GAMESCENES

EVENT: YEAR OF THE ROBOT: THREE MACHINIMA SHORTS (OCTOBER 3 2023, MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA)

Still from How to Disappear (2021), Total Refusal. Courtesy of the artist

Year of the Robot: Three machinima shorts

A machinima retrospective curated by Jini Maxwell

Part of The Melbourne International Games Week Film Series

October 3 2023

ACMI Museum

Federation Square (Level 2 cinemas), Melbourne, Australia

 

Never previously shown in Australian cinemas, these three short films use screen-captured footage from Grand Theft Auto V and Battlefield to consider how videogames reflect (or reinforce) the sociopolitical reality.

Full program

Why Don't the Cops Fight Each Other? (2021)

Grayson Earle, 9 mins 4 sec, English, DCP

Still from 'Why don't the cops fight each other?' (2021), Grayson Earle. Courtesy of the artist

Grayson Earl’s Why Don't the Cops Fight Each Other? (2021) is desktop performance that considers how the ‘blue wall of silence’ manifests in Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto V (2013). Over the course of ten minutes, the artist records his repeated attempts to modify the game, revealing how social structures are embedded in the way police officers behave in the game's code itself.

It's Just Math (2021)

Mathias Wolff, 29 mins 52 sec, English, DCP

Screen capture from Mathias Wolfe's It's Just Math (2021). Courtesy of the artist.

Mathias Wolff’s It's Just Math (2021) uses Grand Theft Auto V's fictional city of Los Santos as the setting for an experimental documentary on predictive policing, and its impact on everyday life of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour in Los Angeles. By appropriating and repurposing Grand Theft Auto V, the film shows how so-called Dirty Data — inaccurate, incomplete or inconsistent data, especially in a computer system or database — are created through discriminatory policing practices and how the usage of such data within predictive policing software directly affects BIPoC.

How to Disappear (2021)

Source: Refreshing Films, Courtesy: Total Refusal, 21 mins 6 sec, English DCP

Still from How To Disappear (2021), Total Refusal

In How to Disappear (2021), pseudo-marxist media guerilla Total Refusal considers the political function of combat desertion in both the real and digital world (2021). An anti-war film, this short considers the possibilities for peace in the unlikely setting of the multiplayer war game Battlefield (2002).

LINK: Year of the Robot: Three Machinima Shorts (Thanks to Jini Maxwell)

LINK: Melbourne International Games Week Film Series

EVENT: INTELLIGENCES OF THE WORLD (OCTOBER 11 - NOVEMBER 10 2023, ARLES, FRANCE)

ONFM 2021, Exhibition view, Theo Triantafyllidis, Pastoral, Église des Trinitaires.

Octobre Numérique – Faire Monde

October 11 - November 10 2023

Arles, France

Various locations and times

Full program

Octobre Numérique – Faire Monde is a month-long festival in Arles, France, at the crossroads of video games and arts, advocating towards more inclusive, open and sustainable virtual worlds.

press release

From October 11th to November 10th 2023, exhibitions, conferences, performances, and workshops, will take place in the emblematic places of Arles and its region.

2023 EDITION: INTELLIGENCES OF THE WORLDS

As chatter around AI develops, the 2023 edition of the festival explores what constitutes our world’s very diverse intelligences: human, artificial, but also animal, vegetal & planetary.

On our quest, we will be joined by artists, makers, technologists who play with these various forms of intelligences in virtual worlds.

The exhibitions and workshops are free for all.

OPENING DAYS: FROM OCTOBER 11 TO 15, 2023

The conferences, workshops and performances of the opening days question and explore the interventions of AI in the manufacture of virtual worlds, video games and immersive experiences.

What does artificial intelligence really change? Artists, researchers, and makers take up the question. Looking at technologies: a mirror of ourselves. Beyond the simple opposition "human/machine": what do we call intelligence? What place do we give it within the living world? From these questions flow infinite possibilities in a creative effervescence. Come and take part!

