INTERVIEW: CHRIS HOWLETT

IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, AUSTRALIAN ARTIST CHRIS HOWLETT DESCRIBES HIS FASCINATION FOR SLAVOJ ZIZEK, SIMCITY AS A SIMULATOR OF SOCIAL CONTROL, AND HIS EARLY YEARS IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA.

Chris Howlett (b. 1974, Kokopo, Papua, New Guinea) graduated with a MFA from the Californian Institute of the Arts in 2000. His works have been exhibited internationally in festivals including GAMERZ in Marseille, 16 France, Inter-Society of Electronic Arts in Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm, Videoholica International Video Art Festival in Bulgari, Los Angeles Freewaves Festival of Film, Video and New Media and exhibited work at the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California. His solo and collaborative works have also been exhibited locally at the Gallery of Modern Art, Institute of Modern Art, the QUT Art Museum, The Arc Biennial for Art & Design and interstate at the Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Hobart Art Gallery, Cairns Contemporary Art Space and Blindside Artist Run Space in Melbourne. His public art commissions include “KICK OFF” which was a curated screen-based program at the new Metricon Stadium Homeground of the Gold Coast Suns and Australia’s largest public art canvas the QUT billboard project. In 2012, he was part of the DJ Culture: Contemporary Australian Video Art, screening in the Cinémathèque at Gallery of Modern Art and in 2013 underwent a residency in Armenia at Tumo – center for creative technologies where he completed a series of Alternate Reality Games called ARGARMENIA. He currently lives and works in Brisbane, Queensland.

Chris Howlett's Metropolis I-III is currently on display in the ASSEMBLAGE 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?

My university education began in the early nineties in the Applied Sciences in Australia at QUT (Queensland University of Technology) in Brisbane, but I quickly realized that the educational structure of the sciences was not suited to my personality or my desire to think creatively. I deliberately failed all of my exams in the first semester and was essentially kicked out of university to reassess what my future would be. The following year in 1992, I reapplied to QUT to undergo a Bachelor of Visual Arts and never looked back.

After completing my Honours year in 1996 I took off a year and went travelling throughout Europe. While I was overseas, I learnt that I was awarded a Samstag scholarship to undergo an Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) at The California Institute for the Arts (CalArts) from 1998 – 2000. When I completed my time at CalArts I wanted to take at least ten years outside of any educational institution to work on my art practice. Now I have come full circle by returning to begin a PhD (Doctor in Philosophy) back at QUT where I initially began my art degree.

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

Many of my direct and immediate influences come from the contemporary art world, but there are many different writers who come from diverse fields such as cultural theory, art history, art criticism and curatorial practice who I would all conflate with my understanding of artistic influence, since they are read and experienced in conjunction with my artistic decision making. But if I have to choose a non-artistic influence it would come from a deeply personal and experiential space.

Some of my formative years of growing up were in Papua New Guinea on an island called Kavieng. Here my family literally lived next to the beach and a coral reef which was on the grounds of a local high school where my father was the Headmaster.

Growing up in this idyllic environment and non-european culture as a nine year old allowed me to experience and generate many different forms of self-ascribed knowledge. Some of these include what it meant to explore, to play, to be alone, to discover, to understand what a sense of freedom could look and feel like in nature, the dangers that also come along with it and to understand that how you think, look and behave can have an influence on those around you, who behave and understand the world quite differently from your own perception of it.  

One of the dominant, and often romantic clichés that is used to describe artists is that they are “outsiders”. Although I don’t agree with this entirely, there is always an element of truth that is embedded in the cliché. As an artist, those early formative years abroad helped me to look objectively at my surroundings, to value play and openness, to be curious and to question what my purpose was in being there. I still think today that these processes influence my artistic decision making and the subject-matter I research.

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

After completing my MFA in 2000 a number of my friends from CalArts began a project space called C-level in downtown Chinatown which was a co-operative lab that shared technology and resources. It also developed and ran projects which had a bent towards new media, that could take the form of performances, screenings, lectures, debates or even tournaments and video games was just one of the mediums they collaboratively employed.

Although I was not directly involved in the space when it was initially set up, apart from cleaning out the space in the beginning, being around those involved, living with some of them and participating in their events had an impact on my thinking around material choice and medium.   

