Fotomuseum Winterthur new exhibition How to Win at Photography's online supplement is not a replica of the in situ exhibition, but rather an archive of information related to all-things-playful-image-making.
It will grow, so keep an eye on it.
06/04/2021
03/11/2021
EVENT: BLEND & BLEED. AN ONLINE SYMPOSIUM ON TRANSREALITY AND PERVASIVE PLAY (MARCH 20 - MAY 30 2021, ONLINE)
Carina Erdmann, a researcher at LUCA, research unit 'Inter-Actions' in Brussels, is the catalyst behind this phenomenal series of online symposia:
"This is an invitation to conspire.
The series of online workshops conjures synergies between the fields of performance, LARP, game design and media theory. The common inquiry will be the phenomenon of 'bleed', wherein the boundaries between fiction and reality, the virtual and physical world dissolve.
The symposium is hosted by the Inter-Actions department of LUCA school of Arts and links to their research on the hybridization of online gaming and performance. What can games teach us about the ways we construct worlds collectively?
We invite you to partake in a series of playful experiments around digital presence, embodiment and relationality. Reflecting on the psychological, social and political implications of distance we will explore virtual commoning practices and 'conspiratorial bleed'."
(Carina Erdmann)
Carina Erdmann, we have become used to magic, 2020.
Schedule
The workshop Hotel Bardo by Omsk Social Club sends you on a journey to explore
reality-making systems and what we can do to control our own narratives. McKenzie Wark talks about Early Transition as LARPing, how being a trans woman can feel like role play through the gaze of others and metaphorical bleed sometimes avoids literal bleeding.
Magical Materialism: World Factory is a world-building workshop by Trakal that takes its cues from Psychoanalysis and a post-socialist perspective of Andrey Platonov's concept of the "literature factory“.
Day 3 – April 3 2021
The Interactions Group transdisciplinary thought band invites you to The Wonder Machine, an experiment in emergence at the level of collective intuition. Reed Berkowitz gives a workshop on guided apophenia and how to create your own conspiracy theories.
Day 4 – April 10 2021
In the workshop ‘The Dive’ by Nina Essendrop and Rozan van Klaveren we create a collective tale about the dying of nature and a path towards our inner worlds and wilds through LARP methods.
Francis Patrick Brady and Rilla Khaled let you explore possible futures through the card game DOHL and speculative play methods framed by the worlding of a fictional conference: The Congress of Future Love & Connection
Day 6 – April 23 2021
In her workshop Erotic Sociability, Isabel Lewis shares ideas around sociality and embodiment through the metaphor of the "unambitious stripper". The performative lecture Vaporized, dispersed, made particulate by Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė collages folkloric narratives, landscape -natural or constructed- and molecular entanglements.
Day 7 – May 1, 5, 8 2021
Theatre as Laboratory: Experimentation with Non-Human Partners in Expanding Dramaturgies is a three part workshop developed by Rebecca Rouse and Carl von Winckelmann letting you experiment with technologies and other non-human entities through the frameworks of partnership and play.
Day 8 – May 9 2021
In And what about those who prefer not to appear? Simon Asencio and Martina Leeker explore different modes of presence to reflect on publicness and anonymity as well as hyper-affirmative performing on topics of digital culture as a critique.
Day 9 – May 14 2021
Susan Ploetz and Ju Row-Farr share experiences in building speculative worlds, letting you explore somatic telepathy within the fictional institute PSY-SOMA-TEK and by discussing 2097: We Made Ourselves Over a project that worked with diverse communities to develop a journey into an imagined future.
Day 10 – May 23 2021
In the Prediction Error workshop by Brody Condon we perform as a predictive coding model and simulate delusion formation in the brain introduced by neuroscientist Philip Corlett. With Hito Steyerl we move to predictive neural networks of machines and the hallucinations they create.
The LARP Accomplices bleed by Carina Erdmann and Nick Koppenhagen is based on the 1909 novella “The Machine Stops” and atmospheres found in cinematic fragments. It lets players view their own situation through the lens of historic visions of the future.
Sometimes we need fiction to show who we truly are.
All sessions are free and open for participation. Places are limited.
02/10/2021
RESOURCE: ARTFORUM ON IN-GAME PHOTOGRAPHY
Essential piece on art, video games and photography by Gideon Jacobs on the February 2021 issue of ARTFORUM. A key passage:
But it’s possible that a better approach to the issue removes technology from the equation entirely. Instead of Hershel, we might refer to the pragmatic definition offered by legendary MoMA curator John Szarkowski: “One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing.” In-game photography is certainly pointing, it’s just pointing that occurs in places that we don’t yet deem as weighty and consequential as our tangible reality.
LINK: ARTFORUM
11/27/2020
RESOURCE: PAOLO PEDERCINI'S ON THE FLASH GAMES ECOSYSTEM
A phenomenal talk (cum transcript) by Paolo Pedercini aka Molleindustria about Apple's decision to kill Flash (spoiler: platform capitalism).
Here's an excerpt:
LINK: Paolo Pedercini's Gone in a flash
08/14/2020
RESOURCE: GAME PHOTOGRAPHY AS AVANTGARDE
An introduction to game photography with artist overview by Hart Fowler published on Digital Trends.
LINK: Third-person shooter: In-game photography is becoming an avant-garde art form
07/05/2020
GAME ART: BARDUU'S PHOTO TUTORIALS FOR THE LAST OF US PART II (2020)
Petri Levälahti aka @Berduu is making super short photo mode tutorials for The Last of Us Part II on Twitter. Check'em out!
Petri Levalhati currently works at EA DICE as a Screenshot Capture Artist.
You may remember his brilliant machinima that we covered a few years ago.
RESOURCE: FRIEZE JULY/AUGUST 2020
The July/August 2020 issue of Frieze features a series on articles on play and games, including but not limited to: Darran Anderson's reverie about escaping into the classic arcade game Street Fighter II (1991) during the Troubles in Northern Ireland; Orit Gat on sports writing as a visual experience not dissimilar to writing about art (click here to read the full article); Simon Denny and Joanna Pope update the world’s first socialist board game Class Struggle (1978); Jennifer Kabat takes a close look at Lynn Hershman Leeson’s use of avatars and antibodies; and Azby Brown asks: what went wrong for Tokyo’s 2020 Olympic Stadium?
Unmissable.
LINK: Frieze
08/29/2019
VIDEOS: LOOKING FOR GOOD
Looking for Good (LFG) is a student-run group at the University of Florida facilitated by Kyle Bohunicky, Assistant Professor of Digital Arts and Sciences at University of Florida. LFG produces live-streams on Twitch addressing artistic, technical, social, and cultural topics across the arts and computer sciences while playing relevant games. Each stream features a video game that the students play while discussing relevant topics. It's a terrific resource for anybody interested in understanding the relationship between games, art, and culture.
Here are some examples:
Digital Museums and Art Curation with Kristopher Purzycki, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The Physics of Masculinity with Dr. Amanda Phillips, Georgetown University
Queer Representation in Digital Games with Dr. Bo Ruberg, University of California Department of Informatics
CURTAIN and Queer Futures with Dr. Edmond Chang, Ohio University
02/12/2018
Book: Giochi video. Performance, spettacolo, streaming
I'm delighted to announce the release of Giochi video. Performance, spettacolo, streaming, a new collection of essays on the rise of game videos edited by Enrico Gandolfi and I. Released in Italy, the book features contributions on machinima, videoart, live streaming, speedrunning, let's play videos and much more. It's the follow up to Machinima. Dal videogioco alla video arte and, once again, features a jacket design by Italian illustrator Marco Goran Romano.
Below is the synopsis in Italian:
Oggi, il game video è importante tanto quanto il video game.
Termine ombrello che indica le pratiche di produzione, distribuzione e consumo di audiovisivi inerenti al videogioco – dai live stream di Twitch alla videoarte del machinima, dai walkthrough ai Let’s Play, dagli speedrun ai tutorial – il game video oggi rappresenta un importante fenomeno culturale, artistico ed economico. Giochi video. Performance, spettacolo, streaming propone, per la prima volta, una mappatura di un territorio dai confini fluidi grazie ai contributi di studiosi internazionali. Applicando un approccio innovativo alle metodologie di ricerca e di analisi, gli autori esaminano numerosi nodi teorici, con una forte attenzione all’evoluzione del medium. Tra i temi portanti spiccano le trasformazioni delle modalità spettatoriali, le influenze crossmediali e le contaminazioni estetiche, a conferma che oggi il videogioco si configura innanzitutto in chiave performativa e spettacolare. Il libro si rivolge agli appassionati di nuovi media e a quelli di cinema, televisione e arte contemporanea. L’orientamento pluridisciplinare e il prisma dei punti di osservazione applicati ai fenomeni considerati offrono spazi di riflessione originali all’interno dei game studies contemporanei.
Titolo: Giochi video. Performance, spettacolo, streaming
Curatori: Matteo Bittanti e Enrico Gandolfi
Editore: Mimesis
Collana: Eterotopie
Data di pubblicazione: 15 febbraio 2018
Lingua: Italiano
Pagine: 220, con illustrazioni in bianco e nero
ISBN-10: 8857540952
ISBN-13: 978-88-5754-0955
Prezzo: 18 euro
LINK: Giochi video
10/26/2017
RESOURCE: When Art Is Put Into Play (Dissertation)
Artist and researcher at Gothenburg University Arne Kjell Vikhagen has just completed his dissertation about game art.
English Keywords: Game Art, Computer Games, Video Games and Art, Play, Artistic Research, New Media Art
ISBN: 978-91-982421-5-7 (printed version) ISBN: 978-91-982421-6-4 (digital version)
Full-text: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/
Description: When Art Is Put Into Play: A Practice-based Research Project on Game Art is a practice-based research project that aims to contribute to the understanding of the relation between play and art from the specific perspective of computer-based Game Art. This is done firstly through the production of nine works of art that through their means of production all relate to Game Art as it has come to be known in the last twenty years or so. Secondly, the relation between games, play and art is discussed from a Game Art perspective. This project as a whole aims to map and exemplify cases where Game Art successfully inherits rule-systems, aesthetics, spatial and temporal aspects from computer games. This work has in turn resulted in a provisional response to the question of the possibility for Game Art to successfully create a state of play, whilst still maintain agency as a work of art. The claim is that the friction between art and play makes it doubtful that art can maintain its agency as art through play. This claim is made as a result of the artistic process leading up to the works of art that were made as a part of the thesis. It has been strengthened through the study of the concept of play and how it relates to artistic practice.