GAMESCENES

EVENT: GAIA 2021 (VARIOUS EVENTS, MARCH - MAY 2021, ONLINE)

In 2021, the Game Arts International Network organizes the The Game Arts International Assembly, a "stretched symposium for game art curators and game community organizers." In 2021, it is organizing a flotilla of events, including nine sessions spread over two months with 35 people participating as speakers and workshop hosts from 21 countries across all the continents. Below are the first four events (March and April) (full disclosure: I'll be moderating an event on May 20 titled The Art on The Interface). All events are free!

The full program is available at the GAIN's site and at Game on!

To participate you must fill out this registration form.

Kudos to María Luján Oulton (Directora de Game on! El arte en juego) and Jim Munroe (the founder of GAIN), to make this happen!

EVENT: PLAY SOCIETIES: WOLVES, LYNX AND ANT (JUNE 16 - SEPTEMBER 9, 2020, HYUNDAI MOTORSTUDIO BEIJING, BEIJING, CHINA )

PLAY SOCIETIES: WOLVES, LYNX AND ANT

(JUNE 16–SEPTEMBER 9, 2020, HYUNDAI MOTORSTUDIO BEIJING, BEIJING, CHINA )

Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing
Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing, E-1, 798 Road
798 Art Zone, Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang District
100015 Beijing, China
Hours: Monday–Sunday 10am–7:30pm
motorstudio.hyundai.com.cn
T +86 10 5394 5200

Curator: Chen Min & Zhang Yehong (Winner of "Creativity" Hyundai Blue Prize 2019)

Artists: Angela Washko, Chen Baoyang, Chen Xin & Huang Yuwen, Lao Jiahui, Loopntale, Molleindustria, Nicky Case, Pied la biche, Tang Chao, Yao Qingmei, Zhang Wenxin, Zhao Bang, Zheng Da, Zhou Pengan

The award-winning exhibition of the 2019 Hyundai Blue Prize—Play societies: wolves, lynx and ants had its grand opening on June 16, 2020 in the Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing. This exhibition is curated together by Chen Min & Zhang Yehong, who won the “Creativity” prize in the 2019 Hyundai Blue Prize .

Since its establishment in 2017, the Hyundai Blue Prize, hosted by Hyundai Motor Company, has always been pursuing the vision of cross-border sharing, national innovation and enjoying life. It sparks a public discussion on art, innovation and technology, while bringing the public closer to the emerging art ecology. The Hyundai Blue Prize serves as a foothold for outstanding young curators to step onto the world stage and stands as a vanguard of supporting young curators in China.

The exhibition aims to take audiences on a journey from the time when personal computers became ubiquitous, through the beginning of the Internet in the 1990s to the current era of smart devices, thereby exploring the social interaction/social intelligence problems faced by individuals. The exhibition uses play as a behavior and a medium, asking whether we can imagine a kind of "pan-intelligence" that combines human, animal and artificial intelligences.

The two curators said, “Playing is an instinctive act for animals and humans alike, and is the method as well as the medium of this exhibition. As Johan Huizinga once wrote, play predates culture and society; civilization arises in and as play. But what we have seen today is screens reducing desires into symbols and signs, game rules taking the place of intuition, data replacing the individuals, and algorithms eliminating chance. By constantly revising and iterating the rules inherent in collective plays, artists hope to introduce an incalculable quality to different communities and society overall, so that play and games will no longer be dominated by rules of competition and conflict, but filled with purer liquidity and spontaneity. At the same time, play is undoubtedly sociable; even “players” in the “console games” can talk to the creator (the game designer) through the game’s interface. Group plays help humans to explore the rules of how the world works, learn from each other and achieve unity through group collaboration.”

The three animals—wolves, lynx and ants—which symbolically represent the human society are shown through the different developmental stages of media technology, revealing the contradictions between the interconnected society and individuals. Meanwhile, “superhighway,” “refuge island,” and “arcade” are taken as cues for the overall design of the space. The exhibition is composed of artworks by 14 artists and game designers both from mainland China and abroad, and uses different interpretative forms, such as video art, paper painting, multimedia interactive installations, video games and other forms of interaction to show the concept of “play.”

Cornelia Schneider, the head of Global Experiential Marketing, mentioned “This exhibition will display many artworks with deep interaction and collective participation among audiences who can play, watch, or even do both simultaneously to experience the interactive electronic games designed by the artists.”

