GAMESCENES

Game Art: Victor Morales' Esperpento (in progress)

Victor Morales, Esperpento, test installation at 3 Legged Dog, 2018

Victor Morales' latest project is titled Esperpento, an immersive three dimensional space inspired by the aesthetic vision of Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Specifically the War Paintings and his famous, Caprichos series,

As Morales writes:

The project is a universe where tragedy, sarcasm, and comedy are portrayed as a deformed and apocalyptic mirror of reality; In this world, circumstance is the source of tragedy, and the grimace produced by this tragedy is what rules its form.

Esperpento is an exploration about the rejection of the different and the dehumanization of the stranger. Why the foreigner (who looks different) is often shunned, despised and criminalized?

This virtual universe will work primarily as an immersive interactive installation and performance its first iteration will take place in the Fall of 2018 at 3 Legged Dog Art and Technology Center in NYC.

Esperpento (a Spanish literary term for “monstrosity”) is a digital performance event - a charged visual performance that allows the viewer to see through a monstrous lens. Rather than using the “monster” to critique societal ills, Esperpento embraces strangeness and deformity in order to challenge conventions of beauty, familiarity, and what is “normal” or “native” to the human condition.

Esperpento is a series of 3D digital events which explores the dehumanization of the stranger. In a vivid sequence of natural and manmade disasters, rendered through a real-time video game engine, victims and perpetrators collide with increasingly interchangeable ethnic, class and cultural markers. These "Esperpento Events" are a digital meditation on the rejection of foreignness, and why we shun those who look (or appear to look) different from the people in the US.

Goya’s War Disasters and Black Paintings are, in substance and form, a template for Esperpento. These paintings are a testament of genuine protest, full of style and piercing opinion, that simultaneously document and comment on reality.

The Latino community and other minorities will be the main focus group for this production. The technology and the delivery of the animations are the major points for connection with these communities, basically promoting technology made by and for Latinos. (Victor Morales) 

Morales has launched a crowdfunding project for Esperpento. As writes:

Esperpento is also a Play! "Two Black Lights and a Red One" written by the great Billy Burns! The show is about the vicissitudes of a Blind Poet "Max Starpower" in a strange ultra violent place called - you guessed - Esperpento. We need your help to make this happen, so we started a crowdfunding campaign, please help us create this piece. For the record, all the money collected is ONLY to pay all collaborators that are working on Esperpento, and if you are a friend of Billy Burns, notice that one of the perks is to bring him to New York from Berlin so he can help directing and polishing the play. Spread the word!

Victor Morales born in Venezuela, received a Law Degree from Universidad Catolica Andres Bello, in Caracas, in 1990. During his time there he was an active member of the University Theater Group, where he directed several plays, including writing and directing Mueca 23, for which he won the New Director’s Prize in the Festival de Teatro Para La Ciudad (Caracas). Based in New York City since 1991, he completed a Master’s degree in Technology Applied to the Arts at New York University’'s Gallatin Division, in 1992. He is a director, performer and designer, whose work includes video animation and design, text, sound design, and movement. Since 2003 he has been obsessed with the art of video game modifications and has implemented different game engines into most of the works he has participated in or created.

LINK: Victor Morales' Esperpento at 3-legged Dog

Video: AAA Collective's ACID GAMES (2018)

JUNE 20, 2018/20 GIUGNO 2018
Aula seminari
Università IULM (IULM 1)
Via Carlo Bo, 1
20143 Milano

Filming: Lorenzo Mosna

AAA COLLECTIVE
ACID GAMES

In this talk, members of the collective AAA (Merle Leufgen, Gabriel Helfenstein, Troy Duguid, Chloe Langford, Jessica Palmer) will present their work and reflect on their collaborative practices which intent to propose an alternative to the often accepted thinking that the way we live and organize society is the only possible way. The aim of the talk will be to show how games and collaborative exchange in game development can help break the inertia resulting from the perceived lack of possibles disrupting the current status quo - in our everyday lives as well as in the production of art.

