GAMESCENES

GAME ART: KEIKEN'S MORPHOGENIC ANGELS (ONLINE)

press release

Channel, Somerset House’s new curated online space for art, ideas, and the artistic process, presents the new work Morphogenic Angels from artist collective Keiken.

A futuristic transhuman love story, Morphogenic Angels stems from Keiken’s new prototype role-playing game, set in a reimagined future 1000 years from now. This new RPG simulation explores a future in which humans have morphic upgrades that organically re-engineer them to have transhuman capabilities. The two central characters, Yaxu and Anamt’u’ul, explore our endless capacity for change and self-discovery in fantastical and unimaginable ways, as the characters live and love through cycles of drastic evolution.

In this intricately designed future, angels live for hundreds of years, but instead of experiencing the same life for this unimaginable period of time, they experience many different lifecycles. Endless cycles of evolution, drastically change the abilities, purposes and direction of these post-human being (referred to as Morphic Angels). Morphogenic Angels explores the longing to know oneself. Trusting others and falling in love through so many lived evolutions becomes an infinite task. So when Angels do fall in love it becomes so much more precious and fragile than what we can imagine today.

Keiken is an artist collective, co-founded by Tanya Cruz, Hana Omori and Isabel Ramos in 2015. Keiken’s collective title is taken from the Japanese word for experience; the lived experience being an idea at the core of their practice. They are building and imagining a Metaverse to simulate new structures and ways of existing and to test-drive possible futures. The metaverse is a fully immersive virtual space, allowing Keiken to become the architects and collaborators of the future. Creating speculative worlds through filmmaking, gaming, installation, Extended Reality (XR), blockchain and performance, they explore how societal introspection governs the way we feel, think and perceive.

About Channel
Drawing from Somerset House’s unique resident community, the digital platform will showcase a rolling programme of exclusive commissions, documentaries, films, podcasts, talks, interactive works and editorial content. Channel’s content has been created with accessibility in mind and will provide alternative ways of presenting information such as subtitles and transcripts.

Channel has been developed with support from the UK Government’s Culture Recovery Fund through Arts Council England.

Watch the artwork here

LINK: Channel

LINK: Keiken

EVENT: MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXIII (MARCH 19 - 26 2023, MILAN AND ONLINE)

MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXIII

Neither Artificial Nor Intelligent

March 19 - 26 2023, Milan and online

Special screening on March 25 2023 at the

Museo Interattivo del Cinema

Viale Fulvio Testi 121 20162 Milano

Curated by Matteo Bittanti

 

The sixth edition of the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL features a diverse selection of 19 machinima and game videos from 23 artists representing 12 countries.

“Neither Artificial Nor Intelligent” (NANI) is how Kate Crawford— research professor of communication and science and technology studies at the University of Southern California and a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research — describes artificial intelligence in her award-winning book Atlas of AI (2021). According to Crawford, “AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. It is made from natural resources and it is people who are performing the tasks to make the systems appear autonomous.”

Likewise, the new edition of the Milan Machinima Festival will address the growing influence of artificial intelligence on storytelling and visual narrative, but also the rhetoric surrounding this technique

This year the festival features two distinct sections: NEITHER INTELLIGENT NOR ARTIFICIAL (March 25 2023, in-person) and MACHINIMA IN THE AGE OF AI (March 19-26 2023, online), featuring 9 programs overall.

Experience the best of machinima and game videos through our curated programs:

NEITHER INTELLIGENT NOR ARTIFICIAL (Museum of Interactive Cinema, Milan, March 25 2023): NEITHER INTELLIGENT NOR ARTIFICIAL, THE POLITICS OF GAMING, DYSTOPIA and a selection of works from MADE IN ITALY and THE NEO AVANT-GARDE which will be presented exclusively on site, specifically

• LUCAS AZEMAR, LIFE ON EARTH, 2019

• SOREN THILO FUNDER, GAME ENGINES (Orange Bulletproof Kids) (2021)

