GAMESCENES

EVENT: NATURE NUMÉRIQUE (MAY 21 - JUNE 5 2025, LA TOUR DE PEILZ, SWITZERLAND)

Pascal Greco

Nature Numérique: Photographier le jeu vidéo par Pascal Greco

May 21 - June 5 2025

Musée Suisse du Jeu
Rue du Château 11
1814 La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland

(English below)

Dans les années 1990, les mondes numériques ont souvent été pensés comme dissociés du réel : d’un côté, la réalité, le tangible. De l’autre, le virtuel, vu comme un simple divertissement, sans impact écologique ou politique. Face à la prolifération d’images générées par intelligence artificielle, de la remise en question des valeurs partagées qui permettent de faire société, de l’exploitation de nos échanges par le capitalisme de plateforme, force est de constater que les images « virtuelles » sont devenues politiques. Confronté à une culture visuelle générique, il devient crucial de repenser notre rapport aux images. Le travail de Pascal Greco s’inscrit dans cette perspective, en déplaçant la question du réalisme vers celle du sensible. À travers la photographie in-game, il interroge la tension entre réel et virtuel, questionnant la culture visuelle contemporaine et notre capacité d’action. Envisageant l’humain comme interface sensible, son travail refuse une vision technologique des images et privilégie l’expérience subjective : en photographiant des paysages de jeux vidéo, il questionne la frontière entre le réel et le virtuel et propose de renouer avec une écologie de l’attention et du sensible, condition essentielle pour repenser notre rapport au monde.

---

In the 1990s, digital worlds were often conceived as separate from reality: on one side, the tangible world; on the other, the virtual, regarded as mere entertainment, devoid of ecological or political consequence. Today, confronted with the proliferation of AI-generated imagery, the erosion of shared social values, and the commodification of our interactions by platform capitalism, it is clear that so-called “virtual” images have become political. In the face of an increasingly generic visual culture, it is vital to reconsider our relationship to images. Pascal Greco’s work responds to this imperative by shifting the focus from realism to sensibility. Through in-game photography, he explores the tension between the real and the virtual, interrogating contemporary visual culture and our capacity for agency within it. Conceiving the human as a sensitive interface, his work rejects a purely technological understanding of images and instead foregrounds subjective experience. By photographing video game landscapes, Greco probes the boundary between reality and simulation, advocating for a renewed ecology of attention and sensibility—an essential condition for rethinking our relationship to the world.

Pascal Greco is a Swiss-Italian self-taught filmmaker and photographer whose work often explores the interplay between architecture and landscape. His projects have been exhibited internationally, reflecting a deep engagement with both urban environments and natural settings. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Greco innovatively turned to video games as a medium for artistic exploration. Unable to travel to Iceland for a photography project, he immersed himself in the virtual landscapes of Death Stranding, a game renowned for its expansive, Iceland-like terrains. Utilizing the game's photo mode, Greco captured images that emulate traditional photography, challenging the distinctions between virtual and real-world imagery. This endeavor culminated in his photobook Place(s), which presents these in-game photographs in a Polaroid format, prompting discussions about the evolving nature of photography in digital realms.

LINK: Nature Numérique

LINK: Pascal Greco

EVENT: 2GIRLS1COMP’S I AM IN YOUR GAME (APRIL 2 2025, LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA)

         

2girls1comp | Workshop | 2 Apr 2025 16.30–19:00

𝘐 𝘈𝘔 𝘐𝘕 𝘠𝘖𝘜𝘙 𝘎𝘈𝘔𝘌 – 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘎𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘚𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘛𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘛𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘙𝘦𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵

The Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana Department of Video, Animation and New Media

Tobačna 5; 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

 

Textures in video games are what creates the visual identity of virtual environments, providing more than mere decoration for 3D models. They represent and shape the spaces players inhabit, embedding social and political meanings within the game.

In this workshop, participants will learn how to modify and personalize the game world of Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar, 2013) by altering its visual textures. We will explore techniques for manipulating existing textures and incorporating personal images into the virtual landscape. Through these interventions, participants will challenge and reinterpret the narratives and aesthetics defined by the original developers and game studios.

The workshop will introduce the emerging field of texture archeology and the networked community investigating the history of images such as cobble_stone.jpg. The event will explore issues of labour that lie behind computer games, as well as the hidden infrastructures beyond the game software.

