GAMESCENES

EVENT: OASIS: THE VIDEOGAME EXHIBITION (JUNE 15 - JUNE 2022, MADRID, SPAIN AND ONLINE)

Oasis. The videogame exhibition 

 

Curated by María Luján Oulton – David Alonso – Sergio Reyes

 

ESNE University in Madrid, Spain

 

97, Avenida de Alfonso XIII, in Distrito de Chamartín

June 15 - June 20 2022

The exhibition showcases 24 international games grouped into 4 nodes. It is accompanied by a program of round tables (Friday the 17th), a Makey Makey workshop (Saturday the 18th), a cicle of documentaries (Sunday the 19th) and a reading space which aims to give an intro to the local scene of gamestudies in Spain.

As curator María Luján Oulton writes:

I also wanted to invite you to listen to the round tables that will be taking place tomorrow Friday 17th and will be live streamed via youtube The sessions will be in English with local and international speakers. The topics will be: Museum & Videogames, Affect & play, Artgames curators and festivals, Videogames, activism and politics, Postmortem clinic. 

Click here to read the curatorial text in Spanish and English

LINK: OASIS

EVENT: SATURDAY MORNING ANIMATION CLUB (JUNE 11, 18, 25 - JULY 2, 9 2022, ONLINE)

 

SATURDAY MORNING ANIMATION CLUB

 

Curated by Petra Széman in partnership with isthisit? and Off Site Project

 

Supported by Arts Council England

 

Saturday June 11, 18, 25 2022

Saturday July 2, 9 2022

online (registration required)

 

Saturday Morning Animation Club is a terrific screening series taking place over five consecutive Saturday mornings, featuring new worksby Emily Mulenga, Petra Szemán, David Blandy, Christian Wright and Bob Bicknell-Knight. Each screening will be followed by a second featuring a commentary by the artist, and will conclude with a Q&A session. The curators' goal is "to re-capture the excitement of watching cartoons over the weekend and celebrate all forms of fandom."

 

Full details

Saturday Morning Animation Club is a series of screenings + talks across five weeks between 11 June - 9 July, showcasing films by people who wield the dual powers of being an artist and a nerd.

Unified by an early fascination and involvement with anime and games, each artist focuses in on the worlds and perspectives fandom allows for. From this angle the five videos broaden ideas of human and non-human perception, screen-based experiences, virtual worlds and alternative ways of being.

Join us on Saturday mornings for a screening of new video commissions by Emily Mulenga, Petra Szemán, David Blandy, Christian Wright and Bob Bicknell-Knight respectively, followed by a little insider walkthrough and a Q&A (via Zoom).

Tied together by a refusal to downplay the enthusiasms and generative energy of fandom, Saturday Morning Animation Club will lead viewers through iterations of animatic worlds, on- and off-screen, with or without player input. The screening series has been produced in collaboration with web projects isthisit? and Off Site Project. Attendance of all five screenings will be rewarded with a special prize.

The videos were commissioned using funding from Arts Council England as part of On Animatics, a cross-disciplinary project exploring the murky overlapping areas of contemporary art, animation, fandom, avatars and virtual worlds.To conclude the project, the book WEEB THEORY will be released later this year with Banner Repeater, edited by Petra Szemán and Jamie Sutcliffe.

 

Featured artwoks

 

June 11 2022, Emily Mulenga, Main Character (2022)

Main Character centres around the Bunny as she experiences the abrupt end of her relationship, set against the backdrop of her life in a cyberpunk city and her evening gig as a singer. Whilst the event tears a hole in the fabric of her reality, it leads to reflections on the nature of being and what can be discovered underneath surface appearances. Flipping between 3D visuals, 2D animation and live action footage, Emily’s film takes inspiration from cartoons, video games and music videos as means to navigate the character’s relationship to life.

Register here

June 18 2022, Petra Szemán, Openings !!! (2022)

Inhabiting the interstitial zones of anime credit sequences, video game loading screens and regional train journeys, Petra Szemán’s Openings !!! 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.

