GAMESCENES

EVENT: VRAL #9_BRENT WATANABE (SEPTEMBER 18 - OCTOBER 1 2020)

ANIMAL CROSSING: ALL MINE

digital video, color, sound, 7’ 05”, 2020 (United States)

Created by Brent Watanabe

VRAL

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti 

Conspicuous consumption is the implicit goal of innumerable video games, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons is, by far, the most shameless celebration of capitalism. Released in March 2020, the latest installment of the popular series became the most popular video game during the most intense months of the Covid-19 lockdown in Europe and the United States. A commercial triumph – more than twenty two million copies sold in four months – New Horizons gave players the possibility to escape from their brick-and-mortar homes and relocate to a minuscole island in the middle of the ocean. All they had to do was to purchase the innocent sounding “Deserted Island Getaway Package” from a development company called Nook Inc. Lured by the promise of playful evasion and endless growth, American artist Brent Watanabe soon found himself enslaved by perpetual debt, surrounded by a mountain of waste, and forced to compulsively perform bullshit jobs. An unofficial adaptation of Maurizio Lazzarato’s The Making of the Indebted Man, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the most sophisticated simulation of neoliberalism ever concocted: suffice to say that players must take a mortgage on their virtual houses to start “playing”. Assuming the role of a modern day Robinson Crusoe with entrepreneurial skills, Watanabe spent more than one hundred fifty hours hoarding as many consumer goods as possible and displaying them on his island. He documented his performance with a machinima.

Brent Watanabe is an artist combining a background in traditional materials and practices (drawing, sculpture) with emerging technologies (computer programming, electronics), exploring an artistic field still uncharted. For over a decade, Watanabe has been creating computer-controlled gallery installations populated by kinetic sculpture, drawing, projection, and sound. His 2016 project, San Andreas Deer Cam was streamed live on the internet, had over 800,000 visitors in the first three months, and was mentioned in several international publications, including New York Magazine, the BBC, and WIRED. Watanabe has participated in several group shows and screenings nationally and internationally, including Through Machine Eyes curated by James Bridle 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. He has had recent solo exhibitions at SOIL Art Gallery (Seattle, 2006), McLeod Residency (Seattle, 2008), Jack Straw New Media Gallery (Seattle, 2009), Gallery 4Culture (Seattle, 2011), Anchor Art Space (Anacortes, Washington State, 2013), and Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival (Seattle, 2016).

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GAME ART: JORDY VEENSTRA'S PIXELATION (2020)

Dutch artist and filmmaker Jordy Veenstra has recently released Pixelation, an experimental machinima consisting of three Quake III fragmovies originally made in late 2010. As Veenstra explains, "All movies were created at the time to familiarize myself with the Q3MME mod and cinematic camera paths and not so much the quality of the frags. The film was re-edited today, almost exactly ten years later, to a more experimental and mysterious mood-like short film." The video is hypnotic: evocative of Piranesi's architecture, Pixelation is a homage to ealy machinima. 

Jordy Veenstra is a video editor, motion graphics designer, 2D animator, and experimental filmmaker based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In his practice, Veenstra connects art and narrative with technology and software through the medium of experimental film. His work examines often overlooked social and artistic concerns. His groundbreaking Depthmap was featured in the The Weird, The Eerie, and The Unreal program of the 2020 MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL. In June 2020, VRAL exhibited his work Regression.

LINK: Jordy Veenstra

TOOLS: NVIDIA OMNIVERSE MACHINIMA

NVIDIA is introducing a new app called Omniverse Machinima which "enables gamers across the world to easily master the art of storytelling by using 3D objects, animated by NVIDIA AI technologies."

