Festival international des Arts multimédia GAMERZ 14ème édition
AIX-EN-PROVENCE | MARSEILLE, FRANCE
NOVEMBER 8 – DECEMBER 2018
http://www.festival-gamerz.com
09/21/2018
09/07/2018
Event: Chicago New Media 1973–1992 (Nov 1 - Dec 15 2018, Chicago)
Montana, Jane Veeder, Video, 1982. Courtesy of Jane Veeder and VGA Gallery
Chicago New Media 1973–1992
Curated by Jon Cates with assistance from Chaz Evans and Jonathan Kinkley
Gallery 400
University of Illinois at Chicago
Art and Design Hall, First Floor
400 South Peoria Street (at Van Buren Street)
Chicago, IL 60607
Chicago is not often thought of as a center for new media art, technology, or industry, yet the city was home to some of the earliest and most important experiments in new media in the late 20th century. Chicago New Media 1973–1992 explores the rich exchange between industry and academics during this heady time, chronicling the under-recognized story of Chicago's contributions to new media art by artists at the University of Illinois at Chicago's (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and at Midway and Bally games from 1973–92. Generations of now well-known and acclaimed artists, scholars, designers, developers, curators, and organizers have moved through UIC and SAIC, all of whom shaped the development of new media locally as well as on the burgeoning international stage. Chicago New Media 1973–1992 will exhibit a range of ephemera documenting this period of industry incubation and globalization and its connections to new media art.
08/05/2018
Event: JON RAFMAN: THE MENTAL TRAVELER (September 14 2018 - February 24, 2019, Modena, Italy)
Exhibition: Jon Rafman. The Mental Traveller
Curated by: Diana Baldon
Curatorial Assistance: Chiara Dall’Olio
Institutions: Fondazione Fotografia Modena and Galleria Civica di Modena
Location: Palazzina dei Giardini, Corso Cavour, 2, Modena
Exhibition Dates: 14 September 2018 to 24 February 2019
Opening: 14 September 2018 at 6pm
Press View 12 September 2018 at 11am
Opening Hours:
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: 11am to 1pm; 4pm to 7pm
Saturday, Sunday and Holidays: 11am to 7pm
Opening Hours for festivalfilosofia 2018:
Friday 14 September: 9am to 11pm
Saturday 15 September: 9am to 12am
Sunday 16 September: 9am to 9pm
Jon Rafman, Dream Journal 2016-2017, 2017, Colour HD video with stereo sound. Music by James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never, Runtime: 49’17”, Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers
FONDAZIONE MODENA ARTI VISIVE is delighted to present The Mental Traveller, the first large-scale exhibition of works by Jon Rafman to be shown in an Italian contemporary art institution. Curated by Diana Baldon and presented by Fondazione Fotografia Modena and the Galleria Civica di Modena, the exhibition will open at the Palazzina dei Giardini on Friday 14 September 2018, to coincide with this year’s festivalfilosofia, the theme of which is truth.
The exhibition brings together a selection of multimedia installations, presented for the first time in Italy, tracing the arc of the Canadian artist’s practice from 2011 to the present. Employing a variety of media – including photography, video, sculpture and installation – Rafman explores how reality and simulation have become increasingly homogenized in contemporary society in artworks that blur the boundaries between the virtual and the tangible, between physical bodies and technological replicas.
Born in 1981 in Montreal, where he lives and works, Rafman studied literature and philosophy at McGill University before graduating in film, video and new media from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since his earliest career, Rafman has investigated the ramifications of our reliance on technology on our perceptions of reality.To create Kool-Aid Man (2008–11), Rafman spent three years exploringthe virtual-reality platform Second Life, in the guise of the titular avatar, to discover the myriad incarnationsof its digital ‘inhabitants’. Rafman neither judges nor criticises his Second Life cohabitants: rather, his intention is to document how technology enables people to create entirely new versions of themselves in fantastical environments, giving them the freedom to invent new identities and iconographies.
Rafman also drew from the Internet and its multiple online communities as archival resources for the three videos comprising his Betamale Trilogy (2013–15) – Still Life (Betamale), Mainsqueezeand Erysichthon – which are among the installations included in this exhibition. As in the novels of Georges Bataille, where the narrative arc implodes in the claustrophobic and catastrophic arena of the writing, this leads to a proliferation of narrative strands and interpretations. Watching the Betamale Trilogy, the viewer feels trapped in a vortex of scenarios that are traumatic yet seductive. Rafman skilfully conveys the ambiguous lure of the Internet, which seemingly promises freedom and the discovery of new worlds, yet, in reality, imprisons you in a space tracked by algorithms and monitored by agencies that process, then sell, your navigational data.
