehrdad Dehdashti, Beatrix Moersch, Terra Nova, interactive game, 2019

Created by Maize Longboat, Ray Caplin, Mehrdad Dehdashti, Beatrix Moersch, Terra/Nova is a split-screen side-scroller starring an elder land-keep and a youthful inventor. The characters must perform actions in their respective worlds in order to accomplish the game's ultimate goal. Lastly, visitors can experience Full of Birds, an interactive art gallery which immerses the viewer in a colorful, vibrant "natural" world.

LINK: Indigenous Futurism (All images and videos courtesy of the Artists)

GAME ART: JACKY CONNOLLY'S ARIADNE (2019)

Jacky Connolly, Ariadne, 2019, HD video, color, sound, 50m13s.

Last Summer, one of the most prominent video artists working with the video game aesthetics, Jacky Connolly, released her new monumental work, Ariadne. Like her previous projects, Ariadne was shot with/in The Sims. It was exhibited at Down and Ross Gallery in New York. However, this time around Connolly emphasizes the porous boundaries between the tangible and the virtual by mixing video game footage with live footage. As curator Emily Watlington writes:

The fifty-minute piece is set amidst a lightning storm that splices together two realities: a virtual, seaside Italian villa created in Sims, and New York City, shot with a camera. The rupture forms a third suburban, autumnal realm. Ariadne1, of New York and played by the artist, decides she wants to disappear, allowing lightning to transport her into a virtual realm. The simulated Ariadne2 is seen with a red lightning scar upon her chest—a trace of the act, which she carries with her back into the live-action scene that concludes the film. [...] There’s a haunting soundtrack, scored by Hunter Hunt-Hendrix; a Lynchian, empty, eerily-lit diner among other suburban interiors; the ‘camera’s’ fascination with solo, silent women à la Todd Haynes’ Safe; and implied family disfunction frequently found in melodrama (weepies, ‘women’s pictures). Connolly leaves clues toward her referents: Doug Richmond’s 1985 book How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found, for instance, is stationed throughout. Due largely to the nature of the game, there are no close-ups, their absence serving to emphasize the characters’ solitude, their displacement in empty sets.

Jacky Connolly was born in 1990 in Lower Hudson Valley, New York. She gained her BFA in Photography, Art History, and Critical Studies from Bard College at Simon's Rock in 2011; she gained an MFA in Digital Arts and MSc in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute in 2016. Selected solo & two-person exhibitions and screenings: Downs & Ross, New York; Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta; Microscope Gallery, Brooklyn; Peach, Rotterdam; Daata Editions at NADA New York; Kimberly-Klark, Queens; Bus Projects, Melbourne; and Et al., San Francisco. Selected group exhibitions and screening programs: Museum Brandhorst, Munich; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; D21, Leipzig; IULM, Milan; PAF Animation Festival, Olomouc, CZ; Ellis King, Dublin; Kimberly-Klark at Interstate Projects, Brooklyn; Et al., San Francisco; and Hester, New York. She lives and works in Bearsville, NY.

LINK: Jacky Connolly (All images and videos courtesy of the Artist)

GAME ART: SÉAMUS GALLAGHER'S A SPACE AND PLACE FOR US ALL (2017)

Seamus Gallagher, falling in love with whatever loves me first, pigment print, 44” x 66”, 2017

I'm in love with Séamus Gallagher's a space and place all for us, a triptych featuring images created digitally using 3D modeling programs like Blender, as well as Unity, a computer game engine. As Gallagher explains,

images of these video game environments are then extracted into print form, which i use to construct complex, large-scale installations for me to photograph, encompassing the camera’s frame. in bringing these digital aesthetics into a physical space, these photographs exist as dense visual environments that blur the line between the digital and the physical, the real and the fake. by photographing myself inside these constructed spaces, i want to explore what it means for the body to interact within virtual, otherworldly spaces.

Seamus Gallagher's is a an interdisciplinary artist originally from Moncton, New Brunswick, and currently finishing his undergraduate with a double major in Photography and Expanded Media at Nova Scotia College of Art & Design. His practice centres around constructing complex, colourful spaces for myself to interact within, blending photography with installation and performance.

LINK: Seamus Gallagher

GAME ART: TOTAL REFUSAL'S SWINGS DON'T SWING (2019)

The latest work by Total Refusal (Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf) is a 4-channel video installation that brings to light the intrinsic contradictions of video game environments, i.e. the designers' obsession to achieve photorealism and the Potemkin Village-like syndrome which informs their representational logic. Far from being functional, several simulated elements are just props: they look "real", but they do not perform as one might expect. Specifically, the collective underlines the complete lack of usability of playground structures within shooter games, where the function of swings and slides is purely decorative. Hence, swings don't swing, slides don't slide and carousels don't... well, you get the idea. Far from being interactive, virtual playground spaces are "dead space".

installation view, 2019

Swings don't swing was conceived as an installation in which four screens literally swing in the gallery room as to compensate for the counterintuitive stasis of their digital replicas. As they write in their accompanying text, "They document different attempts to interact with the dysfunctional objects, showing how difficult it is to actually play within a video game." It is somehow ironic that, in a shooter, playful structures are stripped of their playful affordances. The playground thus becomes an arena for violent conflict. Or artistic subversion, like in this case. In other words: if a video game totally refuses to play, Total Refusal plays with the video game. 

Total Refusal is Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, and Michael Stumpf.  In their practice, they critically analyze and appropriate digital game spaces and put them to new use. Moving within games but ignoring the intended gameplay, Total Refusal allocates these resources to new activities and narratives, in order to create “public” spaces imbued with critical, even subversive potential.

Leonhard Müllner works as an artist in the public and digital space and is currently writing his doctoral thesis at the Linz Art University at the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies.

Robin Klengel works in Graz and Vienna as an interdisciplinary artist, illustrator, cultural anthropologist and vice president of the Forum Stadtpark.

Michael Stumpf studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. He works as an artist, designer and cultural theorist.

LINK: Total Refusal

GAME ART: SU HYUN NAM'S SURROGATE_ BEING II (2019)

A fascinating take at simulation vs. representation, memory vs. concreteness. 

Surrogate Being is an interactive virtual environment exploring possibilities of affective relationships between humans and machines and mindful approaches in the computation process for their sustainable coevolution of human and technology. This work negotiates the discrepancy between memories and digital data of a nostalgic place through the process of recreating the artist’s hometown in Korea. The heterogeneity of algorithmic digital images and affective memories are interwoven in the 3D environment.

This virtual space bridges my mind and digital technology and invites participants to explore the mediated landscape with curiosity. As memories remain indistinct and disintegrated until we recollect, the landscape is destructed when no participant is engaged. If a participant is approached to the fragmented image and stand in front of it, it turns into a navigable landscape. As s/he moves her/his head to look at the other side of the landscape, the virtual camera in the scene changes its direction responding to the participants' movement. This interaction suggests a potential depth in the digital landscape we can look into, thus the monitor or the projected image becomes a portal into the mediated memory space.

As the virtual environment is transformed based on input data of participants' movement, the participant's body is affected by reactive virtual images again. In this way, their interaction begins to flow in the feedback loop and ultimately makes the human mind and algorithmic process indistinguishable.

Su Hyun Nam investigates the complex emerging identity and implicit conflict of a foreign being by reconstructing familiar landscapes as uncanny digital images. Living as an immigrant, I experience and observe multiple incongruities in the seemingly coherent public world - generated by competing social norms and clashing cultural perspectives, and my digital images mediate those fragmented heterogeneous experiences of the society. In this process, digital technology inspires my own personal searching in a creative and mindful way, and consequently, the computation process becomes meditative beyond the canonical rule-driven approach.

LINK: Su Hyun Nam

EVENT: LAST STOP (OCTOBER 4 2019, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA)

LAST STOP

At LIKE LIKE gallery

Friday October 4th, 2019
7-11 PM
During the Unblurred gallery crawl

205 North Evaline St
Pittsburgh, PA

A show featuring New Urbanist Games for Transit-Oriented Teens. Celebrate public transportation as portrayed / idealized / fetishized by videogames. Take an infinite bus ride! Ride an infinite bus! Master the controls of a handsome Deutsche Bahn ICE 3M class 406! Plan the most efficient subway system! Drive a trolley in a whimsical world! Plan your commute on a future-Pittsburgh transit map!