Takeaways:

• gain an insight in modding as a practice for artistic appropriation 
• gain a basic understanding of working with textures for 3D models in games
• have the chance to creatively and critically engage with video game culture by creating their own projects

Duration: 2,5h

Materials and knowledge required: Images you want to insert into the game (optional)

Laptop (ideally with Adobe Photoshop installed)

Free of charge

2girls1comp is a modding duo founded in 2023 by Italian artist and curator Marco De Mutiis and Swiss artist Alexandra Pfammatter. Their work redefines the logic of video games as an act of creative counter-play, revealing the social and economic fabric in which they are immersed: from reclaiming global digital infrastructures to commenting on free labor within the capitalist ideologies of the gaming industry, to showcasing the way play can influence its subjects through its mechanics. Their projects are distributed within the gaming and modding community, as well as cultural and artistic contexts.

Registration required

EVENT: HOLDING PATTERN (MARCH 15 - JULY 27, DORTMUND, GERMANY)

HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein
at the Dortmunder U, Level 3
Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse
44137 Dortmund
Germany

press release

Holding Pattern is the English term for the tactic used by air traffic controllers to keep several aeroplanes in the air above a busy airport without allowing them to crash. This symbolic scenario unfolds the motif of remote control and mastery: the sense that human destinies are closely interwoven with the circuits of technology - interwoven with expectation and fear, danger and rescue, as well as geometry, aesthetics and even beauty.

What are the patterns that guide our lives? Do we design them ourselves, or are they written elsewhere, in dark zones that we can only glimpse but never fully see? Holding Pattern presents a selection of international artists who explore the choreographies, rhythms and algorithms that characterise modern life, the ways in which data is embodied and how bodies are transformed into data.

Panhans/Winkler,, »Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1 – Installation Version«, 2017/2025 4K video, single-channel-projection, colour/sound, 16:13 mins, stage elements, crowd control systems, chains, handbags, motorbike helmets, carbon fibre, silicone, pizza-delivery-bag, functional shirt, novel, etc., variable sizes

The exhibition Holding Pattern includes major installation pieces such as as Hasselblad Award-winner Stan Douglas’ Luanda-Kinshasa (2013), a six-hour loop depicting an imaginary jam session in New York’s legendary Columbia 30th Street Studio; Turner Prize-winner Elizabeth Price’s SLOW DANS (2019), an elaborate fictional history binding together mining, data storage and the female ‘teachers’ of a mysterious underground ritual as well as the short videos of FOOTNOTES (2020), that reprise and annotate these themes; Harun Farocki’s Deep Play (2007), a 12-channel extrapolation of the physical, social, security and broadcast patterns shaping a high-profile international football game; and Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler’s Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1 – Installation Version All Choices All Endings II (2025), which toggles between human dancers and digital avatars as it examines the interaction sequences (by turns violent and tender), the loops and glitches of the Grand Theft Auto universe. It includes Turner Prize-winner Susan Philipsz’ Ambient Air (2021), in which she draws a literal holding pattern across Berlin’s sky as she hums Brian Eno’s “Music for Airports” from the cockpit of a small plane, transmitting her voice via radio tower to Tegel Airport’s PA system. Also, Åke Hodell’s work igevär (1963, english: “to arms”), in which the titular military command-word gathering soldiers into formation is unlocked through repetition to suggest other, more emancipatory calls-to-arms.

Artists: Stan Douglas, Harun Farocki, Åke Hodell, Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler, Susan Philipsz, Elizabeth Price

The exhibition will be on display at the HMKV from 15 March to 27 July 2025. The opening will take place on Friday, 14 March 2025 at 19:00.

LINK: Holding Pattern 

EVENT: RADICAL SOFTWARE: WOMEN, ART & COMPUTING 1960-1991 (FEBRUARY 28 - MAY 25 2025, VIENNA, AUSTRIA)

Dara Birnbaum, Pop-Pop Video: Kojak/Wang, 1980, © Courtesy Dara Birnbaum und / and Eletrconic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

Radical Software
Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991
February 28–May 25, 2025

Exhibition opening: February 27, 7pm

Symposium: February 28, 9am–6pm

kunsthallewien.at

Kunsthalle Wien Museumsquartier
Museumsplatz 1
1070 Wien

press release

Kunsthalle Wien presents a major new exhibition examining the pioneering role of women in digital art. Organised in collaboration with Mudam Luxembourg–Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991 brings together over one hundred works by fifty artists including painting, sculpture, installation, film, performance and many computer-generated drawings and texts.