Register here

June 25 2022, David Blandy, Androids Dream (2022)

In Androids Dream, Blandy deconstructs the cyberpunk aesthetic first prototyped by Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and which has continued to be repeated and become ever more ossified. Formed of multiple simulacra, the work involves Unreal Engine assets, uses Kojima’s Snatcher - itself a replay of Blade Runner in videogame form - and even deploys an algorithmic mimesis of the artist's own voice. Breaking down the aesthetic form, the film in turn breaks down, repeats, refracts, and goes into reverse. 

Register here

July 02 2022, Christian Wright, Body Language (2022)

Primarily shot within the video game Dark Souls III (2016), Body Language tells the story of an epic encounter between two online players. Focusing on how the combatants communicate via the limited body language afforded to them by the game design and the performative traditions of gaming communities, Christian’s film combines the grandiosity of cinema with the janky awkwardness of gameplay. The result is both reminiscent of videos produced and shared in insular fan communities, while also relating to a burgeoning contemporary art and academic context. 

Register here

July 09 2022, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Non-Player Character (2022)

A looping CGI video, Bob’s Non-Player Character explores the NPC as a vehicle by which we can understand human navigation of an increasingly codified and controlled existence. Controlled by the AI software, NPCs have predetermined sets of behaviours. Doomed to repeat the same day their lives revolve around the player, waiting for interaction. Bob’s film imagines what enemy NPCs are thinking and feeling, forced to be defeated over and over, until their data becomes unreadable.

Register here

 

Featured artists

 

Emily Mulenga

Emily Mulenga (b. 1991, England) is a multimedia artist who imagines what a digital utopia might look like from a feminist and milennial perspective. Her output is the result of a ravenous media diet, blending the high polish aesthetics of MTV with the jagged polygons of early PlayStation games; mixing YouTube video conventions with lo-fi social media posts of her online contacts. Contributing to the excessive circulation of digital matter, she considers how the blurring between human and machine changes experiences of womanhood, and how becoming cyborg is both a fantasy and reality, the future and the present. (instagram)

Petra Szemán

Petra Szemán (b. 1994, Gateshead) is a moving image artist whose practice focuses on the murky borderlands along the arbitrary separation of the real and the fictional. 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 fictionally oversaturated landscape (both on- and off-screen). Turning away from considering cyberspace as a radically ‘other’ realm, Petra walks the line between dystopian and utopian frameworks, eyes set on new queer horizons. (instagram)

David Blandy

David Blandy (b. 1976, Brighton) investigates the stories and cultural forces that inform and influence our behaviour. Through a gaming art practice he has written original RPGs that address issues of social justice, climate change and our potential posthuman futures. Collaboration is central to his practice, used as a means to examine communal and personal heritage, as well as forms of interdependence. His practice ranges from installation, performance, writing, gaming and sound. He has had national and international solo exhibitions, and is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London. (instagram)

Christian Wright

Christian Wright (b. 1993, Newcastle upon Tyne) is a digital media artist working with video games and animated assets to blend cinematic and machinima visual languages. Through this frame, he looks at how the boundaries of normal play are stretched by the performative actions of players themselves. Whether it be the intimate physical interactions of online multiplayer, the choreographed quest for perfection of speedrunning, or the mimetic act of digital cosplay within character creators, Christian places community driven gestures at the forefront. (instagram)

Bob Bicknell-Knight

Bob Bicknell-Knight (b. 1996, Suffolk) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and writer influenced by surveillance capitalism and responding to internet hyper consumerism, automation and technocratic authoritarianism. Within his practice he harnesses different processes and materials to create both physical and digital artworks, including fabric printing, painting, ceramics, bookmaking, 3D printing technologies and game development software. Key subjects of investigation include our complicity with corporate giants, the sculpting of online identities and the prescient qualities of dystopian science fiction. (instagram)

 

LINKS: Petra Széman, isthisit?: Off Site Project (Instagram accounts)

 

EVENT: FELIX KLEE (MAY 13 - MAY 26 2022, ONLINE)

My paws are soft, my bones are heavy

digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound (stereo), 4’ 57”, Germany, 2021

Created by Felix Klee, 2021

vral.org

 

Can an artificial intelligence dream? Apparently, yes. In this oneiric short, it imagines itself as a virtual mountain lion wandering through digital landscapes. After jumping off a cliff, the animal dives into the ocean, looking for some tranquility. Written by an artificial intelligence, narrated by a text-to-speech converter and shot within a modified video game, My paws are soft, my bones are heavy is blatantly post-human.

