GAMESCENES

EVENT: GAME CHANGERS: VIDEO GAMES & CONTEMPORARY ART (FEBRUARY 22 - APRIL 19 2020, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS)

Juan Obando, Pro Revolution Soccer, 2019

Game Changers: Video Games & Contemporary Art

February 22 to April 19 2020 Free entry

MassArt Museum (MAAM)
Sandra & David Bakalar Gallery
Free and open to the public

621 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02115 United States

 

Curated by Darci Hanna, this group exhibition explores artists working at the confluence of contemporary art and video games. Whether highlighting under-explored narratives, pushing technological boundaries, or imagining alternative worlds through game aesthetics, the artists featured in Game Changers are discovering new possibilities for what game-related art can be and do.

 

Nyamakop, Semblance, 2018

Featured artists

Cao Fei, Paloma Dawkins, Tracy Fullerton, Dan Hernandez, Nyamakop, Juan Obando, Momo Pixel, Skawennati, Brent Watanabe

LINK: Game Changers

EVENT: FEEDBACK LOOPS (DECEMBER 7, 2019 - MARCH 22 2020, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA)

 

Feedback Loops

Curated by Miriam Kelly

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art 

111 Sturt Street
Southbank VIC 3006
Melbourne, Australia

ACCA's new exhibition includes work from Lu Wang, a Chinese-born artist whose work incorporates games, VR, animation and live performance. For Feedback Loops, Lu Yang has developed a video game titled The Great Adventure of Material World. Users control a character named Material World Knight through a virtual universe, a digital space influenced by the aesthetics of anime, Buddhist art, consumer culture, arcade games, and science fiction. Can't wait

ACCA’s exhibition Feedback Loops presents six immersive installations that explore the material and digital worlds of our past, present and speculative futures. Populated by characters and conceptualisations that are at once real and fictive, and inherently performative, the works of participating artists are informed by aesthetics of the internet and the ethics of new materialist philosophies, presenting a kaleidoscopic positioning of familiar and unfamiliar references.

Mythology, spirituality and philosophy are mashed together with personal and collective narratives, popular culture and art history, in visual, aural and spatial configurations that simultaneously confront and confound. Belonging to a generation born in the 1980s, the participating artists have an everyday approach to new media and computational thinking, from gaming software and CGI to the ripping and rehashing of internet content, that sits seamlessly alongside live performance and material practices of sculpture, textiles, drawing and painting.

In the simplest sense, a feedback loop is a process of systems analysis, whereby outputs and their past impacts are taken into consideration in the present to affect the nature of future outputs. Traditionally the feedback loop has a binary structure: where negative feedback maintains an equilibrium; while the positive is characterised by amplification, and the possibility of entropy and collapse. The term ‘feedback loop’ is used in diverse frameworks, from sciences of biology, climate and computing, to the fields of sound engineering, product development and human psychology. As a phrase, it also evokes ideas of the echo, reiteration and re-articulation, as well as an understanding of time, knowledge and cultural production as cyclical and generative.

Curated by Miriam Kelly, Feedback Loops comprises new commissions and presentations of recent works by Madison Bycroft, Tianzhuo Chen, Lu Yang, Sahej Rahal, Justin Shoulder and Zadie Xa. The works of participating artists register these dynamics in circuitous disruptions of linear approaches to narrative, time, space, value and power, along with their considerations of empathy – towards both humans and non-human forms. The works and worlds presented in Feedback Loops are spectacular and theatrical; in equal measure unsettling, absurd, fantastical and joyous, offering high-energy hits, as well as sites of reprieve.

LINK: Feedback Loops (all images courtesy of ACCA)

NEWS: GARAGE DIGITAL (ONLINE)

Exciting news from Russia:

"Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is launching Garage Digital, a new experimental program and online platform. The launch will be accompanied by a grant competition for artists who work with digital technology.