A principally analogue exhibition about digital art, Radical Software focuses on the decades that preceded the rise of the World Wide Web and the proliferation of digital information and images that ensued, shaping artistic production and visual culture in the following decades. The exhibition is titled after the magazine that Beryl Korot started with fellow artists Phyllis (Gershuny) Segura and Ira Schneider in 1970. They adopted the term software (as opposed to hardware) as a metaphor and powerful tool for social change. The magazine’s wide-ranging editorial model and mission to serve as “an evolving handbook of technology,” decentralising access to information, predated the World Wide Web by two decades.

Beginning with works from the 1960s and 1970s, the exhibition spans a period from the first years of integrated circuit computing to the “microcomputer revolution,” which led to the birth of personal computing in the 1980s. The first works date from a time in which artists, poets, writers and filmmakers experimented with mainframe and minicomputers alongside mathematicians, scientists and engineers to produce and exhibit the first computer-generated images and texts. During these three decades the computer migrated from the laboratory to private, domestic space. Yet with each retelling of this history, the significant engagement of women with the technology has been largely overlooked. Set within a period that was also marked by the second wave of feminism, this exhibition documents a lesser-known history of the inception of digital art, countering conventional narratives on art and technology by focusing entirely on women.

Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991 also engages with contemporary questions of how technology interfaces with issues of identity and equality. The exhibition follows a renewed interest in the post-internet discourse of cyberfeminism, which highlights the role that women played in the creation of new digital technologies and engages critically with the entanglement of technology and power structures.

Artists: Rebecca Allen (b. 1953, Detroit), Elena Asins (b. 1940, Madrid–d. 2015, Navarra), Colette Stuebe Bangert (b. 1934, Columbus) & Charles Jeffries Bangert (b. 1938, Fargo–d. 2019, Lawrence), Gretchen Bender (b. 1951, Seaford, Delaware–d. 2004, New York City), Gudrun Bielz (b. 1954, Linz) & Ruth Schnell (b. 1956, Feldkirch), Dara Birnbaum (b. 1946, New York City), Inge Borchardt (b. 1935, Szczecin, formerly Stettin), Barbara Buckner (b. 1950, Chicago), Doris Chase (b. 1923–d. 2008, Seattle), Analívia Cordeiro (b. 1954, São Paulo), Betty Danon (b. 1927, Istanbul–d. 2002, Milan), Hanne Darboven (b. 1941, Munich–d. 2009, Hamburg), Bia Davou (b. 1932–d. 1996, Athens), Agnes Denes (b. 1938, Budapest), VALIE EXPORT (b. 1940, Linz), Anna Bella Geiger (1933, Rio de Janeiro), Isa Genzken (b. 1948, Bad Oldesloe), Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (b. 1965, Strasbourg), Lily Greenham (b. 1924, Vienna–d. 2001, London), Samia Halaby (b. 1936, Jerusalem), Barbara Hammer (b. 1939, Los Angeles–d. 2019, New York City), Lynn Hershman Leeson (b. 1941, Cleveland), Grace C. Hertlein (b. 1924, Chicago–d. 2015, Chico), Channa Horwitz (b. 1932–d. 2013, Los Angeles), Irma Hünerfauth (b. 1907, Donaueschingen–d. 1998, Kreuth), Charlotte Johannesson (b. 1943, Malmö), Alison Knowles (b. 1933, New York City), Beryl Korot (b. 1945, New York City), Katalin Ladik (b. 1942, Novi Sad), Ruth Leavitt (b. 1944, St. Paul, Minnesota–d. 2025, Baltimore), Liliane Lijn (b. 1939, New York), Vera Molnár (b. 1924, Budapest–d. 2023, Paris), Monique Nahas (b. 1940, Paris) & Hervé Huitric (b. 1945, Paris), Katherine Nash (b. 1910–1982, Minneapolis), Sonya Rapoport (b. 1923, Brookline–d. 2015, Berkeley), Deborah Remington (b. 1930, Haddonfield–d. 2010, Moorestown), Sylvia Roubaud (b. 1941, Munich), Miriam Schapiro (b. 1923, Toronto–d. 2015, Hampton Bays), Lillian Schwartz (b. 1927, Cincinnati, Ohio–d. 2024, New York City), Sonia Sheridan (b. 1925, Newark–d. 2021, Hanover), Nina Sobell (b. 1947, Patchogue), Barbara T. Smith (b. 1931, Pasadena), Tamiko Thiel (b. 1957, Oakland), Rosemarie Trockel (b. 1952, Schwerte), Joan Truckenbrod (b. 1945, Greensboro), Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (b. 1951, Antwerp), Ulla Wiggen (b. 1942, Stockholm)