• TOTAL REFUSAL, HARDLY WORKING, 2022

• BEN NICHOLSON, THE TONIC OF BATTERSEA PARK, 2023

• ANDREA GATOPOLOUS, HAPPY NEW YEAR, JIM, 2022

• KENT SHEELY, WELCOME BACK, 2022

• CHRISTIAN WRIGHT, BODY LANGUAGE, 2022

• STANISLAW PETRUK, THE REMNANTS, 2022

MACHINIMA IN THE AGE OF AI (March 19-26 2023, online): MADE IN ITALY, THE NEO AVANT-GARDE, COUNTER-NARRATIVES, and UTOPIA.

Featured artists: Babak Ahteshamipour, Lucas Azémar, Martin Bell, Marc Coverdale, Iain Douglas, Søren Thilo Funder, Andrea Gatopoulos, Nicholas Gebbe, Luca Giacomelli, Manuel Ghidini, Kara Güt, Ben Nicholson, Stanislaw Petruk, Kent Sheely, Brenton Alexander Smith, Colin Stagner, Nanut Thanapornrapee, Total Refusal, Rhett Tsai, and Christian Wright.

The festival’s poster was designed by Jordy Veenstra, one of the most talented artists working with machinima today. “The initial keywords given to me were NPC and AI”, said the Dutch artist and filmmaker. “In tandem with this year’s theme, my first thoughts were: pseudo-intelligence, digitization, dehumanization, empty shells, algorithms, compulsory movement and/or execution — as in NPC speech and movement —, the contrast between real/fabricated and the visualization of code.“

Consistently with this premise, Veenstra used AI-based tools to generate the artwork. As he explains: “The work was created with the Dall-E AI provided by OpenAI and in my eyes ideally captures this idea. White experimental, dehumanized masses looking like NPCs, with truly absurd poses; just standing there, surrounded by experimental ‘white’ code blobs; simply looking around restlessly and waiting for someone, anyone, to give a quest to, to be useful and to have their code finally executed. To have their own quest completed.”

The full program and schedule are available here

Tickets can be purchased here

LINK: MMF MMXXIII

EVENT: BASSAM AL-SABAH'S IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS (FEBRUARY 12 2022 - MAY 3 2023)

Bassam Al-Sabah

IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS

February 12 2023 - May 3 2023

The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin 2 D02 PN40
Ireland

press release

In IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS, Al-Sabah transforms the gallery into a fantasy dreamscape embracing the shape-shifting potential of computer-animated worlds with a series of new sculptural works and a new CGI film at its centre. Al-Sabah builds a world in which selfhood and queer possibility intersect, where multiple intersectional “glitches” occur within the body, gender, and within internal and external worlds and ever-present technology. These glitches, or forms of discontent and unravelling, push and challenge preconceived narratives and habitual perceptions of masculinity, taking viewers through a spellbinding journey of metamorphosis and fluidity.

Bassam Al-Sabah works across digital animation, painting, sculpture and textiles creating visions of resistance, transformation and queer possibility. He completed a BA in Visual Art Practice from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in 2016. Recent solo exhibitions include: I AM ERROR, Gasworks, London (2021), and De La Warr Pavilion, Sussex (2022); Dissolving Beyond The Worm Moon, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan (2019); and Illusions of Love Dyed by Sunset, The LAB, Dublin (2018). Recent group exhibitions include Queer Embodiment and Social Fabric at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (2021-2022), The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon (2021) and Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2020). Recent screenings include the Barbican, London (2022), Transmediale, Berlin (2021), EX-IS, South Korea (2021) and Jeu de Paume, Paris (2021). His work is part of collections in IMMA, the Arts Council and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. In 2021 he received the Golden Fleece Award and he is currently a studio member at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. Al-Sabah lives and works in Belfast and Dublin.

