GAMESCENES

EVENT: PLAY THE PAST: A GAMING FOCUS (OCTOBER 26 - NOVEMBER 11 2022, BERLIN/ONLINE)

Play the Past: A Gaming Focus

26.10.–6.11.2022 / HAU3, HAU4 (online)

With machina eX and The Mycological Twist

Games create a multitude of worlds. The HAU is bringing together three different game projects that connect the past to the present day. They create scenes where the players playfully learn something both about socio-historical developments as well as make decisions about the course of events on their own or in groups. Games thus become source of inspiration and media for discourse. The experienced game developers from machina eX who have produced at the HAU for many years and the artist duo The Mycological Twist, who combine ecological and social practices with digital culture, will examine the artistic potential of games together with the audience in HAU3. In addition, the games expert Melanie Eilert recommends “Through the Darkest of Times” by the renowned Berlin-based indie studio Paintbucket for those at home, a historical strategy game about the resistance against National Socialism that she subjects to an accessibility test.

HAU4 is the digital stage of HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

LINK: Play the Past

EVENT: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXII NOW LIVE (MARCH 21-27 2022, ONLINE AND IN SITU)

MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXII

EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE FOR EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME

March 21-27 2022

Milan, Italy and online

 

The MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXII returns with a hybrid format —both online and in situ screenings — after a long disruption in the face of an unprecedented global crisis. The festival program is now online: 25 works of machinima and game video created by 21 artists representing 9 countries are featured in two distinct sections — EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE (March 26 2022, IRL) and FOR EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME (March 21-27 2022, online) — for a total of 11 programs.

Below is a breakdown of all the features:

EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE (Museum of Interactive Cinema, Milan, March 26 2022): MACHINEMA (MACHINE CINEMA), BRAND NEW YOU ARE RETRO, and MADE IN ITALY

FOR EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME (March 21-27 2022, online): THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE AI, BAD TALES, SONG TO SONG, GAME VIDEO ESSAY, IDENTITIES/INTIMACIES, HISTORIES/HERSTORIES, NO DRAMA, PLEASE, and GAME OVER PRESENTS: THIS IS NOT A GAME.

Artist line-up: Lorenzo Antei (Italy), Nicolas Bailleul (France), David Blandy (England), Beatrice Carpina (Italy), Sam Crane (England), Federica di Pietrantonio (Italy), Marie Foulston and The Grannies (England/Australia), Jamie Janković (England), Steffanie Padilla (United States), Juan Poyuan (Taipei), Giulio Piacentini (Italy), Kelly Rabbachin (Italy), Phil Rice (United States), Sjors Rigters (The Netherlands), Sara Sadik (France), Paolo Santagostino (Italy), Jordy Veenstra (The Netherlands), Cris Ubermann (France), Arne Vogelgesang (Germany), and Mathias Wolff (Germany).

This year the curators are unlocking the online various features gradually, like levels of a video game. The online section comprises seven back-to-back features and one special screening.

The first two — THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE AI — featuring works by Phil Rice (US) and Beatrice Carpina (IT) — and SONG TO SONG - featuring machinima by Paolo Santagostino (IT) and Lorenzo Antei (IT) are now available.

For more updates, keep an eye on the festival's Twitter account.    

LINK: MMF MMXXII

EVENT: AMIR YATZIV (OCTOBER 1 - OCTOBER 14 2021, ONLINE)

Amir Yatziv

Kingdom of Shadows, 2021

Recording of live animation performance, sound, color, 11’ 20”, 2021 (Israel)

October 1 - October 14 2021

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

Three avatars are auditioning for the role of a video game character under the vigilant eyes of a Japanese game designer. A human actor, wearing a motion-capture suit, performs a set of actions in real life that are translated in real time onto the on-screen image. Spectators see both. Conceived and produced by Amir Yatziv, this live performance blurring the lines that traditionally separate theater from digital gaming invites the viewer to consider the porosity between reality and simulation. Inspired by a scene in an episode of Final Fantasy, Kingdom of Shadows investigates the changing notions of identity, performance, and communication in a screen-based world.

Born in Israel, Amir Yatziv lives and works in Tel Aviv. After receiving a B.A. in Computer Science at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, he studied Arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. He has directed several short films which were often exhibited as art installations as well. Among his solo exhibitions are This is Jerusalem Mr. Pasolini, Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Israel (2013), This is Jerusalem Mr. Pasolini, Galleria Laveronica, Modica, Italy (2012), Antipodes, Ramat-Gan Museum of Art, Tel-Aviv (2010). Group exhibitions include Too early, too late. Middle east and modernity, curated by Marco Scotini, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (2015), Space Oddity, A capsule exhibition, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany (2014), La guerra che verrà non è la prima, 1914–2014, MaRT, Rovereto (2014), Recalculating Route, 4 Mediations Biennale, Poznan (2014), CounterIntelligence, Hart House, curated by Charles Stankievech, University of Toronto, Canada (2014), Time Pieces, Nordstern Videokunstzentrum, curated by Marius Babias and Kathrin Becker, Gelsenkirchen, Germany (2014), Measure for Measure, curated by Drorit gur-arie and Hila Cohen-Schneiderman, Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Israel (2014), Give Us The Future, curated by Frank Wagner, n.b.k Berlin, Germany (2014), Artists’ Film International, Whitechapel Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2014), Multiplicity, NURTUREart, curated by Marco Antonini and Hila Cohen-Schneiderman, New York (2014).