Works by: Turnfollow /// Dinosaur Polo Club /// Alexander Perrin /// Holly Gramazio /// Dovetail Games

 LINK: Last Stop

EVENT: GAME ON: EL ARTE EN JUEGO 2019 (NOVEMBER 22-30 2019, BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA)

Game On! El arte en juego, Sixth Edition

November 22 - 30 2019

Cultural Center San Martín

Sarmiento 1551, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Entrance is free and open to the public

The sixth edition of Game On! will take place from November 22 till 30 2019 at the Cultural San Martin in Buenos Aires, within the framework of the Festival of Digital Culture Electronic November. Game On! is the only exhibition in Argentina addressing the artistic and cultural impact video games. The exhibition will feature more than 40 international works, including machinima, interactive experiences, experimental art and video games, alternative controls and more. 

Game On! El arte en juego celebrates its tenth anniversary, coinciding with the rise of festivals and exhibitions of experimental art and video games globally. To celebrate such impressive achievement, within the framework of the event GAIA (Game Arts International Assembly) will take place the first think tank at the international level bringing together 20 curators and producers recognized and alternative festivals worldwide, including the creators of exhibitions in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and festivals such as Berlin's A MAZE and many more. 

For this sixth international edition a team of Diego Maté (Bachelor Critique of Arts, PhD in Arts from the UNA, researcher, critic and teacher), Agustin Perez Fernandez (developer of independent video games, multimedia artist and selected curatorial committee was created by the experimental Gameplay Workshop of the Game Developers Conference 2011) and María Luján Oulton, director and curator of Game on! since its inception.

The first edition was held in 2009 and has established itself across five different editions and traveling exhibitions in the country and in the rest of the region. In these ten years, more than 200 Argentine and foreign artists presented their works to an audience of over 60,000 visitors, cultural venues such as San Martin Cultural Center, Planetarium Galileo Galilei, the CCK, the Recoleta Cultural Center, Technopolis, the CCEBA and Subject to the gallery, among others. Game On! It is directed by María Luján Oulton, specializing in game art curator.

Features artists and designers of the 2019 edition include Ignacio Puccini, Juliàn Palacios, Gerrònimo Pellicer, Mario von Rickenbach and Michael Frei, and Ip Yuk-Yiu, Pippin Bar, Paolo Pedercini, Laura Palevicino, Daniel Benvergui and Jeremias Babini, Joaquin Castro, Connor Sherlock, Douglas Wilson and David Kanaga, Alejandro Cura, Ida Toft and Amani Naseem, Robin Baumgarten, Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux, Paloma Dawkins, Ashley Obscura & Casa Rara Studio, Gabe Cuzzillo, Aruna Collective, Papacorps Team, Nicolás Recabarren, Nicolás Saraintaris and Fernando Martínez Ruppel, JRPG Combat Systems, Moshe Linke, Johan, Gorm, Marco And Martín, Moshe Linke and Aaron Oldenburg, Alex Myers, Sam Barlow, Mez Breeze, Accidental Queens, Jonne Hansson, Lorenzo Redaelli, Romina Luna and Elizabeth Lapenséé, among others. 

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Del 22 al 30 de noviembre en el Cultural San Martín, dentro del marco del Festival de Cultura Digital Noviembre Electrónico, se realizará la sexta edición de “Game On! El arte en juego”, única exhibición en Argentina dedicada a abordar los videojuegos artísticos - culturales.

La exhibición se alojará en las salas A/B del Cultural San Martín y desplegará más de 40 obras nacionales e internacionales, entre las que se encuentran videos machinima, instalaciones lúdicas interactivas, videojuegos artísticos y experimentales, controles alternativos y variedad de piezas y actividades relacionadas con los campos del arte y los videojuegos

“Game On! El arte en juego” festeja 10 años desde su creación, coincidiendo con el auge de los festivales y exhibiciones sobre videojuegos artísticos y experimentales a nivel internacional. Para celebrarlo, dentro del marco del evento se desarrollará GAIA (Game Arts International Assembly), el primer think tank a nivel internacional que reunirá a 20 curadores y productores de festivales reconocidos y alternativos de todo el mundo, incluyendo a los creadores de exposiciones en el Victoria & Albert Museum de Londres, y festivales como A MAZE de Berlín y Print Screen de Israel, entre otros.