Rafman’s extensive research on both the Internet and the deep web has enabled him to assume the mantle of amateur anthropologist and digital flâneur. He investigates the epistemic collapse in recent years of the distinction between digital and authentic worlds, between reality and its virtual representation. In his videos, a poetic and hypnotic off-screen voice invariably accompanies a sequence of images taken from the Internet, videogames or online chat forums.
Memory figures as a major theme in many works. In A Man Digging (2013), which comprises footage from videogames including Max Payne 3, the main character speaks of the intrinsic mutability of memory and how it allows for the rewriting of individual and collective history. While the narrator nostalgically drifts along in search of his fragmented past, Rafman transports us, via the glinting surfaces of memory, to the furthest reaches of reality. The video Remember Carthage (2013)tells the story of a man who sets sail on a ship bound for Tunisia in search of a mythical city in the Sahara Desert that existed at the same time as Carthage. Despite its legendary status as the ‘Las Vegas of Maghreb’, however, no trace of the city remains. Composed of footage from Second Life and the videogame Uncharted 3, the film again features an off-camera voice detailing the sublime architectural beauty of ancient civilisations. Remember Carthage explores not only memory but the contemporaneity of history, since – thanks to technological developments such as videogames and Second Life– even history can now find a different form and influence.
The video Dream Journal (2016–17) comes from Rafman’s habit of animating his dreams using amateur 3D software, and has a soundtrack composed by James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never, with whom the artist has previously collaborated. Two young female protagonists – a stereotypical millennial and a child warrior – set off on a Dantean journey within a dystopian universe. The narrative interweaves imaginary scenes with characters from classical epic tales to yield a series of darkly surreal incidents: this is Rafman’s unconscious mind, augmented by online surfing, rendered visual.
Greeting visitors at the entrance of the Palazzina is the artist’s latest work, Legendary Reality (2017). In this he leads us on a voyage into ‘inner space’. An anonymous protagonist narrates a journey through what appears to be a sci-fi landscape – although he could just as easily be sitting at a computer screen on which historical depictions have become conflated with virtual experiences.
Jon Rafman (Montreal, 1981) is an artist who explores digital culture and subcultures, exposing the desires, obsessions and fetishes triggered by the use of technological devices. Recent solo shows in international contemporary art institutions include:I have ten thousand compound eyes and each is named suffering, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016); Jon Rafman, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster (2016); Jon Rafman, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2015); The end of the end of the end,Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2014); Remember Carthage, First Look: New Art Online, New Museum, New York (2013); The Nine Eyes of Google Streetview, Saatchi Gallery, London (2012); Jon Rafman, online exhibition, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012). He has also participated in numerous group shows, including: I was raised on the Internet, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); Alone together, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2018); ARS 17: Hello world!, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki (2017–18); Jon Rafman / Stan Vanderbeek, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles (2017); Manifesta 11, Zurich (2016);Welcome to the Jungle, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015);Speculations on Anonymous Materials, Fridericianum, Kassel (2013); NineEyes, Moscow Photobienniale (2012); Screenshots, William Benton Museum of Art, University of Connecticut (2012); From Here On, Les Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles, Arles (2011).
Together with Museo della Figurina, Fondazione Fotografia Modenaand Galleria Civica di Modena are part of FONDAZIONE MODENA ARTI VISIVE, an institution dedicated to the presentation and promotion of contemporary art and visual culture, directed by Diana Baldon.
Jon Rafman, Remember Carthage, 2013, Colour HD video with stereo sound, Runtime: 13’43” Courtesy of the artist
Jon Rafman, Remember Carthage, 2013, Colour HD video with stereo sound, Runtime: 13’43” Courtesy of the artist
Art Game: Alistair Aitcheson's The Book Ritual (2018)
UPDATE (Feb 4, 2019): The finished version of The Book Ritual is now available. The new version also comes with instructions on how to build your own USB-connected shredder (although you can also play it with a normal shredder or just a bin!) The game was nominated for an award at PLAY18 in Hamburg last year, and this year it'll be a part of the Alt-Ctrl exhibition at GDC.
The Book Ritual is a long-term game project by Alistair Aitcheson, an artist and game designer. Development began in 2010 and focuses on the interplay between digital technologies and physical objects, in this case, books. The Book Ritual is played with a tangible, actual printed book, and during the game the player must deface it (OMG!) and tear pages out. The player writes about herself and perform what Aitcheson calls "creativity exercise" in its pages, but in order to play, the player must also destroy pages. The Book Ritual is about 2 hours long.
