GAMESCENES

EVENT: ALAN BUTLER (SEPTEMBER 13 - 26 2024, ONLINE)

26 GASOLINE STATIONS

digital video (1920 x 1080), colour, sound, 4’ 23”, 2016, Ireland

created by Alan Butler

September 13 - 26 2024

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

26 GASOLINE STATIONS is a digital homage to Ed Ruscha’s iconic 1963 photobook, 26 Gasoline Stations. Ruscha’s work famously documented the mundane yet intriguing petrol stations along his route from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City. In contrast, Butler’s reinterpretation situates this journey within the virtual world of Grand Theft Auto V’s San Andreas, transforming the act of driving across America into a navigational exploration and documentation of digital spaces. Executed as both machinima and an ebook, the project captures each station from the confines of Butler’s studio in Ireland, emphasising the shift from physical to virtual mobility. This transformation not only pays tribute to Ruscha’s artistic exploration but also probes deeper into the evolving relationship between real and simulated environments, highlighting how digital media can extend and challenge traditional notions of landscape, place, and documentation in the age of video games.

Alan Butler is an artist who employs both traditional and new media to probe themes surrounding digital culture and its influence on shaping realities. His creative approach incorporates various materials and techniques from the annals of image–making, scrutinising the ideological and political implications of technologies like 3D graphics, video games, and cloud computing. His recent solo exhibitions include We are Now in the Mountains and They Are in Us at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2023); The Need To Argue In The Master’s Language at Visual Carlow, Ireland (2018); and Down and Out in Los Santos at the Malmö Fotobiennal, Sweden (2017). He has also participated in notable group shows such as Open World: Video Games and Contemporary Art at The Akron Art Museum (2019) and Digital Citizen: The Precarious Subject at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, UK (2019). A key moment in his career was representing Ireland at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 as part of the collective ANNEX. His works are held in several collections including the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Office of Public Works, Ireland, The Arts Council of Ireland, and Trinity College Dublin.

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GAME ART: ED FORNELIES’S INSIDE OUT 2 (2024)

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

Recently presented at Carlos/Ishikawa gallery in London between May 23 – July 6, 2024, Ed Fornieles’s Inside Out 2 is an ambitious exploration of the intersections between corporate structures, personal relationships, and digital interactions, presented through a richly narrative-driven multimedia approach. This project extends Fornieles’ continuous investigation into the dynamics of digital and social spheres, previously exemplified in his Dorm Daze project, where participants inhabited fictional Facebook profiles, blurring the lines between personal and fictional identities.

Central to Inside Out 2 is the conceptualization of a company, Fini, as both a work of art and a corporate entity, challenging traditional notions by positioning the company as a medium that generates value through engagement rather than tangible products. The narrative intricately weaves the concept of friendship into corporate dynamics, prompting profound questions about the nature of relationships within commercial and digital contexts. Drawing on the Brazilian Anthropophagy movement, which advocated for the cultural digestion and transformation of colonial influences, Fornieles illustrates how digital and corporate cultures can be absorbed and reinterpreted.

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

The gallery space, referred to as The Zone, acts as a transformative environment where objects and concepts are recontextualized, allowing viewers to engage in a suspension of disbelief. Fornieles provocatively suggests that shared hallucinations, or mutual agreements on perceived realities, form the basis of our understanding of the world, thereby challenging the stability of reality itself. The project employs a range of narrative techniques, from cute aesthetics to speculative fiction and historical revisionism, creating a multilayered experience that defies conventional boundaries between fiction and reality.

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

Envisioning future expansions, Fornieles introduces the Oom app, positioned at the intersection of messaging and mobile gaming, and a movie that combines live-action with animation, further extending the project  "narrative universe. By discussing the role of venture capital in the growth of new companies, Fornieles draws intriguing parallels between the ambitions of artists and venture capitalists in their shared pursuit of world-building, highlighting the economic and philosophical challenges of sustaining such an innovative endeavor. Inside Out 2 is a complex work that invites viewers to interrogate contemporary culture through the lenses of corporate structures, digital identities, and personal relationships, urging a reconsideration of how we engage with the so-called “digital”.