Felix Klee is studying documentary filmmaking at the University of Television and Film in Munich, Germany. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Munich — where he studied time-based media under Julian Rosefeldt and painting under Pia Fries — Klee previously studied painting under Thomas Hartmann at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg and was a guest student at Universidad de las Artes Aguascalientes México. He co-founded the ReKollektiv, a collective of media artists and directors working towards the democratization of footage and a collectivist approach to film editing. From 2020-2022 he served as an advisory board member at Locarno Film Festival. Klee lives and works in Munich, Germany.

WATCH NOW

VRAL is now on Patreon

GAME ART: TOTAL REFUSAL + JAN-WIEGER VAN DEN BERG'S DECONSTRUCTING THE BRIDGE (2022)

A new work by guerrilla collective Total Refusal in collaboration with artist and curator Jan-Wieger van den Berg created with/in Battlefield V. As the collective writes,

Together with the local artist and operator of the Besienderhuis residency Jan-Wieger van den Berg, the media guerilla Total Refusal walks through the digital replica of the area next to the city of Nijmegen within the video game Battlefield V. This Dutch town and its famous bridge appear in many World War II shooters, famous for its bridge which played a crucial role during the liberation of Europe. While van der Berg is using his avatar to walk through the devastated battlefield he explains particular events, reconstructing the history of a digitally estranged Nijmegen and its famous bridge. The absence of fighting on the battlefield reveals the catastrophe of fighting itself: As the essence of war is destruction, bridges are torn down only to be reconstructed in moments of peace.

Full video:

LINK: Total Refusal

LINK: Jan-Wieger van den Berg

EVENT: IAN CHENG: WORLDING (MARCH 2–JULY 3, 2022, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA)

Ian Cheng: Worlding
March 2–July 3, 2022

Leeum Museum of Art
60-16, Itaewon-ro, 55-gil, Yongsan-gu
140-893 Seoul
South Korea

Curated by Gina Lee, Curator, Leeum Museum of Art

press release

Leeum Museum of Art presents Ian Cheng: Worlding, the artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia. Through his pioneering works comprising virtual ecosystems created with artificial intelligence and game engine, Ian Cheng (b. 1984) creatively explores and philosophically contemplates the nature of human consciousness. Ian Cheng: Worlding is the first exhibition to bring together all of the virtual worlds that Cheng has created. The artist’s boundless imagination and futuristic vision are on full display in all five of the featured works, the latest of which was produced with support from Leeum.

Ian Cheng, Emissary in the Squat of Gods, 2015, still from simulation

Included in the exhibition is the Emissaries trilogy (2015–2017), the unique series that brought Cheng to the attention of the international art world. In this live simulation, which the artist describes as a “video game that plays itself,” AI-based characters and environment are contained in a virtual ecosystem in which new and unforeseen events continuously arise.

Ian Cheng, BOB (Bag of Beliefs) (2018–2019)

In BOB (Bag of Beliefs) (2018–2019), an artificial creature that resembles a snake explores the inner workings of human consciousness. Just as every person has different faces and traits that can appear in a given situation, BOB consists of multiple artificial intelligences with various motives. Using the customized app, audience members are invited and encouraged to help form BOB’s personality and beliefs.

Cheng’s latest work in the show is Life After BOB: The Chalice Study (2021), a feature-length animation created with support from Leeum, The Shed (New York), the LUMA Foundation, and Light Art Space (LAS, Berlin). Telling the story of Chalice Wong, a ten-year old girl with an AI “BOB” brain implant, this work reveals the artist’s imagining of a future in which humans and artificial intelligence coexist. After viewing the work, the audience can use a link to gain access to the interactive “World Watching” mode to explore Cheng’s animated world in even greater depth.

About Leeum Museum of Art: Leeum Museum of Art was established in 2004 by the Samsung Foundation of Culture to preserve the cultural assets of Korea and to share with the public its expansive collection ranging from traditional Korean art to modern and contemporary art of the world. The museum is dedicated to enhancing appreciation and understanding of art through exhibitions, artist support programs, education, research, and publications. Three of the world's most renowned architects designed the three buildings of the museum. Mario Botta designed the terracotta building (M1) for the museum's traditional Korean art collection, Jean Nouvel designed the rusted stainless steel building (M2) for the museum's modern and contemporary art collection, and Rem Koolhaas designed the futuristic black concrete and glass edifice for the museum's special exhibitions and Child Education & Culture Center.

LINK: Leum Museum of Art

LINK: Ian Cheng

GAME ART: THE RUSSIANS PWNED THE 17TH BIENNALE OF ARCHITECTURE (MAY 22 - NOVEMBER 21 2021, VENICE, ITALY AND ONLINE)

 

 

In case you are wondering - I know you are - the answer is yes, Open—Russian Federation Pavilion is, by far, the greatest thing that ever graced the Venice Biennial of Architecture (May 22 - November 21 2021), which will end its majestic run in just a few weeks - game over is expected in less than a month from today, so you still have some time. A penetrating examination of the artistic, cultural and social role played by video games and digital environments in our society, the Russian Pavillion features not one, not two, but three outstanding artworks, specifically:

 

Sanatorium Anthropocene Retreat, a post-apocalyptic rendering of the Pavilion building itself, by artist Mikhail Maximov (don't miss the related Let's Play).

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic scenario: awaking to a deserted Russian Pavilion in Giardini, the game stages a fantasy-like performance in which the main character (the player) mutates between human and non-human entities – a robot, a virus, and a humanoid – navigating a derelict digital environment and trying to recollect what has happened.

Its Winter, 2019, a hauntological, first-player simulation of a post-Soviet suburban residential tower block during winter. This amazing sandbox game was developed by Moscow-based poet and musician Ilia Mazo and developer Alexandr Ignatov (aka sad3d).

 

 

Yuha’s Nightmares from Yuliya Kozhemyako (aka Supr). A simulation game about the nightmares that are tormenting the main character, Yuha, the virtual doppelganger of the game designer. This interactive dream disguised as a video game is set in a surreal world  full of strange things and unexpected events. The deeper part of Yua's consciousness is depicted through the "flip side" of the 3D world. The player is frequently stuck in textures, sees through mesh and wanders around at every level in «inappropriate» places. The glitches in the game are accordingly integrated to make for an intense and inusual experience.

 

For the past several months, the Russians also delivered an overwhelming amount of juicy video content, which is freely available on a variety of video streaming platforms including Vimeo, featuring, among other: Federico Campagna with Ilia Mazo, Paolo Pedercini aka Molleindustria, Keiken, and many more as part of their digital takes (DTO) program. There's enough material for three PhD dissertations, seriously.

 

Another highlight is Into the Sandbox, a three-part film program curated by Vladimir Nadein for Open exploring the interconnections between cinema, digital gaming worlds, virtual landscapes, and gamification, featuring modern masterpieces likeSwatted (2018) by Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis, How to Disappear (2020) by Total Refusal, Hotel (2014) by Benjamin Nuel, My Own Landscapes (2020) by Antoine Chapon, The Letters About the End of the World (2021) by Dina Karaman, FeatherFall (2020) by Total Refusal, Swamp City (2021) by Alice Bucknell, AIDOL (2019) by Lawrence Lek, Feel My Metaverse (2019) by Keiken + George Jasper Stone.

The 2021 Russian Pavilion is commissioned by Teresa Iarocci Mavica, director of the V-A-C Foundation; curated by Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli in collaboration with curator’s team (Erica Petrillo, Giacomo Ardesio, Vladimir Nadein, Liza Dorrer, and Dasha Nasonova) and managed by Anastasia Karneeva of Smart Art.

Final score: A sheer display of Game Art super-power. A new benchmark. Actually, no: a brand new paradigm.