Symposium: Radical Software: On the first day of the exhibition, 28 February 2025, Kunsthalle Wien and TU Wien will host a symposium bringing together highly distinguished female researchers from the fields of art and science including Gerti Kappel, Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, Margit Rosen, Zsofi Valyi-Nagy, Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Ina Wagner and artists Gudrun Bielz, Inge Borchardt, Anna Bella Geiger, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Liliane Lijn, Sylvia Roubaud, Ruth Schnell, Nina Sobell, Tamiko Thiel and Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven.

Exhibition publication: The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication including essays by Tina Rivers Ryan, Margit Rosen and the exhibition’s curator, Michelle Cotton. Co-published with Mudam Luxembourg–Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, it features over 200 illustrations, a timeline and twenty-seven new interviews with artists from the exhibition.

Kunsthalle Wien is financed by the Magistratsabteilung Kultur der Stadt Wien (MA 7). The artistic programme is also supported by the members and patrons of the Kunsthalle Wien Club. The exhibition and symposium are made possible through the generous support of Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

LINK: Radical Software: Women, Art & Computing 1960–1991 

Previously

EVENT: JUST PLAYIN’ AROUND (JANUARY 21 - APRIL 26 2025, PORTLAND, OREGON)

Matthew Earl Williams, Twentysix Gasoline Stations In Grand Theft Auto V, 2014-24, digital prints, Each 16 x 20 inches framed, © m. earl Williams, Courtesy of the artist.

 

Just Playin' Around

curated by Nancy Downes-Le Guin and Theo Downes-Le Guin

January 21 - April 26 2025

Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

PSU1855 SW Broadway

Portland, OR 97201

press release

Once our basic needs are met, we humans have always turned to play and art. Children learn how to navigate the world by playing. Adults depend on play to bring joy and connection to others. The United Nations recognizes play as a universal right of children, and mental health specialists increasingly recommend play for its therapeutic benefit at all ages.

Artists often talk about their work as a form of play involving materials, ideas, and imagination. Play can be part of the process of making art, but can also be its subject matter. Artists create meaning from childhood memories, toys, games, and sport, reframing the past, interpreting the present, or imagining the future. Play is also a way for artists to seek release from meaning, to resist others’ need to interpret or instrumentalize their work, as seen in absurdist art-historical movements such as Dada.

Industrialized societies often treat play as childlike or trivial, an obstacle to productivity. Our cultural institutions define which artworks and artists are worthy of attention, often presenting art in distinctly unplayful settings, equating seriousness with cultural value. This belies the ways in which playfulness, surprise, silliness, and humor in art are able to engage charged emotional, social, and political issues.

Not all art needs to be playful, but in the end, play and art may not be so different. In both, we seek freedom, release, and community. Sometimes we create and receive meaning through our games and our art, and sometimes we just want to have fun. Just Playin’ Around is a peephole into some of the many ways in which art is play, play is art, and both are in all of us.

Just Playin’ Around is curated by Nancy Downes-Le Guin and Theo Downes-Le Guin. This exhibition is supported by The Ford Family Foundation, The Reser Family Foundation, the Jackson Foundation, Elements Roofing, the Richard and Helen Phillips Charitable Fund, and the JSMA Exhibition Circle.

LINK: Just Playin' Around

EVENT: MATTHEW EARL WILLIAMS’S INDIANS FROM THE UNCANNY VALLEY (JANUARY 25 - MARCH 7 2024, ITHACA, NY)

Matthew Earl Williams

Indians from the Uncanny Valley

January 25 – March 7, 2024

Ithaca College 953 Danby Road, Ithaca, NY 14850

1/25/2024 Opening Reception 5 – 6:30pm

1/25/2024 Artist Talk: 1:15p.m

A Tintype is a one-of-a-kind positive image on a metal plate and a popular visual medium of the Mid 1800’s. Around this time my ancestors were being forced to decide between signing away most of their rights in treaties or face extinction by colonizers. These portraits are created by documenting people's avatars in the cowboy roleplaying video game Red Dead Redemption 2. In the game you can create and play with around 24,000 other real people online daily. Most people create some sort of cowboy player but there are forums and social groups of players that choose to create their characters or avatars as Indians in the game. I have been meeting up with them in the game and taking Tintype portraits of them in this virtual world. I’m curious about why someone would want to roleplay as a Native American character during one of the hardest times in their history. Is it because the romanticized images of the so-called vanishing Indian have become so commonplace in common media? Do they not know that these images have fueled identity issues that many natives still struggle with? Do they think that by playing as these figures that they are somehow honoring us? Just as they think they honor us with a school mascot. Do they hope to find some connection to the native experience that will help with the guilt? Or do they just like to root for an underdog?