The opening days are free for all.

Since 2021, the Communauté d’Agglomération Arles Crau Camargue Montagnette (ACCM) has entrusted the Faire Monde association with the organization of Octobre Numérique, within the framework of a call for projects.

The objectives of the festival are to promote and develop the know-how of local companies in the "Cultural and Creative Industries" sector, to strengthen the influence of the region and to make a reference digital event at the regional and national level.

Faire Monde is a non-profit association bringing together cultural and technological actors such as Actes Sud, the Biennale Chroniques, Extramentale and Fabbula.

LINK: Octobre Numérique – Faire Monde  (special thanks to Vincent Moulinet)

LINK: Faire Monde: full program

EVENT: HEECHEON KIM: DOUBLE POSER (DECEMBER 1 - JANUARY 7 2024, LONDON)

Heecheon Kim: Double Poser
1 Dec 2023 –⁠ 7 Jan 2024
HENI Project Space, Hayward Gallery
Hayward Gallery, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX

press release

Kim’s work conflates virtual and physical realms, embracing yet questioning our obsession and trust in advanced technologies.

In his video works, Kim manipulates both filmed and found footage to challenge our habitual manner of processing visual and sensory information. They consider how our bodies, memories, emotions, identities, physical experiences and the banality of daily life are constructed and represented in digital space.

Using technologies such as GPS, augmented reality, virtual reality and face-swap applications, the artist creates ambiguous and, at times, decidedly nonsensical narratives.

This exhibition includes a new moving image commission created using a ‘game engine’, which is a software platform for developing video games. It takes inspiration from the brutalist architecture of the Hayward Gallery and brings together elements of computer-generated imagery, video game aesthetics and skateboarding culture.

You can also see Kim’s 2019 video work Deep in the Forking Tanks at this exhibition.

Heecheon Kim lives and works in Seoul. He was awarded the 2023 Hermès Foundation Missulsang Art Prize.

Developed in collaboration with Seoul’s Art Sonje Center, this exhibition is part of Korean Season 2023. Korean Season 2023 is hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Korea) and organised by KOFICE (Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange) and KCCUK (Korean Cultural Centre UK).

Heecheon Kim (b. 1989) graduated from the architecture department of the Korea National University of Arts. He has held solo exhibitions at the Asian Art Museum (2018, San Francisco) and Doosan Art Center (2017, Seoul) and taken part in numerous group exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2019, Seoul), İstanbul Museum of Modern Art (2017, İstanbul), ZKM (2019, Karlsruhe), and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (2019, Manila).

LINK: Heecheon Kim: Double Poser

LINK: Heecheon Kim

EVENT: LEVEL UP: PIXELS, PLAY & PROGRESS (JUNE 6 - SEPTEMBER 24 2023, ATLANTA, GEORGIA)

Level Up: Pixels, Play, and Progress delves into how game designers view their creations as avenues for fostering empathy, forging human connections, promoting healing, and driving activism. (Image courtesy: Liv Donaldson)

Level Up: Pixels, Play & Progress

June 6-September 24, 2023

Museum of Design Atlanta

1315 Peachtree Street Northeast
Atlanta, GA, 30309
United States

A new exhibition featuring a variety of indie games including Assemble with Care, Gone Home, Season: A letter to the future, Bury Me, My Love, Atuel, Eliza, Before Your Eyes, Endling. Extinction is Forever, Inua: A story in pixel and ice, The Artful Escape, Oxen Free, Thomas Was Alone, I Was A Teenage Exocolonist, Dots Home

press release

We think, remember, and convey our experiences through storytelling. The narratives we weave possess immense power—they inspire change, challenge norms, and shape our collective consciousness.

From oral storytelling to the written word, theater to film, and television to virtual reality, our capacity to tell and share stories has evolved hand-in-hand with technology. Video games mark a significant shift in this intertwined history. Game designers create realities that empower players to shape stories as they explore fantastical realms, experience different viewpoints, and embark on extraordinary adventures. 

