GAMESCENES

GAME ART: FOCI+LOCI'S BOUNCING MOON (2017)

Another formidable work by foci+loci, Bouncing Moon is an algorithmic music device built in LittleBigPlanet 3. Truly avantgarde. 

As the Brooklyn-based duo explains:

The user trigger emission of a triangle in any of four rows- percussion, droplets, bass and piano- by pressing buttons on the controller. Each triangle has three possible notes and plays whichever one lands point-down in the slot it finds. The moving white light indicates what step the sequencer is on. As it passes each triangle, it triggers a note. The user can also, 'reset' any row by thrusting them back upwards to resettle as they fall. The tempo is also controllable.

Treating the map editors in video games as virtual sound stages, foci + loci create immersive electro-acoustic spaces with virtual instruments and timed audiovisual events. Saving and replaying digital game data, camera movement in space can be disassociated from time, changing traditional filmic relationships. foci + loci is Tamara Yadao and Chris Burke.

LINK: foci+loci

EVENT: FUNCTION (MAY 24-25 2019, MALLORCA, SPAIN)

FUNCTION, a new Digital & Electronic Art Festival Mallorca at the Centre Cultural Casa Planas, will debut on May 24 2019.

This year’s theme is innocence:

Digital art focuses on how reality is modified by the growing influence in our daily lives of new circumstances closely linked to automatization. Ranging from critical perspectives to exploring the possibilities of magic through technology, digital art pushes at the limits of our experience and definition of art itself. Above all, it defines in real time our relationship with an omnipresent technology.

The festival showcases videos, performances, webart, sound art and much more.

COLL.EO, Reasonable, machinima, color, sound, 2018

The video section includes machinima from COLL.EO and Ignacio Bosch's project Travelling without moving, a videogame designed as an auto executable app or as an immersive RV videogame that invites the player/spectator to embark on an eternal journey where the combination between magic and the mythical join his/her exploration desires. During the path, the player/spectator will find different elements and situations that would generate a reflection on matters as nature, borders, loneliness and fear.

Ignacio Bosch, TRavelling without moving, 2018

LINK: Function

Podcast: Chips with Everything with Angela Washko, Pippin Barr, James Bridle, and more

If you dig Game Art and love podcasts here's something you should download right now: the Guardian's Chips with Everything, hosted by the excellent Leigh Alexander.

Start with these two episodes:

Angela Washko

Pippin Barr

Truth is: every episode is unmissable.

LINK: Chips with Everything 

Event: VECTOR FESTIVAL 2016 (July 14-1 2016, Toronto, Canada)

VECTOR, one of the most compelling, original, and daring Game Art festivals, returns with a vengeance with a killer program. Now in its fourth iteration, the Canadian event has a special focus on algorithmic and post-human subjects. Subtitled Autonomous Agents, the festival is "a participatory and community-oriented initiative dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices. This year’s festival is co-curated by Skot Deeming and Martin Zeilinger and explores themes of autonomous algorithms and machines through emergent media art practices, live performance, screenings, workshops, and lectures. The Festival takes place across multiple venues in Toronto from July 14-17, 2016."

Because unlike the United States of Inequality, Canada is a civilized, democratic, and inclusive country, ticket passes are affordable for most and several events are open/free to the public. In fact, Festival passes are available for just $25 and offer FREE access to screening and performance events. Plus, Festival Pass holders get a free drip coffee from Sam James Coffee Bar (Queen St. W. location) throughout the duration of the festival.

Below is the full program.

JULY 14

OPENING NIGHT at InterAccess

VIP Preview

Join co-curators Skot Deeming and Martin Zeilinger for a private tour of the exhibition, The Algorithmic Imagination, and preview the festival's upcoming events. Tickets to this event include free access to Vector screening and performance events. (5:30-6:30pm, $100)

Launch Party and Opening Reception 

We kick off Vector Festival 2016 with an energized evening at InterAccess. Festival curators, artists and performers will be in attendance. The works in The Algorithmic Imagination explore the artistic potentials of algorithmic processes. These processes, expressed in the exhibition in kinetic sculptures and screen-based works, are perched between the appropriated and the pre-determined, the autonomous and the random. (7-10pm, FREE)