Matthew Earl Williams, The Lord Marvel, 8” X 10” Tintype, 2021 (c) Matthew Earl Williams

Williams is an artist, educator, and enrolled tribal member of The Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon. M. Earl received a Master of Fine Arts in Photography and a Master of Arts in Studio Art from the University of Iowa. He also received a BFA in Photography at the University of Oregon. His work is shown internationally with recent cities including Rome, Los Angeles, Berlin, Chicago, New York, Denver, Portland, and Phoenix. Currently he resides in his ancestral homelands, the Oregon Willamette Valley, where he is the Multimedia Specialist for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.

Indians from the Uncanny Valley is currently on display in the context of the exhibition Just Plating Around, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at PSU, 1855 S.W. Broadway, Portland.

LINK: Matthew Earl Williams

LINK: INDIANS FROM THE UNCANNY VALLEY

GAME ART: KENT SHEELY’S IMPRESSIONS OF PLAY (2024)

Kent Sheely, Bridge Creek, from the series Impression of Play, 2024

By overlaying wireframe structures on top of long-exposure video game screenshots, Kent Sheely creates a visual language that reveals the hidden architecture of digital gaming, a layer that is usually invisible to players but fundamental to their experience. The wireframes, reminiscent of the early stages of 3D modeling in game design, suggest the raw, unfinished elements of a digital world. By making these structures visible, Sheely invites viewers to consider the layers that exist beneath polished graphics and smooth gameplay. The unstable, fragmented nature of the wireframe overlays - seemingly breaking through the game’s environment - disrupts the illusion of immersion, reminding us that these virtual spaces are constructs.

In doing so, Sheely’s work might be seen as a commentary on the artificiality of virtual landscapes. While players usually engage with these worlds as seamless environments, Sheely peels back the surface to show their manufactured nature, as well as their fragility. The fragmentation in his work destabilizes the sense of reality these virtual worlds offer, creating tension between the organic and the synthetic. The exposed wireframes suggest a world in flux, not quite real, and always at risk of sudden disintegration.

Kent Sheely, Irradiated Snallygaster, from the series Impression of Play, 2024

The use of long-exposure techniques traditionally associated with real-world photography adds an intriguing temporal dimension to Sheely’s work. In photography, long exposure is often used to capture motion, light, and time in a single frame, leading to blurred or dreamlike effects. By applying this technique to video game screenshots, Sheely disrupts the fixed temporality of digital games. Games are usually experienced in real-time, but here, he blends real-world photography methods with virtual landscapes, creating something that feels liminal, in limbo.

This blurring of time and space calls attention to the complex relationship between real and virtual environments, especially when framed through an artistic lens. The long exposure in the landscapes makes them feel ghostly or ephemeral, as though they exist in an in-between state, neither fully realized nor entirely erased. This reinforces the themes of instability, not only in form but in perception.

Kent Sheely, Basement, from the series Impression of Play, 2024

Conceptually, Sheely’s images can be seen as reflecting the instability of virtual reality itself. Digital landscapes are fragile, held together by code and algorithms, subject to glitches and imperfections. By drawing attention to the wireframe skeleton of these spaces, Sheely is perhaps exploring the idea of incomplete realities, environments that are constantly being built, deconstructed, and reconstructed within digital spaces. Consider Ismaël Joffroy-Chandoutis’s SWATTED (2018).

These visual representations may also extend into the philosophical realm of digital spaces as precarious and malleable. Impressions of Play asks: what happens when the infrastructure of virtual worlds is exposed, when the illusion breaks down? By showcasing this instability, Sheely offers a meditation on the counterfeit nature of constructed realities, be they in digital environments or other mediated forms of experience.

