GAMESCENES

EVENT: WORKING TOWARDS OUR OWN OBSOLESCENCE (JUNE 18 - JULY 23 2021, LIMASSOL, CYPRUS)

working towards our own obsolescence

An exhibition curated by Régine Debatty

June 18 - July 23 2021

NeMe Arts Centre

3603 Limassol, Cyprus

Artists: Pippin Barr; Larisa Blazic; Peter Buczkowski; Stéphane Degoutin, Gwenola Wagon, and Pierre Cassou-Noguès; Dasha Ilina; Sanela Jahić; Lisa Ma; Liz Magic Laser; Julien Prévieux; Laurel Ptak.

This exhibition features the work of artists who are critically investigating the ways the Silicon Valley economy is affecting labour conditions. Their works help us understand the pervasive constrictions we, as passive consumers, have unintentionally aided implement. The proposed works fall into five spheres of investigation: the myth that the machines are replacing us; the emergence of an army of invisible, or rather invisibilised workers; the transformation of labour conditions through precariousness and the atomisation of tasks; the body of workers disciplined to act like machines and finally, the ways workers and consumers can fight back with not just resistance but positive alternatives. (read more)

Régine Debatty curated a fantastic exhibition for the NeMe Arts Centre in Limassol, Cyprus, which I had not the pleasure of attending. Nonetheless, the exhibition was accompanied by a consistently phenomenal amount of content, including a series of interviews with the all the artists involved (the entire archive is available on YouTube), plus a killer interview with Pippin Barr on Regine's We Make Money Not Art, which you can read here.

Here's a juicy excerpt:

Indie games are also becoming this massive thing with some titles that become surprising successes. One game that i would call experimental and that met a broad success is Papers, Please. It’s an independent title and it’s pretty surprising that people were so excited about it. Like It is as if you were doing work, it’s a representation of labor. You’re asked to do what seems to be an extremely boring job which is stamping people’s passports. It’s not relying on an exciting narrative with spies coming through, bombings and shooting people at the border. That’s not what the job of a border officer is really like. Lucas Pope is an incredible game designer, he found that balancing act between an unlikely premise and a set of mechanics which are in some sense boring and a narrative framing around that and beautiful tiny elements of design that drew people in. Many of the more experimental games are pulling conventional game design into more interesting areas while acknowledging some of the conventions of design. (Pippin Barr)

And here's the conversation on video:

LINK: Working Towards Our Own Obsolescence

LINK: Régine Debatty's curatorial text

LINK: Pippin Barr interviewed by Régine Debatty on WMMNA (text)

LINK: Artists' interviews page on YouTube (videos)

EVENT: HOMO LUDENS: VIDEOGAMES TO UNDERSTAND THE PRESENT (JULY 20 - OCTOBER 31 2021, MADRID, SPAIN)

Homo Ludens: Videogames to understand the present

July 20 - October 31 2021

CaixaForum Madrid

Paseo del Prado, 36
28014 Madrid, Spain

Curated by Luca Carrubba

Designed by Domestic Data Streamer studio

Produced by Fundación "La Caixa"

Opening Conference: July 20 2021

"The exhibition Homo Ludens proposes an anthropological journey through the playful dimension of human beings through video games, a cultural, aesthetic and artistic phenomenon that is essential in contemporary mass culture. It is currently estimated that more than 2.5 billion people are video game players. Starting from the centrality of the game in our lives, the exhibition's journey approaches video games in a broad and holistic sense, and addresses the role of play as a regulating practice of human activity, both in the history of culture and today. Rather than being a history of video games, the exhibition provides a basically anthropological vision, bringing together culture and technology, industry and art.

The content of the exhibition combines examples of video games with contemporary artworks by the following artists: Rasheed Abueideh, Anna Anthropy, Matteo Bittanti and the collective IOCOSE, Ricardo B. Brasilero, Daniel Canogar, Robbie Cooper, Jake Elliott, Bruno Federico, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, Roc Herms, Agustina Isidori, David Jaumandreu, Ge Jin, Tamas Kemenczy and Ben Babbitt, Josep Lago, Jorge Paris, Nadège Mazars, MesquitaFMS, Hamilton Mestizo, Juan Naharro Gimenez, Roman Pilipey, Everest Pipkin, David Ramos, Linnea Rheborg, Mario von Rickenbach and Christian Etter, Pietro Righi Riva, Monica Rikić, Skawennati, Octavi Serra, Bill Viola and USC Game Innovation Lab, and Robert Yang.