LINK: Ed Fornieles’s Inside Out 2

EVENT: FILE 2024: QUBIT AI (JULY 3 - AUGUST 25 2024, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL)

FILE 2024: QUBIT AI

July 3 - August 25 2024

Centro Cultural FIESP

Avenida Paulista, 1313 Em frente a estação Trianon-Masp do Metrô

Bela Vista, São Paulo - SP, 01311-200, Brazil

 

In the heart of São Paulo, at the FIESP Cultural Center, the FILE 2024 festival unfurls a groundbreaking intersection of art and technology through its latest exhibition, QUBIT AI: Quantum Computing and Synthetic Artificial Intelligence. Curated by Ricardo Barreto and Paula Perissinotto, the exhibition, running from July 3rd to August 25th, promises to redefine the boundaries AI-inspired/co-generated digital art.

At the core of QUBIT AI is the revolutionary potential of quantum computing. This avant-garde technology, characterized by quantum superposition and entanglement, introduces novel creative avenues for artists. Barreto and Perissinotto articulate this paradigm shift in their curatorial text, emphasizing that quantum computing heralds an unprecedented frontier for both computer science and the arts.

For the first time, an art exhibition features a fully operational Quantum Computer. This cutting-edge inclusion is complemented by two pioneering Brazilian projects: Quantum Photography by Gabriela Barreto Lemos and Sounding Qubits by Eduardo Reck Miranda. Lemos’ work explores the visual possibilities inherent in quantum phenomena, while Miranda's installation translates the enigmatic behaviors of qubits into an auditory experience.

While quantum computing represents a nascent technological revolution, synthetic artificial intelligence is already reshaping artistic landscapes. Synthetic art, produced through AI in collaboration with human creativity, parallels the radical shifts of early modernity, offering new methods of creation across diverse media.

The exhibition's synthetic art section is divided into four thematic areas: Sound Synthetics, Aesthetic Synthetics, Cinematic Synthetics, and Architectural Synthetics. One of the standout installations, INTERATOR, is a three-dimensional cinema without VR glasses. This immersive experience allows viewers to navigate a space filled with simultaneous synthetic video projections, creating an interactive dialogue between the audience and the art.

Highlighted artists within Sound Synthetics include Dennis Schöneberg, whose works such as Bodydub and Transparenza blend visual and auditory stimuli to craft a multisensory narrative. The Spanish collective Iskarioto's dystopian AI films, paired with AI-generated music, further push the envelope of what synthetic art can achieve.

QUBIT AI’s interactive installations invite visitors to become active participants in the art. Klaus Obermaier's EGO uses the concept of alienation from psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to distort the viewer's reflection, examining the tension between reality and symbolism. "The Forgettable Art Machine" places the visitor at the nexus of art and technology, turning each interaction into a personalized masterpiece.

Elizabeth Kolbert's influence is evident in Speculative Evolution, Prototype 1, an AI-driven simulator that allows visitors to create new species within a speculative ecosystem. Marc Vilanova’s Cascade immerses viewers in the hidden frequencies of waterfalls, transforming auditory experiences into a sensory exploration of environmental soundscapes.

Seph Li's Everything Before, Everything After transforms collective touch into a dynamic digital painting, capturing the fluidity of interaction in a visual symphony. Holly Herndon’s AI voice model, Holly+, stars in the music video Jolene, featuring Sam Rolfes, which showcases the capabilities of synthetic performers and their impact on contemporary music.

