GAMESCENES

EVENT: VIRTUAL TEXTUAL (OCTOBER 6 - DECEMBER 17 2023, LEICESTER, UK)

 

Virtual Textual

6th October – 17th December 2023

Phoenix Cinema and Art Centre
4 Midland Street
Leicester
LE1 1TG

press release

The exhibition Virtual Textual, explores the digital aspects of game-based poetry, bringing together artists from across the globe in an exhibition that champions innovative, but also careful uses of technology. All the pieces in the exhibition employ lower impact technology – low draw graphics, limited palettes, local-only connections – and easily accessible interfaces across a collection of ludic digital poetic works.

The works in Virtual Textualconsider the ways in which the reader is an essential part in how a text exists in space, and how that text can shift, becoming entirely new with each instance that it is encountered. Participants will discover that reading is no longer a passive act but a dynamic and immersive experience.

At the heart of the exhibition is the Playing Poetry and Phoenix co-commissioned work Wood Wide Web, a lo-fi cottage-commodore-core poetic walking simulator that senses its surroundings. Audiences can become co-creators in an ever-growing piece of poetic nature writing that alters itself depending on the happiness of the plants around it.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a programme of workshops from visiting and local artists, opportunities for audiences to make their own games, and a published pamphlet delving into the exhibition and collecting new game-based works that readers can explore beyond the space.

The Playing Poetry team has emerged from many years in poetry publishing, producing live literature, and developing experimental games, with exhibitions at Somerset House, and commissions from The National Poetry Library, The Edwin Morgan Society, and Edgelandia. Led by Nick Murray, Playing Poetry has launched with Poetry Games, a poignant exhibition in partnership with the National Poetry Library in the Southbank Centre and a game poetry course with the Poetry School.

Check out the amazing projects on display

LINK: Virtual Textual

LINK: Playing Poetry

EVENT: THE SEASHORE OF ENDLESS WORLDS (NOVEMBER 1 - 19 2023, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND)

 

The Seashore of Endless Worlds – Art & jeux de société

 

Le Commun, Geneva, Switzerland

exhibition: from 1st to 19 novembre 2023

online symposium: 20, 21 November

 

featured artists: 0x Salon, Ahmed Isam Aldin, David Blandy, Joshua Citarella, Crude Futures, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Simon Denny, Andreas Dobler, Giulia Essyad, Axelle Grégoire, Half Earth Socialism, Olivia Hernaïz, Rok Kranjc, Paul Loubet, Finn Massie, Constanza Mendoza, Cullen Miller, Moving Castle, Nicolas Nova, OMSK Social Club, Sara Rutz, Kirill Savchenkov, Sammy Stein, Trickster-p, Ilaria Vinci, Elsa Werth, Paulo Wirz

 

press release

 

The Seashore of Endless Worlds considers games as a decisive global and current phenomenon, and calls for societal issues to be put into play by exploring the current conditions, arising from game theory and gamification, of widespread and planetary crises. Beyond mere entertainment and distraction, we see games as a process capable of probing and understanding the world. Not only do games make up a major part of the cultural industry and generate popular aesthetics, they are also now recognised for their powers of simulation, training and generating physical, social, economic and political realities. Between movement and constraint, participation and subjection, identity and avatar, the deployment and mutual redefinition of these terms is open to research by artists, collectives and researchers. The participants are working on different ways of using games to make present-day situations and issues tangible: diversity, the economy, the environment, geopolitics, digitisation, etc. Their games are a dynamic way of exposing and rethinking the rules and shared goals that shape society.

 

As the title suggests, in reference to Rabindranath Tagore’s poem about children playing on the shore, play conjures up potential spaces where the imaginary and the real inform each other as creativity, solidarity and care. Games accompany the fundamentally trans-human process of hominisation, reinscribing the existing in extension with its outsides through which it invents itself - materials, technical objects, more than human… Rather than constituting a category of defined objects or fixed, universal and timeless features specific to all cultures, games enable them to evolve through realities that they both describe and shape.