In the exhibition, themes such as the anthropological roots of the game that are transferred to the video game, its million-dollar industry, the influence of video game aesthetics in other disciplines such as art and design, identity in a world where the real coexists with the virtual, among other issues.

The exhibition invites to an interactive and participatory tour in which the viewer acts as a gamer, although without playing at any time with the video games on display. The viewer chooses the itinerary from a central square that acts as an antechamber and distribution space of the exhibition. The visitor can interact with the exhibition through a device -the Coin-, an object that allows the viewer to build his or her opinion as he or she answers a series of questions. The answers also allow a collective knowledge of the participation of all visitors. On the large screen installed in the last room of the exhibition, a community of avatars is projected, representing, in real time, the accumulated data of all the visitors to the exhibition.

In this way, the exhibition provides a new perspective on the concept of the gamer and shows a gamified world in which life and play merge and in which we are all, in one way or another, gamers. This hypothesis, based on the work of sociologist and game scholar Daniel Muriel, is reflected in the video essay "Gameworlds: the video-gamification of the real" by Luca Carrubba and Daniel Muriel, directed by LaviniaNext and produced by "La Caixa" Foundation.

The exhibition also includes a catalog (in Spanish) that presents in detail all the works installed and proposes a reflective framework for their interpretation. This publication, which I had the pleasure of thinking, coordinating and writing, also includes texts by guest authors such as Oliver Perez La Torre, Flavio Escribano, Luján Oulton, Eurídice Cabañes, Carlos Scolari and Daniel Muriel.

The exhibition will be traveling during the next  four years touring all major cities in Spain. So if you do not have time to get to Madrid you can see the exhibition soon in Barcelona, Sevilla, Zaragoza, Valencia, Palma, Tarragona, Girona." (Luca Carrubba)

LINK: Homo Ludens

EVENT: TIMES OF HANDS – GAMIFICATION VS PLAY (JUNE 11-12 2021, ONLINE)

Times of Hands is a two day event online initiated by Akademie der Künste der Welt (Academy of the Arts of the World (ADKDW) Cologne, in cooperation with Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), School of Environment and Architecture Mumbai (SEA), Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM). The symposium took place on Twitch on June 11-12 2021.

It was organized by SAM HOPKINS, UBERMORGEN (HANS BERNHARD, LIZ HAAS)

with KAGONYA AWORI, CYNTHIA CHEPKEMOI, HYESEON JEONG, STEFFEN KÖHN + NESTOR SIRÉ, BETHUEL MUTHEE, OSCAR PEÑA

"One of the many effects of digitalization is the growing presence and significance of games. On the one hand we see them on mobile phones and laptops, as recreational activities and as a career, as a global practice. On the other hand gamification is used as a means of increasing productivity and efficiency and as a tool for learning. Considering how ubiquitous it is as a practice, it raises the question of whether games and gaming are not less a consequence of digitalization as they are much more a precondition for its success: is it possible to imagine contemporary digital fields – whether economic, social, cultural, or political – without playful, game-like features?

Defining the framework of the symposium are a broadened concept of digital work – i.e. every work that is produced through digitalization is digital work – and a new perspective on games. Nairobi is both a source of inspiration and the focus of these investigations. As an African tech hub, embedded in global finance and knowledge networks and rich in idiosyncratic digital practices, Nairobi is a space with complexity and contradictions in abundance.

The symposium examines themes like the global influence and local practices of Silicon Valley rhetoric, the presence of Chinese tech ideologies in the South and the North, the practice of offline file sharing in Nairobi, the emergence of the transcontinental professional gaming industry and the explosion of the ride-hailing industry in East Africa."

LINK: Time of Hands

LINK: Time of Hands on Twitch

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)