Active in Berlin, the AAA Collective comprises artists, designers, and creators from all over the world. Its founding members are Merle Leufgen, a software artist, curator and independent researcher, Gabriel Helfenstein, a French transmedia artist, curator, and writer, Troy Duguid, and Australian artist working with game engines, and Jessica Palmer, a Canadian multimedia artist interested in neuroscience.

LINK: AAA Collective

Game Art: Paolo Pedercini and Tenley Schmida's Glitchscarf (2018)

Paolo Pedercini and Tenley Schmida's Glitcscarf is "a playful performance and a system to mess with knitting patterns in real time. Design or glitch a scarf as it's being made, wear your artful errors." Created during a game jam at the Carnegie Mellon University Textiles Lab, Glitcscarf was developed with AYAB (All Yarns Are Beautiful), Processing, and a Brother KH910.

Pure genius.

LINK: Paolo Pedercini

Game Art: Phillip Birch, Office-Shadow (Persona) (2018)

 

Office-Shadow (Persona) is Philip Birch's latest project, six animated movies set on a single floor of a computer generated office building. Think of The Stanley Parable, only weireder. Each video acts as a single chapter of a longer narrative which is told through a first person perspective. By remediating the aesthetics of videogames, Birch is upgrading contemporary art as a whole. The videos also juxtapose Greek mythology and role playing games. Ludic themes pervade Birch's oeuvre, like Entering God Mode, Oubliette and The Hand of God. After the Flesh, an homage to David Cronenberg's masterpiece eXistenz, even features a gamepod. 

Philip Birch, After the Flesh, installation.

Philip Birch (b. 1978, Detroit) is represented by Lyles & King and his recent solo exhibitions and performances include Milespires and Reliquaries, Lyles & King, NY; Entering God Mode, Jack Hanley, NY; The Crown of Modernity, 47 Canal, NY; The Hand of God, Essex Flowers, NY; The Chair After Its Method of Implementation, Cleopatra’s, NY.

LINK: Philip Birch (via the mighty Daata Edtions)

Game Art: Peter Burr's Pattern Language (2016)

Developed with a video game engine, Pattern Language is Peter Burr's 2016 colossal multimedia project. A mesmerizing composition patterned in black and white Pattern Language pays homage to John Conway's Game of Life. According to Burr, the work is the result of his "ongoing practice designing modern day labyrinths; dense self-supporting structures that emulate living organisms." Burr created the project as part of his residency at 3-Legged Dog in Lower Manhattan where he spent time observing transit patterns through New York’s various megastructures. Burr is interested "in the way our own universe may operate on a similar set of discrete digital rules, bursting from a few small pixels into a life of patterns from screen to screen." The work also exists as a single channel video. 

Peter Burr (b. 1980) is an artist from Brooklyn, NY, USA specializing in animation and installation

LINK: Peter Burr (Images and videos courtesy of the Artist)

Game Art: Sahej Rahal's Upon Your Bones This Temple (2018)

Indian artist Sahej Rahal has created his first video game Upon Your Bones This Temple, a third person exploration game that uses devotional music as soundtrack available for free for both Mac and PC. Distributed as a series of episodes, the game is an investigation of the notion of belief and faith in the 21st century. In 2011, the Mumbai-born, Delhi-based Rahal graduated from the Rachana Sansad Academy of Fine Art in Mumbai and is is considered one of India’s most innovative young artists. At LiveMint, Bhanuj Kappal provides an in-depth explanation of the imagery of Upon Your Bones:

The objects that populate Upon Your Bones This Temple are 3D scans of sculptures from his earlier exhibitions, as well as works from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya and the Bhau Daji Lad Museum. These are recontextualized by the virtual reality they’re placed in, stripped of their historicity and made to perform new roles as the artefacts of an emergent fictional mythology. The game is meant to mirror the way truth and untruth are being juxtaposed and weaponized to create new contemporary myths, whether it’s the cult of alt-right shamans like Milo Yiannopoulos and Jordan Peterson, or assertions about “Vedic science”.