Meanwhile, to control the number of visitors attending the offline exhibition amid current travel restriction, Hyundai Motorstudio Beijing has launched a virtual reality exhibition that overcomes the limitations of time and space. (press release)

LINK: Play Societies 

EVENT: GAMEPLAY. VIDEO GAME CULTURE (DECEMBER 19 2019 - AUGUST 30 2020, BARCELONA, SPAIN)

If you have not had the chance to check out GAME PLAY VIDEO GAME CULTURE, you have until August 30. This excellent exhibition organized by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, Spain (an extended adaptation of Gameplay. The Next Level, designed by and first presented at the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe) and curated by Jérôme Nguyen and Óliver Pérez Latorre is accompanied by an array of events, workshops, videos, and conversations round the notion of games, art, politics, and identity. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the new version of the exhibition GAMEPLAY replaced the in situ interactives with original audiovisual contents which can be accessed online. The interactive part of the project, the selection of games, new activities, debates and workshops can be found here.

The available online games include:

• Ambush. Developed by Tecfri | Published by Nippon Amuse |1983
• La pulga.Developed by Paco Suárez i Paco Portalo |Published by Indescomp / Investrónica | 1983
• September 12th. Developed by Gonzalo Frasca i Sof.a Battegazzore | Published by Powerful Robot Games| 2010
• Passage. Developed by Jason Rohrer | 2007
• Sísif (Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment). Developed by Pippin Barr | 2011
• Limbo. Developed by Playdead | Publicació: Playdead | 2010 (demostración gratuíta)
• Crayon Physics Deluxe.Developed by Petri Purho | 2009
• Phone Story Developed by Paolo Pedercini |Published by Molleindustria | 2011
• DYS4IA. Developed by Anna Anthropy | 2012
• Unmanned. Developed by Molleindustria (Jim Munroe) | Published by Molleindustria | 2012

Photo by Marti Berenguer, (c) CCCB, 2019

Although some events did raise some eyebrows - like the involvement of the Emperor of Midcult himself, Alessandro Baricco - most are terrific, like this conversation between Mary Flanagan and José Louis de Vicente, titled "New Perspectives on Digital Leisure"

 

Also check out the inevitable film/game connection here.

LINK: GAMEPLAY

GAME ART: MARK SCHOENING'S "THE RED TULIP GLITCH MEMORIAL" IN ANIMAL CROSSING (2020)

Mark Schoening
The Red Tulip Glitch Memorial
April 23 - 29, 2020

On March 27, 2020, Julia Maiuri, a first year MFA student at the University of Minnesota has launched the Museum of Contemporary Art Kittengale within Animal Crossing: New Horizon, a social simulation video game for the Nintendo Switch that allows players to hang out, connect, and interact in a fantasy world. Programming is facilitated by Julia Maiuri and Joolz, her avatar within the game. Working on this platform, Maiuri pushes the limitations of the game to curate weekly virtual exhibitions by real life artists. Among the first exhibitions held in the newly launched gallery space is Mark Schoening's The Red Tulip Glitch Memorial. Schoening is an artist and also co-founder of Porch Gallery in south Minneapolis. Schoening created the artwork - two portraits of red tulips facing each other on opposite walls, and, on the third wall, white letters on a red background spell out “never again" - using Photoshop, and then uploaded the work through acpatterns.com, which creates a QR code that the game can read. The artwork and the message reference a glitch that occurred fifteen years ago, in the “Animal Crossing: Wild World (2006)." The glitch froze thousands of players, forcing them to remain isolated in their houses for months, separated from one another. There's a fil rouge connecting the previous lockdown with the current situation. Screenshots of the show can be seen on Maiuri's Instagram account @moca.kittengale.

LINK: Mark Schoening's The Red Tulip Glitch Memorial (all images courtesy of the artists)

ART GAME: OLIVER MAUCO AND ABDEL BOUNANE'S PRISME7 (2020)

A new game from Oliver Mauco and his team is about experiencing art in an immersive, engaging way, navigating through the enormous online collection of the Musée national d’art moderne, and interact with the artworks in a playful way. Developed for the Centre Pompidou on contemporary and modern art by Olivier Mauco of Game in Society and Abdel Bounane, Prism7 is free and supported by the French Ministry of Education. Researchers from the Ircam worked on the sound design. Prisme7 is available for both smartphone/tablets running iOS and Android) and computers (PC/Mac).