 

While games support the construction of worlds as sets of relationships and systems of rules - more or less arbitrary, contingent and changing - they are also set in motion by processes that open them up (room for maneuver) or even go beyond them (off-games, hidden rules) and put in tension as world-engine and meta-games. What games are being played? Who produces the rules? Are the players being played? At the intersection of materialism and speculation, instruments of power but also engines of emancipation, they allow us to expose and question logics and rationalities that have become increasingly polemical and deterministic, and proceed from eminently aesthetic questions and resolutions.

 

FTW, Christian Bili & Samuel Wagen-Magnon, 2 October 2023

 

Click the image below to access a set of resources related to the exhibition

 

 

LINK: The Seashore of Endless Worlds (special thanks to Christian Bili)

EVENT: AUTOMATED PHOTOGRAPHY (OCTOBER 18 - NOVEMBER 26 2023, BOLOGNA, ITALY)

Elephant Juice, 2020, film still © ECAL / Simone C. Niquille

AUTOMATED PHOTOGRAPHY

Curated by Marco De Mutiis, The École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL)

FOTO/INDUSTRIA VI BIENNIAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY ON INDUSTRY AND WORK

18.10 – 26.11.2023 Bologna, Italy

Ex Chiesa di San Mattia

Via Sant’Isaia, 13

Bologna, Italy

 

Description: An increasing number of images are now autonomously produced by machines for machines, in a technological scheme that is gradually marginalising human intervention. “Automated Photography” is an exhibition based on a research project of the Master of Photography programme at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, which explores the evolution of the digital image and the current role of the photographer. This project is based on the premise that automation is a central process in the definition of photographic practices and contemporary visual culture.

Location: The sumptuous and spectacular appearance of the interior is due to a “modernization” of the ornamental and pictorial apparatus made in the mid-eighteenth century by Pietro Scandellari, Nicola Bertuzzi, and Tertulliano Taroni. In 1799, following the suppression of religious orders by the Napoleonic government, the church was isolated from the convent, deconsecrated, and reduced to storage. The restoration, begun in 1981 and completed in 1994, brought to light what remained of stucco and frescoes. Today it is home to exhibitions, meetings, and conferences dedicated to architecture, urban planning, design, and the study of the historical-artistic-landscape of the territory.

Curation: The École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL) is a school of advanced studies in art and design. Founded in 1821, it is considered one of the most relevant universities in the world in this field. Relying on massive use of photographic images – a key element in today’s visual communication – ECAL’s Master Photography course gives students an opportunity to develop projects in the long term. It especially pushes the boundaries of applied research in contemporary photography with an emphasis on picture dematerialisation through digital manipulation, 3D Computer Generated Imagery, virtual and augmented reality and Artificial Intelligence. From a physical viewpoint, it explores new forms of books, shaping images on various media as well as interactive exhibition design, up to and including the moving image. Taking advantage of ECAL’s numerous collaborations with economic, industrial or cultural stakeholders, this training allows students to regularly rub shoulders with influential figures in fine art photography and commissioned work.

LINK: Automated Photography

LINK: Marco De Mutiis

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: FIRAS SHEHADEH (SEPTEMBER 7 - 21 2023, ONLINE)

Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal

Single-channel video (color, sound, narrator: Mamusu Kallon), 14’ 19”, 2023, Palestine

Created by Firas Shehadeh

Originally commissioned by Singapore Art Museum

 

Part of Shehadeh’s ongoing research into video games and Palestinian youth culture, Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal combines found-footage of Twitch streamers and custom game mods for Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games, 2013). Unpacking video game mods as a form of contemporary archive — and therefore digitizing historic and contemporary architectural sites in addition to seemingly ubiquitous objects — the artwork proposes Los Santos, a virtual replica of Los Angeles, as the biblical “land of milk and honey”.