Sheely’s compositions share a kinship with glitch art, where the breakdown of digital systems becomes an aesthetic strategy. The wireframe overlay functions almost as a glitch in the visual experience, a rupture of the visual smoothness that is normally prioritized in video game design. However, in this case, the glitch is purposeful, a deliberate exposure of the underlying code and framework.

Moreover, the fragmentation can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger cultural or existential questions about our relationship with virtual environments. Are we content to view these spaces as stable, complete worlds? Or are we aware of the ways in which they are constantly falling apart, needing repair or restructuring? Does play leave an impression? If so, can it be documented?

Impressions of Play is a modern day homage to Rosemarie Fiore’s seminal work with arcade games and photography.

Kent Sheely is an intermedia artist based in Los Angeles who takes inspiration from the aesthetics and culture of video games, examining the relationships between the real world and virtual ones and confronting the influence of psychology and politics in video games and digital spaces. Kent’s work is internationally-acclaimed and is noted as an important influence on the evolution of game-based art, especially in the area of virtual photography. He recently partnered with publisher Ubisoft for an exhibition highlighting their Photo Mode utility, and has been featured in numerous academic and games publications such as Blind Magazine, Artforum, WIRED, Kill Screen, and Kotaku.

LINK: Kent Sheely

EVENT: ALAN BUTLER (SEPTEMBER 13 - 26 2024, ONLINE)

26 GASOLINE STATIONS

digital video (1920 x 1080), colour, sound, 4’ 23”, 2016, Ireland

created by Alan Butler

September 13 - 26 2024

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

26 GASOLINE STATIONS is a digital homage to Ed Ruscha’s iconic 1963 photobook, 26 Gasoline Stations. Ruscha’s work famously documented the mundane yet intriguing petrol stations along his route from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City. In contrast, Butler’s reinterpretation situates this journey within the virtual world of Grand Theft Auto V’s San Andreas, transforming the act of driving across America into a navigational exploration and documentation of digital spaces. Executed as both machinima and an ebook, the project captures each station from the confines of Butler’s studio in Ireland, emphasising the shift from physical to virtual mobility. This transformation not only pays tribute to Ruscha’s artistic exploration but also probes deeper into the evolving relationship between real and simulated environments, highlighting how digital media can extend and challenge traditional notions of landscape, place, and documentation in the age of video games.

Alan Butler is an artist who employs both traditional and new media to probe themes surrounding digital culture and its influence on shaping realities. His creative approach incorporates various materials and techniques from the annals of image–making, scrutinising the ideological and political implications of technologies like 3D graphics, video games, and cloud computing. His recent solo exhibitions include We are Now in the Mountains and They Are in Us at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2023); The Need To Argue In The Master’s Language at Visual Carlow, Ireland (2018); and Down and Out in Los Santos at the Malmö Fotobiennal, Sweden (2017). He has also participated in notable group shows such as Open World: Video Games and Contemporary Art at The Akron Art Museum (2019) and Digital Citizen: The Precarious Subject at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, UK (2019). A key moment in his career was representing Ireland at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021 as part of the collective ANNEX. His works are held in several collections including the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Office of Public Works, Ireland, The Arts Council of Ireland, and Trinity College Dublin.

WATCH NOW

EVENT: FERNANDO PEREIRA GOMES (JULY 19 - AUGUST 1 2024, ONLINE)

Light Study

digital video (1280 x 720), color, sound, 28’ 32”, 2015, Brazil

created by Fernando Pereira Gomes

 

In Light Study, a male avatar from Grand Theft Auto V stands unwavering, gazing into the camera for nearly thirty minutes as weather and light conditions shift subtly yet continuously, painting the scene with an ever-changing palette. The camera remains mostly fixed, with slight movements adding to the contemplative stillness. Dominant wind sounds blend with ambient city noises, creating an immersive backdrop. The artist discovered this scene by accident when the game idled into screen-saver mode. He noticed the light changing on the avatar’s face from morning to night and back. Fascinated by this passage of time, he recorded the scene, furthering his exploration of digital realms and their parallels with our experience of life and time.

Fernando Pereira Gomes was born in São Paulo, Brasil in 1993, currently living and working in Paonia, Colorado. After spending his teenage years in Europe, Gomes moved to New York where he earned his BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts (SVA). In New York, he created a body of street photography depicting life in the city, seeking moments of stillness and poetry within the ever buzzing metropolis. In 2014, his groundbreaking in-game photography series Procedural Generation garnered international attention, both in print and online, culminating in a solo exhibition curated by Alexandra Ungern-Sternberg at Ateliê Alê in São Paulo, Brazil, titled Geração Processual. Additionally, selected images were featured in the group exhibition Transition at the Y Gallery in Minsk, Belarus, also in 2014. Gomes’s work has been presented at prominent venues such as the Noorderlicht Photofestival, Miami-Project, and Photo-LA.