It's a free download from Itch.io.
As Aitcheson explains,
it currently says "beta" on it, and that's because I'm waiting for more feedback before I decide "this is the final version!" - once it's final, it will continue to be a free download
I love the Dada nature of this project, but I don't think I could ever deface a copy of BEE's American Psycho... Nonetheless, the designer's rationale for creating this game is fascinating. Here's an excerpt:
Indeed, to destroy books is taboo, and there’s a solid historical precedent for why. I’m certainly not trying to say that destroying literature is a good idea. What I am trying to do is tell a story about guilt and loss. If the player feels guilty in the process of destroying their book, if it feels like they're losing something with innate value, it means they are acting out the emotion I want them to explore.
Alistair Aitchenson is a game developer and has developed games since 2001, starting up as a one-man studio in 2010. In 2010 he graduated with a first class Masters degree in Mathematics with Study Abroad from the University of Warwick. During his degree he spent one year studying at the elite Ecole Normale Supérieur in Lyon, France. As well as his own projects he works as a freelance designer-developer. He has worked on web game projects for the BBC, and regularly produces games for the education technology company Sparx Limited. Alistair frequently exhibits his gamesat exhibitions in the UK and abroad, and regularly gives conference talks about his experiences.
LINK: Alistair Aitchenson (all images and videos courtesy of the Artist)
06/15/2018
Game Art: Phillip Birch, Office-Shadow (Persona) (2018)
Office-Shadow (Persona) is Philip Birch's latest project, six animated movies set on a single floor of a computer generated office building. Think of The Stanley Parable, only weireder. Each video acts as a single chapter of a longer narrative which is told through a first person perspective. By remediating the aesthetics of videogames, Birch is upgrading contemporary art as a whole. The videos also juxtapose Greek mythology and role playing games. Ludic themes pervade Birch's oeuvre, like Entering God Mode, Oubliette and The Hand of God. After the Flesh, an homage to David Cronenberg's masterpiece eXistenz, even features a gamepod.
Philip Birch, After the Flesh, installation.
Philip Birch (b. 1978, Detroit) is represented by Lyles & King and his recent solo exhibitions and performances include Milespires and Reliquaries, Lyles & King, NY; Entering God Mode, Jack Hanley, NY; The Crown of Modernity, 47 Canal, NY; The Hand of God, Essex Flowers, NY; The Chair After Its Method of Implementation, Cleopatra’s, NY.
05/30/2018
Event: NEXTNEWGAMES (June 23 – September 16, 2018, San José, California)
NEXTNEWGAMES
June 23 - September 16, 2018
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)
San José
560 South First Street
San Jose, CA 95113 > MAP
OPENING RECEPTION — JUNE 24, 2018
MEMBERS PREVIEW 1-2PM
PUBLIC RECEPTION 2-4PM
"ICA’S NEXTNEW SERIES IS A BIANNUAL EXHIBITION PROGRAM THAT PRESENTS THE WORK OF EMERGING ARTISTS AND/OR EMERGING ART PRACTICES.
When playing a board game or video game, one might experience a range of emotions, from elation when advancing towards a finish line, to a sense of gratification from beating a competitor, to a feeling of anger when your strategy goes awry. Immersing wholeheartedly into the rules and experiences of play is what Dutch historian and play theorist Johan Huizinga refers to as the “magic circle,” a zone where players temporarily suspend disbelief and adopt the qualities of the game space, disconnecting from the realities of the everyday world. Games often provide a moment of respite from the “real world” and allow the player to escape into a fantasy.
The eight artists in NextNewGames create work within this alternative space. The set of board games, video pieces, and new media works consider our current social, political, and cultural climate, creating a porous relationship between the imaginary land of the game space and that of the real world.
Characterizing the art world with an air of parody are works by Sioux City-based artist Charles Bass who developed a series of free, participatory games, which comment on the quirks of the opaque art world. COLL.EO (San Francisco- and Milan-based collaborative Colleen Flaherty and Matteo Bittanti) re-enact seminal 1960-70s contemporary art performances and interventions in “Liberty City,“ through the action and adventure game Grand Theft Auto.
