GAMESCENES

EVENT: GAME SOCIETY (MAY 12 - SEPTEMBER 10 2023, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA)

Game Society
May 12–September 10, 2023

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu
03062 Seoul
South Korea
Hours: Tuesday–Thursday 10am–6pm
Friday–Saturday 10am–9pm

Organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.
Curated by Hong Leeji
Curatorial Assistant: Sojung Jang 
Technical support by Lee Giljae and Jiyoung Han

Artists: Cory Arcangel, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Harun Farocki, Jacky Connolly, Kim Heecheon, Lawrence Lek, Lu Yang, Ram Han

press release

Game Society is an exhibition that examines how the grammar and aesthetics of video games have influenced contemporary art and visual culture, and permeated our society and daily lives over the five decades since the launch of the first video game. Video games encompass interface design for visual and auditory stimulation, storytelling that spurs the imagination, immersive experiences and social interactions, which makes them the most relevant media form today. Game Society takes a closer look at the process of powerful synchronization between society and video games that has been accelerated by the pandemic. It explores the context in which society becomes virtual spaces and the reality of those spaces becoming part of everyday life, examining what experiences games can communicate and share with us. The exhibition features 9 video games and more than 30 artworks by contemporary artists who have been influenced by the grammar and aesthetics of video games. The games on display include Korean video games and select loans from the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which have been acquiring games since the early 2010s.

To read is to imagine a world, to watch a movie is to observe that world, and to play a video game is to live in that world; the imagination and realism have become a shared experience and visual grammar in modern society. To play a game is analogous to contemplating and appreciating contemporary art in that it requires active participation in a work of art, during which the audience can attain a moment of art. However, the worlds within games are still imperfect. There is a marked lack of diversity in games, where virtual worlds are populated by hyperbolically perfect physiques, and women, the aged, weak, or disabled are either not represented or appear as non playable characters. As in real life, it can be difficult for them to find ways to access games and their digital environments. In contextualizing digital spaces and games in an exhibition, the MMCA, as a space of inclusion, proposes a reimagining of our society where gamification has become part of everyday life, examining gaps and empty spaces in games. In the end, presenting games in the museum is directly linked to the issue of the museum’s accessibility. Playing a video game is not different from viewing an art exhibition in that a video game’s tutorials resemble an exhibition guide with its set routes, exits, and entrances; the accumulation of experience and skill by playing a game resembles the increasing fluency and appreciation of art by visiting exhibitions and museums.    

All the video games in this exhibition are available for play. Audiences can play them with Gaming Accessibility Controller designed and developed by the Korea National Rehabilitation Center Assistive Technology Open Platform, along with Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller devices. As video game critic C. Thi Nguyen noted, games are “the art form of agency.” As such, the exhibition offers audience ways to gain fresh perspectives on the issues that emerge when they gamify their daily lives by providing universal and expansive controllers. In a similar spirit of inclusiveness and accessibility, the exhibition also provides online projects organized with PACK.

For the MMCA, this exhibition is a celebration of what video games and art museums share in their experiences. The exhibition is also an active endeavor to share the common act of accessing and reflecting on video games and the art museum, observing the roles and spheres of the individual and the public. In both video games and art, it is the application of contemporary knowledge and social experiences, and the speculation that it provokes, that creates an opportunity for us to reevaluate the world we live in. In this sense, the intention of Game Society is to provide the audience with the opportunity to contemplate and question the efforts and attention required to make public places and games more inclusive, reframing where we might wish to redefine our common goals. Through games as an artistic medium with cross-generational appeal, the exhibition hopes to provide the full sensory gamut to each individual in a unique way that serves the artistic experiences and values of each person best.

LINK: Game Society

EVENT: BRENT WATANABE (MAY 19 - JUNE 1 20923, ONLINE)

MINE

machinima/digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 37’ 06”, United States, 2023

Created by Brent Watanabe

 

The latest work by Brent Watanabe is a thought-provoking exploration of the intersection between virtual reality and contemporary culture. Originally conceived as a semi-narrative interactive experience, MINE spans eight mesmerizing episodes, each presenting a different facet of our complex relationship with consumption, waste, the environment, and the digital world. Originally presented on Meta/Facebook's VR platform Horizon Worlds, visitors are invited to journey through a kaleidoscopic array of immersive and fully-realized virtual environments, each revealing a new layer of insight and critique. From the grotesque realities of animal exploitation to the dark allure of gaming, guns, and surveillance, MINE is a bold and unflinching statement on the pressing issues of our time. The original work has been reimagined as a single-channel walk-through video edited by the artist for VRAL. 