 

LINK: Open_Russian Pavillion at the 17th Biennale of Architecture in Venice

 

All images courtesy of The Russian Pavillion, photos by Marco Cappelletti

EVENT: WHO DID IT BETTER IN IN-GAME PHOTOGRAPHY WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP (OCTOBER 9 2021, WINTERTHUR, SWITZERLAND)

Who Did It Better in In-Game Photography

Finissage Event  of How to Win at Photography – Image-Making as Play

with Marco de Mutiis and Matteo Bittanti 

October 9 2021, 16:00 - 17:00 

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44 + 45
CH – 8400 Winterthur
+41 52 234 10 60
[email protected]

As a finissage event of the exhibition How to Win at Photography the final rounds of a playful tournament will take place: Curators turned sports commentators Matteo Bittanti and Marco De Mutiis will present artistic projects that have been created using in-game photography. The works address questions of photorealism, simulation, photographic practices in and against video games. Bittanti and De Mutiis ultimately choose what they consider to be the most exciting and best work with the help of the audience. Visitors play an important part in the process: they can cast their vote and decide who amongst the artists did it better in in-game photography!

The event takes place in English.

Subject to change due to the current situation.

Admission: CHF 5.–/4.– (reduced)
For members: CHF 4.–

Get your ticket here

The exhibition How to Win at Photography – Image-Making as Play explores the relationship between photography and play. It investigates the notion of image play, creating unexpected connections between the history of photography, the gamification of the visible as well as practices of image making with and within computer games.

LINK: Who Did It Better in In-Game Photography

TOOL & EVENT: GAME ARTS CURATORS KIT

The mighty members of the Game Arts International Assembly have just released the Game Arts Curators Kit, which Ma. Luján Oulton describes as

"a statement of purpose and consultation for curators, producers and institutions that are either working with video games or want to get into the field. Over 25 writers and editors have worked together sharing our experiences of exhibiting games, spanning the practical to the political, the ethical to the esthetic. The Game Arts Curator Kit will have a printed version produced and published by VGAReader and it will also be available in the wiki form open to the community. 

For those interested in knowing more about the project there will be a round table on its creation as a part of Society of Literature, Science and Arts 2021 on October 1st 2021." (Ma. Luján Oulton)

More info about the project can be found here.

LINK: Game Arts Curators Kit

LINK: GAIA 2021

TOOLS: ART SPACE

press release

A new platform, Art Space, created at Vidzeme University in Latvia is available as a download here for Windows.

Its purpose is to present the history of artistic styles in modern gaming in an innovative and interactive way. The authors of the game are researcher Ieva Gintere and new media artists Kristaps Biters & Ieva Vīksne (Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, Art Academy of Latvia, Liepāja University, Latvia). Art Space is a sophisticated new digital media prototype based on research results into modern art theory. The game can function as a model for similar games in the future that would show the results of artistic research and transfer knowledge gained in research. Art Space reflects the ideas of game theorists who contend that in order to raise curiosity concerning cultural heritage in games, one should invite the player to individually form artifacts or customized characters. This approach can effectively attract people to educational games since creation is a powerful key in eliciting emotions. Objects that the player of Art Space will individually form, are linked to aesthetics, and the game is designed as a story that reveals the historical background of the styles and effects chosen by the player.

Art Space functions in the intersection of educational games, serious games, and art games. The game has several tasks. It incorporates and explains the artistic codes of modern art, and functions as an informative platform for the player. It is intended to marry the activities of the general public of players with the heritage of modern art and its historical keys.

Art Space is innovative since there are no research-based games of modern aesthetics that incorporate the historical context of digital art and transfer the knowledge of contemporary art to players in a systematic and comprehensive way. Art Space is an educational instrument with the aim of capturing specific knowledge from contemporary art that is otherwise difficult to transfer to the general public.

The project will develop knowledge of modern artifacts and their appreciation as well as awareness of cultural capital. The strategy of knowledge transfer in the project will develop the audience’s ability to evaluate the artifacts and cultivate their aesthetic taste. The project expects that by expanding a society’s collective consciousness people will be able to better coexist with artistic styles which are a natural part of contemporary culture.

Prototype of the virtual environment (Windows version) is available here

For additional information, please contact 

Ieva Gintere
Dr.art., Researcher, Assistant Professor
Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, Cēsu iela 4, Valmiera, LV 4201, Latvia 

This project was supported by a grant from the European Regional Development Fund project “Leveraging ICT product innovations by enhancing codes of modern art” No. 1.1.1.2/VIAA/1/16/106 within the Activity 1.1.1.2 “Post-doctoral Research Aid”.

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)