NextNewGames artists also invite players to embody different perspectives through single- and multi-player games. Lark VCR and Porpentine Charity Heartscape’s elaborate online game invites players to treat their trauma as if it were a virtual pet. Colorado-based artist Rafael Fajardo presents two contrasting games that simulate the realities of crossing the US-Mexico border at El Paso-Ciudad Juarez. Sam Vernon engages local community members in a game of hangman and creates a visually cacophonous installation with the resulting documentation from this age-old game. Considering the relationship of communities today and in the future, Berkeley-based artist Asma Kazmi constructs a hypnotic, sensorial experience of the religious site of Makkah and documents the rapid changes to the sacred site. San Francisco-based artist Scott Kildall questions what it might mean for the moon to colonize the earth in his site-specific scavenger hunt at the ICA.
These artists move away from the dichotomy of winning or losing. They collectively subvert and interrupt the modes of operating within a game while reflecting on how these game spheres serve as mirrors to our current society: how do we think about cooperation and negotiation? What does it mean to lose or win? Where are points of resolution and conflict? What is your next move?"
LINK: NextNewGames
05/25/2018
Event: foci+loci's TOPOS (May 30, 2018, Milan, Italy) [includes full video]
FOCI + LOCI
TOPOS
MAY 30 2018
Aula seminari
Università IULM (IULM 1)
Via Carlo Bo, 1
20143 Milan
AN OFFICIAL EVENT OF GAME TALKS 2018, CURATED BY THE M.A. IN GAME DESIGN AT IULM UNIVERSITY
Topos is a long-term WIP and a game art performance combining a two-channel video projection of artist-built game spaces. The piece examines the cultural shift from the mechanized, topographic 20th century to the topological experience of the digital era through virtual, kinetic portraits. Subjects will include modernist artists concerned with time and movement such as F.T. Marinetti, Claude Cahun, Scott Joplin and others. Navigating custom game spaces in real time, the performers will explore the grand shift from the physical to the virtual.
foci + loci evolved through a fascination with the malleability of virtual space paired with an interest in electroacoustic improvisation leading the duo (Chris Burke and Tamara Yadao) to design spaces that could be “played” as instruments. foci + loci received a NYSCA grant for 2013 to develop their full scale game art performance installation Bal(l)ade. Tamara received an American Composers' Forum grant in 2015 commissioning the music for foci + loci's "Another Kind of Spiral" which premiered at Cluster Festival in Winnipeg with a performance at Centre Georges Pompidou following soon after. Other performances and exhibits include GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY (2016), an official exhibition of the 21st Triennale of Milan, Vector Festival in Toronto, Babycastles, The Stone, and Joe's Pub in NYC.
LINK: foci + loci
LINK: GAME TALKS 2018
05/04/2018
Interview: Jonne Hansson and the Machinima of Absurd
GameScenes is conducting a series of interviews with artists, critics, curators, and gallery owners operating in the field of Game Art, as part of an ongoing investigation of the social history of this artworld. Our goal is to document and examine both the origins and evolution of a phenomenon that changed the way game-based art is being created, experienced, and discussed today.
We are currently running Season 7, which began in 2017 with a conversation with Alex Hovet.
This episode features a conversation with Jonne Hansson, a Swedish artist who's been using digital games as an expressive form for more than a decade. Hansson's practice is very eclectic: he uses machinima, installations, paper, but also drawing, directly inspired by game aesthetics and the history of art. Absurdity and humor are some of the most most recurrent traits.
This interview between Matteo Bittanti and Jonne Hansson took place via email in April 2018.
Jonne Hansson, Cannon Travel Center, 2010, colored pencil, crayon, acrylic, paper, foam, 34,5 x 44,5 cm
GameScenes: What is your background? Can you please summarize your trajectory as an artist, gamer, and above all, agent provocateur?
I started making art pretty late. I mean, I did not draw much as a kid. I was more of a sports guy and a gamer, but when I started studying art my interest in sports and video games followed. I have always enjoyed being a funny guy, or at least the accidental slapstick comedian. I think humor and (dark) satire - particularly on subjects such as technology and society - has been an important part in my artistic practice. I enjoy finding funny situations in video games, especially things that the game designer (in all probability) did not intend to create. I also like the idea of using an already existing (and recognizable) character, it’s a bit like employing a famous actor. My works tend to land somewhere between Game Art (in the context of contemporary art) and gamification leaning towards gamified life-coaching.
Jonne Hansson, Outcast, 2017, machinima, 8' 19"
GameScenes: Outcast (2017) is a machinima adaptation of Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull created with the Grand Theft Auto V in-game video editor. You turned an hyper-violent game into a tender, poetic experience. The inevitable question is: What came first, Richard Bach or GTA?