Brent Watanabe’s art practice defies categorization, fusing traditional techniques with cutting-edge technology to create installations that are at once visually arresting and intellectually engaging. Drawing on his extensive background in drawing and sculpture, Watanabe uses computer programming and electronics to create kinetic sculptures that are at the forefront of a new wave of digital art. Watanabe’s work has been recognized both nationally and internationally, with his groundbreaking 2016 project, San Andreas Deer Cam, receiving over 800,000 visitors in its first three months alone and being featured in publications such as New York Magazine, the BBC, and WIRED. In addition to his solo work, Watanabe has participated in group shows and screenings around the world, including Through Machine Eyes at the NeMe Arts Center in Limassol, Cyprus, Game Changers at MassArt Art Museum in Boston, and Playmode at the MATT Museum in Lisbon, Portugal. With recent solo exhibitions at prestigious venues such as SOIL Art Gallery, McLeod Residency, Jack Straw New Media Gallery, Gallery 4Culture, Anchor Art Space, and the Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival, Watanabe continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in the realm of digital art. 

WATCH NOW

EVENT: NOW WHAT? (APRIL 25 - JULY 9 2023, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA)

Theo Triantafyllidis, BugSim (Pheromone Spa), 2022, Live Simulation

 

NOW WHAT?
April 25–July 9, 2023

 

SeMA, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art
1238 Dongil-ro, Nowon-gu
01783 Seoul
South Korea

 

Artists: Riar Rizaldi, Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid Productions, Theo Triantafyllidis, Jaewon Kim, Internet Mountain Club, Yoon Jeewon

press release

2023 marks the tenth anniversary of SeMA, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art. With its mission to build sustained connections to the local community, the museum has experimented with a variety of exhibitions and programs. It is in this context that the museum presents NOW WHAT?, an exhibition that requires a deeper level of engagement from the museum, artist, and the audience.

In our contemporary digital media environment, new media is the medium enjoyed by most people. Yet, even such attributes of new media started to stutter and did not work very dramatically as they entered the format of the white cube. It happened since the new media were not inherently unilateral. Historically, attitudes toward art exhibitions have evolved to emphasize the importance of experience and interaction. Yet, there are still some points that leave something to be developed. In particular, the video art that we want to examine in this exhibition has not escaped the limits of receiving the audience on a white wall like an old painting, even in an explosive circulation of the media ecosystem. The experiential layers of video art must be presented in a more complex and autonomous way. Therefore, we materialize the numerous elements that make up their works in a “game-like scenography.”

We invited artists who work with new media in various ways such as film, documentary, interactive video, and live simulation. We then focused on researching their works that resulted in the single-channel video format. First and foremost, Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid Productions is a filmmaker and game developer who created IMMORTALITY (2022), a game that raises questions about the nature of video art by deconstructing the unidirectionality and monolinear structure of traditional cinema. In IMMORTALITY, the player sits in the editing room to unfold and reassemble all the scenes of the three unmerged films to infer the unfilmed events. It is an important and inspirational example that is closely connected to how the exhibition came about. Jaewon Kim talks about the lives of queer people, those infected with HIV/AIDS, and his relationship with his lovers. His works are composed in the form of letters to lovers through the fragmentation of images or reconstruction of memories. We transformed these works into a performative dimension and placed devices for pseudo-emotional experience. Riar Rizaldi focuses on individuals and specific groups in Indonesia and Hong Kong who are marginalized from a socio-economic perspective. In the exhibition, the audience will become marginalized individuals or particular groups in no time through spontaneous performative acts. The mountaineering documentary True of Landscapes (2023) by Internet Mountain Club allows us to take a closer look behind the scenes of the mountain that was not visible to the eyes of mountain hikers. They tell the holistic story of our time—ethnicity, identity, culture, generation, climate—on the actual topographic map of a “mountain”and ask the audience to be witnesses of the times. Taking on the determination of this video work, we concretized our actions and experiences as witnesses. In the meantime, Theo Triantafyllidis creates a live simulation in which an autonomous ecosystem operates. This work in the exhibition space becomes an object of observation and exploration by itself. The intention is to have this work interact with the audience with a sense of observing an ant’s nest as we did as homework when we were young or with an intention to have it as a mirror to reflect on reality. Finally, artist and filmmaker Yoon Jeewon presents a new video work A VERY ABSOLUTE EFFECT ON THE PERCEIVER (2023). It is hoped that the audience will appreciate the exceptional golden ratio and infer the rules that constructed the work. The best way to watch the video works with the most delicious taste might be to learn the rules and connect what is possible within them for an emergent viewing. 