The immersive nature of video games blurs the lines between the physical and digital. Contemporary games tap into human emotions and fill needs. They bring people together by transcending boundaries, building communities, and creating opportunities for collaboration across diverse backgrounds.

The stories told in video games — and how players interact with those stories — provide a lens into how humans navigate and understand the world. With this exhibition, we invite you to explore the potential of game design to make the world more empathetic, inclusive, and interconnected. 

Related events: Guided Tour of Level Up: Futuristic Fiction (August 20 2023) and Guided Tour of Level Up: Nature's Narratives (September 9 2023), both in person.

LINK: Level Up: Pixels, Play & Progress

EVENT: AREAS OF EFFECT: PLANAR SYSTEMS, CRITICAL ROLES, AND GAMING IMAGINARIES (SEPTEMBER 2 2023, LONDON)

Areas Of Effect: Planar Systems, Critical Roles, and Gaming Imaginaries

Symposium and live play sessions

2 Sep 2023, 11:00am - 8:30pm

Part of arebyte 2023/24 programme The Body, The Mind, The Soul

arebyte

Java House, 7 Botanic Square

London City Island E14 0LG

 

press release

Could role playing games hold the potential to forge new communities or serve as tools for activism?

Curated by artist David Blandy and writer Jamie Sutcliffe in association with Strange Attractor Press, Areas Of Effect: Planar Systems, Critical Roles, and Gaming Imaginaries is a one-day symposium on Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPGs) with live game sessions.

Forming part of arebyte’s programme The Body, The Mind, The Soul which questions the complex nature of humanity in the realm of technological progress, the event brings together artists, game designers, theorists, and philosophers to discuss these wildly expansive forms of play in which players utilise both their imaginations and chance mechanics (such as dice rolls) to determine the actions of fictional characters and the scenarios surrounding them.

The symposium looks at TTRPGs as the physical interface between the body and the imaginary, addressing the hopes currently instilled in tabletop play to act as a transformative activity. As such, this form of play presents novel opportunities for immersive experience, problem solving, moral dilemma, but perhaps most importantly, communal storytelling.  

While an increasing number of contemporary artists have started to embrace the form and bring tabletop gaming mechanics into the development of participatory artworks, the TTRPG community itself remains a remarkable testing ground for the possibilities of play as a kind of “empathic technology”. Here, critical play is capable of strange things... might it temporarily untether us from the stagnant imaginaries of a post-capitalist inertia? Could role-playing games even come to function as vital tools for activism, or the forging of new communities?

Speakers at the event include acclaimed RPG designers Emmy Allan, Kayla Dice, Mike Mason, Chris McDowall, Samuel Mui, and Zedeck Siew, alongside writers, historians and theorists such as Stu Horvath, Timothy Linward, Mark Pilkington, and Simon O’Sullivan.

An exhibition of TTRPGs-inspired video games by artists Kitty Clark, Uma Breakdown, John Powell-Jones, Petra Szemán, and Holly White are hosted on computers and available to play for visitors throughout the whole event.

The day culminates in live TTRPG play sessions of the games Eco Mofos by artist David Blandy and SUPERZEROES by TTRPG game designer Samuel Mui, amongst others, inviting the audience to play with a deck of uniquely designed TTRPG playing cards.

LINK: arebyte TTRPG symposium

EVENT: BETWEEN WORLDS (JUNE 23 - SEPTEMBER 24 2023, LONDON)

Second Life (still), 2023, Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery

Between Worlds

June 23 - September 24 2023

The Photographers’ Gallery

16–18 Ramillies Street London W1F 7LW

United Kingdom

 

press release

What happened to your first online game, website, social platform or virtual world?

Our everyday lives have been digitised and scattered through different spaces since the internet was created. Opening on 23 June 2023 – the 20th anniversary of virtual world Second Life – Between Worlds examines the digital folklore created by online communities and worlds. The social exchanges, digital artefacts and politics that inform our current experiences of online life are all explored in the exhibition.