JULY 15

SCREENING

Basement Revolutionaries, Curated by Amber Christensen and Clint Enns at CineCycle in a time and place awash in the detritus of early 21st Century capitalism, we look to our basement revolutionaries to lead us not upwards but downwards into a bunker of safety to wait it out. Duck and cover, and grab a snack...it may be your only way to survive. (8-11pm, $15)

JULY 16

WORKSHOP

Sonic Pi Live Coding Introductory Workshop, facilitated by Martin Zeilinger

at InterAccess Live coding is an exciting form of experimental digital sound-making that uses on-the-fly programming techniques to mix traditional improvisation with algorithmic composition. This workshop will introduce you to create live electronic music through simple programming techniques using a mix of sound synthesis and digital sampling. In the practice of live coding, the computer code you enter yields an instant sonic feedback. No prior programming skills required. (11am-3pm, $45 regular/$35 member)

PERFORMANCE

Join us for an evening of performances that bridge the spaces between the composed and the improvised, the generative and the algorithmic, the analog and the digital. Featuring live coding, modular synthesis and generative visuals, performers explore the boundaries of control within sonic and visual apparatuses. Featuring Karl Fousek with Dan Browne, and Spectral Sound System (Michael Trommer and Eric Filion). (Doors at 8pm, $15)

JULY 17

PANEL

Algorithms, Generative Art, Machine Agency at InterAccess

In conversation and open discussion with participating festival artists and performers, Vector Co-Curator Martin Zeilinger explores some of the underlying concerns and questions that inform this year’s events: What makes generative art? Can algorithms ever be creative agents? What is the future of the digital as an expressive medium? Featuring

Dan Browne, Eric Filion, Karl Fousek, Justine Lugli, and Michael Trommer. (1-3pm, FREE)

WRAP PARTY at Reposado

Celebrate another year of Vector with a live performance by Castle If. (8-11pm, FREE)

VECTOR FESTIVAL EXHIBITIONS

Art on the BIG Screens Vector Festival Preview

July 11, 8-10pm at Celebration Square, Mississauga (300 City Centre Drive)

Works by COLL.EO and Brent Watanabe

The Algorithmic Imagination

July 15 – August 13 at InterAccess (9 Ossington Avenue)

Works by COLL.EO, Adam Donovan, Justine Lugli, Brent Watanabe

Davis Heslep July 1-31 (109 Niagara Street) at Loop Hole

A. Bill Miller

July 14-17 at Common Sort (1414 Queen Street West)

DAY ZERO: PRE-FESTIVAL PARTY

July 13, 8-11pm at Electric Perfume (805 Danforth Avenue)

with a screening curated by Clint Enns

For a complete schedule and to purchase your festival pass, visit vectorfestival.org.

Game Art: Victor Morales's "Eva" (2016)

An "experimental sleepy video" by Victor Morales. Music by Pal Asle Petersen and voice by Jessica Weinstein, with a little treatment

Read an exclusive interview with Victor Morales at GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY.

LINK: Victor Morales

Doc: Greg and Tim Andresen's "BEND_ A Circuit Bending Documentary" (2012)

 

A short documentary on circuit bending created by Greg and Tim Andresen of Greater Sirens with Nick Petterson and Thomas McColskey for one of their classes at Expression College. It features interviews with Dmitri SFC, Derek Sajbel (a.k.a. Dr. Rek, circuit bending documentarian), Erin and Mark Pauley (Sounds Beyond), and Reed Ghazala (The Father of Circuit Bending). Music by Dr. Rek, Dmitri SFC, and Gannon.

LINK: Greater Sirens
LINK: Dr. Rek
LINK: Reed Ghazala
LINK: Sounds Beyond
LINK: Gannon
LINK: Dmitri SFC

 

Event: (Re)Sounding the City (April 24 and May 1, 2015, New York)

(Re)Sounding the City is an interactive performance on body language and the psycho-geography of urban spaces presented by Masters students at New York University’s Tisch School of Arts. The performance uses "Kinect for Windows to project the performer’s body onto the screen and visually convey the synthesis of body language and mental state of mind and how deeply intertwined both elements are." Created by MFA first-year Ansh Patel and students from other graduate departments at Tisch School of the Arts.