We prepared game-like texts to facilitate the interaction between the interpretive layers of the video works and the fragmented experiences. Among the various formats of games, we focused on “immersive simulation”games. While the player’s actions were limited to essential actions in the early games, it is possible to interact with almost every element of the environment in immersive simulation games. Players can have autonomy and thus practice emergent gameplay in a given environment regardless of their original obligations. In addition, the proficiency accumulated through trial and error creates a deep understanding and immersion in the game’s worldview. 

Taking this into account, the scenography of the exhibition is set in the gray area of the city, which also happens to be the psychological background of the uncertainty of our time and the participating artists. In particular, the exhibition houses an “underpath of an imaginary bridge.” The underpath is a limbo-like space where the audience’s failures return not as defection but as experiences and skills. Here, artists and curators talked about what it would take for an individual’s media experiences and subjective memories to move beyond mere appreciation and become part of a collective experience, memory, and language. The process devised in the underpath has become an activity sheet and is given to all players. While the placeness of this exhibition primarily gives a sense of déjà vu, the activity sheet works as a tutorial and a list of tasks that help the artists to master the experiences and languages they want to deliver through the live action. Now, with the list of missions in hand, the audience (player) will be able to recall our question. 

“NOW WHAT?”
The exhibition expects that the audience to become the player, and determine their own path at will and absorb the rules or languages of artworks through their explorative interaction at the experiential level. We hope the audience to get deeper into the pleasure of watching video art and the essence of what the artists tell in their works. 

LINK: Now What?

EVENT: LARRY ACHIAMPONG'S AND I SAW A NEW HEAVEN (MAY 4 - JUNE 17 2023, LONDON

Larry Achiampong, And I saw a new heaven. Photo credit: Reece Straw, Copperfield Gallery, 2023

 

Larry Achiampong

And I saw a new heaven

4 May - 17 June 2023

Copperfield Gallery

6 Copperfield Street
London SE1 0EP
info (at) copperfieldlondon . com
+44 (0) 7455 029002
+44 (0) 7845 594549​

Press release:

Referencing the unlikely trinity of HBO TV, video games and Christianity, the title drawn from dialogues from the game-turned-series The Last of Us and ultimately from the Bible encapsulates the references for Larry Achiampong’s second solo show at Copperfield. From computer games to church the cast of faces represented there has almost always been white. The already problematic status quo that church is high culture and gaming is low or pop culture breaks down here when one references the other, but the exhibition brings real game play for visitors into direct dialogue with Achiampong’s collaged paintings. 
 
“video games have had huge influence on my art work and the reality of their sophistication and cultural referencing is ignored by the rest of the creative sphere. It’s time for video games to take their place as context in the gallery while I work on my ultimate goal; a playable artwork. At its core gaming is storytelling, world building, fantasy, exploration and human culture in one”
 
What is missing still, trailing behind even film and TV, is minority representation in games. What scant references there have been to people of colour or the queer community for example have almost always been negative or derogatory with just one or two recent exceptions like Beyonetta. Why though when nearly half of game players in the US alone are people of colour? While the mechanics differ, this cause and effect of this uncomfortable fact can ultimately be connected to a similar peculiarity in religion.
 
