PERFORMANCE SHOTS: MARCO MENDENI (JUNE 30, 2016)
A few shots from r lightTweakSunlight, a NEW performance by MARCO MENDENI THAT took place at IULM on June 30 2016.
Marco Mendeni's performance r_light_Sunlight continues the artist's investigation into the world of simulations that began in 2005 with r lightTweakSunlight01. Specifically designed for GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY, the performance investigates the gray area between abstraction and representation. By manipulating and modifying a game engine, images are created and altered in real-time and by improperly tweaking algorithms affecting the images' appearance, a flux of sounds and visuals are generated. This performance is a meditation on the ongoing shift toward a new simulation regime, a total simulation. The duration of the performance in approximately 30 minutes.
THE ARTIST
Marco Mendeni (b. 1979, Brescia, Italy) explores new realities and situations engendered by technology. Specifically, he uses video games as an expressive medium to investigate the relation between the real and the digital, simulation and dissimulation. Mendeni’s work is informed by such binaries as virtuality vs. materiality, presence vs. absence, tradition vs. innovation. Videogame worlds, in their virtual reality, lose their artificial character as playable simulations to become a space for exploration and experimentation. Mendeni approaches video games as unsubstantial constructions and turns them into material objects. This apparent paradox creates new meanings and situations. Mendeni lives and works in Berlin.
INTERVIEW: LAWRENCE LEK
IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, LAWRENCE LEK DISCUSSES THE POLITICS OF THE ART WORLD, HIS BONUS LEVEL SERIES, AND THE AESTHETICS OF THE UNREAL ENGINE.
Lawrence Lek (b. Frankfurt, 1982) explores the uncanny experience of simulated presence through hardware, software, installation, and performance. His interactive virtual environments have been presented in countries including Australia, Hungary and China and his work has been hosted by the V&A, SPACE, Barbican, Art Licks, the Delfina Foundation, and he is currently a resident artist at The White Building in Hackney Wick. This virtual simulation of the Royal Academy, based on surveyors’ drawings as well as found text from Russian Tatler (translated into Mandarin and subtitled in English), invites the participant to a multilingual conjuring of the building’s potential future as repurposed by high-end estate agents. Lek lives and works in London.
Lawrence Lek's Unreal Estate (The Royal Academy is Yours) (2015) is currently on display in the RECORD level of GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY.
This interview was produced by the students of Master's Degree Program in Arts, Markets and Cultural Heritage at IULM.
GVA: Can you briefly describe your education?
Lawrence Lek: I studied architecture at Cambridge University, the Architectural Association in London, and Cooper Union in New York. I was lucky to have teachers who emphasized the wider theoretical and cultural aspects of the art form, rather than its formal or practical aspects.
GVA: Can you name some influences - not necessarily artistic ones - that played a key role in your evolution as an artist?
Lawrence Lek: Jack London, Francesco Borromini, James Joyce, Final Fantasy (Nintendo Game Boy versions), Andrei Tarkovsky.
GVA: When and why did you begin using video games in your practice?
Lawrence Lek: It's a continuation of working in a site-specific way. In the first few years of my art practice, I had been building (physical) installations that related to the space they were installed within. For these, I usually created digital models to help me fabricate and assemble the installations. Of course in architecture you always make models, but it only serves to communicate the intention of your work or to convince somebody about your idea. I started thinking – what if the model was actually the main work rather than just a working tool? So with video games I could create the entire environment, selecting which aspects of reality I wanted to model, and which ones I could invent.
GVA: Why did you specifically choose a video game to make art? What do you find especially fascinating about this medium? Its interactivity? Agency? Aesthetics? Theatricality?
Lawrence Lek: I am particularly interested in the first-person perspective and how the player/viewer very quickly becomes embodied in the character. Of course in commercial games there are usually goals or objectives even in the most open-world scenarios. But in my work, I like to remove these intentions so that the viewer only experiences a face-to-face encounter with the environment itself. Afterwards, they might become more aware about the differences between their agency in the art work versus the real world.
GVA: Digital games often create parallel, alternative experiences for its users. How do you relate to the complex relation between reality and simulation? How do you address this tension through your work?
Lawrence Lek: The suspension of disbelief happens quickly when you watch a film or play a game or engage in a performance. For example, after only a minute of watching the screen-captured video, you stop being conscious of the fact that it's only coloured polygons on the screen. You're inside the world. In each work, I've already embedded hundreds of symbols and messages through the set design of the level and its sound, lighting and interactivity. But in the end, it's very much up to the viewer or player how they want to perceive the work. Some people might see it as an escapist fantasy, others as an alternate reality that exists between fact and fiction, others as a socio-political commentary. All of them are right.
GVA: Would you agree that machinima has democratized the art making process? Has it lowered the entry barrier for creators of video art, as some critics argue?
Lawrence Lek: By providing a readymade platform for creating digital animations, of course machinima makes it easier to create a certain kind of video art. However the problem with any emerging process in digital art is that the vast majority of artworks lie within a narrow spectrum of expression. When you're learning a new tool or program, you have to rely on default presets. The challenge is to make the democratized tool a personal medium.
GVA: In your artwork Unreal Estate (The Royal Academy is Yours) how and why do you use video game aesthetics?
Lawrence Lek: I wanted to use video game aesthetics to combine fantasy and critique. In Unreal Estate, I was invited to make a new work for an exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. I thought to create something site-specific that also referred to the cultural implications of an elite art institution. In the simplest terms, it would be a fantasy if that was your home. But to be in a position where you could afford to buy the Royal Academy, you would have to be part of a financial elite, capable of buying expensive art but also paranoid about security and getting kidnapped.