Specifically,

Through NVIDIA Omniverse, creators can import assets from supported games or most 3rd party asset libraries into the platform. Creators can then automatically animate characters using an AI-based pose estimator and footage from their webcam. Characters' faces can come to life with only a voice recording using NVIDIA's new Audio2Face technology. Reality is effortlessly recreated with high-fidelity physics like particles and fluids, and physically accurate materials. After mixing, playing, and composing the scenes, path-traced rendering technology is enabled with one-click to final output with the highest fidelity using Omniverse RTX Renderer. [...] NVIDIA Omniverse is an open platform built for virtual collaboration and simulation. It provides a universal design tool asset exchange with a viewer based on real-time, photorealistic path-tracing. The engine is designed to be physically accurate - simulating light, physics, materials, and AI. With Omniverse, creators, designers, and engineers can accelerate their workflows with one-click interoperability between leading software tools, and seamless collaboration in an interactive, simulated world.

If you don't dig the marketing-speak (who does?), jump straight to the videos:

LINK: NVIDIA Omniverse Machinima

EVENT: VRAL #8_DAVID BLANDY (SEPTEMBER 4 - SEPTEMBER 17 2020)

HOW TO FLY

digital video, color, sound, 6’ 23”, 2020 (United Kingdom)

Created by David Blandy

How to Fly was originally presented by John Hansard Gallery in Southampton as part of the Digital Array programme supported by the Barker-Mill Foundation.

VRAL

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti 

Originally commissioned by John Hansard Gallery in the United Kingdom and exhibited in May 2020, How to Fly uses the format of online video tutorials to explore ideas about life, nature, and technology. Created during the most intense months of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe, How to Fly begins with the artist providing detailed information on how to make a short video about flying using the tools available on a computer, such as the Rockstar Editor, a popular video editor embedded in Grand Theft Auto V. “Hi guys. I’ve been thinking about making a film about flying,” the artist calmly tells the viewers in voiceover, before illustrating the process step by step. The entire procedure takes place on a computer screen: flying is enacted with the touch of a few strokes on the keyboard and experienced virtually. But How to Fly is not an ironic commentary on the state of the world. It is not earnest either. So, what is it? You decide.

David Blandy’s practice consists of in depth investigations into the pop cultural forces that he experienced throughout his life, from hip hop and soul, to computer games and manga. His works slip between performance and video, reality and construct, using references sampled from the wide, disparate sources that construct and constantly reassemble his sense of self. David Blandy’s films are distributed through LUX. The artist is represented by Seventeen Gallery in London. Blandy’s work has been shown at numerous public institutions including Tate, London, UK; FACT, Liverpool, UK; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; INIVA, London, UK; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; Spike Island, Bristol, UK; Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Modern Art Oxford, UK; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany; Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, UK. Blandy lives and works in London.

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GAME ART: OLAVO EKMAN'S COLORS FADE (2020)

Colors Fade is a video clip created by Brazilian Estudio Bijari for the independent electronic trio Lumen Craft, an electronic pop trio from São Paulo, Brazil. Entirely filmed in virtual locations of Grand Theft Auto V, Colors Fade shows three different characters travelling through the landscapes of a dystopian future that presents remnants of a technocratic civilization. As the authors write:

The futuristic narrative in road movie style, references pop culture and science fiction. It is meant as a homage to artists like Moebius, Simon Stalenhag, Ralph McQuarrie, Syd Mead, Katsuhiro Otomo, Masamune Shirow, James Cameron, Neill Blomkamp and others. The video alludes to faded signs of resistance to a technocracy. The idea is directly related to the growth of right-wing movements in the world and at the same time questions our increasing dependence on technology, machines and social networks. In this universe of "Colors Fade" only three characters, representing the members of Lumen Craft (John Evans, Ceah Pagotto and Noah Guper), are seen following a journey whose destination is unknown.Colors Fade was scripted, directed and edited by Olavo Ekman. Art and animations by Alexandre Marcati, Audrey Martini, Raphael Minhoso, and Olavo Eckman. It was produced by Geandre Tomazoni, Gustavo Godoy, João Rocha, Maurício Brandão, Olavo Ekman, and Rodrigo Araújo

Estudio Bijari is a visual arts studio that brings together a multidisciplinary group of artists, architects, scenographers, designers, video directors and planners. 
Bijari was formed in 1997 in Sao Paulo. Current members are Geandre Tomazoni, Gustavo Godoy, João Rocha, Maurício Brandão, Olavo Ekman and Rodrigo Araújo studio.