Firas Shehadeh is a Palestinian artist and researcher exploring issues of identity, meaning, and aesthetics in the digital age. Currently based in Vienna, his interdisciplinary practice engages with post-colonial effects, technology, and history through the lens of worldbuilding and internet culture. Shehadeh holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he is currently a PhD candidate. His education also includes studies in conceptual art, video, and architecture in Vienna, Barcelona, and Amman. Investigating topics like colonial legacies, memory, and belonging, Shehadeh creates speculative narratives that reveal unseen structures and realities. His research-focused practice utilizes and subverts the visual languages of new media, examining how technology transforms society’s relationship with knowledge and power. His work, which has been exhibited internationally, offers a critical perspective on the role of the internet and digital imaging in shaping contemporary identities, histories, and ways of world-making.

WATCH NOW

EVENT: NSFW (AUGUST 4 2023, PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA, USA)

NSFW

Friday August 4th, 2023
7-11 PM
During the Unblurred gallery crawl

205 North Evaline St
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

press release

An evening of X-rated games dealing with sex work, pornography, internet censorship, gay hookup culture and much more.
All the projects in the exhibition, while not pornographic, challenge the notion of games as children’s entertainment, and push at the boundaries of what is thematically accepted in a playable form. Viewer discretion is advised.

Works by: Robert Yang /// Fellatia G /// Lena Chen, Goofy Toof, Maggie Oates, Avatar Lilith /// Pierre Corbinais /// Seemingly Pointless /// Heather Kelley

LINK: LIKELIKE

EVENT: PETRA SZEMÁN OPENINGS !!! (29 JULY – 12 AUGUST 2023, LEICESTER, ENGLAND)

Petra Szemán
Openings !!!
29 July – 12 August 2023
Opening Night, Friday 28th July
Two Queens
2 Queen Street
Leicester
LE1 1QW

press release

Inhabiting the interstitial zones of anime credit sequences, video game loading screens and regional train journeys, Openings !!! (2022) intensifies the gaps between the layers of animated imagery in an attempt to grasp the kinds of experience that may lie beyond human perceptual boundaries. The video follows the protagonist ‘Yourself’ as they ride local trains through intermedial landscapes. From this uniquely conceived and drafted kinetic viewpoint, fragments of different worlds segue into view, signalling perceptual ruptures that seemingly force subjectivity outside of itself, into strange new relationships of interdependency and intoxication with the moving image. Part of the artist’s ongoing exploration of the radical potential of animation and fandom, Openings !!! rejects its own filmic boundaries, surrendering instead to the free play of a multi-planar and ultimately elusive meta-worldview.

Petra Szemán is a moving image artist working with animation and game-like landscapes. Their practice focuses on the murky borderlands along the arbitrary line separating real and fictional, and the kind of lives and experiences that are possible there. Using a virtual version of themself as a protagonist journeying through animatic realms, they explore liminal spaces and threshold situations, looking to dissect the ways our memories and selves are constructed within a landscape oversaturated with fiction (both on- and off-screen). Turning away from thinking of the cyberspace as a radically ’other’ realm, Petra hopes to walk the line situated between dystopian and utopian frameworks, eyes set on new queer horizons.

The exhibition will be supported by an Artist Talk and Artist Development Workshop.

Details for the Artist Development Workshop on Sunday 6th August can be found here.

This project is made possible by public funding from The National Lottery through Arts Council England.

LINK: Petra Szemán's Openings !!!

LINK: Petra Szemán

MOD: 2GIRLS1COMP'S EVERY THING (2023)

Developed by the elusive collective 2girls1comp - a tragic pun on the infamous 2girls1cup meme - "Every Thing" is a modification for Grand Theft Auto V "that sequentially spawns every object from the game's prop database until the program ultimately crashes under the weight of every thing". Basically, it's a reverse Katamari Damacy. The antithesis of Jenga. Also: this Every Thing is not to be confused with David O'Reilly's Everything. The video above shows Every Thing in action and it's a trip.

