GAMESCENES

EVENT: SERIOUS GAMES (AUGUST 2 - NOVEMBER 2 2019, SHANGHAI, CHINA)

SERIOUS GAMES

August 2 2019 - November 2, 2019

How Art Museum

O 1, Lane 2277, Zuchongzhi Road

Shanghai, China

Artists: Alexis Mailles, Feng Chen, Harun Farocki, Jon Rafman, Kent Sheely, Andrew Luk, Lawrence Lek, Matthieu Cherubini, Payne Zhu, Peter Nelson, Wu Chi-Yu

Curated by Fu Liaoliao

Serious Games will present works and projects of both artists and game designers, casting light on the historical development of video games as a form and image, the tension between the mechanism of eSport competition and players from a bio-political point of view, as well as the critiques of spatial politics, historical truth, and future conflicts within the context of video games. Moreover, the exhibition is not limited to present the works directly related to video games, and it also attempts to extend the boundaries of people's notions of game by showcasing works from different perspectives.

The exhibition is accompanied by several events, including various panels, such as "Serious Games: Radical Field inside and out of Virtuality" (August 2), featuring Dr. Jiang Yuhui (Professor of philosophy, East China Normal University), Feng Chen (Artist), Payne Zhu (Artist), Wu Chi-Yu (Artist) and moderated by Fu Liaoliao (Curator of HOW Art Museum). Below is the full description:

As an ancient form of human activity, games have been undergoing drastic changes under the development of science and technology. Until the era of video games, its unprecedented connection with daily life has opened up new possibilities for cognitive space, images and life forms. It has even launched challenges to the present and future way of people's existence. The panel discussion starts from this radical field inside and out of virtuality.

LINK: Serious Games

GAME ART: CODY FILARDI'S WALK THROUGH 1 (2017)

In Filardi's works, video game imagery - alongside other pop culture elements - is a recurrent trope. The juxtaposition of sequences from video games (from Doom to Super Mario) and live footage creates a continuum rather than an antinomy. Sometimes, as it happens in Hygiene part 1 and 2, idealized images of women are appropriated from the mediascape (advertising, games) and playfully recontextualized. 

Cody Filardi is an interdisciplinary artist based in Rochester, NY. With a focus on materiality and the politics of the personal, she/they create and entangle physical manifestations of identity and queer space. Cody received an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts from SUNY Buffalo State.

Cody Filardi, Walk Through 1, stills from video, 2017.

LINK: Cody Filardi

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: JONNE HANSSON'S HEAVY THOUGHTS (2019)

In his latest machinima shot with/in Grand Theft Auto V, Swedish artist Jonne Hansson casts virtual bodybuilders to discuss the politics of gamification, the life as a simulation hypothesis, the nature of game rules, and much more. A day in the life of three avatars working out their bodies and their minds (Richard Guy Slatter, Gazi Mrah, August Ballgren). Yes, it's very meta. Killer sound design by Daniel Westman. Heavy Thoughts is a follow up to the brilliant The Convenience Store (2018), 

Jonne Hansson uses computer game graphics and different game elements, often leaning towards gamified life-coaching. A recurrent theme in his work is the crossover between digital games and reality, where pixels, polygons and the world of atoms are mixed together. He uses media such as machinima, installations, prints, drawings and other things that fit the work’s oeuvre.

LINK: Jonne Hansson

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

GAME ART: THOMAS HAWRANKE'S PLAY AS ANIMALS (ANIMALS IN TRAFFIC) (2019)

A new project by German media artist Thomas Hawranke investigates the representation of non-human animals in video games and, specifically, Grand Theft Auto V. In this machinima titled Play as Animals (Animals in Traffic) different animals ranging from a board, several breeds of dogs, and even a monkey, slowly walk on a bridge, while several drivers stuck in traffic honk, curse, and complain. Hawranke has previously directed the spectacular Grand Ape Town, which was presented at the 2018 Milan Machinima Festival. 

LINK: Thomas Hawranke

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: ZAYAO LI'S "THE MAN AND WOMAN WHO MARRIED THE INTERNET" (2018)

Zayao Li's The Man and Woman Who Married The Internet is a machinima about the post-internet generation developed with Unity. It was presented at the exhibition Aesthetics for New Realities, Fall 2018, NYU.

Zeyao Li is a queer coder and artist from China. He was born and raised in Beijing, studied and lived in New York, Prague, Seattle, and Shanghai. Having this multi-cultural background, Zeyao couples the technical skill that he acquires with observations from his surroundings. His work ranges from Analog Photography to Interactive Installation and Mixed Reality.

LINK: Zayao Li

CALL FOR ENTRIES: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2020 (DEADLINE: DECEMBER 1 2019)

MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2020

March 2020

IULM University

Via Carlo Bo 2,

20143 Milano, Italia

WE ARE DELIGHTED TO ANNOUNCE OUR OFFICIAL CALL FOR ENTRIES FOR THE THIRD EDITION OF THE MACHINIMA FILM FESTIVAL, SLATED FOR MARCH 2020.

The third edition of the MACHINIMA FILM FESTIVAL will take place at IULM University (Milan, Italy) in March 2020 during the Milano Digital Week. Sponsored by the City of Milan, Department of Digital Transformation and Public Services, the Milano Digital Week celebrates the driving forces that are reshaping work, leisure, and learning.

Filmmakers and video artists engaged in the practice of appropriation, repurposing, and creative remix of video games are encouraged to send us their work for consideration. All submission will be judged by an international panel of jurors and a selected number will be featured in the main program. A Critics' Award will be awarded during the ceremony. 

Screenings of selected works will be curated around different themes, to be announced. The most interesting submissions are those which seek to capture or highlight a specific facet of contemporary life - from politics to art, from violence to creativity, from technology to ideology - through the aesthetic lenses of digital gaming. The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2019.

The full program will be announced in February 2020.

Please carefully read our simple submission guidelines and requirements below before sending your work.

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INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL FOR NEW MEDIA ARTWORKS

GUIDELINES:

The Milan Machinima Festival defines machinima as any digital video made using video games technology (game engines, game tools, assets such as characters, items, environments etc.).

Submissions must feature machinima made with specifically with video games (not virtual worlds, e.g. Second Life).

Submissions must be 10 minutes or less in length. The minimum duration is 1 minute.

Submissions must have been produced between January 1, 2019 and December 1, 2019.

Multiple versions of the same machinima will not be considered.

Acceptable submission formats: Digital video files only.

Acceptable exhibition formats: mp4, avi, mpg, Quicktime file (ProRes 422).

All applicants must complete the official festival submission form located on filmfreeway.com.

One-time, nominal submission fee: $15 or 15 euros payable via PayPal to the festival organizers.

The applicant holds the sole responsibility of copyright clearance of any copyrighted material in the machinima.

The submission must include an accompanying artist statement/description no longer than 500 words.

The MMF is under no obligation to provide comments regarding submitted machinima to any applicant.

Submission deadline: December 1, 2019.

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LINK: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL

LINK: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2019

LINK: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2018

EVENT: CHRIS HOWLETT'S NEW STATEMENTS (15-17 MAY 2019, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA)

New Statements is a new media exhibition by Chris Howlett that showcases an installation of interactive and screen-based machinima works that were developed from 2016-19 for his PhD. This practice–led research project explores the operations of a ‘techno-stice’ that demonstrates digital technology's capacity to generate dissensual space in the form of new subjectivities and ethico-political perspectives in contemporary art.

Chris Howlett, Joystick Drama, 2017-2019

LINK: Chris Howlett