Bringing together artists, scientists, programmers, and art historians, Garage Digital aims to explore and support the new languages of visual culture that are emerging under the influence of advanced technologies and new media on everyday life and on artistic and research practices.

Today, when mobile and broadband Internet have become familiar elements of urban life just like electricity and water supply, the traditional museum has lost its monopoly as a store of meaningful imagery. Every owner of a smartphone connected to the Internet can access an unlimited amount of content. Big data analysis organizes web searching and creates a feeling of total availability and interconnection, while algorithms help to solve complex tasks. It has become possible to approach the world as a full-fledged source of visuality, flowing from the real environment to the screens of digital devices. This means that today reality develops in close proximity to and under the influence of the digital realm, sometimes almost completely merging with it. Akin to scrolling through a news feed, the new form of perceiving information blurs the boundaries of the real and the virtual, reforms our sense of space and time, and thus questions the goals and values of the traditional museum.

Garage Digital accumulates the experience of studying contemporary born-digital art as the product of a new type of thinking and living through everyday reality. Along with digital art proper, the program focuses on the latest technological advancements—code, neural networks, big data analysis, game engines and computer graphics, 3D printing, and other new production modes—that can operate simultaneously as the artwork’s material, medium, and means of production.

Anton Belov: «The Garage Digital team, together with artists and experts, is redefining the role of cultural institutions and means of creating and exhibiting works of art. Launched in 2019, this program is focused on digital reality, but that does not mean we are choosing between online and offline presence. For Garage they are of equal importance. In essence, the Garage Digital platform is a space within the Museum, with its own exhibition and education programs».

The online platform features artworks and research projects created for Garage Digital, multimedia material on digital art and culture, information on grants and a schedule of offline events. Born-digital artworks and research projects created in collaboration with or supported by Garage are published in Projects and integrated into a data feed interface, replicating the continuous flow of visual images and ideas produced by contemporary reality.

One of the key goals of the program is to systematize knowledge on digital art and technogenic reality. The platform offers access to documentary videos and theoretical research on themes covered by the program, such as Game Studies, which focuses on the study of video games and computer simulations as an artistic medium.

Garage Digital’s program of offline events, which take place in the Museum as well as off-site, aims to develop a community of digital and new technology artists, allow for the exchange of experience, and support professional networks. Garage Digital also includes a grant program for artists who work with new technology, with each season addressing a particular aspect of artistic practice within the digital environment.

Garage Digital is like a virus infiltrating the Museum’s programs. It implies collaboration with the exhibition and education departments and participants in the Field Research program, as well as offline interventions into the Museum’s public spaces. By its launch, the platform will feature new projects and digital artworks created for the exhibition The Coming World.

LINK: Garage Digital

EVENT: GAMEPLAY. VIDEO GAME CULTURE (DECEMBER 19 2019 - MAY 3 2020, BARCELONA, SPAIN)

GAMEPLAY. Video Game Culture

19 December 2019 - 3 May 2020

Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona

Inauguration
18 December 2019 - 19.00

7.00 pm Audiovisual performance by Alba G. Corral & Tutu

 

Dates and hours
19 December 2019 - 3 May 2020
From Tuesday to Sunday, 11.00 - 20.00

Curated by Óliver Pérez Latorre, Jérôme Nguyen

Gameplay journeys to the origins of video games, analyses their language and highlights the impact they have had on popular digital culture and on art and society. The exhibition is designed as a space for recreation and reflection where visitors can play and (re)discover video game culture. Since their popularisation in the seventies and eighties, video games have developed as an expressive and entertainment medium and now occupy a central space in our imaginary to the point that, today, it is impossible to understand contemporary society and culture without relating them with video gaming.

Gameplay takes a look at the history of the medium, video game language, experimentation and artistic innovation, and critical and political video games.vThe exhibition also raises the issue of the increasing gamification of society: from mobile games to YouTubers and electronic sports (esports) to so-called serious games, educational video games with applications that go beyond entertainment. With 28 game points, from the first arcade and historic computer games to the new immersive options, Gameplay is devised as an exhibition where visitors can play and, at the same time, understand and enjoy video game culture from a critical viewpoint. The show pays particular attention to Catalan production, especially pioneering works, recent indie creations and local artists, and university projects.