 

Here's a description of the gameplay:

As they make their way between colour and light, players explore an organism that is constructed gradually as they discover the physical and sensory properties of the works of art. As they interact with Le Rhinocéros by Xavier Veilhan, New York City by Piet Mondrian, Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair or the famous “pipes” of the Centre Pompidou building imagined by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, players progress on their way through the game. After an initial introductory level (to familiarise themselves with the gameplay), there are six game worlds where they can explore a selection of 40 iconic works from the Centre Pompidou collection, through the relationships between colour and function, colour and emotion or light and immersion.  

 

LINK: PRISME7

EVENT: SCREEN WALK WITH ALAN BUTLER (APRIL 22 2020, ONLINE)

Screen Walk with Alan Butler on 22nd April 2020 at 6 pm UK time / 7 pm CET (on Zoom)
Free event.

Join artist Alan Butler in a live-streamed online expedition 

Alan Butler will lead a tour of the game environment of Grand Theft Auto V, focusing on topics of representation and simulation as well as the role of the in-game photographer. Viewers will be able to follow the artist in his critical analysis of the game logics, and their social, political, and economic implications.

Screen Walks is a new series of live-streamed artist/researcher-led explorations of online spaces and artistic strategies designed to illuminate a thriving – often overlooked – digital cultural scene. A new online collaboration between The Photographers’ Gallery, UK and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.

Details on how to access the talk will be confirmed upon registration. 

 

Biography

Alan Butler is a visual artist and lecturer, focusing on the material and philosophical implications that digital environments and new media technologies pose to the evolution of visual culture, politics, ecologies and social structures. Since 2005, part of this practice has involved an exploration of video game worlds, and their potential to act as 'real' spaces of creativity beyond traditional game-play. Significant works in this series include: 'Down and Out in Los Santos', a quasi-documentary photography series about homelessness and poverty in the video game Grand Theft Auto V; 'Virtual Cyanotype Botany', a series that uses the 19th century photo-chemical process to document plant-life from video games of the last 45 years; and 'On Exactitude in Science' a two-screen feature film comprising Godfrey Reggio's 'Koyaanisqatsi' and Butler's shot-for-shot remake 'KoyanisGTAV', which was produced entirely in Grand Theft Auto V. Since 2017, his works have been featured in galleries and museums across the globe, including: The Akron Museum, USA; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, England; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; C/O Berlin, Germany; ZKM, Karlsruhe Germany; Les Rencontres d’Arles 2017, France; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; Transfer Gallery, New York City, USA; FACT, Liverpool, England; Kasteel Wijlre, The Netherlands; Lismore Castle, Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and the Perth International Film Festival 2019, Australia; Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography, Switzerland; Espace Multimédia Gantner, France.

LINK: Screen walk with Alan Butler

LINK: Screen walks

PROJECT: PAOLO PEDERCINI'S ONLINE MUSEUM OF MULTIPLAYER ART (ONLINE)

As always, Paolo Pedercini is ahead of the curve. oMOMA is a playful lo-fi multiplayer online gallery of art installations. Unmissable. 

LINK: oMOMA (screenshots by Paolo Pedercini)

EVENT: SYSTEM LINK: VIDEO GAME AS MEMOIR (JANUARY 24 - APRIL 25 2020, CHICAGO, ILLINOIS)

Jenny Jiao Hsia, Consume Me, 2018

System Link: Video Game as Memoir

Curated by Brice Puls
January 24 - April 25, 2020

Opening Reception Friday, January 24 2020, 6-9pm

VGA Gallery
2418 W Bloomingdale #101
Chicago, IL 60647

Video games have historically been a product catered to the player. A focus on engagement, replayability, and general entertainment value has guided design strategies that create impersonal pieces, appealing to the widest range of players possible. While film, music, writing, and other media have historically been vehicles of memoir and personal storytelling, games often maintain a trajectory as products of their audience and not their creator. The voices of the individual artists have recently begun to break through the standards of generalization in the medium, creating stories where players are able to experience the emotional perspectives of the creator. In doing so memoir games reveal that assumptions about the general audience skew toward specific perspectives, and exclude others. This exhibition seeks to highlight those works, exploring how a range of game makers and artists have translated their personal experiences into the interactive context. Each work is designed to allow the player to understand, empathize with, and connect to other lived realities, using the participatory advantages of video games to express a story as no other medium can. The different projects showcased in this exhibition offer different answers to the question “What happens when you let the player of games into your story?”

LINK: System Link: Video Game as Memoir

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)