Complementing QUBIT AI, the FILE LED Show 2024 illuminates Fiesp's facade with innovative creations from USP Visual Arts Course and IED São Paulo students. Under the guidance of Dr. Silvia Laurentiz and Daniel Grizando, these collaborations highlight the interdisciplinary nature of design and the transformative power of university partnerships

QUBIT AI at FILE 2024 is not merely an exhibition; it is a visionary journey into the future of art. By integrating quantum computing and synthetic AI, it challenges and expands our understanding of creativity, inviting us to explore the uncharted territories where art and technology converge.

LINK: FILE 2024: QUIBIT AI

EVENT: RADICAL PLAYGROUNDS: FROM COMPETITION TO COLLABORATION (APRIL 27 - JULY 14 2024, BERLIN)

Céline Condorelli, Play for Today, installation view, École de la Porte d’Eau, 2022. Photograph by Caroline Douau © FRAC Grand Large

Berliner Festspiele

April 27 - July 14 2024

Hours: Wednesday–Monday 11am–7pm,
Saturday–Sunday 10am–7pm

Gropius Bau
Niederkirchnerstraße 7
10963 Berlin
Germany

Curated by Joanna Warsza and Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius

Public space is also a relation between strangers. A place that not only unites, but also reveals what divides us. City playgrounds are particularly significant public realms because it is here that the tension between rules and freedom, the familiar and the unknown, borders and transgression, the present and the future, risk and security are constantly negotiated.

Massimo Furlan, A Reenactment of the 1974 East Germany West – Germany World Cup Match © Sandra Singh

Featured artists

Edgar Calel, Alice Chauchat, Céline Condorelli, Massimo Furlan, Florentina Holzinger, Ingela Ihrman, Martin Kaltwasser, Agnieszka Kurant, Joar Nango, Vitjitua Ndjiharine, The Playground Project, Tomás Saraceno, Mariana Telleria, The School of Mutants, Irad Verkron, Raul Walch

Program

While many exhibitions are considered finished upon opening, Radical Playgrounds challenges this notion, embarking on a journey together with architects, artists, mediators, researchers, neighbors and visitors to transform and expand the art parcours with its  overarching program starting at the end of April. Embracing the motto “From Competition to Collaboration”, Radical Playgrounds invites everybody to convert the former parking lot of the Gropius Bau into a vibrant public space. Through a series of workshops, talks and guided tours, participants will build real and imaginary bridges together, invent games and embody collaborations. In weekly discussions with international guests, the on-site playable installations will be contextualized, and the diverse meanings of play and its socio-political implications will be explored. The program poses questions: How does Radical Playgrounds sound, speak, feel, smell and taste? What can practice and opportunity spaces for coexistence and collaborative interaction between humans and nature look like? How can spatial infrastructure be made more inclusive, social and equitable? The public program is an invitation to play, but also a platform for contemplation that strengthens community bonds, especially right now, and creates opportunities to deepen existing neighborly relationships.

LINK: Radical Playgrounds: From Competition to Collaboration

EVENT: ANGELA WASHKO'S MOTHER, PLAYER (APRIL 5 - MAY 5 2024, NEW YORK)

Angela Waskho

April 5–May 5, 2024

Public Works Administration
1627 Broadway, New York, NY

Enter via Downtown 1 Train at 50th

See a solo exhibition surrounding Angela Washko’s (2020 Awardee) Creative Capital project Mother, Player, an experimental narrative video game. Set within a backdrop of the tense 2020 United States election and a terrifying COVID international health crisis, players explore the maternal healthcare industry and parenting culture as a burnt out pansexual artist who has decided to have a child despite an increasingly discouraging geopolitical climate that deprioritizes and devalues care. (Creative Capital)

Angela Washko is a media artist, filmmaker, and experimental game developer who creates new forums for discussions about feminism in spaces frequently hostile towards it. Her practice spans interventions in virtual environments, performance art, media installation, documentary film, and video games. A recipient of the United States Artists Fellowship, Creative Capital Award, Franklin Furnace Performance Fund, Impact Award at Indiecade, and Jury Awards for Best Documentary at the American Film Festival, San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, and Buffalo International Film Festival, Washko’s practice has been highlighted in The New Yorker, Frieze Magazine, Time Magazine, The Guardian, ArtForum, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The New York Times and more. Her projects have been presented internationally at venues including Museum of the Moving Image, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Milan Design Triennale, and the Shenzhen Animation Biennial. Angela Washko is an Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.

Read more about Mother, Player

Read Angela Wahsko's new essay Tactical Homebrewing

Angela Washko

EVENT: DIGITAL PORTRAITURE: EMPATHY IN VIRTUAL WORLDS (APRIL 25 2024 - MAY 5 2024, BRUSSELS, BELGIUM)

Laurie Simmons – Untitled (Woman’s Head) – 1976

Digital Portraiture: empathy in virtual worlds

Curated by Bob Bicknell-Knight

April 25 2024 – May 5 2024

Open 1.30 – 6.00 pm from Wednesday to Sunday

Vernissage : 24 April 2024 6-9 pm

Senne 19

rule de la Senne 19

1000 Brussels, Belgium

The exhibition - part of Art Brussels 2024 - explores digital portraiture and empathy within virtual worlds, featuring artists who use a variety of different techniques to seek out emotional and empathetic moments within digital spaces, both from AI combatants and real world people.

An exhibition with works by Chiho Aoshima, Cory Arcangel and Paper Rad, Myfanwy Ashmore, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Alan Butler, Brody Condon, Jodi, Walter Langelaar, Eva and Franco Mattes, Eddo Stern, Petra Szemàn, Ubermorgen, Angela Washko, and Laurie Simmons.

[Senne] is an independent, non-commercial space that intends to present, once or twice a year projects of design and art characterized by their innovative aspects, directed by Thierry Tilquin.

LINK: DIGITAL PORTRAITURE

GAME ART: DORIJAN ŠIŠKO AND SARA BEZOVŠEK

Sara Bezovšek and Dorijan Šiško are two young Slovenian artists who often collaborate on multimedia and game-based art projects. Their works demonstrate an interest in internet culture, social media, and exploring relevant socio-political themes through speculative worldbuilding.

Sara Bezovšek is a visual artist, active in the fields of new media, experimental film and graphic design. Her artistic practice is characterized by the exploration, collection and storage of mostly pop-cultural visual references from various online platforms, films and TV series. Using the cut/copy-and-paste technique, she combines the found digital material into web pages, collages, mashup videos, and the likes thus creating new narratives through appropriation and its documentation (see, for instance, www.false-utopia.com). In doing so, she is interested in what people view and share on social networks, how visual material travels the internet, how it changes and how it affects users. The dense amount of short clips from popular series and films, animated GIFs, internet memes, videos and other images from online platforms creates a multilayered infrastructure as the viewer can read a number of parallel, complementary and alternative narrative. Her expansive interactive projects like SND. An interactive story game and Life of Its Own immerse participants in apocalyptic and cinematic universes built out of the over-saturation of recognizable pop culture icons.

Dorijan Šiško, Critical Hit, 2022, installation shot Aksioma, Liublijana 

Dorijan Šiško, Critical Hit, 2022,video game

 

Šiško is a multimedia graphic designer and artist working heavily with games, VR, animation, and installations. His neon bright, layered style often remixes disparate elements into speculative worlds where he probes topics like fake news, internet radicalization, tribalism, gamification, and science fiction visions of the future. Šiško collaborated with Bezovšek on the installation What’s Your Truth: Tipping Point (2023) an interactive game space filled with ideological memes that aimed to encourage reflection on how the filter bubbles and biases we operate in can distort perception of truth.Another remarkable project is Critical Hit (2022), a "speculative video game that draws gallery visitors into a post-virtual vision o parallel reality", a kind of psychedelic walking simulator. Šiško is also active in the Freštreš art collective organizing joint exhibitions and the Nimaš Izbire music collective putting on events. He is the recipient of two awards of the Brumen Foundation: for the newspaper Tribuna and for the book Freštreš 10. His work has been exhibited in such institutions as Osmoza, KUD Kibla, Kino Šiška, Slovenian National Museum, Modern Gallery Ljubljana, MGLC, GT22, Jakopič Gallery, Out to See Festival in New York, etc.