"(Re)Sounding the City invites the audience on an immersive journey to reimagine the ways our bodies could move in a utopian city. Drawing inspiration from the Situationist International Manifesto (1960), our project aims to rewrite the psycho-geography of the city by re-situating urban bodies in an emancipatory soundscape."

Free to the public, but RSVP is required.

LINK: (Re)Sounding the City 

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti via NYU Game Center

Event: Le Salon Ludique (October 16, 2014, Montreal, Canada)

Salon Ludique 1: Soundscapes

October 16th. 7pm. $5.
@Espace Fibre 
2665, rue Augustin-Cantin, 2nd Floor
Montreal (QC) H3K 3L12

RVSP

 

A brand new initiative from curator and critic skot deeming aka mrghosty, Le Salon Ludique is an interdisciplinary salon series at Espace Fibre, in Montreal, Canada, ready for its debut.

 

The series is co-curated by Carolyn Jong, a graduate student in the interdisciplinary Humanities PhD program at Concordia University. 

 

As skot explains on the official website, 

Le Salon Ludique is a not-for profit event series, designed to initiate and sustain a critical dialogue centered on experimental practices across artistic disciplines. Running bi-monthly, Salon Ludique will feature 3 to 4 works by both emerging and established creative practitioners in a salon style format. Each artist will showcase their work, and give a 10 to 15 minute talk about their practice. In order to facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue, Salon Ludique will showcase works in digital games, new media art, electronic art, performance, and more. Each articulation of the event will feature new configurations of art, games and performance, curated through thematic and discursive connections between the works.

Sorry for the platitude, but this looks fantastic.

 

Episode 1 features FOCI + LOCI, RICHARD FLANAGAN and Devine Lu Linvega aka Alice Effekt.

 

The event centers around the theme of soundscapes. 

 

Chris Burke and Tamara Yadao aka FOCI + LOCI will perform live using two PlayStation 3s, various popular games, spoken word, and more while Flanagan will discuss FRACT, the "first person music puzzle/exploration game". Alice Effekt will  show Purgateus, a mod of Ed Key & David Kanaga's Proteus.

 

Full details here.

 

LINK: LE SALON LUDIQUE

 

related: skot deeming on Game Art

 

related: GameScenes interviews skot deeming

 

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti

Game Art: 23N!'s "Sonata per Mario" (2008-2010)

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23N!, Sonata per Mario, 2008 (source: 23N!)

Sonata per Mario is a project based on the "detournement" of the game "Super Mario Bros." and the keyholders "Soundrop" developed in 2008 by 23N!. How does that work?

"The players use the eight Soundrops of the Super Mario Bros. series as an eight-buttons controller for a game based on pre-recorded plays of Super Mario Bros.. The pre-recorded plays have been stripped of the sound and the goal of the game is to reconstruct it through the use of the Soundrops, in perfect synchronization with the actions of the character Mario. Players earn points by pressing the correct Soundrop button at the right instant." (23N!)

This piece was included in the 2010 New Media Art Festival Mario Viva in Tokyo, Japan:

 

23N! is a Japanese noise performer working exclusively with homemade gear. His works include circuit bent toys, use of sensors to produce sound, homemade instruments. He performs solo and regularly collaborates with other artists in various fields. Recently, he has been particularly interested in developing extreme live performances that use the body as an essential part of the creative process. In addition to his musical activities, 23N! is working on several projects of media/device art. 

LINK: 23N!

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti

Game Art: 23N!'s "The DualShockerz" (2013)

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23N!, The DualShockerz, modified PlayStation controllers, 2013

23N! is a Japanese noise performer working exclusively with homemade gear. His works include circuit bent toys, use of sensors to produce sound, homemade instruments. He performs solo and regularly collaborates with other artists in various fields. Recently, he has been particularly interested in developing extreme live performances that use the body as an essential part of the creative process. In addition to his musical activities, 23N! is working on several projects of media/device art. This one, for instance, is a set of repurposed PS controllers as electronic instruments.

LINK: 23N!

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti