GAMESCENES

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)

GAME ART: KIT KIRBY'S LADY RUGS COMPILATION (2019)

A new project by Kit Kirby, a student in Eddo Stern's phenomenal UCLA GameLab:

As Pablo Picasso once observed, "There are two kinds of women: Goddesses and Doormats." Lady Rugs riffs on this expression through a series of rugs depicting actual women from history who respond when the rugs are stepped on. Each woman--Harriet Tubman, Hillary Clinton, Roberta Williams, and Gertrude Stein--is a pioneer in a traditionally male dominated field, but is often overlooked, underappreciated, even despised. Each rug has a fabric pressure sensor, which triggers audio clips of voices explaining why each woman has been devalued. The voices also explain why fields such as the military, politics, video game development, and fine art remain part of "a man's world. Created by Kit kirby.

Kit Kirby is a designer, artist, half-troll madwoman who employs absurdity and dark humor to create art about identity and expectation. A recent arrival from the east coast, Kit has a degree in Graphic Design from Boston University and a Post-Baccalaureate in Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Arts. Just like the Kirby Nintendo character, she is round, adorable and utter chaos in Super Smash Brothers. (UCLA Gamelab)

LINK: Kit Kirby

OPEN CALL: GAMES FOR WINDOWS (DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 1 2019, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK)

Still from Hygiene1 by Cody Filardi

 

GAMES FOR WINDOWS: Experiments with Video Game Footage

 

a store-front video exhibition curated by Nilson Carroll

 

October 4 - November 17, 2019

 

Liquor Store Rochester, New York

 

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR
Experimental video art made with video game footage.

This can take the form of a more traditional machinima piece, or something completely different. We want to see a Stan Brakhage film made on a Game Boy , or the N64 Flaming Creatures. Surprise us, make us weep.

We encourage submissions that experiment with the splicing of game footage with other content (personal or appropriated). If you make interesting games, consider making video art within them.

We're also open to ROM hacks and homebrews that can run in attract mode.

Works are preferably between 1 - 10 minutes.

Due to the nature of the storefront installation, audio is currently limited. Don't let this hinder you!

WHO SHOULD APPLY
ANYONE. Formally trained artists, hobbyists, game designers. The goal of this exhibition is a subversion of both games and cinema. We are especially interested in pro-affection, anti-fascist, feminist artworks that challenge our notions and systems.

NO FEE TO APPLY.

Any questions or concerns, please contact Nilson at [email protected]

If you cannot upload or send your video, please use the above email to contact us!

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DEADLINE: Sunday, September 1, 2019 (All day)

EXHIBITION DATES:  Friday, October 4, 2019 (All day) to Sunday, November 17, 2019 (All day)

LINK: GAMES FOR WINDOWS

GAME ART: TOTAL REFUSAL'S CIRCUMVENTING THE CIRCLE OF DEATH (2018)

Total Refusal - Digital Disarmament Movement is a collective comprising Austrian artists Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel and Michael Stumpf funded in 2018 which promotes a subversively pacifist approach to violent video games. The trifecta operates as an "ideological antidote, unveiling the regressive characteristics of contemporary gaming media and reopening them as playgrounds for practicing creative disobedience and dissent." As they write,

The vast majority of contemporary video games is characterized by combative gameplay. This seems especially remarkable now that video games have long arrived in the entertainment mainstream and have managed to drop the boy’s room stigmata. With gaming becoming both commercially and culturally more and more relevant, the question arises how artists can modify and make use of this media for their own  purposes. In “Total Refusal”, artists Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf aim to peacefully appropriate the existing mechanics of digital gaming media in order to find new use for their virtual combat zones. As such, “Total Refusal” is a pacifistic statement, realized in digital space.

Circumventing the Circle of Death is a performance - hereby documented as a machinima piece - in which the artists highlight the absurd behavior of some computer game algorithms. In this case, by keeping two armies of a real-time strategy game in constant motion so that they do not come in "frontal view" with each other and thus begin an armed confrontation, the game becomes something else, that is, a virtual dance (and potentially interminable) between two factions. We hear the soldiers shouting menacingly at each other, and yet shots are not fired. Destruction is replaced by distraction. Inspired by the tactics of the International Situationists, the artists sabotaged the game without tempering with the code: gameplay is subverted by exploiting the algorithm's "blindness". And yet, the almost comical dance is no less absurd that the urge to destroy and annihilate. If anything, the former produces sweat, while the latter blood. 

Total Refusal - Digital Disarmament Movement has produced several other performances, installations, and video pieces including Landscape for a Battle Panorama (64 Soldiers hiding from the Player), Sculptering a Peace Model, Operation Jane Walk, and the upcoming How to Disappear.

Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel and Michael Stumpf, Circumventing the Circle of Death, 2018, installation view.

LINK: Leonhard Müllner

EVENT: YOU + PEA'S PLAYING THE PICTURESQUE (JUNE 4 - SEPTEMBER 7 2019, LONDON)

Playing the Picturesque

4 June to 7 September 2019

Architecture Gallery, RIBA

66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD

Official website

Playing the Picturesque is an interactive installation exploring the boundaries between virtual and physical space created by You+Pea, the architectural design studio of Sandra Youkhana and Luke Caspar Pearson. Their work explores the integration of videogame technologies into architectural design, exploring how games can engage new participants in the design of cities. (for more information, check out their videogame urbanism projects).

LINK: YOU + PEA

GAME ART: VICTOR MORALES'S RAPID TRANSIT (in progress)

Victor Morales is working on a new, ambitious and intriguing project titled Rapid Transit, an animated science-fiction video and VR experience performed in a video game engine. As Morales writes,

It is about riding the NYC subway in  the 2050s, maybe later. High percentage of the riders wear vr/ar systems//things combined with electric stimulants or lectrics. The subway is the subway, people always  ignoring one and other, dancers doing elastic moves to rhythmless music/noise interrupted by beeps and synthetic shouts popping out of devices like rings and bracelets using holograms with hovering capabilities and sh!t. Homeless people giving advice, cursing In Rapid Transit, on a late weekday night,  a rider under the influence takes the subway, unbeknownst to what the ride will do to them.

Below are some prototype videos:

Stay tuned for several updates. 

LINK: Victor Morales

GAME ART: LUYANG'S THE GREAT ADVENTURE OF MATERIAL WORLD (2019)

This looks phenomenal! A spin-off of Lu Yang's 2018 masterpiece Material World Knight, The Great Adventure of Material World will be released soon, according to the artist.

Lu Yang was born in 1984 in Shanghai and lives and works in Shanghai and Beijing. The artist received a BA as well as an MA in the New Media Art Department at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, near Shanghai. Lu Yang earned two degrees from the new media art department of the China Academy of Arts, and has been featured in important solo and group exhibitions at venues such as the UCCA in Beijing, Centre Pompidou, and DFB Performance Gallery (Chicago), Chronus Art Center (Shanghai), Momentum (Berlin), and Tampa Museum of Art. Some of her notable projects include Kimo Kawa Cancer Baby (2014), Uterus Man (2013), and Wrathful King Kong Core (2011), often in collaboration with performers, designers, experimental composers, and controversial figures such as Mao Sugiyama. Lu Yang's multimedia installations (often combining video, sculptural elements, lighting and soundtracks made in collaboration with different musicians) explore neuroscience, mortality, pop culture, technology, and religion. 

LINK: Lu Yang

GAME ART: RAÚL ENTTER & MÓNICA RIKIĆ'S WE WILL NEVER FORGET (2019)

Created by Raúl Entter & Mónica Rikić, We will never forget uses Openframeworks + Kinect Videogame Installation produced for Negocio, a critical game exhibition. Here's the description:

Pope Benedict XVI was accused of conspiracy to cover up sexual abuse in the United States. At the Vatican's request, President Bush granted the pope immunity from prosecution.

Raúl Berrueco, better known as Entter, is a Spanish visual artist who studied Fine Arts at the Basque Country University. Born in Santander in 1977, Entter worked as a motionographer, digital designer and Art Director for web and media. As visual artist, he worked as professional video jockey and performer for years, collaborating with electronic musicians on acclaimed audiovisual shows. 

LINK: Raúl Entter