WATCH NOW

CFP: WELL PLAYED JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE CFP: PLAYABLE THEATRE (MAY 31 2020)

Well Played Journal Special Issue Cfp: Playable Theatre 

Edited by Celia Pearce & Nick Fortugno

The rising popularity of immersive theatre works such as Third Rail’s Then She Fell and Punch Drunk’s Sleep No More, has given rise to new hybrid forms of live entertainment that combine aspects of games and theatre. These “playable theatre” works draw extensively from digital games, Big Games, tabletop and live action roleplaying (LARPs) combined with theatrical conventions and methods to create fully immersive, participatory live theatrical events in which the audience plays a substantive role in the experience. We use the term “playable theatre” to distinguish works that engage meaningful audience agency from more passive forms of “promenade” theatre where the audience’s role is strictly navigational. Works of this type include a wide range of genres, scales and contexts, from highly theatrical “Nordic larping” traditions, to theme park experiences, to “puzzle plays” that integrate aspects of escape rooms and performance, to site-specific and pervasive/progressive live events. They can also draw from a variety of theatrical methods such as improv, process drama, and devised theatre. The rise of these works has been accompanied by a rediscovery of Pine & Gilmour’s concept of the “Experience Economy,” spurred by scientific research that people who spend money on experiences are happier than those who spend it on goods. The aim of this special issue is to explore critical and practical aspects of this emerging form and develop a shared vocabulary across disciplines to advance both scholarship and innovation in this emerging art form. 

For this special issue we invite experiential play-throughs, theoretical papers, critical analyses, and post-mortems by practitioners, across domains from around the world, that explore the many facets of live, interactive experiences. As an interdisciplinary issue, we welcome researchers and creators from theatre, digital and analog game studies, performance studies and related disciplines.

ETC Press is accepting submissions for this special issue of the Well Played journal.

All submissions are 31 May 2020

All submissions and questions should be sent to:

well-played (at) lists (dot) andrew (dot) cmu (dot) edu

The Well Played Journal is a forum for in-depth close readings of video games that parse out the various meanings to be found in the experience of playing a game. It is a reviewed journal open to submissions that will be released on a regular basis.

 

Contributors are encouraged to analyze sequences in a game in detail in order to illustrate and interpret how the various components of a game can come together to create a fulfilling playing experience unique to this medium. Through contributors, the journal will provide a variety of perspectives on the value of games.

 

The goal of the journal is to continue developing and defining a literacy of games as well as a sense of their value as an experience. Video games are a complex medium that merits careful interpretation and insightful analysis. By inviting contributors to look closely at video games and the experience of playing them, we hope to expand the discussion, and show how games are well played in a variety of ways.

 

The ETC Press is an academic and open-source publishing imprint that distributes its work in print, electronic and digital form. Inviting readers to contribute to and create versions of each publication, ETC Press fosters a community of collaborative authorship and dialogue across media. ETC Press represents an experiment and an evolution in publishing, bridging virtual and physical media to redefine the future of publication.

 

LINK: Well Played Journal

EVENT: PIETRO BABINA'S GAMING (SEPTEMBER 7, 2019, FORLÌ, ITALY, 2019)

CRISALIDE XXVI
GAMING
DA RIVISTA 7

SABATO | 7 | SETTEMBRE

ORE 22 c/o Teatro Félix Guattari - via Orto del Fuoco, 3 - Forlì, Italy
---
testo: Pietro Babina Flavio de Marco
Voce e sonorizzazione: Pietro Babina

Lettura sonorizzata di Rivista 7. Una lettura (non integrale) dell’ultimo numero pubblicato. Ad ogni presentazione una diversa modalità. La Super Dittatura ha creato un videogame, il cui utilizzo è obbligatorio, per trasformare tutti gli abitanti della terra (nessuno escluso) in artisti, decretando la definitiva banalizzazione del concetto di artista. Rivista ha la natura del dono, quel dono tabù la cui gratuità definisce il tentativo di fuga (disperata) dal sistema avvilente della mercificazione capillare dell’atto artistico.

The Super Dictatorship has created a video game, the use of which is mandatory, to transform all the inhabitants of the earth (no one excluded) into artists, and thus imposing the definitive trivialization of the concept of artist. Rivista is imbued with gift culture, that taboo gift whose gratuitousness defines the attempt to escape (desperately) from the disheartening system of the systematic commodification of the artistic gesture. [reading]

INTRODUCTION

LINK: Pietro Babina

Game Art: lamegame's "STREETfight" (2012-ongoing)

lamegame, STREETfight performance in Hamburg, 2013

Irresistible street performance by Kathleen Rappolt and Nils Deventer, directed by Stefanie Rejzek and Gwendolin Lamping aka lamegame, whose goal, motto and mantra is to invent "low tech/no tech streetgames and performances" (my kind of games). Rejzek and Lamping met at the University of Arts of Berlin, where they were getting their degree in Theater Pedagogy. Lamegame was launched in 2011. Their first performance, "Celebrity Stalking", debuted at the You Are Go! Festival in Berlin. Their second game, STREETfight, went public for the first time in 2012 at the Playpublik Festival in Berlin. Since then, STREETfight, has been invited to various theater and urban streetgame festivals including 100° Berlin, Let's Play Poznan in Poland and Kaltstart Festival Hamburg. This makes Oculus Rift look even lamer than it already is.

