GAMESCENES

Event: David Blandy, The End of the World, (Nov 3 - Dec 1 2017, London, England)

David Blandy 
The End of the World
3rd November to 16th December 2017
PV Thursday 2nd November 6pm
Seventeen
270-276 Kingsland Road
Entrance on Acton Mews
London E8 4DG

 

Press release:

"Comprising three film installations and new series of photographs, ‘The End of the World’ deals with the artist’s relationship to technology and memory, speculating about Armageddon and a loss of connection to the server.

 

The installation The End of the World (2017) is film work projected onto three screens, enclosing the viewer in a planetarium style view of the solar system. The accompanying audio monologue intertwines examples of end times, examining its differing cultural forms. The narrator touches on macro ideas effecting nations - genocide, climate change and more personal, intimate moments of loss and grief. A section of the film appropriates chat-room text from users of Asheron’s Call, a multi-player online role-playing game, whose servers where recently shut down after 17 years of collective game play. The users gathered to communally experience the end of their world, publicly narrating their emotions.

 

The Archive (2017) is a film made inside the Hans Tasiemka Archive, using 360-degree filming technology. This sprawling resource is run by 94 year old Edda Tasimeka from a 1920’s semi-detached house in Golders Green. Amassed over decades, it's a collection of hundreds of thousands of idiosyncratically catalogued newspaper cuttings forming a web of interconnected stories and information. Masses of cuttings are kept all around the house, from the toilet to her garage, categorised through subjects as diverse as ‘The Family’, ‘Isis’ and the ‘Kardashians’.

 

HD Lifestyle (2016) focuses on the physical nature of the screen, its component elements and the cost of their extraction. Blandy notes the physicality of the Cloud, the ocean floor cables and rare earth minerals extracted at such an environmental cost that the Chinese state has designated specific ‘sacrificial zones’ - concentrated toxic wastelands permitted in order to maintain high levels of production. The material forms of the Internet are countered by the users desire for dematerialisation, to be brought closer to the information, the game, the experience, to reach through the screen and interact directly with content.

The exhibition is completed by a new series of photographic works, images woven into a digital collage, finding equivalence between geology and technology, silicon chips and cosmic matter." (Seventeen Gallery)  

LINK: David Blandy

 

Game Art: Mauri Lehtonen's UFO Trouble (2015)

 

Mauri Lehtonen, UFO Trouble, HD video, color, sound, 2015, 1'

Mauri Lehtonen (b. 1985)  is a Finnish filmmaker and a new media artist. His works is imbued with styles ranging from abstract structuralism to experimental pop mutations. His latest video is titled UFO Trouble, as it was created by corrupting Super Nintendo ROM files before running them with emulator software. He describes it as "Rhythmical exposure to synaesthetic glitch sequences". This work was screened at Experiments In Cinema v11.4 (USA 2016), AnimateCOLOGNE 4 (India 2016) and at the College Art Association Conference (USA 2016).

Mauri Lehtonen, still image from UFO Trouble, HD video, color, sound, 2015.

One of my favorite works from Lehtonen is Haustorium (2013):

Mauri Lehtonen, Haustorium, digital video, 4', 2013

"Violent parasite infection. Video and audio were made by hex editing Atari 2600 ROM files." (Mauri Lehtonen)

Haustorium was screened at International Symposium On Electronic Art (Canada 2015), Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival (Switzerland 2014), Lumen Outdoor Projections at Beacons Festival (UK 2014), What The Festival (USA 2014). 

LINK: Mauri Lehtonen

Call for Proposals: ART GAMES DEMOS #3: THE CITY (Deadline: October 6, 2017)

Call for proposals ART GAMES DEMOS #3 Theme: The city
21 October 2017 at Cargo de Nuit in Arles

Art Games Demos is an evening imagined by Isabelle Arvers and Chloé Desmoineaux, dedicated to the exhibition of video artworks and video games demonstration.

We wish to present, during this evening, works of emerging or confirmed artists, local or international, between projections, live performances, demonstrations of games, prototypes or installations.

We are launching a new call for proposals ART GAMES DEMOS, for an evening organized as part of ON-Octobre Numérique at the Cargo de Nuit in Arles on Saturday 21 October 2017 (19h-02h) on the theme of the city: world city, city ​​of utopia, generative city, town planning … This call for projects is open to students, artists, developers, game designers and any other person wishing to share their creations in the following areas:

Hacks, Alternative Controllers, Independent/Experimental/In development (PC, Mac, Android, IOS, Console, Paper), video/web, 2D, 3D, 4D, VR, installations, prototypes, music, UFOs, unclassifiable …

You can send us your proposals before October 6 by email to: [email protected] or [email protected]

For more information consult the Facebook page

ART GAMES DEMOS # 3 is organized in the framework of ON_October Digital – Encounters of creation, innovation and the digital economy 05/10> 19/11/2017 www.octobre-numerique.fr in partnership with Databit .me, MOPA School, PxL-Lan and the VR Festival.

