ART: LAWRENCE LEK'S "EUROPA MON AMOUR (2016 BREXIT EDITION)

A new - very timely - video from Lawrence Lek whose work Unreal Estate (The Academy of Arts if Yours) is currently on display in the RECORD level of GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY.

INTERVIEW: LES RICHES DOUANIERS

IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, FRENCH ARTISTS GILLES RICHARD AND FABRICE ZOLL ALSO KNOWN AS LES RICHES DOUANIERS DISCUSS THEIR EXPERIMENTAL MACHINIMA.

Les Riches Douaniers are Gilles Richard and Fabrice Zoll, two French artists who began collaborating in 2000. They have been producing machinima, animated films, and shorts since 2005. They participated in numerous festivals, including Athens Digital Arts Festival, Manila Film Festival, Hong Kong New Media Arts Festival, Atopic, ARSGAMES and many more. Their work has been awarded at Machinima Festival in New York in 2008. They also give lectures about their practice with games.

Their 2011 work The Lonely Migrant was featured in the NEW DIRECTIONS program on May 25, 2016. 

This video interview was produced and edited by Les Riches Douaniers. French and English captions are available (please click on the "CC" button to activate them).

Below is a video overview of their works, courtesy of Espace Multimedia Gantner.

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Les Riches Duaniers

INTERVIEW: BADEN PAILTHORPE

In this exclusive interview, Australian artist Baden Pailthorpe discusses his fascination for digital games, military simulations, and the hidden forces that shape our cultures and politics.

Baden Pailthorpe (b. 1984, Canberra, Australia) is a contemporary artist. Situated predominantly within the field of new media, Pailthorpe’s work increasingly exposes the growing reach and the subtle operations of contemporary militarism, institutions and power. He has participated in over sixty solo and group exhibitions, including the Centre Pompidou, Paris, NIMk, Amsterdam, la Gaîté Lyrique, Paris, the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, ARTSPACE, Sydney, the UQ Art Museum, Brisbane and the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. In 2013, Pailthorpe was the inaugural Australia Council artist in residence at the Australian War Memorial. He received a Ph.D in New Media Aesthetics from UNSW, Sydney, holds an MFA in New Media from l’Université Paris VIII; an MA from the College of Fine Arts, UNSW and a BA from the University of Sydney. His work is held in numerous private and public collections. He lives and works in Sydney, Australia.

Baden Pailthorpe's installation Cadence (2013) is on display in the GLITCH 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?

Baden Pailthorpe: I started studying languages and culture before moving into art and new media at post graduate level. I didn't set out to be an artist at all; it slowly happened over time.

GVA: Can you name some influences - not necessarily artistic ones - that played a key role in your evolution as an artist?

Baden Pailthorpe: I've always looked up to artists like John Gerrard, Hito Steyerl, Trevor Paglen, AES+F, Omer Fast, to name just a few, since their practices each have a rigorous research component but also excellent execution. Apart from that, my most direct influences are those closest to me, my wife and my close friends, curators and writers, my academic colleagues and mentors. And finally, my exposure to mainstream western culture and media, cinema, video games, music videos etc, has been very influential.

GVA: When and why did you begin using video games in your practice?

Baden Pailthorpe: I began using video games in my practice because they were around me at the time. I was interested in them from an artistic point of view but it was also a question of what resources I had access to. When I was studying for a Masters in Photography, I was struck by the common thread between photographic theories and the photorealism that some video games aspire to. So it felt natural to apply these theories to video games and to use the game environment as a space for creation.

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?

Baden Pailthorpe: I was mostly drawn to the very loaded politics of military games, especially first-person shooters. I spent many hours playing these games as a teenager, but as a student at University I began to understand the mechanics of the game in more complex terms. By treating the game as a sort of ready-made, in the Duchampian sense, a whole world of possibilities was opened up to critique the political and cultural assumptions that are bound up within the very carefully constructed world of video games.

