GAMESCENES

GAME ART: Sarp Kerem Yavuz' Curse of the Forever Sultan (2018)

Sarp Kerem Yavuz' Curse of the Forever Sultan™

Anna Laudel Contemporary

September 20 -27 2018

Bankalar Caddesi 10
Karaköy, Beyoğlu
34421 Istanbul, Turkey

Curse of the Forever Sultan is a series of neon sculptures created by  Sarp Kerem Yavuz depicting various traditional Ottoman characters from the 18th and 19th centuries. The cartoony, skeletal structure of these sculptures is an homage to videogames from the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the 1997 LucasArts game, The Curse of Monkey Island, from which the series gets its name. Each sculpture is life-sized or larger, and designed as a 2-dimensional caricature of a member of the Ottoman court or military. It is hard not to see the references to current events and especially the identity of the so-called Forever Sultan...

Sarp Kerem Yavuz, Okçu (Archer), 2018. Neon, 180x93cm

Sarp Kerem Yavuz' Curse of the Forever Sultan™ will be on display at Anna Laudel Contemporary between September 20 – 27, 2018. 

Born in Paris in 1991 and raised in Istanbul, Sarp Kerem Yavuz is a visual artist working primarily with photography, light projection, and video. He received his Bachelor's Degree in Studio Art with Honors from Oberlin College in 2013, and his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. His works explore various aspects of gender, politics, religion, and violence. He is the recipient of several international accolades, including the 2016 Palm Springs Photo Festival Emerging Photographer award, presented by Leica Camera, the 2013 New Artists Society Award from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the 2013 Leah Freed Memorial Prize. He currently lives and works between Chicago and Istanbul.

LINK: Sarp Kerem Yavuz

EVENT: WHAT IS WITHOUT THE HAND THAT WIELDS IT: X (REDUX) (November 3-4 2018, Sydney, Australia)

WHAT IS WITHOUT THE HAND THAT WIELDS IT: X REDUX

Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Sydney, Australia

Saturday November 3 2018 
Cockatoo Island
11:30 AM - 5:30 PM

Performance times/Saturday (3 Nov):
11:30AM – 12PM
2:30PM – 3PM
5:30PM – 6PM

The performance is repeated on Sunday November 4

A landmark of Game Art returns a decade later.

In 2007/2008 Harmon created What it is Without the Hand That Wields It, an electronic mechanical sculpture that was connected to modified version of the first-person shooter video game Counterstrike. When gamers on the internet killed one another, the sculpture manifested the virtual kills physically by releasing small amounts of blood into a gallery, thereby bridging the two realities. Now 10 years later, Harmon stages WIIWTHTWI: X Redux – a resurrected slipstream version of the work manifesting the gamer commentary in the form of an endurance performance and new electronics. This new version has escalated with time – however what, if anything, has changed?

Riley Harmon is a US artist working in the Netherlands and his creative activity originated growing up in community-oriented theatre. Central to his practice is a process of weaving truth, fiction and magical realism into works and narratives that offer an uncanny distorted mirror to our reality – which take shape in performances, films, objects, live experiences, installations and collaboration with other artists. His current artistic practice traverses the social psychology phenomenon of 'terror management theory'; or how symbolic actions both mediate against, yet also reinforce mortal terror. His projects and collaborations have been internationally written about in such publications as Rolling Stone, Wired, American Theatre Magazine and he has exhibited, performed, and screened works internationally – at such venues as the Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst (Montevideo), FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) in Liverpool, de Appel, EYE Film Museum, Schin Kunsthalle, among others – as well as self-made contexts.  