Almost anywhere in the world touched by white missionary work, from the Philippines to Ghana, you can find congregations of colour surrounded by posters and imagery with an entirely white cast of God, Mary, Jesus, disciples and crew. The incongruity of a chalk white Jesus with his apparently middle eastern origins is hugely questionable, but in the context of countries that have been repressed by white western imperialism, the apparent perpetuation of these images by these congregations becomes even more unsettling. As a starting point for the works in the exhibition, Achiampong has selected a series of typical religious posters from Ghana to paint over. Their plethora of graphic and immediate imagery draws on a pastiche of dated advertising styles and, in turn, so does Achiampong’s response. While the Golliwog or minstrel show character is an uncomfortably recognisable icon of Britain and America's colonial past, the immediacy of this image when reduced here to an internet style avatar, belies its complex and often obscured history. Other more subtle painted edits and editions amplify the way in which these works question, disrupt and take ownership of these problematic legacies by obscuring parts of the posters. The frame on the face of each panel is custom made by hand by Larry in a nod to the idealised story of Christ as carpenter vs the realities faced by many undervalued manual work forces today. The framing style is comparable with the kind found in the humble places of worship Achiampong experienced as a child — grand in form but with no pretence of gilding or hiding the knots — in other words, strangely honest. 
 
Nearby, games like Bayonetta 2, The Binding of Isaac, and Blasphemous give context to the works for visitors through play. The Binding of Isaac was made in darkly humorous response to the game developers Catholic and Baptist upbringing which Achiampong’s childhood shares, and is loosely based on the Bible story of the same name, but has as much to say about childhood as organised religion. In their aesthetics and sounds, and references to literature and history, Blasphemous and Bayonetta 2 relate to Christianity – specifically, the Catholicism with which the artist grew up – and explore the problematic aspects of religion and blind Faith. An uncanny dialogue thus arises between these games and the artworks, from their use of racialised imagery, to that of language: Biblical commands, lifted from Latin; teachings from Psalms demanding control of the self under the guise of support. It is a question of independently analysing the instruction given to us by a ‘higher power’, of considering the self in the broader context of accepted traditions and behaviours.
 
It is the intro sequence from 2014 blockbuster game Bioshock Infinite that welcomes visitors to the exhibition. While part fantasy, the game draws on some of humanities darkest moments, and gives context to the kind of processes that have led to historic whitewashing across culture. The game is set in the fictional city of Columbia, founded by self-proclaimed prophet Zachary Comstock, and funded by the American government as a floating world's fair within the ideology of American exceptionalism. Worshipped as a prophet, Comstock has transformed the city into a theocratic police state, with the Founding Fathers of the United States venerated as religious icons. Play makes it clear that institutional racism and elitism are widespread in the city, with minorities serving as a labour underclass on the verge of rebellion.
Sound familiar?

 

LINK: And I Saw A New Heaven

LINK: Larry Achiampong

EVEN: OPEN SYSTEMS 1_OPEN WORLDS (MAY 4 - AUGUST 10 2023, SINGAPORE, ONLINE)

Open Systems 1_Open Worlds
May 4–August 10, 2023

Curated by Duncan Bass

curatorial text

Press release

Singapore Art Museum (SAM) launches Open Systems (OS), its first dedicated initiative exploring technology and virtual spaces as sites for exhibition and art production, focused on the examination of the impacts of contemporary digital culture on creative expression. OS presents online exhibitions, interventions and virtual programmes where the sites of their production—video games, creative code, the browser—serve as the locus for both artistic expression and inquiry.

From May 4 to August 10, 2023, audiences are invited to reimagine the metaverse through Open Systems 1_Open Worlds (OS1) at opensystems.sg, a browser-based art experience exploring the dynamics between real and virtual realms. Bringing together artists and thinkers who imagine scenarios challenging logics of enclosure, privatisation, and artificial scarcity imposed on virtual realms, OS1 maps the inequities that transfer between lived and digital realms, positing that video games, game engines and virtual environments may function as sites to rehearse alternative and novel modes of social, political, and spatial organisation.

Unfolding across six thematic chapters fortnightly, the artworks presented in OS1 seek to reframe virtual spaces as sites for practicing alternative modes of organisation within society, from the shared reality of global financial systems and major cities to the multiplicity of personal interactions and individual expression. As the boundaries between real and virtual spaces continue to degrade—another opening of worlds—interventions in virtual realities increasingly reflect upon our physical realities, for worse and for better. OS1opens possibilities of reimagining our shared spaces, investigating a world that is no longer a niche pastime.