Appel à projet SOIREE ART GAMES DEMOS Thème: La ville
21 OCTOBRE 2017 AU CARGO DE NUIT ARLES

ART GAMES DEMOS est une soirée imaginée par Isabelle Arvers et Chloé Desmoineaux, dédiée à l’exposition d’œuvres vidéo et à la démonstration de jeux vidéo ;

Nous souhaitons présenter durant cette soirée, des œuvres d’artistes émergents ou confirmés, locaux ou internationaux, entre projections, performances live, démonstrations de jeux, prototypes ou d’installations.

Nous lançons un nouvel appel à projetART GAMES DEMOS, pour une soirée organisée dans le cadre d’ON – Octobre Numérique au Cargo de Nuit à Arles le samedi 21 octobre 2017 (19h-02h) sur la thématique de la ville : ville monde, ville utopique, ville générative, urbanisme… Cet appel à projet est ouvert aux étudiants, artistes, développeurs, game designers et à toute autre personne souhaitant partager ses créations dans les domaines suivants :

Création vidéo/web, 2D, 3D, 4D, VR, Machinimas, Glitch, Hacks, contrôleurs alternatifs, jeux vidéos indépendants/expérimentaux/en développement (PC, Mac, Android, IOS, console, papier), installations, prototypes, performances, musiques, OVNI, inclassifiables…

Vous pouvez nous envoyer vos propositions avant le 6 octobre par mail à : [email protected] ou [email protected]

Pour plus d’information :
http://www.kareron.com/art-games-demos/
www.facebook.com/artgamesdemos

Art Games Demos #3 est organisé dans le cadre d’ON_octobre numérique – Rencontres de la création, de l’innovation et de l’économie numérique 05/10 > 19/11/2017 www.octobre-numerique.fr en partenariat avec Databit.me, l’école MOPA, PxL-Lan et le VR Festival.

LINK: Isabelle Arvers 

LINK: ART GAME DEMOS

Game Art: Michael "Vioxtar" Efraim's virtual dioramas

Michael Efraim, Path of Spawn, 2017.

Gamasutra's contributor Alex Wawro writes about Michael "Vioxtar" Efraim's work. Efraim uses Garry's Mod to create detailed dioramas. One of his most ambitious pieces, Path of Spawn, consists of 116 ragdolls, 329 effects, 679 props. The work took about seven months of work. The result is quite stunning: the raw capture was scaled at 25600x14400 and was subsequently downscaled. And yes, Efraim is the Hieronymus Bosch of Garry's Mod. 

Here's the full process:

You can read the full interview here. 

LINK: Michael "Vioxtar" Efraim (via Gamasutra) [all images (c) Michael Efraim]

Game Art: Chris Howlett's Untitled Swarm (2017)

Chris Howlett, Untitled Swarm, 2017. excerpt/preview only. Warning: stroboscopic, flashy colors.

A new video piece by Australian artist Chris Howlett, Untitled Swarm, shows "different 3D models used as the generic game asset for representing the dual image of the player as either Terrorist or Rebel." The video is vaguely reminiscent of Brody Condon's Adam Killer (1999), but the overall impact is more grotesque. Both artists work by subtraction and recontextualization. As Howlett writes, "Abstracted from their stereotypical gaming environments and third world-surroundings of desert, mud and dust they strobe in infinite space. They drift without a purpose – frozen in a hypnotic background of Photoshop pallet swatches that strobe and loop endlessly, forever trapped, in a never-ending cycle of pulsing colour." The title, swarm, is evocative of a recent Byung-Chul Han's powerful treatise on digital culture, In The Swarm.

Chris Howlett (b. 1974, Kokopo, Papua, New Guinea) graduated with a MFA from the Californian Institute of the Arts in 2000. His works have been exhibited internationally in festivals including GAMERZ in Marseille, 16 France, Inter-Society of Electronic Arts in Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm, Videoholica International Video Art Festival in Bulgaria, Los Angeles Freewaves Festival of Film, Video and New Media and exhibited work at the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California. His solo and collaborative works have also been exhibited locally at the Gallery of Modern Art, Institute of Modern Art, the QUT Art Museum, The Arc Biennial for Art & Design and interstate at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Hobart Art Gallery, Cairns Contemporary Art Space and Blindside Artist Run Space in Melbourne. His public art commissions include “KICK OFF” which was a curated screen-based program at the new Metricon Stadium Homeground of the Gold Coast Suns and Australia’s largest public art canvas the QUT billboard project. In 2012, he was part of the DJ Culture: Contemporary Australian Video Art, screening in the Cinémathèque at Gallery of Modern Art and in 2013 underwent a residency in Armenia at Tumo – center for creative technologies where he completed a series of Alternate Reality Games called ARGARMENIA. He currently lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland.

Read an interview with Chris Howlett (2016).