 

 

As usual, 2girls1comp documented the process with a series of making-of videos. Here are two:

 

 

You may remember 2girls1comp's previous exploits, including the hilarious Towards a Philosophy of the Photodaddy, a mod inspired by Vilém Flusser and boomer photographers, and the equally meta Piano of the Dead, all released in 2023.

 

For the record, users of GTA5-Mods are going insane in the membrane. Here are some comments: "This must be most weird mod in the site :D", "Contemporary Art", "One must be fully drowned in LSD to make such a script." and "I want to smoke what you're smoking".

 

Try Every Thing at our own risk and do share your videos with us.

 

P.S: We're eagerly awaiting the collective's upcoming project F** THE POLICY.

 

LINK: 2girls1comp

EVENT: JUAN OBANDO (JUNE 30 - JULY 13 2023, ONLINE)

Pro Revolution Soccer

Custom PC, modified game, two controllers, two custom-made gaming seats, sound system, projector, and vinyl screen structure, 2019 hereby presented as a gameplay video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 21’ 23”, Colombia, 2019

Created by Juan Obando

 

Pro Revolution Soccer is an interactive installation that deftly reimagines the popular football simulation Pro Evolution Soccer (PES). Drawing inspiration from the profound bond between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Italian soccer club Inter Milan, this artwork ingeniously introduces the EZLN as an enthralling new feature within the simulation. Evoking the enigmatic essence of a mythical football match, the work unfurls an intriguing narrative where EZLN daringly challenges the Italian team, forever suspended in the realm of imagination. Originally presented as an interactive installation based on a modified version of Konami’s soccer simulation, the artwork is presented on VRAL as a one channel gameplay video.

Juan Obando is an artist from Bogotá, Colombia, specializing in interventions within social systems. Through video performances, post-digital objects, and screen-based installations, Obando explores the collision of ideology and aesthetics, sparking the emergence of speculative new worlds. Obando’s work has garnered international recognition, with exhibitions held in Mexico, France, Colombia, Germany, and the United States. Notable solo shows include “Fake New” at General Expenses (Mexico City, México), “Summer Sets” in Faneuil Hall (Boston, MA, 2022),  “DEMO” at Museo Espacio (Aguascalientes, MX, 2022), and  “La Bodeguita de La Concordia” at Galería Santa Fé for the Luis Caballero National Art Prize (Bogotá, Colombia, 2021). Selected group exhibitions include First Place In The Table? (Trafo, Szczecin, Poland, 2022), Game Changers (MAAM, Boston, 2020), Video Sur (Palais de Tokyo, France, 2018), La Vuelta (Rencontres de la Photographie,  Arles, France, 2017), and MDE15 (Medellín, Colombia, 2015). Obando was also awarded a Rhizome commission from The New Museum in 2012, a MassArt Foundation grant in 2017, and an Art Matters fellowship in 2019.

WATCH NOW

EVENT: VECTOR FESTIVAL 2023: SHADOW WORK (JULY 6-16, TORONTO, CANADA)

Vector Festival 2023: shadow work

July 6–16, 2023

InterAccess
Unit 1
950 Dupont Street
Toronto ON M6H 1Z2
Canada

press release

Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices.

Vector Festival 2023: shadow work, curated by Mitra Fakhrashrafi, engages the formal and informal and mundane and arcane ways that classification systems attempt to contain the messy realities of our lives and shape our conditions. Confronting the work that both maintains and disrupts these systems, shadow work presents interventions on labour, the calculability of human life, the ungovernable, the echoes and reverberations of colonization and propositions for new, “life-giving” languages.

Through a hybrid online and in-person program of exhibitions, performances, screenings, and workshops, this 10-day festival invites artists and audiences to come together as we navigate the systems uninformed of our humanity.

