EVENT: TRAVELOGUE (SEPT 7 - 11 2016, MANTUA, ITALY)

We are delighted to announce an upcoming art exhibition in Mantua, Italy:

TRAVELOGUE

Curated by Matteo Bittanti

September 7- 11 2016

Cantine di Vincenzo I Gonzaga

Piazzetta Santa Barbara, 46100 Mantua MN

Open every day from 8.15  AM until 19.15 p.m.

Admission: 3 euros

An official event of Festivaletteratura 2016

Official website: travelogue.space

Trailer

Mantua, August 14 2016 - TRAVELOGUE is a survey of audiovisual artworks made with or inspired by video games. Using machinima and interactive installations, fifteen artists examine the virtual automobile as medium, message, technological commodity, status symbol, interface, and prosthetics. Created through a process of appropriation and remix, these works lie at the intersection of fiction and documentation, performance and simulation, video art and experimental cinema.

TRAVELOGUE takes the viewer for a ride through landscapes that are simultaneously familiar and uncanny, featuring dematerialized vehicles in autopilot mode; glitches, ghosts and algorithms; weapons of mass distraction and feedback loops; sudden acceleration, absolute speed, and endless stasis. Until the inevitable crash.

The exhibition is staged in the Cellars of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, a part of the Gonzaga Palace. Featuring an impressive structure with exposed brick walls and beamed vaulted and barrel ceilings, the space features several rooms covering an area of about eight hundred square meters located in a XV Century building.

FEATURED ARTISTS

Max Almy & Teri Yarbrow

Dave Ball

Bob Bicknell-Knight

Clint Enns

COLL.EO

Matthew Hillock

Kristin Lucas

Victor Morales

Leonardo Sang

Palle Torsson

Jean-Baptiste Wejman

+ Surprise artist

COLLATERAL EVENTS

CRASH: GAME AESTHETICS AND CONTEMPORARY ART

Isabelle Arvers e Valentina Tanni in conversation. + SURPRISE SCREENING

Sunday September 11 at 11:30 AM

Cantine di Vincenzo, Piazza Santa Barbara, 46100, Mantua Italy

Admission: 6 euros

What is the difference between video games and game videos? What are the affinities and divergences between video games and video art? What role do electronic simulations play within the current visualscape? Isabelle Arvers and Valentina Tanni discuss the influence of game aesthetics on contemporary art. The conversation is moderated by Matteo Bittanti.

END GAME

Dear all,

On August 1, 2016, GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY has been taken down and IULM's Contemporary Exhibition Hall has returned to its original condition.

We are now working on new projects and events, including the upcoming MILANO GAME FESTIVAL (IULM Milan, Italy, September 8-12, 2016) and TRAVELOGUE (Mantua, Italy, September 7 -11, 2016) which will focus on independent game design and contemporary art respectively. 

This website will remain online for at least 12 months. We hope that scholars, critics, artists, and curators will find it useful for research purposes alongside the recently published catalogue. 

On behalf of IULM University and La Triennale di Milano I would like to thank you all for these 3+ amazing months. 

Ciao,

Matteo Bittanti

NEWS: GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY CATALOGUE NOW AVAILABLE

GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY, THE OFFICIAL CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION, IS PUBLISHED BY SILVANA EDITORIALE. TEXT IN ENGLISH AND ITALIAN.  FULLY ILLUSTRATED. 112 PAGES.

Featuring critical contributions by: Claudio De Albertis, Mario Negri, Vincenzo Trione, Vanni Codeluppi, Stefano Bartezzaghi, Anna Luigia De Simone, Isabelle Arvers, Henry Lowood, and Matteo Bittanti. It also includes visual and critical information about all the artists featured in the show.

Game Video/Art. A Survey brings together recent works by more than thirty international artists who use video games as raw material. Also known as machinima, these videos explore themes related to simulation and representation, replay and re-enactment, architecture and urbanism, sex and race, politics and ideology through the lenses of digital gaming.

GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY can be purchased online on Amazon or IBS.

EVENT: MILANO GAME FESTIVAL

Curated by Pietro Righi Riva - 1/2 of indie studio Santa Ragione and Program Coordinator of new Master GAME/PLAY, the first edition of the Milano Game Festival will take place at IULM University in Milan, Italy every night from the 8th to the 12th of September 2016.

"Five evenings of play that will take place along the lines of a film festival, including the participations of international guests and premieres – the Milan Game Festival is dedicated to the curious, to film and media art fans, and to those looking for an intelligent and original entertainment experience.  The Milan Game Festival offers an entirely new format for enjoying videos games: a real play hall with many seats, similar to a movie theater, in which to dedicate the right amount of time to enjoying immersive interactive experience. All participants play the same game at the same time, and will share a common experience to discuss and remember.  Part of the XXI Triennale, Milano Game Festival exemplifies "Design After Design" in digital art and in interactive storytelling. The festival is a celebration of a new kind of authorial design – cultured and radically independent – in one of the most technology ­driven industries: video games."

Featuring ABZÛ, Gorogoa, Possum Springs, Future Unfolding, and The Town of Light.

Additionally, every night, before playing the game from the main selection, participants will be able to try a selection of experimental games produced by internationally renowned authors.

LINK: MILANO GAME FESTIVAL (official website)

VIDEO: MARCO DE MUTIIS: VIDEO GAMES & PHOTOGRAPHY: A BRIEF HISTORY

FULL VIDEO OF MARCO DE MUTIIS LECTURE ON MAY 27 2016 NOW AVAILABLE

DESCRIPTION: Photo and camera modes have started to appear in more and more video games, allowing players to capture an instant of the game world. Often mimicking some aspect of the camera interface and the act of photographing, games have been attempting to simulate photography, sometimes incorporating it into the mechanics of gameplay. So quite often we find ourselves in front of a screen, looking through a virtual viewfinder, interacting with simulated aperture settings and controlling the amount of depth of field of our in-game image. Playing games we also encounter fictional clients and digital photography teachers rating our safari pictures, telling us how to frame an image, to get closer, or giving us a disappointing C+ because our subject is not facing the camera. In short: there seem to be all sorts of strange simulations, remediations, and mutations of photography appearing within games, questioning what it means to photograph and to play and how the two are interconnected. “VIDEO GAMES AND PHOTOGRAPHY: A BRIEF HISTORY” is an attempt to illustrate the complex relationship and diverse interplay between photography and video games.

THE SPEAKER Marco De Mutiis is an artist and curator with a focus on language, perception and communication. His works deal with the human necessity of expression through the act of coding and decoding system of signs, and the urgency to translate thoughts and feelings into symbols. Exploring that balancing act between an irrational and subconscious need to communicate and the impossibility of pure unmediated expression, he often attempts to unravel the polarisation between signal and noise, sign and meaning. His works have been shown in festivals and museums internationally. As a curator his research lies in the exploration of new forms of photographic practices beyond the camera, mutations and remediations of photography, and new approaches to the way images are created and distributed. Currently, Marco works as digital curator for Fotomuseum Winterthur and research associate at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Switzerland). De Mutiis lives in Zurich, Switzerland.

marcodemutiis