The short answer is that I read Richard Bach’s book before I played Grand Theft Auto V. While playing this open-world game I took a step away from being a completionist gamer and became a nature photographer. The initial idea was to make a nature documentary in true David Attenborough style - commentating on what I see and how the animals behave within the boundaries of the virtual sandbox. While collecting Peyote plants (one of the side-quests) I unlocked animals as playable characters in Rockstar Editor. After some tests I discovered I could play as a seagull, and that’s when I rediscovered (and acted out) Richard Bach’s fable.
Jonne Hansson, Good Workout Today!, 2016, screenshot from the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS3)
GameScenes: To create Good Workout Today! (2016) you used an iPhone 6 Plus to upload videos "shot" in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas to your Instagram account. This multimedia project exemplifies the increasing layers of digitalization of our lives, including the virtualization of fitness and the exhibitionist, narcissistic culture of social media. How did you feel after (having your alter ego) lifting gold dumbbells?
Using my alter ego in the local gym in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, I thought lifting the heaviest virtual golden dumbbells wouldn’t be a problem. I was wrong. I miserably failed at beating the weights. Ironically, I was actually physically exhausted from the serious button mashing. It was a good workout. Being fully aware of the new wellness-ideology and this constant urge to get instant visual feedback through social media - I just had to post my recorded video on Instagram. Good Workout Today! also deals with the idea of cheating and being lazy. For instance, I think it is ironic that Pokémon Go players are now driving cars to catch the best pokémons or level up as fast as possible. The initial concept of the game was that people could play a game and get some exercise at the same time...
Jonne Hansson, Going for Birdie, 2016, installation view (studio), mixed media, including, wood, carpet, aluminium, textile, plastic, print (framed), dimensions variables
GameScenes: A recurrent theme in your work is the crossover between games and reality. You bring bits into the world of atoms, effortlessly. Is this strategy an attempt to emphasize the paradoxical nature of simulation? For instance, in Going for Birdie (2016) you used wood, carpet, aluminium, textile, and plastic - among other things - to give material consistency to a digital simulation of golf for the NES and to highlight the connection between different layers of reality, each with its own style and conventions (e.g. pixel art, for the game). Are you commenting on the pervasive influence of gaming on 21C aesthetics?
Going for birdie is the pioneering work in that style, and actually came out of a joke with a colleague and friend. A literal, deliberate misunderstanding of the golf term “Birdie”. The joke was that you’d probably be more successful in hitting a bird if you just whacked a ball straight into the woods… just that the spiteful asshole bird decided to hang around on the green that day.
Jonne Hansson, Cardsharp/Watch Dogs, 2016, machinima, Watch Dogs (Xbox 360)
GameScenes: Absurdity is a leitmotiv in your work, or, rather, THE key theme. In Cardsharp/Watch Dogs (2016) you remediated a classic painting with the aid of video games and toys. Were you trying to illustrate the porosity between the so-called high brow and the vernacular, or rather to update playful practices, emphasizing the connection between the past and the present, tradition and innovation?
In Cardsharp/Watch Dogs I turned my attention to our recurring cheating nature. We’ve done it for a long time. It was a valid subject for Caravaggio and equally valid as a revitalized cheating scene in the hacker game Watch Dogs. It seems to be a rather timeless concept:cheating remains but how we do it changes.
Jonne Hansson, The Square Painter (Star Junction) 2016, machinima, 2' 58"
Jonne Hansson, The Square Painter (Happiness Island) 2016, machinima, 2' 58"
GameScenes: Can you discuss your machinima series The Square Painter (2014), created with Grand Theft Auto IV for the PlayStation 3? What do you find so fascinating about this recurrent character? The ubiquity of game avatars in simulated landscapes? The campy nature of artistic representations in digital games? Or something else altogether?
While playing Grand Theft Auto IV and following the game’s narrative, one situation really caught my attention. It was when the protagonist, Niko, is sitting in an internet café in Liberty City and browsing through his e-mails, and he discovers that he has gotten an e-mail from his mother. She writes that she doesn’t judge him for having been in trouble and having done bad things and that is her duty to miss her son. Being an artist myself, I had also been noticing the easel painter who appeared in some typical touristic locations. I created my new own story in the game by investigating what it would mean for Niko to become a painter instead of a criminal (by killing the painter and taking his place, haha)
04/02/2018
Interview: Gareth Damian Martin: The Aesthetics of Analogue Game Photography
GameScenes is conducting a series of interviews with artists, critics, curators, and gallery owners operating in the field of Game Art, as part of an ongoing investigation of the social history of this artworld. Our goal is to document and examine both the origins and evolution of a phenomenon that changed the way game-based art is being created, experienced, and discussed today.