Details will continue to be announced at vectorfestival.org

Program highlights

shadow work
Flagship Exhibition, July 6–August 5, 2023
Curated by Mitra Fakhrashrafi

Through AR, VR, solar power, and immersive projection, shadow workexplores classification systems in contrast with the messy reality of our lives.

Worldbuilding towards...
Game Jam, July 7–16, 2023
Curated by Bracy Appeikumoh

This participatory game jam encourages game makers to create worlds radically different from our current realities, ones that foster care, compassion, and community. Together, we’ll ask (and work to answer): what world would you like to live in?

Anthropo-digitalism
Multi-site exhibition, July 6–July 16, 2023
Curated by keiko Hart

How does the digital (re)animate our environments? How do we imprint our humanness upon the digital, and how does digitalness imprint upon us humans? Ruminate on your human/digital reflections with the anthropomorphic inventions of Marisa Fulper-Estrada, Jon McCurley, Kristin McWharter, Lorna Mills, Sunny Nestler, and Seth Scriver.

a language of bodies
Screening, July 12, 2023    
Curated by Fabiyino Germain-Bajowa

This screening brings together artists who are each transcending sealed forms and exploding the classification systems which govern “bodies”. By engaging physical bodies, bodies of water, and bodies of knowledge, these artists are working in the spaces between, celebrating the undefined and uncontrollable.

ponyHAUS performance
Performance, July 14, 2023
Curated by ponyHAUS

In true hybrid fashion, you're invited to a night of moving in and out of screen-based worlds. Contrast and draw parallels between our IRL and URL lives, supported by a selection of experimental music performances.

A Very Human Screening
Screening, July 15, 2023
Curated by Insomniac Film Festival

Go outside! Touch Grass! Logging off has become harder and harder to do. Our jobs, our social lives and our societal infrastructures have all moved online. Our identities, our bodies even, are shaped by the internet. So what now? Do we fight harder for our three-dimensional lives, or do we submit to the digital one we have? Joining us in pondering these questions with Insomniac in the genuine, outdoor, real life world.

Festival After Party
July 16, 2023
Details TBA, stay tuned.

Workshop series

SinkInSync: Creating Interactive VR with Brainwave Data
Online via Zoom, July 8
Facilitated by Tiange Wang and Xin Feng

Explore creating interactive and responsive VR environments leveraging brainwave data using Unity3D, Muse Headband, and Oculus VR Headset (Muse Headband or the VR Headset not required to participate). Upon completion of the workshop, participants will have created a 3D environment with dynamic visual elements responsive to data, and obtained the knowledge to independently implement neurofeedback VR experiences with commercially-available tools.

Tiling into AI
In-person, July 9
Facilitated by Blaine Cambell and Mohamed Somani

Patterning is an accessible activity regardless of age and skill that has deep roots across cultures. It is also a way for people to connect in verbal and non-verbal ways—in the moment of the activity but also across geographies and time. Join us in a freeform pattern making workshop where participants create individual or group patterns using various coloured cut geometric mat board shapes. These creations will be augmented by an AI model which will insert a collaborative “buffer” to connect our creations and create a cohesive, continuous pattern.

Utopics
In-person, July 13
Facilitated by Geoffrey Pugen

In this workshop Geoffry Pugen will demonstrate how to create a labyrinth as a 3d asset and export a rendered video walk through of the scene. Using Unreal engine 5.1 and Blender 3.5

Making a Solar-Server: DIY Web Design & Eco Media Art
In-person, July 22
Facilitated by Imogen Clendinning

Learn about DIY Internet technology and solar-powered media with one of Vector Festival 2023’s exhibiting artists. Participants will be led through the creation of a static HTML web server hosted on a Raspberry Pi microcomputer and a live demonstration on powering a microcomputer using solar energy.

Registration, more details, and updates with workshops soon to be announced. More programming announcements to come!

Keep in touch with us at @interaccessto on Instagram and at vectorfestival.org
If you have any questions about the Vector Festival or our programming, please email [email protected].

LINK: Vector Festival 2023