ART: HUGO ARCIER'S "FPS" (2016)

FPS is an interactive installation by French Artist Hugo Arcier featuring a soundtrack by Stéphane Rives and Frédéric Nogray also known as The Imaginary Soundscapes.

Arcier created the piece as a response to the November 13, 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.

As he writes:

"The artist deals with blindness hijacking video game codes, in particular of first person shooter game. The only visible elements are pyrotechnic effects, gunshots, muzzles flashes, sparks, impacts, smokes. All these elements reveal a decor and impersonal silhouettes, innocent persons denied by the subjectivity of the character we incarnate. From dark to light, a blindness is replaced by another one. Gunshots after gunshots a memorial is created before our eyes." (Hugo Arcier)

FPS is currently on display at Fantômes numériques (Digital Ghosts), a new exhibition at Lux-Scène Nationale in Valence, France. 

Hugo Arcier, FPS, interactive installation, 2016

Arcier's previous work, 11 Executions (2015), also deals with terrorism, random violence, and trauma. His machinima is currently on display at GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY in the Record level.

Photo by Colleen Flaherty

Hugo Arcier

ANITA FONTAINE INTERVIEW

Anita Fontaine’s radical creations intersect art, fashion, advertising and technology.

Celebrated as an artist, director and creative director, her work straddles virtual dimensions that verge on beauty and experimentation. Her future forward vision and hyper real aesthetic have evolved into a recognized brand, making her a favorite collaborator of Louis Vuitton, Diesel, MAC Cosmetics, Vice and Google. Hailing from Australia, Anita played in goth hop bands creating game art hacks while studying photography, film and video game design. Anita relocated to Canada in 2002 to become an artist in residence at the pioneering Banff New Media Institute, where she created digital art experiments for 3 years inside a magic mountain national park. She now lives and works in Amsterdam.

Fontaine's seminal machinima The Fontaines #2: Daughter and The Fontaines #2: Dad are currently on display in the GLITCH section of GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY. 

The video interview was produced by the students of IULM's Master's Program in Arts, Markets, and Cultural Heritage. Editing and Subtitles by Mariacristina Maffeo. (see more INTERVIEWS here)

Below is another seminal work by Anita Fontaine, CUTEXDoom II (2008) created with Mike Pelletier, a game-modification and installation which hijacks the brutally violent first-person shooter Unreal Tournament 3 to create a luscious and surreal gaming experience. As the artists explain:

"CuteXDoom II continues to explore the themes of obsession and fanatical adherence to ideologies, but is a stand-alone narrative with a new mission. In the explanatory animation that starts the game, Sally Sanrio wakes up from her paroxysm to find herself in a familiar, yet changed, environment. Upon drinking a liquid nearby, she notices that the cute environment she once sought to enter is becoming increasingly strange and distorted. She realises that she has been poisoned. Once sweet characters now appear malevolent, predatory; the landscape becomes surreal and sinister, graphic forms are elegant, and almost cruel. In this altered state of perception she realises that the cult of CuteXDoom was not what she thought it would be, and that she must fight the effects of the poison to find the antidote and escape."

Anita Fontaine and Mike Pelletier, CuteXDoom II, HD video projection, UT game- mod, Stereo, Wallpaper, Customized joypad, prints, plexi-glass sculpture, 2008

anitafontaine

DUELS ON MACHINIMA

Film AND MEDIA magazine DUELS has published a comprehensive article on GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY featuring a conversation between Massimo Rota and Matteo Bittanti ON the past, present, and future of machinima.

You can read the full story (in Italian) by clicking on the image below:

Below, an excerpt:

VALENTINA TANNI ON GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY

Art critic, curator, and INSTRUCTOR Valentina Tanni has written a penetrating REVIEW of GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY. Titled "The dangerous liaisons between video games and video art", the article cogently ilLUMINATES both the conceptual and pragmatic process behind the exhibition. 

Not incidentally, as a curator, Tanni introduced game-based artworks in Italy in the early Zeros. Consider, for instance, the seminal L’oading. Genetically Modified Videogames exhibition, which took place in Syracuse, Sicily, as early as 2003. Tanni is also the cofounder of Exibart and ArtTribune, Italy's most popular art publications. Among her latest projects is a show about .gif art, STOP AND GO.

Click on the image below to read the full review on ArtTribune:

For additional media coverage. click here.

arttribune

valentinatanni

JON RAFMAN ON MACHINIMA

 

Jon Rafman's comments were originally included in "Artist Talk: Jon Rafman", Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 2014. Uploaded on AugUST 14, 2014. URL: http://tinyurl.com/zr7y4qa