Baden Pailthorpe 'MQ-9 Reaper II (That Others May Die)', 2014 High Definition, two-channel 3D animation (3840 x 1080), colour, stereo, 6 mins. ED. 4 + 1AP Sound engineer: Jack Prest

On Return and What Remains, Artspace Sydney. 21 August - 12 October 2014 Curated by Mark Feary 

GVA: The creative opportunities afforded by machinima are greatly constrained by existing copyright law, which prohibits many possible uses, including commercial purposes. What’s your take on the paradoxical nature of this artform?

Baden Pailthorpe: Machinima is an interesting practice since many game studios now actively encourage this practice for marketing purposes. So it is paradoxical indeed, but it now seems like games studios have identified the commercial benefits of using free labor from their users. I have not made any work in video games since 2013 now, but it still seems to be a rapidly evolving area that existing law struggles to keep up with.

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?

Baden Pailthorpe: I think video has been democratized for some time, and photography for even longer. And this idea has been around since Walter Benjamin, of course. But the barriers to art making are probably more complex than access the tools themselves. More broadly, the production of 'content' is now the dominant practice. Art still seems to be able to demarcate a special space for video art/machinima etc but the complex barriers within the art world remain.

Baden Pailthorpe, Formation V, 2011, HD video, colour, sound 20 mins 39 sec. Ed. 1 + 1 AP.

GVA: Can you describe your creative process? What kind of video games did you use to create the Cadence series? What is the relationship between Cadence and its predecessor, Formation?

Baden Pailthorpe: Cadence was made by using a military simulator which has a very flexible editor. So it is more like a piece of production software than a video game. I like using tools in ways that were not intended, to push things to their limits so that new possibilities are revealed. The patterns in Cadence exist in the game but they are invisible unless organised in a specific way. By intervening in the logic of the game and reorganizing its usual operations, magical hidden elements can be revealed. This links back to the artists I mentioned earlier, they all make visible the invisible in some way. They reveal otherwise hidden or obscured relationships that give us a deeper insight into the forces that shape our cultures and politics.

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INTERVIEW: ANGELA WASHKO

In this exclusive interview, American artist Angela Washko discusses her practice with video games. 

Angela Washko (b. 1986) is a New York-based new media artist and facilitator whose work mobilizes communities and creates new forums for discussions of feminism where they do not exist. Washko has been creating performances inside the online video game World of Warcraft since 2012 in which she initiates discussions about feminism within the gameplay. She is the founder of the Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft whose goal is to raise awareness and protest the sexist language from players in the game. In 2014, she wrote an essay about her findings in World of Warcraft, commissioned by Creative Time. She lives and works in Pittsburgh & New York City.

Angela Washko's three-channel installation Free Will Mode 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?

Angela Washko: I attended Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia for my undergraduate degree. I received a BFA in Painting, Drawing & Sculpture. I also studied abroad at Temple University’s Rome Campus, focusing on art history and painting. I did my MFA at University of California, San Diego in a very interdisciplinary Visual Arts program. After graduating from UCSD, I taught at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany for a summer and am now a Visiting Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

GVA: Can you name some influences - not necessarily artistic ones - that played a key role in your evolution as an artist?

Angela Washko: Writers like Chris Kraus, Elfriede Jelinek, Alice Walker, and Kathleen Blee have been very influential to me in thinking about the ways in which women’s experiences of the world are distinctly different from men… In terms of artists, I’ve been influenced by conceptual and performance artists like Sophie Calle, Coco Fusco, Dynasty Handbag/Jibz Cameron, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, Kalup Linzy, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Michael Smith, Martha Rosler, Kristoffer Ørum & Anders Bojen. And then there are tactical media artists like The Yes Men, The Institute for Applied Autonomy, Electronic Disturbance Theater, Paper Tiger TV, Critical Art Ensemble. Additionally, I would like to mention architect/activists like Teddy Cruz and Laura Kurgan. So even though I am working with video games – I am coming from more of a performance, critical media theory and interventionist perspective than a game art or game criticism perspective perhaps.