Para esta sexta edición internacional se creó un comité curatorial integrado por Diego Maté (Licenciado en Crítica de Artes, doctorando en Artes por la UNA, investigador, crítico y docente), Agustín Perez Fernandez (desarrollador de videojuegos independientes, artista multimedia y seleccionado por la Experimental Gameplay Workshop de la Game Developers Conference 2011) y María Luján Oulton, Directora y curadora de Game On! desde sus inicios.

“Game On! El Arte en Juego” se exhibirá del 23 al 30 de noviembre, de 15:00 a 21:00 horas, en el Centro Cultural San Martín, Sarmiento 1551, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. La entrada es libre y gratuita.

Acerca de Game On! El arte en juego: se trata de la única exhibición en Argentina de videojuegos como una expresión artística. La primera edición fue realizada en el año 2009 y se ha consolidado a través de 5 ediciones y diversas muestras itinerantes en el país y en el resto de la región. En estos diez años más de 200 artistas argentinos y extranjeros presentaron sus obras para un público de más de 60.000 visitantes, en espacios culturales como el Centro Cultural San Martín, el Planetario Galileo Galilei, el CCK, el CC Recoleta, Tecnópolis, el CCEBA y la galería Objeto a, entre otros. Game On! es dirigido por María Luján Oulton, curadora especializada en videojuego artísticos.

LINK: GAME ON 2019

EVENT: PLAYMODE (SEPTEMBER 11 2019 - FEBRUARY 17 2020, LISBON, PORTUGAL)

PLAYMODE

 

11 September 2019 - 17 February 2020

Curated by Filipe Pais and Patrícia Gouveia

MAAT

Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology

Av. Brasília, Central Tejo

1300-598 Lisboa

Open from 11 AM to 7 PM

Closed on Tuesdays

The artists understood early on the transformative power of play, and began integrating it into their works for various purposes – escaping reality, social construction and transformation, subversion or as a criticism of game and play mechanisms themselves. The exhibition Playmode offers a reflection on these aspects and on the era of ludification that contemporary societies are now experiencing, bringing together pieces by several artists, such as Brad Downey, Gabriel Orozco and Ana Vieira, who incorporate the theme while exploring new ways of seeing, participating and transforming the world, using gaming in a critical light.

Participating artists:

The Pixel Hunt, Pippin Barr, Aram Bartholl, /////////fur//// art entertainment interface, Gabriel Orozco, Priscila Fernandes, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Mary Flanagan, Harun Farocki, Molleindustria, Bill Viola and USC Game Innovation Lab, Samuel Bianchini, Eva and Franco Mattes, Lucas Pope, Joseph DeLappe, Brent Watanabe, Filipe Vilas-Boas, Shimabuku, Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn, Tale of Tales, David Shrigley, André Gonçalves, Isamu Noguchi, Ana Vieira, Miltos Manetas, David OReilly, Brad Downey, Dunne & Raby with Michael Anastassiades, Os Espacialistas, CADA.

LINK: PLAYMODE

GAME ART: TABITHA NIKOLAI'S DOWNSTREAM A SHINING WIRE (2019)

Tabitha Nikolai

Downstream a Shining Wire

September 17 - November 1 2019

Open Signal

2766 NE Martin Luther King, Jr Blvd
Portland, OR 97212

opensignalpdx.org

 

Tabitha Nikolai is a visual artist from Utah who works in sculpture, text, video games, cosplay and earnest rites of suburban occult. Her work has been shown an the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, and Ganka Gallery in Tokyo. She was formerly the assistant and co-curator at Place, Surplus Space and Compliance Division in Portland, Oregon. She uses video games and virtual reality to create fictional worlds addressing themes such as the relationship between society and technology, sex, gender, and identity. 

For example, Utopia Without You transformed a gallery space into a gamer's den, and looked at video games as a means of isolation and a retrenchment from an adversarial society.