GVA: Can you describe your creative process in developing Unreal Estate?
Lawrence Lek: It’s essentially a reconstructed version of the Royal Academy, but modelled as if a Chinese billionaire (or Tony Montana in Scarface) had redecorated it. When constructing the environment, I'm always thinking how it will look cinematically. For example, you have to make an impression at the beginning – in the first wide shot of the courtyard, there's a Lamborghini, Ferrari, and Jeff Koons sculpture. And to end, why not look at your mansion from above, in a helicopter?Also key to the composition is the voiceover by Joni Zhu and soundtrack by Oliver Coates. I actually edited the sound together as a guiding track when I captured the video. The voice was guiding me – I knew I had to be in the gallery, or living room, or basement by a certain time.
GVA: How is Unreal Estate related to the Bonus Levels series?
Lawrence Lek: Unreal Estate is chapter 9 of Bonus Levels, an ongoing series of virtual worlds that create either utopian or dystopian commentaries of reality. Previously, I had worked with public squares, post-industrial areas, and independent project spaces and galleries. So the Royal Academy was the most established institution I had worked with up to that point, and so I wanted to use the opportunity to explore the complex relationships that exist in an institutional context.
GVA: How do you reconcile the fact that a game-based artwork aspiring to be recognized by the Art World is simultaneously criticizing the inner workings of such environment, i.e. the Art World itself?
Lawrence Lek: I see projects like Unreal Estate being more like a mirror than an object. The conventional left-leaning viewpoint is that the established or commercial Art World is a bad thing because of its complicity in elitism. However, looking at the Art World as a subject reveals larger aspects about culture, economics and history. Through the Royal Academy, you can think about wealth, desire, but also fear and oppression. At the same time there's a certain brutal honesty to it: I would love to live at the Royal Academy.
Read more interviews here
lawrencelek
EVENT: MARCO MENDENI'S r_light_Sunlight (JUNE 30, 2016, 5 PM)
TITLE: r lightTweakSunlight01
ARTIST: MARCO MENDENI
DATE & TIME: JUNE 30, 2016 AT 5 PM
LOCATION: SALA DEI 146, OPEN SPACE IULM 6
FREE ENTRY AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
DESCRIPTION
Marco Mendeni's performance r_light_Sunlight continues the artist's investigation into the world of simulations that began in 2005 with r lightTweakSunlight01. Specifically designed for GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY, the performance investigates the gray area between abstraction and representation. By manipulating and modifying a game engine, images are created and altered in real-time and by improperly tweaking algorithms that affect the images' appearance, a flux of sounds and visuals are generated. This performance is a meditation on the ongoing shift toward a new simulation regime, a total simulation. The duration of the performance in approximately 30 minutes.
THE ARTIST
Marco Mendeni (b. 1979, Brescia, Italy) explores new realities and situations engendered by technology. Specifically, he uses video games as an expressive medium to investigate the relation between the real and the digital, simulation and dissimulation. Mendeni’s work is informed by such binaries as virtuality vs. materiality, presence vs. absence, tradition vs. innovation. Videogame worlds, in their virtual reality, lose their artificial character as playable simulations to become a space for exploration and experimentation. Mendeni approaches video games as unsubstantial constructions and turns them into material objects. This apparent paradox creates new meanings and situations. Mendeni lives and works in Berlin.
Marco Mendeni's r_lightTweakSunlight01 is currently on display in the GLITCH level of GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY.
Read an interview with Marco Mendeni
TITOLO: r lightTweakSunlight01
ARTISTA: MARCO MENDENI
DATA & ORA: 30 GIUGNO 2016, ORE 17:00
LUOGO: SALA DEI 146, OPEN SPACE IULM 6
INGRESSO LIBERO E APERTO AL PUBBLICO
DESCRIZIONE
La performance è stata pensata appositamente per il progetto GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY ed esplora e approfondisce partendo dal progetto iniziato nel 2015 con r lightTweakSunlight01, il confine tra astrazione e rappresentazione. L’idea è quella di trasmettere attraverso intrecci invisibili e manipolazioni del motore grafico, immagini composite elaborate/modificate in real-time. Attraverso l’uso improprio di algoritmi che modificano le immagini, i suoni e le sequenze di visioni contemplative generate da un software, il lavoro vuole stimolare lo spettatore ad una riflessione sulla migrazione in atto verso le simulazioni o meglio la simulazione del “tutto”. La durata della performance è di 30 minuti.
L'ARTISTA
Nato a Brescia nel 1979, Marco Mendeni esplora creativamente le realtà generate dalla tecnologia. Nello specifico, Mendeni utilizza i videogiochi come medium espressivo per investigare la relazione tra il reale e il digitale, simulazione e dissimulazione. La sua pratica è incentrata sull'articolazione di coppie binarie come virtualità vs. materialità, presenza vs. assenza, tradizione vs. innovazione. I mondi videoludici - fatti di realtà virtuale - perdono il carattere artificiale di simulazioni giocabili per diventare spazi di sperimentazione. Mendeni trasforma costrutti intangibili e scevri di sostanza - i videogiochi - in oggetti concreti. Questa pratica apparentemente paradossale genera nuovi significati e situazioni. Mendeni vive e lavora a Berlino.
L'opera di Marco Mendeni r_lightTweakSunlight01 è visibile nel livello GLITCH di GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY.
Leggete un'intervista a Marco Mendeni
EVENT: CATALOGUE PRESENTATION (THURSDAY, JUNE 30 2016, 3.30 PM)