OS1.1_Virtual Capital Available 4–17 May 2023

Alice Bucknell, Lawrence Lek, and Bahar Noorizadeh, Rudá Babau & Waste Paper Opera (Klara Kofen, James Oldham, Gary Zhexi Zhang, Anna Palmer)

Through satirical storytelling and science-fiction narratives, Virtual Capital demonstrates how virtual cultures simultaneously reflect and react to tangible impacts on real, lived experiences.

OS1.2_WoW, Unite! Available 18–31 May 2023

Cat Bluemke, Joshua Citarella & Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman, and Mario Mu

Exploring video games as unexpected sites for collective action and organisation, WoW, Unite! considers labour rights issues, exploitation, and organisational conditions in the video game industry.

OS1.3_Landscapes of the Political Imaginary Available 1–14 Jun 2023

Zheng Mahler, Shabtai Pinchevsky, and Firas Shehadeh

Through the concept of the nation-state as constructed by both physical environments and the collective imagination, viewers are invited to reassess their understanding of video games in Landscapes of the Political Imaginary and the underlying assumptions that are built into their virtual landscapes.

OS1.4_Unrealpolitik Available 15–28 Jun 2023

Yeyoon Avis Ann & George Chua, Grayson Earle, and Clemens von Wedemeyer

Focusing on the ubiquitous nature of violence in video games, Unrealpolitikunpacks the societal tensions and assumed neutrality of ideologies embedded in gaming software while highlighting the potential for intervention and political resistance in gamified environments.

OS1.5_Dematerialised Zones Available 29 Jun–12 Jul 2023

Antoine Chapon, Hayoun Kwon, and Total Refusal

Subverting stereotypical perceptions of violence often associated with video games by expanding on sites of conflict as liminal spaces, Dematerialised Zones illustrates how virtual spaces can serve as sites of healing.

OS1.6_Intimate Encounters Available 13–26 Jul 2023

Kara Güt, Sara Sadik, and Xáfier Yap

Intimate Encounters reflects on notions of nurturing one’s identity and intimacy within virtual spaces by drawing on old-school aesthetics, comparing character development in role-playing games to processes of personal identity construction.

A series of accompanying programmes featuring artists and collaborators titled OS Broadcasts will be hosted on the popular live-streaming platform, Twitch, and broadcasts of prior programmes can also be found on the Open Systems platform.

 

LINK: OPEN SYSTEMS

EVENT: MACHINE VIOLENCE (MAY 5 - 31 2023, NEW YORK)

MILTOS MANETAS, RGB, 1998, oil on canvas, 40 x 48 in 101.6 x 121.9 cm (MM0001)

 

Machine Violence
May 5 - 31, 2023
Opening reception Friday, May 5
6 - 8pm  Postmasters 4 Bond Street, 10012, NYC

press release

Featured artists: Chando Ao, Damjansi, Huntrezz Janos, Gracelee Lawrence, Miltos Manetas, Eva and Franco Mattes, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw,Eddo Stern

Postmasters 5.0 is a moving target - our next exhibition will occupy a spectacular ground floor space on Bond Street in downtown Manhattan.

Machine Violence is a show for this moment, a visually stunning exhibition of topical relevance. It will bring together works in all media from software to painting.  Several historic projects by digital pioneers (McCoys, Matteses, Manetas) will be presented alongside current works of the new generation (Huntrezz, Damjanski).

Machine violence invariably fosters fear and disruption on an individual or societal scale. As artworks in this exhibition attest, it is left to humans - artists, in this case - to redirect, subvert, and/or transcend the literal narrative.

Fitting the current moment of intense uncertainty along the art-technology axis, this show can potentially triangulate two significant museum exhibitions currently on view in New York: Signals at MoMA and Refigured at The Whitney Museum.

The exhibition location, a former carpentry shop with skylights, brick walls and a 20 foot-tall ceiling, will be cleaned but otherwise left “as is” - raw - freeing the artists’ projections, screens, sculptures, prints and paintings from the homogeneity of a white box. Art can survive anywhere. Joining a salient history of co-opting raw spaces for art: Gavin Brown's Harlem space, Triple Candie, The Project, Sculpture Center - we will continue this countering flow at the moment of extreme showroom effect.