Gameplay. Video Game Culture is an extended adaptation of Gameplay. The Next Level, designed by and first presented at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

LINK: GAMEPLAY

EVENT: INDIGENOUS FUTURISMS: EXPLORATIONS IN ART AND PLAY (OCTOBER 2 2019 - JANUARY 31, 2020, DAVIS, CALIFORNIA)

Steven Paul Judd, Invaders, 2018

Indigenous Futurisms: Explorations in Art and Play

Gorman Museum at University of California, Davis

Oct 2, 2019 - Jan 31, 2020

One Shields Ave., Davis, California

Open Mon-Fri, noon-5 p.m., and Sun 2-5 p.m.

Admission is free.

Website: gormanmuseum.ucdavis.edu.

Indigenous Futurisms brings together graphics, comics, SF, and video games  to create a provocative space of engagement and thought about Indigenous futures and possibilities. The gaming section was curated by Ashlee Bird, a graduate student of Native American Studies at UC Davis, who writes:

The content and graphics involved with Native American and Indigenous representation in these genres are fraught with embedded stereotypes and in some cases, these depictions are viewed as deeply offensive and racist. Native American artists and game designers actively engage with these concerns by creating new spaces, environments and platforms for the expression of visual sovereignty. Games and artwork are created, mediated and informed from rich cultural foundations alongside technical media expertise.

Video game inspired art on display includes an enormous vinyl inkjet print created by interdisciplinary artist Sonny Assu which reimagines the original Nintendo Entertainment System controller and replaces the original directional pad with a copper, an indigenous shield shape that for Northwest coast tribes indicates status and wealth. The piece is exhibited as large inkjet on paper. 

Sonny Assu, Nuła̱mał Entertainment System, 2017, exhibition Copy: Inkjet on paper, 36 x 26 inches

Assu has previously made modified cabinet arcades such as Wreck-Consiliation! (2017) and Broken Treaties (2017) which both display a video of  Clayfighter (made by Brendan Tang) as a 81 second loop. The coin-op machines were exhibited in the context of the Ready Player Two exhibition at the Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, British Columbia between 25.05.17 - 03.09.17.

Sonny Assu, Wreck-Consiliation!, 2017 a, Maple, copper leaf, paint and video, 24w x 33.5d x 66.25 inches

Sonny Assu, Broken Treaties, 2017, Maple, copper leaf, paint, 73.75x25x28.25 inches

Nathan Powless-Lynes, Hold My Mand!, interactive game, 2019

Indigenous Futurisms also features interactive games playable with Xbox One controllers within the gallery space, including Nathan Powless Lynes's Hold My Hand!, a dual character puzzle platformer where the characters hold hands to help each other overcome obstacles.

Maize Longboat, Ray Caplin, Mehrdad Dehdashti, Beatrix Moersch, Terra Nova, interactive game, 2019

Created by Maize Longboat, Ray Caplin, Mehrdad Dehdashti, Beatrix Moersch, Terra/Nova is a split-screen side-scroller starring an elder land-keep and a youthful inventor. The characters must perform actions in their respective worlds in order to accomplish the game's ultimate goal. Lastly, visitors can experience Full of Birds, an interactive art gallery which immerses the viewer in a colorful, vibrant "natural" world.