In that sense, the video game is only the latest instalment in what can be described as a large, interdisciplinary project of world-building that Rahal has been engaged in since 2010. Using performance art, sculpture and video work, he has crafted a constantly evolving narrative that draws influence from sources as disparate as Indian and Western mythology, anime, science fiction, pop culture and the city of Mumbai. History, religious traditions and exotic futures collide in this narrative, which is populated by “absurd beings” from a fictional civilization, and the tools and artefacts they have left behind. 

LINK: Sahej Rahal

Event: Ian Cheng's Emissary Forks At Perfection (May 24 - November 25, Venice Italy)

Ian Cheng

Emissary Forks At Perfection

May 24 - November 25

Espace Louis Vuitton

Venezia Calle del Ridotto 1353

Opening hours: Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 8.00 pm and on Sunday from 10.30 am to 8.00 pm. Open on public holidays. Free entrance

For its third exhibition produced in the framework the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Hors-les-murs” program, the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia is pleased to present American artist Ian Cheng’s Emissary Forks At Perfection. The Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Hors-les-murs” program showcases previously unseen holdings of the Collection at the Espaces Louis Vuitton in Tokyo, Munich, Venice and Beijing, thus carrying out the Fondation’s intent to realize international projects and make them accessible to a broader public.

The video installation Emissary Forks At Perfection (2015-2016) is the second chapter of the Emissaries trilogy created by Cheng between 2015 and 2017. These three episodes, located in the same space but addressing different eras, trace the evolution of ensembles of beings and the way they adapt to their environment. Each features an “emissary”, a “narrative agent”, whose actions will modify the course of events. With Emissary Forks At Perfection, Cheng leads us to question the human mind’s adaptive capacities and human evolution in the face of otherness, randomness and the unpredictability of an ever-changing world.

LINK: Ian Cheng

LINK: Espace Louis Vitton

Event: NEXTNEWGAMES (June 23 – September 16, 2018, San José, California)

NEXTNEWGAMES

June 23 - September 16, 2018

Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)

San José

560 South First Street

San Jose, CA 95113 > MAP

OPENING RECEPTION — JUNE 24, 2018

MEMBERS PREVIEW 1-2PM

PUBLIC RECEPTION 2-4PM

 

"ICA’S NEXTNEW SERIES IS A BIANNUAL EXHIBITION PROGRAM THAT PRESENTS THE WORK OF EMERGING ARTISTS AND/OR EMERGING ART PRACTICES.

When playing a board game or video game, one might experience a range of emotions, from elation when advancing towards a finish line, to a sense of gratification from beating a competitor, to a feeling of anger when your strategy goes awry. Immersing wholeheartedly into the rules and experiences of play is what Dutch historian and play theorist Johan Huizinga refers to as the “magic circle,” a zone where players temporarily suspend disbelief and adopt the qualities of the game space, disconnecting from the realities of the everyday world. Games often provide a moment of respite from the “real world” and allow the player to escape into a fantasy.

The eight artists in NextNewGames create work within this alternative space. The set of board games, video pieces, and new media works consider our current social, political, and cultural climate, creating a porous relationship between the imaginary land of the game space and that of the real world.

Characterizing the art world with an air of parody are works by Sioux City-based artist Charles Bass who developed a series of free, participatory games, which comment on the quirks of the opaque art world. COLL.EO (San Francisco- and Milan-based collaborative Colleen Flaherty and Matteo Bittanti) re-enact seminal 1960-70s contemporary art performances and interventions in “Liberty City,“ through the action and adventure game Grand Theft Auto.

NextNewGames artists also invite players to embody different perspectives through single- and multi-player games. Lark VCR and Porpentine Charity Heartscape’s elaborate online game invites players to treat their trauma as if it were a virtual pet. Colorado-based artist Rafael Fajardo presents two contrasting games that simulate the realities of crossing the US-Mexico border at El Paso-Ciudad Juarez. Sam Vernon engages local community members in a game of hangman and creates a visually cacophonous installation with the resulting documentation from this age-old game. Considering the relationship of communities today and in the future, Berkeley-based artist Asma Kazmi constructs a hypnotic, sensorial experience of the religious site of Makkah and documents the rapid changes to the sacred site. San Francisco-based artist Scott Kildall questions what it might mean for the moon to colonize the earth in his site-specific scavenger hunt at the ICA.