Many virtual worlds – like Second Life and PlayStation Home – have been created and inhabited online, bringing close-knit user communities together. Second Life is a rarity to still be active – many virtual worlds appear and disappear within a few years. The end of many of these worlds, often linked to profits, have been marked by ‘end of the world’ parties – one last community get-together before the servers are switched off.

Despite many virtual worlds ending, improved usability has led to a resurgence of interest in online communal spaces. All helped by significant increases in domestic computer capacity, changing social attitudes; as well as the rise of VR headsets, metaverses and Web3 technologies.

Between Worlds traces the development from Maze, considered the first 3D first-person game ever made, and the influence these early games had on the development of virtual communities. In Preserving Worlds, a documentary series through aging and beloved virtual worlds, Derek Murphy and Mitchell Zemil invite users, developers and preservation communities to discuss historically important spaces such as WorldsChat, Myst Online and ActiveWorlds.

Second Life (still), Courtesy of Preserving Worlds

Reflecting more recent developments, Between Worlds includes screenshots from viral ‘meeting my internet best friend’ videos where relationships formed in virtual communities spill out of virtual spaces; and the EU-funded metaverse Global Gateway, an initiative designed to engage young people in topics such as climate, connectivity, health, which highlights the increasing interests of governments in virtual worlds.

Between Worlds also includes a newly commissioned video game with Glasgow-based creative developers Benjamin Hall and Frances Lingard. In the World Imagining Game, you are invited to create new and alternative virtual worlds while exploring the power dynamics, aesthetic possibilities, and legacies at play. Imagine your own visuals, characters, modes of gameplay in your world, and think about who your world is for, how it is moderated, and how it operates economically.

Second Life (still), 2023, Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery

Between Worlds marks a new strand of programming and research through The Photographers’ Gallery digital programme into the structural and socio-political issues around online worlds, and precedes a new PhD collaboration with the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University.

LINK: Between Worlds

EVENT: PRIDE AT PLAY (JUNE 3-24 2023, MELBOURNE)

Pride at Play celebrates thoughtful queer games

June 3-24 2023, Melbourne Australia

carlisle street arts space, st kilda town hall

9:00am – 4:00pm, Monday to Friday.
10:00am – 3:00pm, Saturday.
Please note the gallery is closed on Sundays.

 

Pride at Play was launched during Sydney WorldPride festival.

 

Don't miss the catalogue curated  by Xavier Ho, Lecturer in Interaction Design, featuring 20 interviews with LGBTQIA+ game designers from Brisbane, Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne, Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Canada, United States, and Argentina. You can purchase a paperback copy here, or browse the PDF online for free. Every penny goes to three charities focused on the LGBTQIA+ community in Australia and the Asia Pacific. This includes Oogachaga (Singapore), Human Rights Watch Malaysia, and the Black Rainbow (First Nation Australians).

LINK: Pride at Play

 

GAME ART: LAWRENCE LEK'S THETA'S WORLD (2023, ONLINE AND BEIJING, CHINA)

Lawrence Lek, Theta's World, 2023. Digital work. Courtesy of the artist and X Museum. © X Museum.

Lawrence Lek
Theta’s World
X Virtual Incubator
May 27, 2023

press release

As the second edition of its Incubator commissions, X Virtual is delighted to present artist Lawrence Lek's latest project, Theta’s World. Created on X Virtual’s multiplayer online platform, Theta’s World is an experimental video game that explores nonhuman consciousness, virtual cityscapes, and storytelling through video game infrastructure. The work is built upon SimBeijing—a fictional smart city from the artist’s body of work Sinofuturism.

Theta’s World immerses the player into the heart of SimBeijing, a fictional smart city brought into existence as a cradle and testbed for intelligent technologies, devoid of human life. The work sprawls an intricate world comprising three levels, varying in times of a day—from the “Looping City at Dawn,” through the “Lattice City at Twilight,” to the “Vertical City at Midnight.”—each alluding to Theta's dream states and consciousness evolution. Through the first player persona of Theta, a self-driving car dreaming about its life and choices within this city, the player embarks on an odyssey through a multitude of layered and increasingly complex narratives.