LINK: IT'S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE! TAKE THIS

EVENT: SØREN THILO FUNDER (FEBRUARY 24 - MARCH 9 2023, ONLINE)

 

EVERYWHERE

Digital video/machinima (720 x 328), color, 11’ 33”, 2007, Denmark

Created by Søren Thilo Funder

In Everywhere, we witness a lone figure navigating through a bleak and surreal urban environment, evoking a sense of isolation and alienation. The desolate terrain appears to be both familiar and foreign, presenting a disorienting experience for the viewer. The man’ continuous movement and evasion of unseen obstacles within the virtual realm challenge conventional notions of escapism, offering a fresh perspective on the concept as an unending cycle of seeking liberation from an undefined void. The piece’s cyclical nature serves as a commentary on the paradoxical nature of escape, as the runner’s repetitive journey highlights the futility of attempting to break free from the inherent boundaries, constraints, and power dynamics of digital media. Through this haunting work, the artist invites us to reflect on the interplay between virtual and real-life experiences, and the inherent limits within the world of gaming.

An artist who specializes in video and installation, Søren Thilo Funder, creates thought-provoking works that blend various cultural tropes, socio-political issues, and popular fictions. These narrative constructions operate within a delicate membrane where fictions and realities intersect, generating fresh interpretations and new meanings. Funder's oeuvre is steeped in both written and unwritten histories, as well as a deep awareness of the paradoxes and complexities of societal engagement. His art explores temporal displacements, nonlinear storytelling, and the emergence of new, unconventional forms of memory. Through his work, Thilo Funder creates immersive spaces that enable unpredictable encounters with the political, temporal, and recollective. He invites the viewer to challenge their preconceptions and explore the unexpected, creating a dialogue that is both deeply personal and universally relevant. Funder received an MA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and The School of Art and Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is currently finishing a Doctorate program in Artistic Research at The Art Academy, Department of Contemporary Art, University of Bergen in Norway.

WATCH NOW

EVENT: REFIGURED (MARCH 3 - JULY 3 2023, NEW YORK)

Rachel Rossin, still from The Maw Of, 2022. Web-based animation with augmented reality (AR). Commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art for its artport website and Kunst-Werke Berlin Institute for Contemporary Art AP.2022.1. © Rachel Rossin

 

Refigured

Curated by Christiane Paul

March 3 - July 3 2023

Whitney Museum
of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
New York, NY 10014

press release

Refigured, opening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on March 3, brings together five installations by leading artists working in the field of digital art to reflect on the ways technology intersects with and influences our ever-evolving identities, underscoring the dynamic between digital and physical artworks and blurring boundaries between them.

Featured artists include American Artist, Morehshin Allahyari, Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, Auriea Harvey, and Rachel Rossin. Drawing from the Museum’s collection and including digital video and animation, virtual sculpture, and augmented reality, the installations in this exhibition respond to the various forces that form identity and engage with the concept of “refiguring.” Sculptures are presented concurrently in digital and physical space alongside animations that escape the confinement of screens and reach into the gallery. Constructs of identity, self-representation, structures of oppression, and colonialism are explored through a variety of lenses and mediums. Some artists investigate the ways identity is reflected in the structures of artificial intelligence and computer interfaces, while others consider how selfhood transforms in online environments and ancient cultural myths.

Refigured will be on view March 3–July 3, 2023 in the Museum’s Lobby Gallery, a space that is accessible to the public free of charge and often highlights the latest emerging talent and innovation in American art. Three works in the exhibition are also accessible on artport, the Museum’s portal dedicated to Internet art and an online gallery space for commissions of net art, and can be directly launched through a QR code. This exhibition is organized by Christiane Paul, Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

“Experimenting with the idea of ‘refiguring’ is at the core of the works presented in this exhibition,” says Paul. “Through practices of appropriating material forms and reinventing them, the artists are challenging what it means to construct or shape identity.”

“Under Christiane’s leadership, the Whitney has long been dedicated to building an important collection of digital art,” says Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “With Refigured we will shine a spotlight on this key area of our holdings and some of the most innovative artists working in the field today.”