LINK: Estudio Bijari

EVENT: VRAL #7_JÓN BJARKI MAGNÚSSON (AUGUST 21 - SEPTEMBER 3, ONLINE)

EVEN ASTEROIDS ARE NOT ALONE

digital video, color, sound, 17’, 2019 (Iceland)

VRAL

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti 

In the vast and hostile world of New Eden, trust is not a given. How can one make friends in the depths of space? Even Asteroids Are Not Alone explores social relationships within Eve Online, a multiplayer game where hundreds of thousands of players mine, trade and fight their way through computer-generated galaxies far away from the world as we know it. By weaving together the experiences of fourteen individuals from around the globe, the filmmaker shows a different story: The ability of online games to forge communities and bridge the space between people, countries, and continents. Entirely shot within Eve Online, Even Asteroids Are Not Alone is a insightful ethnographic video game essay.

Jón Bjarki Magnússon is an award-winning journalist, writer, and filmmaker from Iceland currently living in Berlin, Germany. He studied Creative Writing at the University of Iceland in 2009-2012, published a book of poetry ― The Lambs in Cambodia (and you) ― in 2011, and received a Master of Arts in Visual and Media Anthropology at Freie Universität, Berlin. Even Asteroids Are Not Alone was his first film, followed by Half Elf (2020), a feature length documentary. Even Asteroids Are Not Alone won the RAI and Marsh Short Film Prize at the RAI Film Festival 2019 and was screened internationally at several festivals, including Transmediale.

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GAME ART: MIRIAM ROSS AND HELEN PERKINS'S ASSASSIN'S CREED ULYSSES (2020)

A fascinating project by Victoria University of Wellington’s Senior Lecturer  Miriam Ross and Helen Perkins (both from the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studie), AC Ulysses is an interactive machinima created with Ubisoft’s Story Creator mode for Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey meant as a remake of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Yes, indeed! The above video is a playthrough of AC Ulysses. A brilliant remediation, AC Ulysses shows the potential for interactive machinima and narrative design. Ubisoft's Story Creator Mode was released in June 2019, and six months later, 9,000 mini-story game plays have already been published. While most of the stories are connected to the game's universe and historical context, Ross and Perkins' work truly illustrate the strength of machinima by mixing different texts, aesthetics, and modes of cosnumption.  They are released a series of Bloomsday quests.

Dr Miriam Ross is Senior Lecturer in the Film Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. She works with new technologies to combine practice-based methods and traditional academic analysis. Her publications include South American Cinematic Culture: Policy, Production, Distribution and Exhibition (2010) and 3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences (2015) as well as journal articles on film industries, new cinema technologies, stereoscopic media and film festivals. Her short films have been screened internationally and her video essays have been published in online journals. She is also co-founder and administrator of stereoscopicmedia.org.

Helen Perkins is a research assistant in the School of English, Film, Theatre, Media Studies, and Art History. She is completing her final year of study towards her conjoint degrees majoring in Film (BA) and Media Design (BDI).

LINK: Miriam Ross

CALL FOR ENTRIES: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2021 (DEADLINE: DECEMBER 15, 2020)

The fourth edition of the MACHINIMA FILM FESTIVAL will once again take place at IULM University (Milan, Italy) during the Milano Digital Week, which celebrates the driving forces that are reshaping art, culture, and technology of Italy’s most vibrant city.

Filmmakers and video artists engaged in the practice of appropriating, repurposing, and remixing video games are encouraged to send us their work for consideration. All submissions will be judged by an international panel of jurors comprising scholars, curators, and critics. A Critics' Award will be awarded to the most groundbreaking work.

Screenings of selected machinima will be curated around different themes and presented in different sections. 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 15, 2020. 

The full program will be announced in February 2021

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

INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL FOR NEW MEDIA ARTWORKS GUIDELINES:

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

A preference is given to machinima created with/in video games rather than virtual worlds such as Second Life.

Submissions must be 10 minutes or less in length. The minimum duration is 2 minutes.

Submissions must have been produced between January 1, 2020 and December 15, 2020.

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).

Each submission requires a one-time, nominal submission fee of 15 euros. Submissions that have not been accepted will not be refunded.

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 in English.

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

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

Submission deadline: December 15, 2020

LINK: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2021: CALL FOR ENTRIES

GAME ART: PETRA SZÉMAN'S MONOMYTH: GAIDEN / MASTER OF TWO WORLDS (2020)

Petra Széman, Monomyth: gaiden/ Master of Two Worlds, 2020, digital video, color, sound 10' 40"

Petra Széman's monumental Monomyth: gaiden series has reached its destination. With the latest and last installment Monomyth: gaiden/ Master of Two Worlds, Széman's the meta-referential, self-reflexive series that pay homage to Skyrim, among other things, is now complete. The grinding of everyday life acquires a whole new meaning in an endless loop of identity play. The penultimate episode, Return, was recently exhibited on VRAL.

Born in Budapest, Hungary, Petra Szemán is a moving image artist working with animation and game-like immersive installations. Her practice is centered around instances in which real life can be experienced as fictional. Using a virtual version of herself as a protagonist across various digital realms, she explores liminal spaces and threshold situations, looking to dissect the ways our memories and selves are constructed within a landscape oversaturated with fiction both on- and off-screen. Rejecting the idea of cyberspace as a radically alternative realm, Petra walks the line situated between dystopia and utopia. Petra is a recent Fine Art graduate from Newcastle University (2013-2017) and has exhibited since graduation at NEoN Festival in Dundee, Scotland; Big Screen Southend; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, as well as various galleries across the North East of England. She is currently based in Tsukuba, Japan, developing new work as a recipient of a research scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education and Culture (2018-2020). 

LINK: Petrà Széman

EVENT: VRAL #6_BRENTON ALEXANDER SMITH (JULY 17 - JULY 30 2020, ONLINE)

THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW

Digital video, color, sound, 7’ 01”, 2020

July 17 - July 30 2020

Introduced by Luca Miranda

Things are different now (2020) is both a variation of The Soft Crash (2020 – ongoing) and a complementary, consequential conversation with Brenton Alexander Smith’s other works I Feel Like a Nervous Wreck (2019) and Inverted Black Box (2020). All these works center on an impossible dialogue between the human and the machine. Things are different now tests the limits of the physics simulation in the driving game BeamNg.drive. The video shows a twitching car located in (or rather, on) a multi level car park environment. The jerky motion makes the vehicle look vulnerable and fragile, but the absurdity of the situation has comical undertones as well. Crashforms, the name given by the artist these hybrid artifacts, are both living corpses and the embodiment of one’s desires. In Things are different now, the machine is no longer a human prosthesis or appendix. It is transfiguration.

Brenton Alexander Smith is an Australian artist whose work explores the relation between the human and the mechanic, and the affective and sentimental responses generated through this relationship. Smith deliberately avoids narrative structures, preferring instead an apparently chaotic openendedness. Imbued with a sense of uncanny, his work transports the viewer into media res, that is, in a series of always already unfolding events. Smith received a Bachelor in Visual Arts in 2014 at the Sydney College of Arts in Australia and took part in several group and solo exhibitions. He exhibited at Kudos Gallery in Sydney, Australia and at The Wrong Biennale (2019) in Valencia, Spain. His solo exhibitions include I Feel Like a Nervous Wreck (2019) in the virtual gallery of Closed on Monday Gallery and Inverted Black Box (2020) in the Black Box Space in Sydney.

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