LINK: Riley Harmon

LINK: What it is Without the Hand That Wields It: X Redux

Event: Open World: Video Games & Contemporary Art (Akron, Ohio, 2019-2020)

Curated by Theresa Bembnister, Associate Curator at Akron Art Museum, Open World: Video Games & Contemporary Art is bound to be one of the most impressive exhibitions entirely dedicated to Game Art of the late Tens. Open in October 2019 and running until January 2020, the exhibition will  feature many artworks that are influenced by the popularity and cultural relevance of video games. Open World will include paintings, sculpture, prints, textiles, drawing, animation, video games and modifications and game-based performances and interventions by international artists from the late 1980s to today. The expression "open world" refers both to a genre of gaming where players can define their own goals within a virtual landscape rather than following predetermined paths, but also to the opportunities video games offer for creative expression. The exhibition will also feature early arcade games, text adventure, modern multi-player online games and first-person shooters. Commercial games will not be included, making Open World: Video Games & Contemporary Art the antithesis of The Smithsonian's The Art of Games. The full line up has not been announced yet, but artists confirmed include Butt Johnson (New York), Angelo Ray Martinez (South Bend, Indiana), Tim Portlock (St. Louis), Suzanne Treister (London) and Angela Washko (Pittsburgh). Other artists under considerations are Tabor Robak, Cory Arcangel and many more. The Akron Art Museum recently received a $30.000 grant by the National Endowment for the Arts as part of its first major funding for fiscal year 2018. The grant will be used to fund the exhibition.

Stay tuned for more information. 

LINK: Akron Art Museum

Call for submission: Vector Festival 2018 (deadline: 12/23/2017)

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Vector Festival 2018
Topic: Born Digital
Deadline: Saturday, December 23rd 2017 (midnight)

Now entering its sixth year, Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented event showcasing artistic practices that engage critically with new media and digital game technologies. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, panels, and workshops, Vector Festival acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice. In recent years, the festival has broadened its scope to include a wider spectrum of works critically engaging with many aspects of emerging digital technologies. The festival is proud to be a participatory and community-oriented initiative organized by InterAccess in Toronto, Ont. 

Since 2013, Vector Festival has developed an active presence in regional and international communities related to co ntemporary art and critical game cultures. Curators Martin Zeilinger and Katie Micak invite you to contribute artworks for consideration toward festival programming, which will include a feature exhibition at InterAccess throughout the month of July and August, along with off-site screenings, performances, workshops, and panels from July 12-15, 2018. Note that Vector Festival does not charge submission fees to artists applying to participate.

This iteration of the festival turns its focus on the births (and deaths) of the digital. What might it mean to witness the birth of a new technology, or to be ‘born digital’? How does the term ‘digital native’ function in relation to this? How can technologies mold or inform identity? How do artists adopt, advance, hack, or dismantle digital technologies, to critically reflect on their meanings and implications? How does analogue detritus live on in the digital? What comes after the digital, how do post-human ist, post-digital, and post-Internet artistic perspectives inflect these questions?

Invoking everything from endlessly spawning game avatars to ‘permadeath,’ from media-archeological excavations to futurological speculation, from generative digital creation to the digital purgatories of discussion boards and spam, we invite emerging and established artists from diverse perspectives and backgrounds to contribute their critical explorations of these and related concerns and interests.

The curators seek works for the following programs:

Flagship Exhibition:
Artworks (including interactive installations, experimental game mods, sculptural work, screen-based work, sound art, etc.) for the festival flagship exhibition

Online Exhibition:
Digital artworks that can be exhibited online

Festival Screening:
Film/video/machinima works for the festival screening

Performance: 
Performance-based propos als (including sound art, live coding, chipmusic concerts, as well as performances and interventions in virtual and public spaces.

SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS

1. Project description and artist statement (2 pages maximum)
2. Documentation (maximum five images and one video; ideally, please provide an online streaming link)
3. Detailed description of technical requirements (please outline materials provided by the artist and materials expected from the exhibiting venue)
4. Current CV (3 pages maximum)
5. Artist biography (100 words)

Send your submissions by Saturday, December 23, 2017 at midnight to [email protected] using the subject line VECTOR 2018 SUBMISSION. Attachments should not exceed 15MB. Please indicate which program your submission falls under. All artists selected for participation will receive artist fees, as well as support to apply for external funding.