Angela Washko, Heroines with Baggage, 2012,

"Heroines with Baggage is a video essay using footage taken directly from the snes Final Fantasy 3 (US)/6 (Japan). The video deconstructs the game by displaying the trajectories of 2 of the only 3 playable female characters..in a game with 14 playable characters. The sheer lack of female representation in the game is less surprising (far fewer females reportedly played video games in 1994 than today) than the way they are represented. Both characters mention their desires to experience love nearly every time they speak (unlike male characters that do not need to mention it at all), and are introduced with "fallen woman" baggage. Despite their strengths and the plot focus around them, the two characters always remain projections of archetypal powerful-yet-victimized women." (Angela Washko)

GVA: When and why did you begin using video games in your practice?

Angela Washko: In 2010, I started making videos from role playing games from my childhood. At first I just wanted to re-play them because they’d had such a big impact on my development. I wasn’t nearly as interested in movies and television – I mostly absorbed books and video games. So when I started replaying these games. I quickly realized how much I had been affected by the ways in which women were portrayed. Women in these games were often running scared, killed romantically for the sake of the emotional engagement of the assumed male player, emotionally damaged, weak, and often operating in support/healing classes or roles. I wanted to highlight that in my first game-based projects Heroines with Baggage and Her Longing Eyes.

Angela Washko, Her Longing Eyes, 2011- 2012

"Video As I revisit role playing games that were highly influential to me during my childhood, clear patterns emerge which make their impact on my understanding of romantic partnerships obvious. Her Longing Eyes is a study of a necessary requirement for female protagonists in Final Fantasy 6, Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 8, Valkyrie Profile, and Final Fantasy 10 (games that I love/loved). These characters are displayed looking directly at male characters with the most ridiculous glazed over eyes, or they are displayed this way in a context in which they are meant to be thinking about/missing a male character. Male characters are portrayed as heroic, safely holding female characters or looking over them. Her Longing Eyes is an extension of my research project Heroines with Baggage- an ongoing project devoted to the study of the proliferation of gender-based stereotypes throughout the video games that I grew up playing and how the presence of these stereotypes has impacted my growth- especially in my expectations of love, tragedy, and the roles I take on in my adult relationships." (Angela Washko)

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?

Angela Washko: I don’t use games for their aesthetics, although their strong aesthetics produce nostalgia in a lot of the viewers that look at the work – which is for me just a byproduct of working often with existing games made from 1993-2005. I am most interested in the cultural impact of games. In most of the works I make I am either looking at what stories games tell and how they coexist with other types of cultural storytelling (cinema, art, fiction etc.) and how those stories impact the development and thinking of those playing through them. In my project  The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, I focus on the community aspect of World of Warcraft. The emergence and popularity of massively multiplayer role playing games has created unique digital public gathering spaces, and I am interested in the informal behaviors, languages, social codes and other practices produced by the community participating in this space and how it has evolved over the ten+ years World of Warcraft has existed and thrived.

Performance by Angela Washko (The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft) tjat took place on December 8, 2012 at Gowanus Studio Space. 

"I engage players in discussions about feminism instead of going on quests, getting better equipment, or fighting goblins." (Angela Washko)

Video documentation by Alex Young. Screen captures by Angela Washko.

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?

Angela Washko: I think of the community-oriented digital spaces I’m studying and participating in as extensions of lived experience at this point. I don’t think of them as “not real” as I think many may have discounted them in that way at first. At this point with ubiquitous computing and the pervasiveness of our digital lives coexisting with our physical ones beyond having to be stationary at a computer. I don’t see a tension so much anymore as a complete hazy white noise immersion in the digital world at all times. At least if you are a middle class western consumer who isn’t “opting out”?

6. The creative opportunities afforded by machinima are greatly constrained by existing copyright law, which prohibits many possible uses, including commercial purposes. What’s your take on the paradoxical nature of this artform?