LINK: Indigenous Futurism (All images and videos courtesy of the Artists)

EVENT: PLAYMODE (SEPTEMBER 11 2019 - FEBRUARY 17 2020, LISBON, PORTUGAL)

PLAYMODE

 

11 September 2019 - 17 February 2020

Curated by Filipe Pais and Patrícia Gouveia

MAAT

Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology

Av. Brasília, Central Tejo

1300-598 Lisboa

Open from 11 AM to 7 PM

Closed on Tuesdays

The artists understood early on the transformative power of play, and began integrating it into their works for various purposes – escaping reality, social construction and transformation, subversion or as a criticism of game and play mechanisms themselves. The exhibition Playmode offers a reflection on these aspects and on the era of ludification that contemporary societies are now experiencing, bringing together pieces by several artists, such as Brad Downey, Gabriel Orozco and Ana Vieira, who incorporate the theme while exploring new ways of seeing, participating and transforming the world, using gaming in a critical light.

Participating artists:

The Pixel Hunt, Pippin Barr, Aram Bartholl, /////////fur//// art entertainment interface, Gabriel Orozco, Priscila Fernandes, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Mary Flanagan, Harun Farocki, Molleindustria, Bill Viola and USC Game Innovation Lab, Samuel Bianchini, Eva and Franco Mattes, Lucas Pope, Joseph DeLappe, Brent Watanabe, Filipe Vilas-Boas, Shimabuku, Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn, Tale of Tales, David Shrigley, André Gonçalves, Isamu Noguchi, Ana Vieira, Miltos Manetas, David OReilly, Brad Downey, Dunne & Raby with Michael Anastassiades, Os Espacialistas, CADA.

LINK: PLAYMODE

EVENT: SERIOUS GAMES (AUGUST 2 - NOVEMBER 2 2019, SHANGHAI, CHINA)

SERIOUS GAMES

August 2 2019 - November 2, 2019

How Art Museum

O 1, Lane 2277, Zuchongzhi Road

Shanghai, China

Artists: Alexis Mailles, Feng Chen, Harun Farocki, Jon Rafman, Kent Sheely, Andrew Luk, Lawrence Lek, Matthieu Cherubini, Payne Zhu, Peter Nelson, Wu Chi-Yu

Curated by Fu Liaoliao

Serious Games will present works and projects of both artists and game designers, casting light on the historical development of video games as a form and image, the tension between the mechanism of eSport competition and players from a bio-political point of view, as well as the critiques of spatial politics, historical truth, and future conflicts within the context of video games. Moreover, the exhibition is not limited to present the works directly related to video games, and it also attempts to extend the boundaries of people's notions of game by showcasing works from different perspectives.

The exhibition is accompanied by several events, including various panels, such as "Serious Games: Radical Field inside and out of Virtuality" (August 2), featuring Dr. Jiang Yuhui (Professor of philosophy, East China Normal University), Feng Chen (Artist), Payne Zhu (Artist), Wu Chi-Yu (Artist) and moderated by Fu Liaoliao (Curator of HOW Art Museum). Below is the full description:

As an ancient form of human activity, games have been undergoing drastic changes under the development of science and technology. Until the era of video games, its unprecedented connection with daily life has opened up new possibilities for cognitive space, images and life forms. It has even launched challenges to the present and future way of people's existence. The panel discussion starts from this radical field inside and out of virtuality.

LINK: Serious Games

EVENT: BRENTON ALEXANDER SMITH'S I FEEL LIKE A NERVOUS WRECK (APRIL 1-30 2019, ONLINE)

Brenton Alexander Smith

I feel like a nervous wreck

Closed on Monday gallery 

April 1-30 2019

Closed on Monday Is an online gallery that is experienced like a video game. It is a 3D space that the ‘player’ can move around in to experience the works. You can visit the gallery right now at closedonmondaygallery.com. Brenton Alexander Smith's exhibition I feel like a nervous wreck is showing in the gallery until the end of the month, and will likely be accessible in the archive section of the website afterwards. Here, his crashforms have been extracted from the environment of BeamNg.drive and placed into the new context of this gallery. These crashforms begin to move as you approach them, returning an element of interactivity to how they are experienced. 