Resonating with architect Lebbeus Woods' methodology, Lek designed a cityscape which creates a mirroring effect of time, structure, and form that permeates through each level. Embedded within this urban fabric are scattered fragments of text, each whispering stories that shift and morph with every journey undertaken. The non-linear nature of these narrative threads grants every participant an unparalleled storytelling encounter. By bestowing dreams upon Theta, the consciousness, subjectivity and existence of machine are examined through a lens traditionally unexplored. Centering an AI entity in a world where only non-human life exists prompts us to contemplate the ethical intricacies inherent to such a reality.

The online playable work will culminate in an immersive installation. The physical showcase of Theta’s World will be on view from August 2023 at X Museum in Beijing.

 

Lawrence Lek
Lawrence Lek is a filmmaker, musician, and artist who unifies diverse practices—architecture, gaming, video, music and fiction—into a continuously expanding cinematic universe. Over the last decade, Lek has incorporated vernacular media of his generation, such as video games and computer-generated animation, into site-specific installations and digital environments which he describes as ‘three-dimensional collages of found objects and situations.’ Often featuring interlocking narratives and the recurring figure of the wanderer, his work explores the myth of technological progress in an age of artificial intelligence and social change.

Lek studied at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, the Architectural Association, London, and The Cooper Union, New York. Lek recently graduated with a PhD from the Royal College of Art in London. He has exhibited internationally with recent solo exhibitions, including Sadie Coles HQ, London (2023); QUAD, Derby (2022–3); ZiWU The Bund, Shanghai (2022); Center for Contemporary Arts Prague, Prague (2019); HeK House of Electronic Arts, Basel (2019); Urbane Künste Ruhr, Essen (2019); and K11 art space, Hong Kong (2018).

X Virtual
Launched by X Museum in 2019, X Virtual is a digital art platform that fuels new artistic 3D spaces in the virtual worlds. X Virtual provides a digital infrastructure—an interoperable network of virtual worlds that stimulates new artistic productions and critical practices. We commission artists to create audio-visual space on X Virtual’s online platform and host online and offline exhibitions and virtual gatherings.

As a museum affiliate initiative dedicated to cultivating virtual worlds, X Virtual aims to foster new thoughts, discourses, and interdisciplinary practices in the light of emerging Web 3.0-centred technologies, including XR, AI, and game engines. Through working with digital creators from diverse backgrounds, we are devoted to building an accessible digital art platform to the fast-evolving Web 3.0 virtual worlds, for everyone.

Credits
Artist: Lawrence Lek
Soundtrack: Kode9 and Lawrence Lek
Writing: Lawrence Lek and Holly Gramazio
Architecture: Andreea Iliescu
Technical support: Pete Jiadong Qiang

LINK: Lawrence Lek's Theta's World

EVENT: GAME SOCIETY (MAY 12 - SEPTEMBER 10 2023, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA)

Game Society
May 12–September 10, 2023

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
30 Samcheong-ro, Jongno-gu
03062 Seoul
South Korea
Hours: Tuesday–Thursday 10am–6pm
Friday–Saturday 10am–9pm

Organized by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea.
Curated by Hong Leeji
Curatorial Assistant: Sojung Jang 
Technical support by Lee Giljae and Jiyoung Han

Artists: Cory Arcangel, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Harun Farocki, Jacky Connolly, Kim Heecheon, Lawrence Lek, Lu Yang, Ram Han

press release

Game Society is an exhibition that examines how the grammar and aesthetics of video games have influenced contemporary art and visual culture, and permeated our society and daily lives over the five decades since the launch of the first video game. Video games encompass interface design for visual and auditory stimulation, storytelling that spurs the imagination, immersive experiences and social interactions, which makes them the most relevant media form today. Game Society takes a closer look at the process of powerful synchronization between society and video games that has been accelerated by the pandemic. It explores the context in which society becomes virtual spaces and the reality of those spaces becoming part of everyday life, examining what experiences games can communicate and share with us. The exhibition features 9 video games and more than 30 artworks by contemporary artists who have been influenced by the grammar and aesthetics of video games. The games on display include Korean video games and select loans from the Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which have been acquiring games since the early 2010s.