The exhibition centerpiece will be Horror Chase (2002) by Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, who have worked collaboratively since early 2000 (Kevin McCoy is also widely recognized for creating the first art NFT in 2014). Newly remastered into 4K, Horror Chase is based on the climactic chase sequence from the film Evil Dead 2 re-enacted on a custom stage set. Each shot is digitized individually and processed by a custom computer program that selects clips randomly. The chase becomes a continuously variable incarnation of an endless - and futile - escape attempt. The images are projected on a cinematic scale, and the computer hardware is installed in a black briefcase which forms a part of the installation. Given the recent explosion of interest in generative art, the McCoy's piece may be one of the earliest examples of algorithmically created cinematic footage - a software/hardware combination of object and projection.

EVA AND FRANCO MATTES, Freedom, 2010, single-channel video(color, sound), monitor, inflatable mattress, cables, media player(optional), dimensions variable; running time: 8:56 mins, edition of 3 (#2/3), (EFM072)

 

Eva and Franco Mattes are the notorious Italian artist's team working with internet and digital media since the late 1990s. One of their most iconic works, Biennale.PY, Perpetual Self Dis/Infecting Machine (2001-2003) is an aesthetically alluring, customized computer encased in plexiglass, with all parts exposed. It only has two software programs installed:  the virus that the artists made in 2001 for the Venice Biennale, and the "Norton Utilities" antivirus patch. The computer is in a perpetual mode of being infected, then disinfected, then rebooted; a machine locked forever in a fight between good and evil.

EDDO STERN, Vietnam Romance, 2003 digital video, NFT Time 19:09 (ES0018)

 

MILTOS MANETAS, Flames, 1997, digital video file, machinima, NFT, time 23:49, Edition of 3 (MM0002)

 

There will be three early key works of machinima in the show: Miltos Manetas’ Flames (1997) of Lara Croft committing suicide; Eddo Stern’s masterwork Vietnam Romance (2003) where key war scenes are recreated through video games like Grand Theft Auto and MASH; and Eva and Franco Mattes’ Freedom (2010), a haunting montage of death scenes from iconic first-person shooter games.

 

Damjanski will present his app, Bye, Bye Camera (2020), the AI-powered camera for the post-human era, which automatically removes people from any picture someone takes. The tool digitally detects and erases body shapes, but keeps human traces like shadows. The app will be shown along with photographic prints of Post Human Dog (2020),  his pandemic-time series of dogs with no owners.Gracelee Lawrence will present two large scale, 3D-printed sculptures of fragmented, battered bodies.

 

Jen Catron and Paul Outlaw  are making a lamp, a huge, functioning, fruit flies - killing zapper encased in plexiglass.

 

Chando Ao’s kinetic sculpture in the show will be a computer driven chair/cradle for grownups that belies its mean and ominous torture device look, to soothingly rock the sitter.

 

Huntrezz Janos will show - as AR - two Instagram filters that recast the user as armored, warrior-like characters and a related 3-D printed sculpture.

 

Also on view will be Miltos Manetas still life paintings of computer components from 1998-2010. A mid-show performance is planned where Manetas will, via WhatsApp and a local assistant, paint a still life remotely from Bogotá.

 

LINK: MACHINE VIOLENCE

GAME ART: YELTSIN PENADO'S GTA MODS (2021)

Yeltsin Penado, Portland Harbor, GTA 3 Mod, 2021

Yeltsin Penado, Yacht, GTA 3 Mod, 2021

GTA mods (2021) by Yeltsin Penado is

"A series of interactive modifications made for Grand Theft Auto's 3D Universe. The Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise has developed a theme and lore which spans an array of titles: GTA: 3, GTA: Vice City, and GTA: San Andreas; The settings of GTA games are fictional parodies of American cities, through the lens of a thematic snapshot in time. This series of works utilizes an experimental software that opens the GTA game files which are loaded into a computer's memory; this allows anyone to use GTA 3D models, assets and textures to create their own landscape using the game as their empty canvas. The modifications were produced on a software named: MEd v0.32 which allows you to change environmental elements within the video game. Liberty City is a rendition of New York, Vice City is a rendition of Miami, and San Andreas is intended to span a whole state comprised of three major cities and regions: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. These landscapes are characterized by American stereotypes surrounding the local culture, monuments, distribution of wealth, proliferation of crime, corruption, false idols, excess, waste, and lawlessness. Through modding GTA, our blank canvas reveals methods of manipulation through simulating a narrative through an unreal setting." (Yeltsin Penado)