American Artist is an interdisciplinary artist whose work incorporates video, installation, new media, and writing to consider Black labor, visibility, and antiblackness within digital systems and the internet. Their legal name change to American Artist represents the basis for their practice and affirms blackness as descriptive of an American artist while simultaneously erasing identity in virtual spaces where “American Artist” remains anonymous online. Mother of All Demos III, American Artist’s installation in Refigured, alludes to the historical underrepresentation of the Black workforce in Silicon Valley. The installation features a mold of an Apple II computer—the company’s last model with a black home screen—coated in dirt, with liquid seeping out of the keyboard and handprints stamped on each side. The physicality of the computer sharply contrasts with the sleekness of Silicon Valley, commenting on how ideologies influence design choices and digital interfaces.

Morehshin Allahyari’s hypertext narrative The Laughing Snake was commissioned for artport in 2018 and will be presented in-gallery as an installation including a sculptural component. The work is based on the myth of jinn, supernatural creatures from Arabian mythology, to explore the status of women and the female body in the Middle East. Allahyari is an artist, activist, and educator whose work addresses the political, social, and cultural contradictions we face every day. Employing technology as a theoretical toolset, the work documents and reflects on collective life struggles faced today.

A collaboration between artists Zach Blas and Jemima Wyman, im here to learn so :)))))) is a four-channel video installation centered on a chatbot examining the politics of pattern recognition and machine learning. The chatbot was developed by Microsoft in 2016, and its

learning and language imitation were influenced by aggressive trolling on platforms like Twitter. Within hours, these influences led the chatbot to use genocidal, homophobic, misogynist, and racist language, and it was shut down. For the installation, the chatbot is resurrected as an avatar to reflect on life after AI death and contemplate the experience of being stuck inside a neural network and the “apophenic” pursuit of patterns within information and algorithms.

Debuting both online and in the exhibition, Auriea Harvey’s SITE1 is the latest commission for artport. SITE1 is an illusionistic online space and the origin site of sculptural characters the artist has been working on over the course of many years. This work will be on view alongside Ox and Ox v1-dv2 (apotheosis), the virtual and physical sculptures that represent the “origin story” of Harvey’s online identity. The sculptures embody the artist’s virtual avatar and her working process, which combines clay sculptures, digital 3D modeling, and video game and software development. Harvey’s digital sculptures are the core of the work, and she sees the physical sculptures as an extension of the virtual pieces.

Rachel Rossin’s THE MAW OF, a recent commission for artport that launched in 2022, is a transmedia story that unfolds across multiple platforms and formats and reflects on the alterations our bodies and minds experience with technology. Rossin, a multidisciplinary artist and established pioneer in the field of VR, blends painting, sculpture, new media, gaming, and video to create digital landscapes that focus on entropy, embodiment, and the effects technology has on our psyche. This work investigates the relationship between humans and machines, highlighting technology’s evolution from a tool to an extension of the mind and body.

LINK: Refigured

EVENT: ALTERNATE PRESENCE (FEBRUARY 23 - APRIL 1 2023, LONDON)

Petra Szemán, David Blandy, Alternate Presence

23rd February – 1st April 2023

Seventeen Gallery

270-276 Kingsland Road

London E8 4DG

 

Still from Petra Szemán, Monomyth: gaiden / Master of two worlds, 2020
Single channel video with sound

Master of Two Worlds (2020) is the 4th and final installment of the Monomyth: gaiden tetralogy. Through an analysis of the position of the protagonist after having undertaken a grand journey through animated worlds, the video starts undoing the constraints of the narrative structure of the monomyth and calls for a lateral approach to storytelling. The Monomyth: gaiden project on the whole centers the space between the layers that make up our complex image-worlds, the holes in the digital landscape. By pushing these small gaps into focus, you can take up an ongoing ontological position, and rethink what constitutes a self or a mode of experience, Deborah Levitt puts it succinctly in her book The Animatic Apparatus: questioning ‘where images end and bodies begin, where truth or the real might reside, or on what side of this vestigial division between spectator and screen we find “life”.’

Still from David Blandy, Androids Dream, 2022
Single channel HD video with sound

In Androids Dream (2022), 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.

Commissioned by Petra Szemán for On Animatics for Saturday Morning Animation Club

LINK: Alternate Presence at Seventeen

LINK: Petra Széman

LINK: David Blandy

EVENT: ROCK BOTTOM: ABE SUGARMAN (MARCH 16-APRIL 25 2023, LONDON)

Abe Sugarman, still from Rock Bottom game, 2023. Commissioned by arebyte.

ROCK BOTTOM: ABE SUGARMAN

Curated by Rebecca Edwards

Part of arebyte 2022/23 programme Sci-Fi
Opening Event: Thurday 16 March 2023 6:30-9pm
Exhibition runs until 15 April 2023

arebyte Gallery London
Java House, 7 Botanic Square
London City Island, E14 0LG

press release

arebyte’s new exhibition Rock Bottom, by Abe Sugarman, transforms the gallery into an immersive game experience where the physical and the virtual collide. Set deep inside a cryptic ocean trench, a bottomless abyss that no light can penetrate, visitors embark on a choose-your-own-adenture journey composed of games, video works and sculpture.

The show represents the culmination of arebyte’s annual hotel generation programme, which is designed to mentor the next generation of UK digital artists during the critical early stages of their careers and whose 2022 edition was awarded to Abe Sugarman.

The exhibition explores concepts of queer and jellyfish temporalities, where restarting and rejuvenation become the metaphorical pointers to introduce the narrative of survival.

The installation expands the gameplay into the physical space through life-size characters and theatrical props, encouraging players to become entangled in game worlds both virtual and physical. The gallery is divided into zones dedicated to different areas of investigation within the exhibition: Northern values and patriotism, the transitory Jellyfish life cycle, and reconciliation of the dual fear and temptation of the unknown.

The exhibition explores how ecological disasters can form new bodily relationships with futures and survival. Familiar and otherworldly locations, from the depths of the River Calder Valley to the Jellyfish Fields, reflect a time of instability, with unfolding crises of the environment, gender stereotyping and the silencing of cast-aside voices. Encouraging us to understand worlds we don’t yet know, Rock Bottom verges into science fiction in its imagining of major environmental change and exploration of the meaning of time at the bottom of the ocean.

Our protagonist’s descent into the darkest ocean trench reveals the inherent struggle towards escape when we truly hit rock bottom. When we interact with the characters that we find there, they reveal death drive behaviours and sentiments through strange conversations, actions, and emotes. It becomes apparent that within the struggle and darkness of localised and planetary pain, light and optimism will emerge through the rethinking and recontextualising of spacetime.

The judging panel for the 2022 edition of hotel generation consisted of artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Head of Digital Arts Computing BSc at Goldsmiths Rachel Falconer, cultural producer Yinka Danmole and curator of Digital at the V&A Melanie Lenz. This exhibition concludes arebyte's 2022/23 programme Sci-Fi which looks at fictioning and alternative futures through a series of exhibitions, live performances, online experiences and educational activities.

Rock Bottom is accompanied by a booklet featuring texts by arebyte’s curator Rebecca Edwards, academic Jack Halberstam and artist Abe Sugarman.

A programme of talks, online gameplay events and workshops accompanying the exhibition can be viewed here.

Abe Sugarman is a multimedia artist based in West Yorkshire, who operates as an agent within a game. Abe uses their political proposal ‘Jellyfish temporality’: as a non-linear model of queer time and survival against geological stratification. Abe combines the circular and entwined web of bodies and systems that exist in the bio-membrane, where a diagrammatic tissue of lies and life cycles emerges through reverberation, compulsion, and restarting. In this newly formed ‘Anthrobussy’, the rehearsal assembles. Abe enjoys SpongeBob SquarePants, cuttlefish, and Gordon Riggs Garden Centre. Abe graduated from the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Previous solo and group exhibitions include: Unit 1 Gallery Workshop, London; Ruskin Project Space, Oxford; Five Folds, London.