To read is to imagine a world, to watch a movie is to observe that world, and to play a video game is to live in that world; the imagination and realism have become a shared experience and visual grammar in modern society. To play a game is analogous to contemplating and appreciating contemporary art in that it requires active participation in a work of art, during which the audience can attain a moment of art. However, the worlds within games are still imperfect. There is a marked lack of diversity in games, where virtual worlds are populated by hyperbolically perfect physiques, and women, the aged, weak, or disabled are either not represented or appear as non playable characters. As in real life, it can be difficult for them to find ways to access games and their digital environments. In contextualizing digital spaces and games in an exhibition, the MMCA, as a space of inclusion, proposes a reimagining of our society where gamification has become part of everyday life, examining gaps and empty spaces in games. In the end, presenting games in the museum is directly linked to the issue of the museum’s accessibility. Playing a video game is not different from viewing an art exhibition in that a video game’s tutorials resemble an exhibition guide with its set routes, exits, and entrances; the accumulation of experience and skill by playing a game resembles the increasing fluency and appreciation of art by visiting exhibitions and museums.    

All the video games in this exhibition are available for play. Audiences can play them with Gaming Accessibility Controller designed and developed by the Korea National Rehabilitation Center Assistive Technology Open Platform, along with Microsoft’s Xbox Adaptive Controller devices. As video game critic C. Thi Nguyen noted, games are “the art form of agency.” As such, the exhibition offers audience ways to gain fresh perspectives on the issues that emerge when they gamify their daily lives by providing universal and expansive controllers. In a similar spirit of inclusiveness and accessibility, the exhibition also provides online projects organized with PACK.

For the MMCA, this exhibition is a celebration of what video games and art museums share in their experiences. The exhibition is also an active endeavor to share the common act of accessing and reflecting on video games and the art museum, observing the roles and spheres of the individual and the public. In both video games and art, it is the application of contemporary knowledge and social experiences, and the speculation that it provokes, that creates an opportunity for us to reevaluate the world we live in. In this sense, the intention of Game Society is to provide the audience with the opportunity to contemplate and question the efforts and attention required to make public places and games more inclusive, reframing where we might wish to redefine our common goals. Through games as an artistic medium with cross-generational appeal, the exhibition hopes to provide the full sensory gamut to each individual in a unique way that serves the artistic experiences and values of each person best.

LINK: Game Society

EVENT: NOW WHAT? (APRIL 25 - JULY 9 2023, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA)

Theo Triantafyllidis, BugSim (Pheromone Spa), 2022, Live Simulation

 

NOW WHAT?
April 25–July 9, 2023

 

SeMA, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art
1238 Dongil-ro, Nowon-gu
01783 Seoul
South Korea

 

Artists: Riar Rizaldi, Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid Productions, Theo Triantafyllidis, Jaewon Kim, Internet Mountain Club, Yoon Jeewon

press release

2023 marks the tenth anniversary of SeMA, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art. With its mission to build sustained connections to the local community, the museum has experimented with a variety of exhibitions and programs. It is in this context that the museum presents NOW WHAT?, an exhibition that requires a deeper level of engagement from the museum, artist, and the audience.

In our contemporary digital media environment, new media is the medium enjoyed by most people. Yet, even such attributes of new media started to stutter and did not work very dramatically as they entered the format of the white cube. It happened since the new media were not inherently unilateral. Historically, attitudes toward art exhibitions have evolved to emphasize the importance of experience and interaction. Yet, there are still some points that leave something to be developed. In particular, the video art that we want to examine in this exhibition has not escaped the limits of receiving the audience on a white wall like an old painting, even in an explosive circulation of the media ecosystem. The experiential layers of video art must be presented in a more complex and autonomous way. Therefore, we materialize the numerous elements that make up their works in a “game-like scenography.”