So what is STREETfight,about? Here's the official description

You don’t find avatars in computer games anymore, you find them on the streets around your corner. So get your team together, chose the character of your avatar and start entering the real world. But be aware… you’re not alone. There are techniques to be learned and fights to be fought. (lamegame)

LINK: lamegame

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti (Images and video courtesy of the artists)

Game Art: Victor Morales' "winterreise marionetten" (2014)

A genius.

Victor Morales is a genius.

LINK: Victor Morales

PREVIOUSLY

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti

Game Art: Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's "410[GONE]" (2013)

Photo by Pak Han: Christopher James Cortez

410[GONE] is a new play by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig and directed by Evren Odcikin. It runs at the Thick House in San Francisco (1695 18th St., SF) through June 29th 2013. Heavily inspired by gaming aesthetics and Dance Dance Revolution in particular, 410[GONE] reconciles two different kinds of acting and performing:

"Where do we go when we die? In Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s dark and dazzling 410[GONE], that all depends on how you play the game. The stakes couldn’t be higher when a young woman goes in search of her lost brother in the Land of the Dead. On this fantastical journey into the underworld—a land ruled by the Chinese Goddess of Mercy and the Monkey King, where time is suspended, and Dance Dance Revolution holds the key to Transmigration—a sister and brother must face the ultimate question: if there is no love without pain, what does it mean to love?" (Crowded Fire Theater)

The official poster

Here's an excerpt from Sam Hurwit' review on KQED:

"Director Evren Odcikin's fast-paced staging deftly incorporates the play's heavy technological element; Wesley Cabral's video and Goose Manriquez's animations bring the video game levels to life admirably. Sara Huddleston's sound design combines both oppressively chipper videogame music and traditional Chinese music, and Stephanie Buchner bathes the stage in colored lights to set a variety of otherworldly moods. Dominated by a pyramid-shaped screen with Dance Dance Revolution control pads in front of it, Odcikin's set doesn't look much like the video arcade that the boy describes it as when he arrives, what with a bathtub-turned-bed and a bank of red phones in the foreground, but it's an intriguing setting in any case. Devon LaBelle provides clever props such as a Lonely Planet guide to the Chinese Land of the Dead." (Sam Hurwit)

Photo by Pak Han

Laura Brueckner interviewed Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig on the Crowded Fire Theater's website. Here's an interesting tidbit:

"Well, in 410[GONE] the question is particular to the dramatic situation. A Chinese-American girl is looking for her dead brother, but doesn’t know where he might be, since his place of ancestry is not his place of death, and she is probably getting all kinds of mismatched information. My mother was raised Taoist and my father Catholic, and when I was living in Okinawa I went to a missionary school, where the teachers told us that the Japanese holiday Obon, where families sweep the graves of their ancestors and offer food, was a festival that worshipped Satan. So then I became confused and worried when I went to my mom’s village for Chinese New Year and saw her entire family worshipping Satan. It seems like cultural and religious beliefs are at their strongest when it comes to the unknowable—i.e., death and what might happen after­—so that is also where there is a high opportunity for conflict and confusion in a person who lives in the margins/the spaces between two worlds." (Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig)

More about the relationship between Dance Dance Revolution and theater here. In the video below, videogame champion Omid Farivar plays DDR. Farivar worked with Crowded Fire Theater on their production of 410[GONE]. They needed someone who could dance a perfect sequence on DDR so that video designer, Wesley Cabral, could record the graphics. In doing so, Omid unlocked a "secret" bonus level. When game meets play...

 

LINK: 410[GONE] 

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti

Game Art: Chris Howlett's "Modus Operandi" (in progress)

Chris Howlett, Modus Operandi, 3 Channel video projection with in situ body acts, in progress

"Modus Operandi is a simultaneous three channel video projection of three Machinima films with a contemporary dance narrative complimenting the video narrative. The improvised dance performance is modeled off the game physics of the male avatars actions on screen and will involve one to three pairs of dancers in the space during the opening and then at a reduced rate over the course of the next three weeks. The floor is demarcated by a series of geometric taped off shapes which mirror the virtual caged off space that the male avatars reside within." (Chrs Howlett)

Link: Chris Howlett

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti 

Game Art: machinaEx's game-inspired performances (2011)

  

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"machina eX is a group of young media and theatre artists designing computergames in real life environments. instead of sitting in front of a screen and a keyboard, in our games you play in real rooms, using real items. machina eX creates unforgettable events somewhere between point and click computergames, theatre and interactive installation." (MachinaEx)

Link: machinaEx

Submitted by Matteo Bittanti (via Rock Paper ShotGun)