About Vector Festival
Founded in 2013, Vector F estival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, and workshops, Vector acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice.

About InterAccess
Founded in 1983 as Toronto Community-Videotex, InterAccess is a non-profit gallery, educational facility, production studio, and festival dedicated to emerging practices in art and technology. InterAccess’s mission is to expand the cultural significance of art and technology by fostering and supporting the full cycle of art and artistic practice through education, production, and exhibition. Annually we execute multiple exhibitions, a full curriculum of skill-building and critical theory workshops, and a broad range of discursive events that explore the impact of technology on the social, political and cultural aspect s of contemporary life. Our studio space facilitates the circulation of skills and techniques required to produce the work we exhibit in our gallery space.

InterAccess Gallery Hours

Tuesday - Saturday, 11-6
Open until 8pm each Wednesday
Admission is always free
9 Ossington Ave.
Toronto, Ontario

For more information contact:
Festival Curators, Martin Zeilinger and Katie Micak
[email protected]

Deadline: 2017-12-23 23:12:00

LINK: Vector Festival

Game Art: Mathew Zefeldt and game aesthetics

Martin Zefeldt, When You're Dead, You're Dead: Part 2, 2013, Acrylic on Canvas. 55 x 40 inches COPYRIGHT © 2017, MATHEW ZEFELDT.

Painter Martin Zefeldt's (b. 1987 in Clayton, California) combines ancient Greek imagery with video game aesthetics borrowed from first person shooters like Castle Wolfenstein, Doom and Duke Nukem. His style is both explosive and methodical, with the same motifs often repeated obsessively on the same canvas. His retro-nostalgic ludic influences are often juxtaposed to more traditional art themes appropriated from a variety of sources - from popular culture to classical styles, from art history to the vernacular. Some paintings, like Green Screen Shadow Rain (2016), seem to evoke the vibrant and syrupy palettes of Candy Crush. Others create dazzling and dizzying effects, trompe l'oeils 2.0.  His 2D reproductions of barrels, doors (like this one from Duke Nukem), mirrors (do you recognize this one?) and pipes remind me of both Aram Bartholl and Damiano Colacito's obsessions. Zefeldt has not simply captured the zeitgeist: he's updating it. 

Martin Zefeldt, Desktop, 2016, Soap Factory, Installation View COPYRIGHT © 2017, MATHEW ZEFELDT.

Mathew Zefeldt  received his MFA in Studio Art at University of California, Davis in 2011. He previously graduated in Art at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work has been exhibited in several solo and group shows across the United States. 

LINK: Martin Zefeldt

Art Game: Tomasz Wlazlak's Superheroes (2016)

Tomasz Wlazlak is a Polish multimedia artist whose work features video game imagery, motifs, and themes. His aesthetic is strongly influenced by 8-bit graphics. One of his latest works, Superheroes (2016), mixes sculptural elements like arcade game cabinets with interactive games inspired by classic coin-ops about historical figures like Sai Baba, Masutatsu Oyama, Padre Pio, and Ratan Manek, the eponymous super heroes.

All the games were programmed by Daniel Lewan.

As Wlazak explains:

I decided to use the form of arcade machines to create a climate of a "temple of gaming", i.e. recreate the mystical atmosphere of the arcades. Arcade machines are also supposed to subtly bring to mind the shape of confessionals. They are to partly belong to the realm of the sacred and partly to realm of the profane because arcades are "semiotic brothels of the machine age."

I love that quote by the way. It's from a seminal essay by John Fiske.​

The artwork was featured in the 2017 Gdańskim Biennale Sztuki curated by Grażyna Tomaszewska.