These artists move away from the dichotomy of winning or losing. They collectively subvert and interrupt the modes of operating within a game while reflecting on how these game spheres serve as mirrors to our current society: how do we think about cooperation and negotiation? What does it mean to lose or win? Where are points of resolution and conflict? What is your next move?"

LINK: NextNewGames

Interview: Jonne Hansson and the Machinima of Absurd

GameScenes is conducting a series of interviews with artists, critics, curators, and gallery owners operating in the field of Game Art, as part of an ongoing investigation of the social history of this artworld. Our goal is to document and examine both the origins and evolution of a phenomenon that changed the way game-based art is being created, experienced, and discussed today.

We are currently running Season 7, which began in 2017 with a conversation with Alex Hovet. 

This episode features a conversation with Jonne Hansson, a Swedish artist who's been using digital games as an expressive form for more than a decade.  Hansson's practice is very eclectic: he uses machinima, installations, paper, but also drawing, directly inspired by game aesthetics and the history of art. Absurdity and humor are some of the most most recurrent traits. 

This interview between Matteo Bittanti and Jonne Hansson took place via email in April 2018.

Jonne Hansson, Cannon Travel Center, 2010, colored pencil, crayon, acrylic, paper, foam, 34,5 x 44,5 cm

GameScenes: What is your background? Can you please summarize your trajectory as an artist, gamer, and above all, agent provocateur?

I started making art pretty late. I mean, I did not draw much as a kid. I was more of a sports guy and a gamer, but when I started studying art my interest in sports and video games followed. I have always enjoyed being a funny guy, or at least the accidental slapstick comedian. I think humor and (dark) satire - particularly on subjects such as technology and society - has been an important part in my artistic practice. I enjoy finding funny situations in video games, especially things that the game designer (in all probability) did not intend to create. I also like the idea of using an already existing (and recognizable) character, it’s a bit like employing a famous actor. My works tend to land somewhere between Game Art (in the context of contemporary art) and gamification leaning towards gamified life-coaching. 

Jonne Hansson, Outcast, 2017, machinima, 8' 19"

GameScenes: Outcast (2017) is a machinima adaptation of Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull created with the Grand Theft Auto V in-game video editor. You turned an hyper-violent game into a tender, poetic experience. The inevitable question is: What came first, Richard Bach or GTA?

The short answer is that I read Richard Bach’s book before I played Grand Theft Auto V. While playing this open-world game I took a step away from being a completionist gamer and became a nature photographer. The initial idea was to make a nature documentary in true David Attenborough style - commentating on what I see and how the animals behave within the boundaries of the virtual sandbox. While collecting Peyote plants (one of the side-quests) I unlocked animals as playable characters in Rockstar Editor. After some tests I discovered I could play as a seagull, and that’s when I rediscovered (and acted out) Richard Bach’s fable.

Jonne Hansson, Good Workout Today!, 2016, screenshot from the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS3)

GameScenes: To create Good Workout Today! (2016) you used an iPhone 6 Plus to upload videos "shot" in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to your Instagram account. This multimedia project exemplifies the increasing layers of digitalization of our lives, including the virtualization of fitness and the exhibitionist, narcissistic culture of social media. How did you feel after (having your alter ego) lifting gold dumbbells?

Using my alter ego in the local gym in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I thought lifting the heaviest virtual golden dumbbells wouldn’t be a problem. I was wrong. I miserably failed at beating the weights. Ironically, I was actually physically exhausted from the serious button mashing. It was a good workout. Being fully aware of the new wellness-ideology and this constant urge to get instant visual feedback through social media - I just had to post my recorded video on Instagram. Good Workout Today! also deals with the idea of cheating and being lazy. For instance, I think it is ironic that Pokémon Go players are now driving cars to catch the best pokémons or level up as fast as possible. The initial concept of the game was that people could play a game and get some exercise at the same time...