LINK: Chris Howlett (Images and video courtesy of the Artist)

Game Art: David Ledgerwood's CS:GO Watermelon Pinball Games (2017)

Here's the ultimate total conversion. Graphic designer David Ledgerwood took Counter Strike: Global Offensive and turned it into a digital pinball game by using (virtual) water melons. How?

I have turned [Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Ed.] into a physics based pinball arcade mini-game using melons as the ball. "Why a watermelon?" you ask, well, it's the only prop in the game that is large enough not to pass through walls and round enough to bounce and roll properly (also the squishing sound it makes is really funny!)

In his detailed post, Ledgerwood explains:

The artwork and textures were made from scratch and the "graffiti" style overlay is an in-game texture and has different art depending on the angle of view. Also, if you don't have a friend to play with locally, you can toggle "auto mode" on either P1, P2, or both sides to let a bot play in their place. The bot works by enabling a melon detector near the paddles and swings after a brief delay. It might miss some of the faster falling melons, but it is very reliable at increased game speed (up to 16 times normal speed making for some very interesting lightning pinball rounds that us humans can't keep up).

Ledgerwood is a highly talented graphic designer (still in college!) whose work features motion graphics, digital games and 3D animation.

Among his game and animation projects are Super Hyperdrive Drifters and Not Doom:

LINK: David Ledgerwood

Game Art: Cory Arcangel's MIG 29 Soviet Fighter Plane and Clouds (2005)

Cory Arcangel, MIG 29 Soviet Fighter Plane and Clouds, 2005, installed at Art Basel 2017
Installation, 2 hacked Nintendo Entertainment System game cartridges, 2 Nintendo Entertainment System game consoles, artist software

MIG 29 Soviet Fighter Plane and Clouds is Arcangel's first work intentionally made to be an installation. It features imagery from two hacked NES cartridges. The work is now on display at Art Basel.

‘This work is a hack of an early 90s video game in which you are a Soviet Fighter Jet asked to go on bombing missions in the Middle East. Usually in these games you are an American pilot; here it’s a role reversal. The game was produced by CAMERICA which was a bootleg Nintendo game-making company. This could very well be the reason the content is a bit unorthodox. For this hack, I singled out the plane from the intro screen of the game, and programmed a new cartridge with just that, and then stole the clouds from later in the game, and made another cartridge which just has those. I made this project to be an installation: meaning, it kinda has to be set up with a bunch of projectors to make any sense. All of my other hacks were made for my website and then retrofitted for gallery installation." (Cory Arcangel, source: Art Basel)

This was eventually remixed in 2016...

Cory Arcangel , Mig 29 Soviet Fighter Plane, Clouds and OSX, 2016, installed at Lisson GalleryMig 29 Soviet Fighter Plane and Clouds (2005) Nintendo Entertainment System .nes Roms, Two Macminis running OS X, Nintendo emulators (Open Emu), variable multi-channel presentation 

Dimensions variable

LINK: Cory Arcangel (photos: AlBright Knox Gallery)

Art Game: Ramsey Nasser's Dialogue 3D (2017)

Artist and game designer Ramsey Nasser appropriated id Software’s open-source Wolfenstein (1992) assets to produce Dialogue 3-D, which subverts the original violent approach, turning each interaction into a text conversation. An encounter with a Nazi soldier prompts the player to re-evaluate her approach and examine possible ethical consequences. Players are asked, among other things, "Is it okay to deny fascists a platform?" and "Doesn’t this make you the real Nazi?" If you are looking for a tutorial, here's the best resource on the web.

This is not the first time Nasser has modified id Software's FPS. Consider, for instance, Killingspree (2011), a video game art piece about violence in video games. In this Wolfenstein 3D clone, the enemies that must be eradicated are fellow art gallery visitors. The game was commissioned for the Terraforms show at Babycastles and completed (in 18 hours) as a collaboration with Zach Gage (more about Killingspree here).

LINK: Ramsey Nasser

Game Art: COLL.EO's Liberty City Crawl (2017)

Liberty City Crawl is the latest installment of the Grand Theft Auto IV interventions series by COLL.EO, a project comprising mods, machinima, and in-game photography, starring the likes of Vito Acconci, Adrian Piper, and David Wojnarowicz.

In Liberty City Crawl, the avatar of William Pope.L replays seminal performances of his physical counterpart, including Tompkins Square Crawl (1991) and The Great White Way (2002), within GTA IV's virtual replica of New York.

LINK: COLL.EO

Video: Brent Watanabe's San Andreas Deer Cam installation view

A modification of GTA V that creates and follows a deer wandering through the fictional state of San Andreas by American artist Brent Watanabe. The deer character is autonomous and will wander and respond to it's surroundings, interacting with the existing GTA V artificial intelligence. The piece is presented as a live stream on sanandreasanimalcams.com. It was presented at NEoN Digital Arts Festival in Dundee, Scotland, 2016. Watch an interview with Watanabe here. 

LINK: Brent Watanabe