WATCH NOW

EVENT: FILE 2024: QUBIT AI (JULY 3 - AUGUST 25 2024, SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL)

FILE 2024: QUBIT AI

July 3 - August 25 2024

Centro Cultural FIESP

Avenida Paulista, 1313 Em frente a estação Trianon-Masp do Metrô

Bela Vista, São Paulo - SP, 01311-200, Brazil

 

In the heart of São Paulo, at the FIESP Cultural Center, the FILE 2024 festival unfurls a groundbreaking intersection of art and technology through its latest exhibition, QUBIT AI: Quantum Computing and Synthetic Artificial Intelligence. Curated by Ricardo Barreto and Paula Perissinotto, the exhibition, running from July 3rd to August 25th, promises to redefine the boundaries AI-inspired/co-generated digital art.

At the core of QUBIT AI is the revolutionary potential of quantum computing. This avant-garde technology, characterized by quantum superposition and entanglement, introduces novel creative avenues for artists. Barreto and Perissinotto articulate this paradigm shift in their curatorial text, emphasizing that quantum computing heralds an unprecedented frontier for both computer science and the arts.

For the first time, an art exhibition features a fully operational Quantum Computer. This cutting-edge inclusion is complemented by two pioneering Brazilian projects: Quantum Photography by Gabriela Barreto Lemos and Sounding Qubits by Eduardo Reck Miranda. Lemos’ work explores the visual possibilities inherent in quantum phenomena, while Miranda's installation translates the enigmatic behaviors of qubits into an auditory experience.

While quantum computing represents a nascent technological revolution, synthetic artificial intelligence is already reshaping artistic landscapes. Synthetic art, produced through AI in collaboration with human creativity, parallels the radical shifts of early modernity, offering new methods of creation across diverse media.

The exhibition's synthetic art section is divided into four thematic areas: Sound Synthetics, Aesthetic Synthetics, Cinematic Synthetics, and Architectural Synthetics. One of the standout installations, INTERATOR, is a three-dimensional cinema without VR glasses. This immersive experience allows viewers to navigate a space filled with simultaneous synthetic video projections, creating an interactive dialogue between the audience and the art.

Highlighted artists within Sound Synthetics include Dennis Schöneberg, whose works such as Bodydub and Transparenza blend visual and auditory stimuli to craft a multisensory narrative. The Spanish collective Iskarioto's dystopian AI films, paired with AI-generated music, further push the envelope of what synthetic art can achieve.

QUBIT AI’s interactive installations invite visitors to become active participants in the art. Klaus Obermaier's EGO uses the concept of alienation from psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to distort the viewer's reflection, examining the tension between reality and symbolism. "The Forgettable Art Machine" places the visitor at the nexus of art and technology, turning each interaction into a personalized masterpiece.

Elizabeth Kolbert's influence is evident in Speculative Evolution, Prototype 1, an AI-driven simulator that allows visitors to create new species within a speculative ecosystem. Marc Vilanova’s Cascade immerses viewers in the hidden frequencies of waterfalls, transforming auditory experiences into a sensory exploration of environmental soundscapes.

Seph Li's Everything Before, Everything After transforms collective touch into a dynamic digital painting, capturing the fluidity of interaction in a visual symphony. Holly Herndon’s AI voice model, Holly+, stars in the music video Jolene, featuring Sam Rolfes, which showcases the capabilities of synthetic performers and their impact on contemporary music.

Complementing QUBIT AI, the FILE LED Show 2024 illuminates Fiesp's facade with innovative creations from USP Visual Arts Course and IED São Paulo students. Under the guidance of Dr. Silvia Laurentiz and Daniel Grizando, these collaborations highlight the interdisciplinary nature of design and the transformative power of university partnerships

QUBIT AI at FILE 2024 is not merely an exhibition; it is a visionary journey into the future of art. By integrating quantum computing and synthetic AI, it challenges and expands our understanding of creativity, inviting us to explore the uncharted territories where art and technology converge.

LINK: FILE 2024: QUIBIT AI