We are currently running Season 7, which began in 2017 with a conversation with Alex Hovet.
This episode features a broad/deep conversation with Gareth Damian Martin, a British artist, game designer, scholar, and writer whose practice focuses on the aesthetics, phenomenology, and logics of contemporary video games. Trained in puppetry and theatre, Martin subsequently moved into graphic and video design, literature, and architecture. His writing can be found on some of the most interesting game publications, including - but not limited to - Kill Screen and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Fascinated by the intersection of architecture and photography in simulated environments, in 2017 Martin launched Heterotopias, on online publication entirely devoted to photographic practices in games. His most recent project, The Continuous City (2018), is a book about game photography available from InBound Publishing.
The following conversation between Matteo Bittanti and Gareth Damian Martin took place via email in March 2018. As usual, the text features embedded links.
GameScenes: What is your background? Can you please summarize your trajectory as a game designer, writer, and artist?
Gareth Damian Martin: I have a very multi-disciplinary background, having originally trained in puppetry and theatre, before moving into graphic and video design, and then studying literature and working in games journalism and design. For the past three years I have been working on a practice-based PhD in experimental literature, specifically focusing on procedurally generated narrative and resolving the supposed conflict between conceptual and expressive forms of writing. Meanwhile I have been working as a games journalist, focusing specifically on the intersection of games with other cultural forms, and more specifically, game spaces and architecture. The Heterotopias project emerged out of this approach, and a need to make a space in which my work on games and architecture might be able to develop freely alongside the work of others. After starting the Heterotopias project I also was offered the change to work at the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, lecturing and tutoring on the intersection of urbanism and games. in addition to this, this year I funded my first commercial game, In Other Waters, where the player takes the role of an AI guiding a xenobioloist as they dive an Alien ocean.
Gareth Damian Martin, Outskirts (Dishonored), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: Can you describe the genesis of your project, Heterotopias, and its latest iteration or evolution, The Continuous City?
Gareth Damian Martin: Heterotopias came from a desire to create a specific space in which I and other writers might be able to explore game spaces and architecture without operating within the limits of mainstream games journalism and criticism. Originally a column on the now defunct site Kill Screen, I expanded it into its own publication in February 2017. In the first year we published three zines, each focusing on long form analysis of game spaces supported by game photography, maps and diagrams. At the same time I have been editing and commissioning a series of online studies which focus tightly on a single game or space. Since the beginning game photography has been a big part of Heterotopias approach and identity, guided by a want to transform the screenshot into a critical tool. The Continuous City, our first book, expands on that idea significantly, consisting of over 200 photographs of urban spaces in games. Structured around a loose typology of urban space, The Continuous City is also unique because of the technique I use to capture the images: a 35mm analogue camera. This technique, which involves projecting the game via a DLP projector and then photographing the image using a black and white, high ISO film stock, is one I developed during the first set of Heterotopias zines, and lends the images it produces a surreal, unreal quality.
Gareth Damian Martin, Outskirts (Grand Theft Auto V), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: In the last few years, game photography underwent a significant transformation: from a fringe activity, it has been endorsed by major hi-tech companies like nVidia, which are actively both facilitating it with powerful tools. This particular Silicon Valley company is not simply recognizing this practice but de facto legitimizing it. In a sense, this shift seems to mirror the evolution of machinima in the late Nineties, which moved from the periphery to the center of gaming culture, when corporations endorsed some machinima makers (Rooster Teeth Productions comes to mind), at least for a while. What's your take on this phenomenon?
Gareth Damian Martin: While I am very muchin support of the increasing visibility of game photography, and the growing number of accessible tools that are being provided by games as well as hardware manufacturers like nVidia, I think in order to develop the form must step beyond the advertising and publicity focus that this context currently affords it. The support of game photography by major tech companies is a reflection of how useful they see players taking, uploading and sharing screenshots is to their advertising and publicity. The replication of "beautiful" images from high-budget games supports their claims to photo-realism and serves to elevate their position, not that of game photography. However, the tools that come with this commercial support of game photography are introducing the idea to many new practitioners, and I believe many will go on to make work that steps outside of "screenshot" territory.
Gareth Damian Martin, Pathways (Dishonored), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: ...Meanwhile, the number of exhibitions focusing on game photography has increased significantly in the past few years, signalling that the initial resistance by the artworld ("...But is it art?") has been partially overcome. What do you make of the increasing attention by critics, curators, and scholars on the topic of game photography? Where do you see game photography heading?
