GAMESCENES

EVENT: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2020 (MAY 25-30 2020, ONLINE)

The 2020 MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL is now live! Between May 25-30 2020, the work of 25 different artists from 13 nations will be available online in 6 different programs. Most of these works have never been presented in Italy before. The third edition of the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL was originally supposed to take place inside the Contemporary Exhibition Hall at IULM University, but was postponed due to the ongoing Covide-19 emergency.

An official event of Milano Digital Week, the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL is organized in collaboration with GAMESCENES. Art in the age of video games and the M.A. in Game Design at IULM University. A follow-up to the 2016 exhibition GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY, the festival brings to Milan idiosyncratic video works that lie at the intersection of video art, cinema, and digital games.

The 2020 MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL is curated by Matteo Bittanti and presented by FANTAGEMMA, Gemma Fantacci’s alter ego.

LINK: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2020

EVENT: ALEKSANDAR RADAN'S IN BETWEEN IDENTITIES (MAY 8 - MAY 2020, ONLINE)

IN BETWEEN IDENTITIES

digital video, color, sound, 13’, 2020

Created by Aleksandar Radan

May 8 - May 22 2020

 

In an ersatz Los Angeles permeated by a pervasive sense of dread, mysterious figures confront their own meaninglessness. Scantily dressed, completely naked or donning fur coats, men and women seem disoriented as they try to see more, see better or see nothing at all. Some even temporarily blind themselves with slices of cucumber over their eyes. At once recognizable and abstract, these cartoon-like characters are not pathetic, but rather apathetic. The viewer indulges in scopophilic pleasures as they perform mundane acts, like watching themselves in the mirror or taking a photo. It seems harmless, even comical, and yet one feels it could suddenly become a nightmare.

Aleksandar Radan was born in Offenbach am Main in 1988 and studied art at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach. His work is concerned with the digital medium, especially video games, which he appropriates, manipulates, and subverts. Key themes include the unpredictable ruptures in otherwise predesigned behaviors and environments, the aesthetics of simulation, and the artist’s role in the age of algorithms. Radan’s practice includes experimental film/video, installation and performance. His works have been featured at multiple venues, including the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen.

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GAME ART: EDDIE LOHMEYER'S SCROLLING LANDSCAPES IN 34 NES GAMES #3 (2020)

Eddie Lohmeyer, Scrolling Landscape in 34 NES Games #3, digital video/machinima, color, 4' 04", 2020

Eddie Lohmeyer's archeological approach to gaming and machinima is exemplified by his third installment on the congoing Scrolling Landscape series. 

A the artist writes: 

Scrolling Landscapes (2020) is a three-channel video installation that explores the relationship among nostalgia and our perception of technologically mediated landscapes. Each film in the series was created by appropriating footage of speedruns of older 8-bit video games and then editing together their scrolling landscapes into produce unfolding Rorschach patterns of gameworlds. These landscapes have then been corrupted using glitch techniques to generate psychedelic abstractions that rapidly accelerate through two-dimensional space. With each film in the series, the same landscape is multiplied and arranged so that the scrolling patterns become increasingly complex

Eddie Lohmeyer is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at the University of Central Florida. He received his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media. His research explores aesthetic and technical developments within histories of digital media, with an emphasis on video games and their relationship to traditions of the avant-garde. Additionally, his art considers embodied experience through processes of play and defamiliarization. Using deconstructive approaches such as glitch, physical modifications to hardware, assemblage, etc., his installations, sculpture, and video stage bizarre encounters with media as a means to unveil our normal attitudes and perceptions toward technologies.

LINK: Eddie Lohmeyer

See Episode 1 and Episode 2

EVENT: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2020 GOES VIRAL (MAY 25-30 2020)

The 2020 edition of the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL which was previously postponed due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic will indeed happen. And sooner than later. From Monday 25 until Saturday May 30 2020, the entire program will be fully available on the festival website. The MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL is part of the revamped Milano Digital Week 2020: The Augmented City. This year, the work of 25 artists from 13 countries will be presented in 6 sections: Game Video Essay A, Game Video Essay B, The Weird, The Eerie, and The Unreal plus three Special Programs (Artists in focus).

Click here to read the full program.

LINK: MILANO MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 

EVENT: VICTOR MORALES'S RAPID TRANSIT: PREFACE (APRIL 25 - MAY 7 2020, ONLINE)

RAPID TRANSIT: PREFACE

digital video, color, sound, 13’, 2020

Created by Victor Morales. Music: Daniel Dobson. Voices: Modesto Jimenez and Christine Schisano. Written by William Burns.

WORLD PREMIERE

April 25 - May 7 2020

VRAL

What is it like to ride the New York City subway thirty years from now? Victor Morales predicts that most travellers will wear VR/AR displays combined with electric stimulants or lectrics. But the subway itself has not changed much nor its rituals: passengers ignore each other while dancers perform to rhythmless soundtracks interrupted by beeps and synthetic shouts popping out of devices like rings and bracelets featuring holograms with hovering capabilities. On a late weekday night, a rider under the influence boards the train, unbeknownst to what is about to happen.

Born in Venezuela and based in New York City since 1991, Victor Morales is a director, performer, and designer. His practice includes theater direction, video design, animation, text, sound design, and digital puppetry. He collaborated on a variety of projects with Chris Kondek (Berlin), Joseph Silovsky (NYC), Jim Findlay (NYC), Findlay/Sandsmark (Norway), and Wolfgang Mitterer (Austria). Since the early aughts, Victor has been using video game engines to create interactive and non-interactive artworks. His multidisciplinary project Esperpento was selected for the Sundance 2019 New Frontier program and received the “Best Immersive and Time Based Art” award at the B3 Biennial at the Buchmesse in Frankfurt, Germany. 

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EVENT: SCREEN WALK WITH ALAN BUTLER (APRIL 22 2020, ONLINE)

Screen Walk with Alan Butler on 22nd April 2020 at 6 pm UK time / 7 pm CET (on Zoom)
Free event.

Join artist Alan Butler in a live-streamed online expedition 

Alan Butler will lead a tour of the game environment of Grand Theft Auto V, focusing on topics of representation and simulation as well as the role of the in-game photographer. Viewers will be able to follow the artist in his critical analysis of the game logics, and their social, political, and economic implications.

Screen Walks is a new series of live-streamed artist/researcher-led explorations of online spaces and artistic strategies designed to illuminate a thriving – often overlooked – digital cultural scene. A new online collaboration between The Photographers’ Gallery, UK and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.

Details on how to access the talk will be confirmed upon registration. 

 

Biography

Alan Butler is a visual artist and lecturer, focusing on the material and philosophical implications that digital environments and new media technologies pose to the evolution of visual culture, politics, ecologies and social structures. Since 2005, part of this practice has involved an exploration of video game worlds, and their potential to act as 'real' spaces of creativity beyond traditional game-play. Significant works in this series include: 'Down and Out in Los Santos', a quasi-documentary photography series about homelessness and poverty in the video game Grand Theft Auto V; 'Virtual Cyanotype Botany', a series that uses the 19th century photo-chemical process to document plant-life from video games of the last 45 years; and 'On Exactitude in Science' a two-screen feature film comprising Godfrey Reggio's 'Koyaanisqatsi' and Butler's shot-for-shot remake 'KoyanisGTAV', which was produced entirely in Grand Theft Auto V. Since 2017, his works have been featured in galleries and museums across the globe, including: The Akron Museum, USA; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, England; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; C/O Berlin, Germany; ZKM, Karlsruhe Germany; Les Rencontres d’Arles 2017, France; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; Transfer Gallery, New York City, USA; FACT, Liverpool, England; Kasteel Wijlre, The Netherlands; Lismore Castle, Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and the Perth International Film Festival 2019, Australia; Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography, Switzerland; Espace Multimédia Gantner, France.

LINK: Screen walk with Alan Butler

LINK: Screen walks

PROJECT: VRAL (ONLINE)

The team behind the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL is launching VRAL, 

a uniquely curated game video experience, available for free on the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL website offering screenings of machinima created by artists and filmmakers whose work lies at the intersection of video art, cinema, gaming, and other visual practices. The program features exceptional machinima selected based on their cultural relevance, artistic achievement, and innovative style. Often presented only in the context of festivals, exhibitions, and surveys, these works best represent the variety, ingenuity, and creativity of game-based video practices. A space providing access to diverse and innovative voices, VRAL is an online-only supplement to the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL. Throughout the year, VRAL celebrates a new generation of digital filmmakers and artists engaging with video game-based technologies, aesthetics, and practices. 

The project comprises exclusive interviews, image galleries, and an archive. 

VRAL begins April 25 2020 with the world premiere of Rapid Transit: Preface by Victor Morales.

LINK: VRAL

EVENTS: NOW PLAY THIS: A FESTIVAL OF EXPERIMENTAL GAME DESIGN (2020, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM)

The 2020 edition of NOW PLAY THIS: A festival of experimental game design at Somerset House in London curated by Marie Foulston features all kinds of artworks looking at games that relate to a theme of ‘Breaking Point’. “Games are the aesthetic forms of systems, and we were looking at works that break or subvert them in interesting and creative ways.” The IRL festival could not go ahead because of the pandemic and it has been postponed. The amazing lineup features, among others, Paolo Pedercini, A.M Darke, IP Yuk-Yiu, Ian MacLarty, Studio Oleomingus, Alistair Aitcheson, Danielle Udogaranya, Patrick LeMieux, Stephanie Bouk, and Matteo Bittanti whose How to get rid of homeless is featured in the selection.

LINK: NOW PLAY THIS 

GAME ART: BRENTON ALEXANDER SMITH'S SOFTCRASH (ONGOING)

Softcrash is part of an ongoing series made using BeamNg.drive, a video game known for its ability to produce realistic car crashes. By pushing the limits of the engine, Smith forces the game to visualize situations that would be impossible in the real world. The software often produces wild, almost organically chaotic shapes, coupled with uncanny twitching movements that afford them a sense of liveliness. The artist calls these phenomena crashforms

Brenton Alexander Smith’s practice emerged from an interest in the relationship between humans and machines. His work explores the point of connection and disconnection between humans and the artificial in the cycle of technological renewal. He frequently draws from abandoned and damaged technical artifacts, such as crashed cars, to create works that seek to elicit an affective response in the viewer. Many of his works aim to arouse feelings of sympathy for broken or discarded machines. Smith’s practice takes form in a variety of media. In several works, the residue of car accidents acts as a sculptural material that echoes the organic through mechanical forms. These sculptures are part relic and part creature, inert yet imbued with a faint sense of liveliness. Smith graduated from the Sydney College of the Arts with honours in 2014. Since then, he completed an artist residency in Iceland, where he held his first solo exhibition at the Akureyri Art Museum. The same year Smith received the Freedman Foundation Travelling scholarship. He is currently working on an MFA at UNSW Art and Design in Sydney.

LINK: Brenton Alexander Smith

GAME ART: SAVEME OH'S ISOLATION (2020)

Machinima in quarantined times.

SaveMe Oh is just one of the several virtual alter-egos created by Oscar Wagenmans, a Dutch theatre director and actor. An eclectic figure inside and outside the virtual space, Wagenmans began his career as an actor in 1983 performing with youth theatre groups, subsequently as a comedian in solo shows and finally as part of the collective De Pinokkio's and Wagenmans and Strikker. Since 1991, he has been the artistic director of the Kamak Theatre, a theatre group of actors with learning disabilities, in Hengelo, Holland. Besides the Kamak project, Wagenmans works with amateur companies and musicians. His alter-ego SaveMe Oh was created in Second Life in 2007, where he appears as an irreverent, sensual performer with Asian roots, whose practice consists in creating sardonic plays on a variety of themes, including the artworld and current events. Mixing a variety of aesthetics (machinima, digital images, video, 3D animation), Wagenmans uses the character of SaveMe Oh to explore the creative challenges and limitations offered by Second Life, trying to disrupt the rules and real-world etiquette that users project onto the lives of their digital personas. His subversive tactics aimed at deconstructing and exposing the nonsense of the mechanisms governing politics and contemporary society, along with its fears and fetishes, provides a remarkable depiction the absurdity and grotesquery of human life.

LINK: SaveMe Oh