But my personal favorite is a previous project titled Tableau Vivant (2012), which looks like a homage to David Crane's Little Computer People (1985):

LINK:  Tomasz Wlazlak

Game Art: Motsonian's "‘The only thing lacking in this second body is the living flesh of the first body’" (2016)

Installation shot at Shape Up or Ship out, Breeze Creatives in Newcastle, Image by LeftLeg gallery.

With The only thing lacking in this second body is the living flesh of the first body, Monica Rohtmaa aka Motsonian explores the paradoxes of corporeality in virtual spaces. This two channel video juxtaposes images from virtual worlds, highlighting the distance between the physical world of the viewer and the intangible, simulated environments. Motsonian also projects digital images onto physical objects, alluding to the process of texture mapping used in 3D animation. 

Originally from Estonia, Mostonian is currently completing her BA Fine Art degree in Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. In her practice she works with video games, including MMORPG Runescape and virtual reality applications like Google Tilt Brush. She also uses digital mapping platforms like Google Earth and Street View. Her work is currently on display at REVEAL at Northumbria University, Newcastle until July 11th. 

Motsonian was shortlisted for the Woon Foundation Painting and Sculpture Prize and her work is featured in this exhibition in Baltic 39, Newcastle and is open from 30th June till 6th August. More details about the exhibition can be found here.

LINK: Motsonian

Game Art: Tony Albert's Space Invaders (2014)

Tony Albert, Space Invaders, 2014, Vintage playing cards, aluminium

Tony Albert was born in Australia in 1981. His practice combines text, video, drawing, painting and three-dimensional objects. Examining the legacy of racial and cultural misrepresentation, particularly of Australia’s Aboriginal people, Albert has developed a universal language that seeks to rewrite historical mistruths and injustice. 

LINK: Tony Albert

Game Art: David Jablonowski's Age of Empires, authorities and properties (2016)

David Jablonowski, Age of Empires, authorities and properties, 2016 aluminium, LED, screen, acetate sheets. Photo by Gert Jan van Rooij

Born in Bochum in 1982, David Jablonowski lives and works in Amsterdam. In his practice, Jablonowski incorporates machines or technology usually used for exchanging information— e.g. scanners, tablets, projectors, printing plates, and even mirrors—that have the potential to distort or disrupt transmission.

LINK: David Jablonowski

Game Art: Olaf Val's Verstärker-I (2001)

Verstärker means amplifier in German. This interactive sculpture design by Olaf Val consist of a PSOne controller, a light bulb, a microcontroller and a pedestal. 

As Val explains:

In the works "Rückkoppler", "Automatic Loop Unit", and "Bubbles", I focused on the development of instruments, which are able to generate light games in the tradition of Clavilux, Farborgel and Chormatops by using video projectors. These concepts are now continued without using video technology. The interaction between light and the designed interaction is at the fore in "Amplifier". In this way the daily use of electric light is the main topic of the work. The light bulb was a symbol of belief of the advance of technology at the turn of the century (1900). Also, the light bulb is just simply a symbol for light, spirit, and idea. In the work "Amplifier" a light bulb is used as a feedback media. The usual displays, like monitors or colorful flashing displays are reduced to a bulb, which turns on and off at one pixel, becoming lighter and darker. This reduction is effected with regard to the input media. The keyboard of the PlayStation becomes the real attraction, because of its tangible and sculptural qualities. The flashing lights, known from the world of computer games are not just follows the purpose to allure people into gambling halls as eye catchers, but most of all to enhance dramatic moments in the game. The flashing light/dark light therefore intensifies the sensuousness of the video game. By playing this work it becomes clear how much quality this effect has, at the same time, computer games are critically examined of their empty light games.

In 2013, Val produced a second version, aptly titledVerstärker-II, featuring a gamer mouse.

Olaf Val (born 1968) grew up in Hanau and Frankfurt, Germany. After his studies at the Academy of Art, Kassel, he was awarded his diploma at a postgraduate course at the Art Academy For Media in Cologne.

LINK: Olaf Val (all images and video courtesy of the artist)