Gareth Damian Martin: My use of game photography is very particular, and is more informed by conceptual photographers than it is by other game photographers. But I think precedents set by, for example, the brilliant work of Harun Farocki's Parallel series have firmly cemented games as a viable subject for video art and photography. If I'm being honest, I don't really see game photography as divergent from photography in general - rephotographing artworks, using the camera as a conceptual or critical tool and photography as an form which is able to create images, not simply take them are all well developed aspects of art photography. Game photography engages with all of these, and doesn't exist within some privileged border.
Gareth Damian Martin, Towers (Kayne & Lynch 2), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: Let's talk a little bit about terminology and vocabulary Does it make sense to use the term "photography" for a quintessentially post-photographic practice? Shouldn't it be simply called screenshooting?
Gareth Damian Martin: I think photography is a useful term as it connects the work to a heritage and history of conceptual, still-life and object photography that stretches all the way back to the beginning of the medium. Screenshotting connects the work to a history of commercial interest, product showcases and advertising, and I think only serves to limit how we might think of this work. In my case the term photography is essential - the use of an analogue camera is a core part of the image making process.
Gareth Damian Martin, Nests (Yakuza 0), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: By combining a traditional, pre-digital technique like 35mm cameras and video games you are simultaneously resuscitating a "dead medium" (Bruce Sterling) and remediating photography, that is, incorporating a medium into another (Bolter & Grusin). You're also updating an evergreen photographic genre - street photography - into virtual environments. How does the genre of analogue game photography fit into the ever expanding medium of game photography tout court?
Gareth Damian Martin: As I've mentioned I don't personally frame my work within game photography, and am more interested in the reference points of art photographers like Hiroshi Sugimoto and his photographs of wax works and dioramas, Thomas Demand and his images of cardboard models that replicate press photography, and even Man Ray's famous photograph (Dust Breeding) of Duchamp's Large Glass. In this context I don't see analogue photography as a "dead medium" at all - Sugimoto uses large format cameras and roll film for example. In my influences from street photography too, most notably the work of Daido Moriyama and the incredible pinhole camera pieces of Takashi Homma from his book The Narcissistic City, analogue processes are part of an art practice which is very much contemporary. In terms of incorporating one medium into another, I would see it as incorporating games into photography as a subject, but again not as a privileged, unique subject, but instead one closely associated with the history of rephotography, and photography engagement with illusion and the virtual. To me games and photography share a particular quality - they are both images of spaces, rather than spaces in their own right, and so the way they process, and relate to spaces and architecture through virtuality and illusion seems to me to be a strong point of connection.
Gareth Damian Martin, Sanctuaries (Dark Souls 3), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: A remarkable number of game photographers strive for hyper-realism, trying to blur the already porous borders between realistic depictions of reality through photographic means and their video game counterparts, and, by doing so, they are merging representation with simulation (one example is Duncan Harris). At the same, since technical images are by definition third level abstractions (Flusser), one wonders how (or even if) digital photographs and game screenshots are substantially different: they are, after all, pure code, that is, software (Manovich). What's your take? I'm asking because you write that The Continuous City is "a travelogue of the digital made real", which seems to imply that, by simulating photographic representations, you're attributing ontological consistency to fluid, transient, immaterial practices such as gameplay. Conceptually, this reminds me of a project by Benoit Paillé, Crossroads of Realities, although aesthetically, you have chose a very different style... Am I completely off?
Gareth Damian Martin: I think what is key here here is that I am not in fact simulating photography as Benoit Paille does, but photographing the game as an object with an actual "true" photographic process. While I ultimately scan my negatives into my computer in order to print them and insert them into the book, each part of the process up to this point is a photographic process like any other analogue photographic process. For me this a key part of the "expansion" or "transformation" of the game I am staging. When I say "a travelogue of the digital made real", I am pointing to the contradictory way in which these images, by abstracting the original subject, grant it a strange veracity - just as a statue beside a static human, when photographed, gains the same limited life as the human within the resulting image. The "reality" of the analogue process grants the unreal spaces of the game a kind of passing connection to the real, and the two become inseparable - the real image and the unreal space. This is especially effective for those who do not recognise or have no experience of the original game space - their first response is often to approach the image as if it is an image of a real space, and then to slowly try to resolve this with the increasingly obvious falsity of the space that becomes more and more evident over time. Even those who have experienced the original game space lose their footing in reality sometimes, and I have had comments pointing out that my images "look just like" the spaces from the game - the viewer unable to resolve their own memories of the same space with the strange image in front of them, therefore separating them to two different planes of reality.