LINK: Brenton Alexander Smith

OPEN CALL: GAME ARTS INTERNATIONAL ASSEMBLY (DEADLINE: FEB 28 2019)

The Game Arts International Assembly (GAIA) is an annual in-person event that provides a chance for people in the game arts organizing and curation community to discuss their challenges and share information. The first one is in November 2019 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and the second is planned for 2020 in Toronto, Canada.

This edition assembly hosts are Luján Oulton director of Game on! El arte en juego (Buenos Aires) and Jim Munroe, co-founder of Hand Eye Society (Toronto) and GAIN. The confirmed key notes are Lorenzo Pilia from A MAZE./Talk and Play (Berlin) and Marie Foulston from Wild Rumpus and the V&A Museum (London). We will be announcing three more international keynotes from established guests later in the year.

This edition will host a maximum of 20 participants. There will be 5 keynotes and up to 15 participants will be selected by the Assembly hosts.

GAIA will consist of:
- Three days of personal talks, playful events, and roundtables;
- local arts experts from outside the games community sharing their knowledge;
- interactive and playful sessions generating ideas to address big issue problems;
- bonding/integration activities designed for the participants, including visits to local game developers studios, to museums and to local cultural venues and activities.

This edition assembly hosts are Luján Oulton director of Game on! El arte en juego (Buenos Aires) and Jim Munroe, co-founder of Hand Eye Society (Toronto) and GAIN. The confirmed key notes are Lorenzo Pilia from A MAZE./Talk and Play (Berlin) and Marie Foulston from Wild Rumpus and the V&A Museum (London). We will be announcing three more international keynotes from established guests later in the year.

Apply here

Deadline is midnight, February 28th 2019.

Accepted applicants will receive free admission to the Assembly and all its activities, as well as a pass to the GAME ON festival prior to GAIA running from 22-30 November at San Martín Cultural Center.

 

LINK: Game Arts International Assembly (English and Spanish)

EVENT: RAINBOW ARCADE – A QUEER HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES 1985-2018 (DEC 14 2018 – MAY 13 2019, BERLIN, GERMANY)

RAINBOW ARCADE – a queer history of video games 1985-2018

Curated by Sarah Rudolph (herzteile.org), Jan Schnorrenberg (Schwules Museum) and Dr. Adrienne Shaw (Temple University, LGBTQ Game Archive).

Dec 14 2018 – May 13 2019.

Schwules Museum
Lützowstraße 73
10785 Berlin

Description

For the first time worldwide, the queer history of video games will be explored in a major exhibition: RAINBOW ARCADE will open at Schwules Museum Berlin in December 2018 and features a wide variety of exhibits spanning over 30 years of media history, including playable titles, concept drawings, modifications written by fans themselves and documentations of online communities. The exhibition will be taking stock of contemporary pop cultural questions of representation, stereotypical and discriminatory narratives in entertainment media, and our cultural memory. For the first time, research by the LGBTQ Game Archive will be presented in a museum.

It is remarkable that while video games have become a natural part of our contemporary culture, almost every new release that doesn’t portray LGBTIQ* people and the realities of life in a negative way is quickly celebrated as groundbreaking or discredited as sudden ideological politicization. Yet there are a few examples of mainstream titles from the 1990s featuring relatively sensible coming-out storylines and same-sex marriage & flirting options. RAINBOW ARCADEasks not only how social discourses and developments have been reflected in video games and if there has been any major progress in regards of LGBTIQ* representation in entertainment media. In addition, the exhibition explores issues regarding our digital memory and the unique challenges posed by digital culture to archives and institutions and the archival absence of contemporary queer media history. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive supporting programme with international developers, artists and researchers. A crowdfunding campaign to fund the catalog can be found here.

The exhibition features an entire section dedicated to Robert Yang's games, Anna Anthropy’s Queers in Love at the End of the World, Brianna Lei’s dating game about chaotic bisexual teens, Butterfly Soupand Dietrich Squinkifer’s Dominique Pamplemousse among others. The Guardian has published a detailed walkthrough.

LINK: QUEER ARCADE