Yeltsin Penado is Salvadoran-American Artist Born 1990 in Los Angeles, California. He studied Fine Arts and Community Arts Engagement at Otis College of Art and Design. Pen ado uses emerging and experimental software and technology to produce audio and video narratives. Yeltsin got into modding by researching open-source solutions to 3D Animation. This prompted him to research mods and machinima and take a closer look into why people decide to modify video games. He draws inspirations from Warren Spector’s: Game Manifesto, and publications like The Machinima Reader and theoretical writings from Erik Champion.

LINK: Yeltsin Penado (all images courtesy of the artist)

LINK: Penado on modding

EVENT: SIMONETTA FADDA (MARCH 31 - APRIL 13 2023, ONLINE)

GAME OVER

One channel video (SD, 676x540), color, sound, 4’ 27”, 2002 Italy

Created by Simonetta Fadda

March 13 - April 13 2023

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

Driving at night in the video game-like suburban French city of Enghien Les Bains can be an exciting or demoralizing experience, depending on the driver or, perhaps, on the filmmaker. Simonetta Fadda’s carscapes are both delirious and hyper-real, suggesting a toxic convergence of realities.

Born in Savona, Simonetta Fadda is an artist, educator, essayist, and translator. Her teaching activities include the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti, Turin and Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan. Since the Eighties, she has been working with video art. Her artworks are featured in public and private collections in Italy and in Europe. She participated in major international events such as Movimenta – Biennale de l’image en mouvement, projet Mondes Flottants: Grandes Images, Nice, France (2017) and Parallel Program of the 13th Istanbul Biennial, Institut Français d’Istanbul, Istanbul (2013). In Italy she was featured, among others, at Festival del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro, Pesaro – Italy (in We Want Cinema: cinema e video di ricerca 2018, and in Satellite 2016) and Bergamo Film Meeting, Bergamo – Italy (2010). A prolific writer and critic, Fadda is the author of the seminal Definition zero: origins of video art between politics and communication (Costa & Nolan, 1999), the first Italian study on video as a medium of art and political activism, which was reprinted in an expanded format in 2017 by Meltemi Edizioni. In 2020, Franco Angeli published her new book, Media and art. She also translated into Italian and edited Gene Youngblood’s seminal book Expanded Cinema.

WATCH NOW

GAME ART: KEIKEN'S MORPHOGENIC ANGELS (ONLINE)

press release

Channel, Somerset House’s new curated online space for art, ideas, and the artistic process, presents the new work Morphogenic Angels from artist collective Keiken.

A futuristic transhuman love story, Morphogenic Angels stems from Keiken’s new prototype role-playing game, set in a reimagined future 1000 years from now. This new RPG simulation explores a future in which humans have morphic upgrades that organically re-engineer them to have transhuman capabilities. The two central characters, Yaxu and Anamt’u’ul, explore our endless capacity for change and self-discovery in fantastical and unimaginable ways, as the characters live and love through cycles of drastic evolution.

In this intricately designed future, angels live for hundreds of years, but instead of experiencing the same life for this unimaginable period of time, they experience many different lifecycles. Endless cycles of evolution, drastically change the abilities, purposes and direction of these post-human being (referred to as Morphic Angels). Morphogenic Angels explores the longing to know oneself. Trusting others and falling in love through so many lived evolutions becomes an infinite task. So when Angels do fall in love it becomes so much more precious and fragile than what we can imagine today.

Keiken is an artist collective, co-founded by Tanya Cruz, Hana Omori and Isabel Ramos in 2015. Keiken’s collective title is taken from the Japanese word for experience; the lived experience being an idea at the core of their practice. They are building and imagining a Metaverse to simulate new structures and ways of existing and to test-drive possible futures. The metaverse is a fully immersive virtual space, allowing Keiken to become the architects and collaborators of the future. Creating speculative worlds through filmmaking, gaming, installation, Extended Reality (XR), blockchain and performance, they explore how societal introspection governs the way we feel, think and perceive.