Gareth Damian Martin, Sanctuaries (Dishonored), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: ...Black and white is a marker of photographic artistry: by deliberately renouncing the vibrant colors of simulated worlds, you're explicitly invoking a photographic tradition with overt artistic ambitions. My question - which has no polemical intent - is this: why looking at the past to capture the essence, the spirit of a (relatively) new medium such as the videogame?
Gareth Damian Martin: To me the connection to the history of conceptual and object photography is the one I wish to evoke, I have no desire to evoke a nebulous "future" that might be suggested by the technological superiority of games. I would also maintain that black and white is no longer able to be considered a historical practice, as many photographers continue to use black and white photography in contemporary work, especially as it has the effective ability to distance the resulting images from their original referent. I also think one of the least helpful myths around games is that they are contingent on a linear technological
Gareth Damian Martin, Ruins (Dark Souls 3), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: The Continuous City combines flaneur-like obs
Gareth Damian Martin: I think both of these concepts - the image as ownership of digital space / the image as reframing of digital space - are actively true. Certainly my project is a kind of obsessive documentation, a pursuit of some quality that I feel is impossible to describe in any other way. However I think the multiplicity of game spaces makes it difficult to see game photography as a process of colonising virtual spaces - these are, after all, spaces designed to entrap, manipulate and engage the player. For that reason I think game photgoraphy leans more towards reframing, and even rebelling against the systems of engagement in games. What I find fascinating in games is the way in which they are starting to show resistance to their own structures internally - photo-modes and features like the "Discovery Tour" tourist-mode of Assassin's Creed Origins point towards a future of games where spaces are hollowed out within compulsive systems to actively subvert or undermine them. I see game photography as engaging with these processes.
Gareth Damian Martin, Entrances (Mirror's Edge Catalyst), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: Stephan Mallarmé famously wrote that "Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a book". It appears that this wish applies to the virtual world as well: is the book, as a medium, a legitimizing strategy? Why did you choose static images to document virtual worlds instead of pursuing different multimedia formats, such as video essays or playthroughs?
Gareth Damian Martin: My intention is not pure documentation, and such a project would find itself crowded out by the huge volume of documentation of game spaces that already exists. To me the images are the work, they don't stand-in for the spaces they depict. This book is a work within the long tradition of artists photo books, and frames itself as such. I'm in no way adverse to video or multimedia projects, in fact I have many in mind for the future of the Heterotopias project, but this project in particular is exploring the relationship of game spaces to photography in particular, and its form follows that intention.
Gareth Damian Martin, Pathways (Grand Theft Auto V), 2017, digital still.
GameScenes: The literary tradition is explicitly evoked in the very title of your book, which alludes to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Both projects are linked by the wish to catalogue and archive the imaginary, the fantastic, and the exotic. Is your ultimate goal to produce a 1:1 map of the digital ludic?
Gareth Damian Martin: Not at all, in fact I think Invisible Cities suggests the opposite - it is a document that points to maps and descriptions as expressive not objective tools. Calvino isn't cataloguing all the imaginary cities of the world, he is instead describing one city, Venice, from a multitude of perspectives, ones that include what Venice is, what it was and what it might be. He combines all the fantasies and dreams, all the nightmares, with the ideologies, arguments and characters of the city in order to try to describe something real through fiction. This too is my intention - after all the book is called The Continuous City - it points to a singular urban body, united in its disunity. It is a book of fictions too, but ones that equally point to some real place we might once have visited.
LINK: Gareth Damian Martin
LINK: Heterotopias
LINK: The Continuous City
02/20/2018
Event: Gun Ballet: the Aestheticization of Violence in Video Games (March 2 - June 3, 2018, Chicago)
March 2 - June 3, 2018
VGA Gallery
2418 W Bloomingdale #102
Chicago, IL 60647
Opening Reception: Friday March 2, 2018, 5-8pm
Chicago's Video Game Art Gallery presents Gun Ballet, an exhibition that identifies the major styles of violence in video games—ranging from the beautiful to the gratuitous—and examines how the representation and mediation of violence achieves the expressive goals of artists. The exhibition includes work by the Biome Collective, Karl Burke, Geissler/Sann, Stephan Martiniere, Trinket Studios, Krista Wortendyke, and more.
LINK: VIDEO GAME ART GALLERY