Shrine Maidens of the Unseelie Court (2017) is a journey into an uncanny environment for PC and Mac.

Ineffable Glossolalia (2017) is a virtual environment made in the Unity game engine for the HTC Vive virtual reality platform, as well as PC and Mac desktop.

Her new show, Downstream a Shining Wire, opens September 17 at Open Signal, in Portland, Oregon.

Downstream a Shining Wire sifts through today’s dystopia to create something hopeful. Using virtual reality, Open Signal New Media Fellow Tabitha Nikolai and friends revisit a demolished shopping mall from her childhood. The exhibition incorporates interactive video games, medieval illustrations and video projection art featuring scenes from Richard Adams’ classic novel Watership Down.

Tabitha Nikolai is a visual artist originally from Utah who works in sculpture, text, video games and cosplay. She created Downstream a Shining Wire during her winter 2019 residency as part of Open Signal’s New Media Fellowship in collaboration with Zanna Kerrigan, Cassandra Gladwin, sam, Lilium Kobayashi, Allynn Carpenter and Kelly Thomas.

LINK: Tabitha Nikolai (all images and videos (c) Tabitha Nikolai)

GAME ART: FRANÇOIS QUÉVILLON'S ALGORITHMIC DRIVE (2018-2019)

Algorithmic Drive is an interactive installation and performance created by François Quévillon inspired by autonomous cars and dash cam compilations. As Quevillon explains,

On their side, dash cam videos display accidents or spectacular events that portray roads as spaces where the unexpected occurs. The works play with the tension generated by confronting the technologies used by mobile robotics with the unpredictable nature of the world.  The interactive installation and performance entitled Algorithmic Drive is the core of these works. I built a database of recordings with a camera that is connected to my car’s on-board computer. The videos captured are synchronized with information such as location, speed, engine RPM, stability and the temperature of various sensors. They feed a sampling system that uses signal processing, data analysis and computer vision algorithms to sort the content statistically. It assembles an endless video by modifying parameters related to images, sounds, the car’s activity and the environment in which it’s located. A controller displays data related to each scene and allows people or a performer to interact with the system. 

This fascinating project looks like an interactive version of one of my favorite documentaries of 2018, Dmitrii Kalashnikov's The Road Movie. It's the ultimate racing game.

Equally interesting is Quévillon's Retroviseurs, which seems like an unofficial adaptation of McLuhan's famous theory about the rearview mirror syndrome (it's not, but remains intriguing nonetheless). it's a rear view mirror with a monitor, a backup camera and ultrasonic parking sensors, all recontextualized in the exhibition space.

François Quévillon is an artist from Montreal, Canada. He develops an interdisciplinary practice through installation, video, photography, sound and digital technologies. His work explores phenomena of the world and perception by the implementation of processes sensitive to their fluctuations and to the interference of contextual elements. He examines the operational dimensions of images, sounds and other media through the elaboration of systems with unstable parameters, compressed or endlessly evolving spatiotemporal structures. Engaging both scientific observation and a contemplative state of mind, his pieces propose ambiguous experiences through which the ungraspable manifests itself. He investigates how technology affects or redefines human cognition, culture, the environment, our relationships to space, to time and to one another. He holds a Master’s degree in Visual and Media Arts from UQAM and was involved with several artist-run centres and research groups. Frequently developed during artist residencies, François Quévillon’s work has been presented at exhibitions and events dedicated to contemporary art, cinema and digital creation. Among them, Sundance’s New Frontier exhibition (Park City), Spaces Under Scrutiny – Quebec Digital Art in NY at the Knockdown Center (Queens), International Symposium on Electronic Art (Gwangju, Dubaï and Albuquerque), Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica (São Paulo), IndieBo (Bogotá), LOOP Barcelona, Plug-In at Contemporary Istanbul, Show Off Paris, Festival de la Imagen (Manizales), European Conference on Computer Vision (Munich), Mois Multi (Québec), Espace [IM] Média (Sherbrooke), FIMAV (Victoriaville), NeurIPS, RIDM, Elektra and International Digital Art Biennal (Montréal).

LINK: François Quévillon (all images and videos courtesy of the Artist)