About Channel
Drawing from Somerset House’s unique resident community, the digital platform will showcase a rolling programme of exclusive commissions, documentaries, films, podcasts, talks, interactive works and editorial content. Channel’s content has been created with accessibility in mind and will provide alternative ways of presenting information such as subtitles and transcripts.

Channel has been developed with support from the UK Government’s Culture Recovery Fund through Arts Council England.

Watch the artwork here

LINK: Channel

LINK: Keiken

EVENT: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXIII (MARCH 19 - 26 2023, MILAN AND ONLINE)

MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXIII

Neither Artificial Nor Intelligent

March 19 - 26 2023, Milan and online

Special screening on March 25 2023 at the

Museo Interattivo del Cinema

Viale Fulvio Testi 121 20162 Milano

Curated by Matteo Bittanti

 

The sixth edition of the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL features a diverse selection of 19 machinima and game videos from 23 artists representing 12 countries.

“Neither Artificial Nor Intelligent” (NANI) is how Kate Crawford— research professor of communication and science and technology studies at the University of Southern California and a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research — describes artificial intelligence in her award-winning book Atlas of AI (2021). According to Crawford, “AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. It is made from natural resources and it is people who are performing the tasks to make the systems appear autonomous.”

Likewise, the new edition of the Milan Machinima Festival will address the growing influence of artificial intelligence on storytelling and visual narrative, but also the rhetoric surrounding this technique

This year the festival features two distinct sections: NEITHER INTELLIGENT NOR ARTIFICIAL (March 25 2023, in-person) and MACHINIMA IN THE AGE OF AI (March 19-26 2023, online), featuring 9 programs overall.

Experience the best of machinima and game videos through our curated programs:

NEITHER INTELLIGENT NOR ARTIFICIAL (Museum of Interactive Cinema, Milan, March 25 2023): NEITHER INTELLIGENT NOR ARTIFICIAL, THE POLITICS OF GAMING, DYSTOPIA and a selection of works from MADE IN ITALY and THE NEO AVANT-GARDE which will be presented exclusively on site, specifically

• LUCAS AZEMAR, LIFE ON EARTH, 2019

• SOREN THILO FUNDER, GAME ENGINES (Orange Bulletproof Kids) (2021)

• TOTAL REFUSAL, HARDLY WORKING, 2022

• BEN NICHOLSON, THE TONIC OF BATTERSEA PARK, 2023

• ANDREA GATOPOLOUS, HAPPY NEW YEAR, JIM, 2022

• KENT SHEELY, WELCOME BACK, 2022

• CHRISTIAN WRIGHT, BODY LANGUAGE, 2022

• STANISLAW PETRUK, THE REMNANTS, 2022

MACHINIMA IN THE AGE OF AI (March 19-26 2023, online): MADE IN ITALY, THE NEO AVANT-GARDE, COUNTER-NARRATIVES, and UTOPIA.

Featured artists: Babak Ahteshamipour, Lucas Azémar, Martin Bell, Marc Coverdale, Iain Douglas, Søren Thilo Funder, Andrea Gatopoulos, Nicholas Gebbe, Luca Giacomelli, Manuel Ghidini, Kara Güt, Ben Nicholson, Stanislaw Petruk, Kent Sheely, Brenton Alexander Smith, Colin Stagner, Nanut Thanapornrapee, Total Refusal, Rhett Tsai, and Christian Wright.

The festival’s poster was designed by Jordy Veenstra, one of the most talented artists working with machinima today. “The initial keywords given to me were NPC and AI”, said the Dutch artist and filmmaker. “In tandem with this year’s theme, my first thoughts were: pseudo-intelligence, digitization, dehumanization, empty shells, algorithms, compulsory movement and/or execution — as in NPC speech and movement —, the contrast between real/fabricated and the visualization of code.“

Consistently with this premise, Veenstra used AI-based tools to generate the artwork. As he explains: “The work was created with the Dall-E AI provided by OpenAI and in my eyes ideally captures this idea. White experimental, dehumanized masses looking like NPCs, with truly absurd poses; just standing there, surrounded by experimental ‘white’ code blobs; simply looking around restlessly and waiting for someone, anyone, to give a quest to, to be useful and to have their code finally executed. To have their own quest completed.”

The full program and schedule are available here

Tickets can be purchased here

LINK: MMF MMXXIII