Jonne Hansson, Going for Birdie, 2016, installation view (studio), mixed media, including, wood, carpet, aluminium, textile, plastic, print (framed), dimensions variables

GameScenes: A recurrent theme in your work is the crossover between games and reality. You bring bits into the world of atoms, effortlessly. Is this strategy an attempt to emphasize the paradoxical nature of simulation? For instance, in Going for Birdie (2016) you used wood, carpet, aluminium, textile, and plastic - among other things - to give material consistency to a digital simulation of golf for the NES and to highlight the connection between different layers of reality, each with its own style and conventions (e.g. pixel art, for the game). Are you commenting on the pervasive influence of gaming on 21C aesthetics?

Going for birdie is the pioneering work in that style, and actually came out of a joke with a colleague and friend. A literal, deliberate misunderstanding of the golf term “Birdie”. The joke was that you’d probably be more successful in hitting a bird if you just whacked a ball straight into the woods… just that the spiteful asshole bird decided to hang around on the green that day.

Jonne Hansson, Cardsharp/Watch Dogs, 2016, machinima, Watch Dogs (Xbox 360)

GameScenes: Absurdity is a leitmotiv in your work, or, rather, THE key theme. In Cardsharp/Watch Dogs (2016) you remediated a classic painting with the aid of video games and toys. Were you trying to illustrate the porosity between the so-called high brow and the vernacular, or rather to update playful practices, emphasizing the connection between the past and the present, tradition and innovation?

In Cardsharp/Watch Dogs I turned my attention to our recurring cheating nature. We’ve done it for a long time. It was a valid subject for Caravaggio and equally valid as a revitalized cheating scene in the hacker game Watch Dogs. It seems to be a rather timeless concept:cheating remains but how we do it changes.

Jonne Hansson, The Square Painter (Star Junction)  2016, machinima, 2' 58"

Jonne Hansson, The Square Painter (Happiness Island)  2016, machinima, 2' 58"

GameScenes: Can you discuss your machinima series The Square Painter (2014), created with Grand Theft Auto IV for the PlayStation 3? What do you find so fascinating about this recurrent character? The ubiquity of game avatars in simulated landscapes? The campy nature of artistic representations in digital games? Or something else altogether? 

While playing Grand Theft Auto IV and following the game’s narrative, one situation really caught my attention. It was when the protagonist, Niko, is sitting in an internet café in Liberty City and browsing through his e-mails, and he discovers that he has gotten an e-mail from his mother. She writes that she doesn’t judge him for having been in trouble and having done bad things and that is her duty to miss her son. Being an artist myself, I had also been noticing the easel painter who appeared in some typical touristic locations. I created my new own story in the game by investigating what it would mean for Niko to become a painter instead of a criminal (by killing the painter and taking his place, haha)

 

LINK: Jonne Hansson

 

ARCHIVE: GAMESCENES Interviews - contemporary practitioners 

Art Game: Edwin Lo/Auditory Scenes's Gerry (2016)

Remediating Gus Van San’s eponymous movie Gerry (2002), Edwin Lo aka Auditory Scenes's Gerry (2016), a student of Ip Yuk Yiu, re-appropriates the original cinematic experience as a lonely journey in a virtual desert at night. Devoid of light, the work transforms the film narrative as purely auditory experiences of aimless nocturnal wandering by simulating the solemn emptiness of the desert and Death Valley's desolation. 

Gus Van Sant, Gerry, 2002

Edwin Lo is a sound artist and researcher form Hong Kong working with the practices and concept of sound and listening in various contexts and medium such as performance, writings, recording, video, installation and software/game. Since 2008, his works are widely presented in various local and overseas exhibitions, festivals and residencies such as Hong Kong Sound Station (Hong Kong, 2009), Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism Architecture 2009, FILE 2010 – Electronic Language International Festival (Brazil, 2010), EMERGEANDSEE Media Art Festival (Germany, 2010), Hong Kong InDependent Film Festival 2010 , White Walls Have Ears (Hong Kong, 2011), Uncharted – Braunschweig Project (Germany, 2013), RPM: Ten Years of Sound Art in China (United States, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, 2013), Around Sound Art Festival (Japan, 2014) and ‘Inside China’ (2014 – 2015) in Palais de Tokyo of Paris and K11 foundation of Hong Kong and Shanghai.

LINK: Auditory Scenes