Together, Bezovšek and Šiško’s collaborative new media art practice demonstrates an interdisciplinary interest in exploring the influence of internet culture and video games on society. By appropriating the visual language of social media and gaming and constructing interactive spaces filled with references to online phenomena, their works aim to reveal deeper truths about our digitally-mediated realities. Their critical, at time sinister, and yet playful style invites participation in collective meaning-making around relevant contemporary issues.

LINK: Sara Bezovšek

LINK: Dorijan Šiško

All images and videos courtesy of the Artists

EVENT: LARS PREISSER (NOVEMBER 10 - NOVEMBER 23 2023, ONLINE)

HOME/NOME

Video installation, SNES game consoles, animation, video, Hi8, miniDV, Bang & Olufsen 90s TV sets, hereby presented as digital video, color, sound, 4’ 16, 2021-2022, Germany

Created by Lars Preisser

 

NOME/HOME is an immersive video installation exploring the relationship between memory, interior design, and video games. Specifically, NOME/HOME recreates Preisser’s former Berlin apartment through the pixelated rendering of Mario Paint, breathing renewed life into the spaces he once inhabited. Participants traverse disorienting rooms as Preisser’s own voice echoes hauntingly around them. This audible tableau juxtaposed with the visual fragmentation of the gaming software creates a palpable sense of nostalgia and loss. Visitors are transported into uncanny reimaginings of real spaces that over time have been distorted by the urban forces of gentrification. By reviving the past through both analog and digital artifacts, Preisser contemplates the ephemerality of memory and the erasure of history in the built environment. NOME/HOME provides an entry point to meditate on the entwined nature of place, recollection, and selfhood within the ever-changing terrain of the city.

Lars Preisser is a multidisciplinary German artist whose work spans various media including weaving, drawing, and moving images. Born in 1984 in Lindau, Preisser holds degrees in textile art and media art from Otago Polytechnic and HGB Leipzig. His research-intensive projects result in intricate formations that address issues like gentrification, technology, climate change, and post-colonialism through a personal lens. Preisser’s family heritage and background in industrial machinery inform his practice. The artist has exhibited internationally at venues like Bauhaus Dessau, nGbK Berlin, and the contemporary textile art biennial Contextile among others. Preisser spent formative years in New Zealand before returning to Berlin where he currently lives and maintains an active studio practice.

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EVENT: AUX FUTURS ANCESTRAUX (OCTOBER 14 2023 - JANUARY 21 2024, BOUROGNE, FRANCE)

Aux futurs ancestraux

Curated by Isabelle Arvers

Rye de la Varonne

90140 Bourogne, France

 

Curated by Isabelle Arvers, Aux futurs ancestraux adopts a decolonial perspective, showcasing art and games from outside the Western canon to expand representations, narratives and cosmologies. Specifically, the exhibition seeks to decolonize imaginations and co-create narratives drawing from oral traditions, indigenous knowledge and video game worlds.

press release

“When we say that the future is ancestral, it has more to do with DNA than genealogy. It’s worldview: it’s the ability to go back to an event that created the world and is alive in you. We want a constant creation of everything and ourselves. This is what happens in DNA, the code handed down by our ancestors. This can reintroduce us to the constellation of life within the planet, where we stop being specialists and realize that we have a common origin”. Ailton Krenak, philosopher and leader of the Brazilian indigenous Krenak movement and author of the book Futuro Ancestral en 2021

The global games market is still dominated by Europe, the United States and Japan.The exhibition Aux futurs ancestraux adopts a decolonial perspective on art and games in order to echo works conceived on the periphery of this global and globalizing culture. Aux futurs ancestraux immerses us in other types of representations, cities, landscapes, narratives and cosmogonies, conceived and expressed in other languages, and seeks to decolonize our imaginary through the co-construction of narratives born of the encounter between oral tradition, endogenous knowledge and the virtual universes of video games.