Angela Washko: My work facilitating discussions about participation, inclusivity, and communal language formation as The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft operates in opposition to rules of use stated by the End User License Agreement (EULA). But I think the work is important and I have been doing it for four years and haven’t been banned yet. I think copyright that protects people from having their works explicitly ripped off  by others is important. However, copyright that prohibits artists from making work that is a commentary or reaction to mainstream cultural products is a blatant stretch/abuse of what copyright is supposed to protect. Once something because a part of public mainstream consciousness – it should be open to be responded to through artistic practices.

Angela Washko, Disposable Muses (Or: Your Turn Now, Fuckers), 2014 (part of Free Will Mode)

"Free Will Mode is a series of videos in which the artist uses The Sims to place human Artificial Intelligence into architectural situations which test the constraints of their ability to rethink the environments they've been placed in. Despite the absurdity of these built architectural anomalies, they expose a greater cultural phenomenon within people- the extent to which we accept the hand we've been dealt (architecturally, politically, socially, economically). When operating in free will mode, the AI in this strategic life simulation game eat when hungry, piss when necessary, sleep when tired, socialize when bored.....but they never alter the environment they've inherited, even if it kills them." (Angela Washko)

GVA: In your artwork Free Will Mode how and why do you use this particular video game?

Angela Washko: Free Will Mode was made using The Sims. In this project, I decided to put human Artificial Intelligence into architectural situations which test the constraints of their ability to rethink the environments they've been placed in. Despite the absurdity of these built architectural anomalies, they expose a greater cultural phenomenon within people- the extent to which we accept the hand we've been dealt (architecturally, politically, socially, economically). When operating in free will mode, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) in this strategic life simulation game eat when hungry, piss when necessary, sleep when tired, socialize when bored, but they never alter the environment they've inherited, even if it kills them. I was especially interested in how mundane the first The Sims game is. It became the most popular game of its time, yet the game offers players the opportunity to build houses, buy furniture for those houses, fill them with people, force the people to get jobs so they can have bigger houses and better furniture. I mean the game is fundamentally a boring parallel to the options for lives that Americans are supposed to pursue. On paper I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to play this American Dream propaganda tool. But I think it is satisfying to play and control other people, it gives you the sense of possibility for structure in your own life somehow maybe?  Anyway, I wanted to subvert this process by putting the human AI into situations that were specifically not what the game wanted you to build for them. And it looks a bit like torture, but it does expose the game’s lack of alternative thinking.

GVA: How does art, and particularly your in-game performances and video installations, take part in your feminist commitment?

Angela Washko: In all of my art and game-based work, I am committed to questioning the structures that we have explicitly accepted as “good”, “normal” and “natural” for often archaic reasons. My project The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft is dedicated to creating safe spaces inside World of Warcraft for discussing the ways in which women, LGBTQA-identifying individuals (LGBTQA stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, and Asexual or Ally individuals, Ed.), and racial minorities are treated within that context. As a feminist artist, creating spaces for resistance, visibility and discussion is what I’m trying to do. More and more often that means not worrying so much about what happens in art spaces but what happens everywhere else. And if that work ends up in an art space, that’s fine, but it’s less of my focus right now.

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INTERVIEW: KENT LAMBERT

In this exclusive interview, American artist Kent Lambert discusses his fascination for THE ICONOGRAPHY OF video gamES and representationS of masculinity in popular culture.

Kent Lambert (b. 1976, Colorado Springs, Colorado) is a Chicago-based musician and media artist. He worked from 2001 to 2004 as the Video Data Bank’s Distribution Assistant and is currently a technological expert at the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago. His creative output primarily consists of vocal driven art-pop music and pop-inflected video art made from repurposed industrial and commercial media. His ever-mutating art-pop band Roommate has been performing stateside and abroad for over a decade.

Lambert's  RECKONING 3 is currently on display in the ASSEMBLAGE level of GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY.

Below is Kent Lambert's Hymn of Reckoning (2006):

The video interview was produced by the students of IULM's Master's Program in Arts, Markets, and Cultural Heritage. Editing and Subtitles: Mariacristina Maffeo

Watch ROOMMATE's video Secret Claw, a companion piece to RECKNONING 3.

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