We invited artists who work with new media in various ways such as film, documentary, interactive video, and live simulation. We then focused on researching their works that resulted in the single-channel video format. First and foremost, Sam Barlow, Half Mermaid Productions is a filmmaker and game developer who created IMMORTALITY (2022), a game that raises questions about the nature of video art by deconstructing the unidirectionality and monolinear structure of traditional cinema. In IMMORTALITY, the player sits in the editing room to unfold and reassemble all the scenes of the three unmerged films to infer the unfilmed events. It is an important and inspirational example that is closely connected to how the exhibition came about. Jaewon Kim talks about the lives of queer people, those infected with HIV/AIDS, and his relationship with his lovers. His works are composed in the form of letters to lovers through the fragmentation of images or reconstruction of memories. We transformed these works into a performative dimension and placed devices for pseudo-emotional experience. Riar Rizaldi focuses on individuals and specific groups in Indonesia and Hong Kong who are marginalized from a socio-economic perspective. In the exhibition, the audience will become marginalized individuals or particular groups in no time through spontaneous performative acts. The mountaineering documentary True of Landscapes (2023) by Internet Mountain Club allows us to take a closer look behind the scenes of the mountain that was not visible to the eyes of mountain hikers. They tell the holistic story of our time—ethnicity, identity, culture, generation, climate—on the actual topographic map of a “mountain”and ask the audience to be witnesses of the times. Taking on the determination of this video work, we concretized our actions and experiences as witnesses. In the meantime, Theo Triantafyllidis creates a live simulation in which an autonomous ecosystem operates. This work in the exhibition space becomes an object of observation and exploration by itself. The intention is to have this work interact with the audience with a sense of observing an ant’s nest as we did as homework when we were young or with an intention to have it as a mirror to reflect on reality. Finally, artist and filmmaker Yoon Jeewon presents a new video work A VERY ABSOLUTE EFFECT ON THE PERCEIVER (2023). It is hoped that the audience will appreciate the exceptional golden ratio and infer the rules that constructed the work. The best way to watch the video works with the most delicious taste might be to learn the rules and connect what is possible within them for an emergent viewing. 

We prepared game-like texts to facilitate the interaction between the interpretive layers of the video works and the fragmented experiences. Among the various formats of games, we focused on “immersive simulation”games. While the player’s actions were limited to essential actions in the early games, it is possible to interact with almost every element of the environment in immersive simulation games. Players can have autonomy and thus practice emergent gameplay in a given environment regardless of their original obligations. In addition, the proficiency accumulated through trial and error creates a deep understanding and immersion in the game’s worldview. 

Taking this into account, the scenography of the exhibition is set in the gray area of the city, which also happens to be the psychological background of the uncertainty of our time and the participating artists. In particular, the exhibition houses an “underpath of an imaginary bridge.” The underpath is a limbo-like space where the audience’s failures return not as defection but as experiences and skills. Here, artists and curators talked about what it would take for an individual’s media experiences and subjective memories to move beyond mere appreciation and become part of a collective experience, memory, and language. The process devised in the underpath has become an activity sheet and is given to all players. While the placeness of this exhibition primarily gives a sense of déjà vu, the activity sheet works as a tutorial and a list of tasks that help the artists to master the experiences and languages they want to deliver through the live action. Now, with the list of missions in hand, the audience (player) will be able to recall our question. 

“NOW WHAT?”
The exhibition expects that the audience to become the player, and determine their own path at will and absorb the rules or languages of artworks through their explorative interaction at the experiential level. We hope the audience to get deeper into the pleasure of watching video art and the essence of what the artists tell in their works. 

LINK: Now What?