Abe Sugarman, still from River Calder Roblox game, 2023. Commissioned by arebyte.

Abe Sugarman, still from Rock Bottom game, 2023. Commissioned by arebyte.

Abe Sugarman, still from Jellyfish Fields film, 2023. Commissioned by arebyte.

All images courtesy of arebyte

LINK: Abe Sugarman

LINK: ROCK BOTTOM: ABE SUGARMAN

EVENT: JAKE COURI (FEBRUARY 10 - 23 2023, ONLINE)

A PRECARIOUS NIGHT AT PLUMB POINT

Digital video (2160 × 3840), sound, color, 24’ 04”, 2023, United States

Created by Jake Couri

Sound Design: Kris Force

Environment Artist: Francou Bosch

Voice Artist: Matthew Curtis

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

February 10 - 23 2023

vral.org

 

A Precarious Night at Plumb Point finds our lead character positioned at sea, guided by the innate voyeurism hard coded into the world of gaming. Possessed by an internal dialogue, the viewer is presented with an assemblage-like simulation indicative of first-person exploration games, survival adventures, and cinematic trailers. Structurally based on the tragic fate of the first cruise ship intended for pleasure voyages, the SS Prinzessin Victoria Luise reached its unexpected demise the night of December 16th, 1906, after crash landing at Plumb Point Lighthouse. We follow our lead character aboard a modern-day cruise ship as he traverses through a series of environments led by the result of his perceived reality.

Jake Couri’s practice leverages digital space, employing computer-generated characters, environments, and conditions for the viewer to navigate. The artist examines the relationship between digital and physical reality, leaning on the possibility of making sense of the human condition through CGI avatars, cinematic effects, and theatrical sound composition. After completing a BFA in Fine Arts from Syracuse University, Jake Couri moved to San Francisco, where he received his MFA in Fine Arts with honors at California College of the Arts. His work has been shown at Superposition Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2019), Public Records in Brooklyn, New York (2020), and 4Culture in Seattle, Washington State (2021). He completed an artist residency at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village, Colorado (2019). He currently lives and works in New York City.

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EVENT: CALUM RODGER (JANUARY 20 - FEBRUARY 09 2023, ONLINE)

ROCK, STAR, NORTH

Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 23’ 05”, 2016-2022, Scotland

Created by Calum Rodger

January 20 - February 09 2023

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

In 2016, inspired by Basho, William Wordsworth and Nan Shepherd, Glasgow-based poet Calum Rodger undertook a poetic odyssey inside San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto V’s hyper-real replica of California. In 2017, he chronicled his journey in a 20-minute performance poem titled Rock, Star, North, which premiered at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh in May of that year. In 2021, the poem achieved its final form: a machinipoem, composed entirely of footage from the game, alongside an all-new reading and updated text, which we are now presenting as part of VRAL S03.

Calum Rodger is a Glasgow-based poet working in print, performance and digital forms. He was Scottish National Slam Champion 2019 and holds a Doctorate in Scottish Literature from the University of Glasgow. In the last few years, he has worked extensively at the intersection of poetry and gaming.

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GAME ART: CARSON LYNN'S REVERSAL RING (2022)

Carson Lynn's latest artwork is a short machinima titled Reversal Ring, which is part of his latest multimedia exhibition !Cursed!. The artwork was created using FromSoftware's Dark Souls III, alongside crosire's ReShade and ElFonz0's Skeleton Base Body modifications. The exhibition comprises several digitally-constructed collages and a short machinima film. As Lynn writes, "The images were created through the appropriation and influence of various sources including public domain illustrations, analog photographs of gamescapes, queer zine archives, and memetic typograph." Here's an example

Carson Lynn, !Cursed!, digitally-constructed collage, 2022

LINK: Carson Lynn (all images/videos courtesy of the Artist)