This necessary dialogue between these different modes of knowledge requires a paradigm shift. Science and human thought are no longer the only sources of knowledge; it is now possible to think of knowledge “beyond the human” (Eduardo Kohn). “This implies that nature thinks, that animals think, and that non-humans can teach us techniques and knowledge, by changing our perspective. (Viveiro de Castro).

Between photo installations, drawing, performance, video installations, immersive, interactive and video game, an exhibition that invites us to reconnect with what connects us to our ancestral futures: the living.

Featured artists and artworks

High in the Sky and Beneath the Stars, Laura Palavecino, (AR), interactive installation

Laidaxai, Daniela Fernandez, (AR) video game

Paramo, Eulalia De Valdenebro Cajiao, (CO), Installation drawings video

Water Divinity, Henri Tauliaut (Martinique), Video game

Atuel, Matajuegos, (ARG), Video game

Coca para comer, Aniara Rodado, (CO), Installation, Performance

Epiculus Garden, Tania Fraga, (BR), Video Installation

Liquid Forest, Isabelle Arvers (FR) Machinima Gaël Manangou, Sound creation (RDC)

Spectographie, VR film & installation : Carole Chausset Myriam Mihindou &Annie-Flore Batchiellilys, Daniely Francisque, Florence boyer / cie Artmayage

eFa, interactive installation by Technorisha Collective: Livia Diniz, Benjamin Abras, Bruno Creuzet, Michel Petris, Henri Tauliaut, M’vwâma Diop, Annabel Gueredrat, Isabelle Arvers.

La Puissance des arbres, vidéo portaits directed by Isabelle Arvers, Livia Diniz, Bruno Qual

LINK: Aux Futurs Ancestraux

GAME ART: JULIANA HALPER'S CIVILIZATION (2023)

Juliana Halpert, My castles, archival inket print on cold press paper, found frame, unique, 32x41 inches, frames, 2023

press release

"Civilization by Los Angeles–based artist and writer, Juliana Halpert [...] reconstruct the artist's long-standing pastime playing the turn-based strategy video game, Civilization in which players lead a human civilization over several millennia. The exhibition centers around the artist’s chosen game character ueen Maria eresa, the eighteenth-century ruler of Austria and the Holy Roman Empire. Displayed throughout the gallery and domestic space, the text and photographs piece together Halpert’s built world within the game’s skewed historic and geographic realms.

In line with the fragmented and re-assembled world histories found in the game, Halpert’s photographs span various timelines and she has utilized multiple techniques for capturing and printing the work. While some images have been sourced and photographed or scanned by Halpert from within old history books, others have been captured directly by the artist in present-day California. The photographs and text works have then either been traditionally processed in the darkroom as silver gelatin prints or digitally processed as archival inkjet prints on cold press paper."

Juliana Halpert  Civilization, February 13 - April 16 202, Larder, Los Angeles; images courtesy of Larder; Photos: Evan Walsh 

Juliana Halpert (b. 1989, Montpelier, VT) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Halpert holds an MFA from ArtCenter College of Design (2020). Recent exhibitions include Plasma at Scherben, Berlin (2022); Animal at Gattopardo, Los Angeles, CA (2022); Everything at The Finley, Los Angeles, CA (2021); Wake up sleepers! at No Moon LA, Los Angeles, CA (2021) and The Goodbye Present at Kristina Kite, Los Angeles, CA (2021). She has contributed writing to Artforum, Bookforum, Aperture, Frieze, Art in America, and X-TRA, among other publications. 

LINK: JULIANA HALPERT

LINK: Civilization @ Larder, LA