I began using video games in my practice in the early noughties (2000s) after I returned to Australia from Los Angeles. Later on, video games just became another material to use and in the noughties it seemed that the prices of games and personal computers in Australia became cheaper to purchase. By this stage my technical expertise had developed to such an extent that I could actually use software and modding tools to create screen works from digital games.

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?

For me, I think it always comes back to the agency attributed to attaching alternate histories and personal narratives over the top of the prescribed structure of the game narrative and physics. I’m also drawn to online communities that form around specific games and the modding tools that arise out of the forums and discussion boards, and how interstitial spaces open up where players develop software programs to mod(ify) aspects of the game physics or game play. This in turn is distributed freely to other players who publically suggest further modifications to the original code which gradually gets updated and evolves into something new and unexpected. This is a very interesting form of collaboration where user generated software and expertise start to direct and take control of the desires of the gamers in order to force unforeseen environmental outcomes for the actual game.

It’s a complicated situation because game developers and corporations also know that this is to be expected from particular online communities who form around certain games. This comes back to then thinking about the perceived subversiveness reserved for processes behind the production of machinima and the choices artists make in the final production of the work.

Chris Howlett, Human Vs. Human 2009, 1-channel, SD, PAL, Stereo. Edition of 5 + 2AP, Duration: 20:15mins

"Human Vs Human is a Machinima film which uses various autobiographical war veteran stories from online social networking sites, live recorded 3D game play from first person shooter games and and remixed pop songs from all male pop groups to create alternative narratives which subvert and intensify their original meaning. The video work inserts the real life personal narratives of soldiers into a virtual gaming world cut with pop music, in-game narratives and atmospheric sound tracks to create a disturbing, conflated look at the reality of warfare, its simulated double and the psychology of masculine violence and seduction." (Chris Howlett)

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?

It’s hard to describe this in such a short passage of text since there are so many facets to the answer, but if I could focus on one idea it would be a partial quote by Žižek from his book called The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema where, I think, he is talking about Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds and he says, “...when our space within the symbolic order is disturbed our reality disintegrates”. The cross overs in how we understand our relationship to reality and its bed partner, simulation, have the potential to behave in a similar way.

I often think about this when I revisit my experiences playing the game called Heavy Rain where you alternate between different game characters of different age, class, gender and subjectivities to solve a crime in order to save a kidnapped boy from certain doom. Throughout the game as you search and make narrative choices based on your own moral and ethical positions the boy is gradually drowned in a stormwater drain by the rain as its falls heavier and heavier across the city.

One of the disturbing scenes that you get caught up in as a player is a simulated home invasion involving one of the female game characters when your are in her role. Her name is Madison Paige who suffers from insomnia. During one of the scenes that is staged in her apartment, you help her shower in her bathroom by pushing the controller buttons to dry herself off with her towel in a very intimate and revealing way (yet another form of home invasion). She walks to her bed and is about to fall asleep in her underwear and tank top when suddenly, she hears a sound from the kitchen. The fridge door is ajar; she closes it and someone is hiding behind her in the apartment.

The intruder is a masked man in black wearing a balaclava who proceeds to attack her, choke her, tackle her to the ground, tries to knife her, as both she and you struggles with the man and his knife a second masked man appears from nowhere and the panic starts to set in – you’re not going to survive this. This simulated rape/abduction/murder scene took me totally by surprise. All of the object pronouns such as me, you, I, her, or us that generally have a clear and defined meaning became unimportant in those moments of traumatic struggle in fighting for one’s life, both ingame and out.

It was an incredibly disturbing scene with a sophisticated pre-setup by the game developers who manipulated the players own voyeuristic impulses beforehand, firstly by interactively representing the intimate relationship that can be shared between a player and their avatar, whom they have a degree of agency over and secondly, using their own sense of shared vulnerability and identification with the character. It was a great lesson in reminding us that virtual or filmic space is not a simple mirror reflecting information about ourselves back to us but an extension of that same reality.

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?

As an artist I don’t worry too much about this issue of copyright, I mean I still think about some of Duchamp’s assisted ready-mades of 1919, a work called L.H.O.O.Q. where he took a reproduction of the Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and drew a moustache and beard on her in pencil. Machinima is just doing the same thing. It’s now in a contemporary digital setting; nothing has dramatically changed in terms of the procedure, except in the dramatic increases in power and influence that corporations can wield over private and public space – they’ve just got stronger as we’ve grown weaker.

Chris Howlett, Michael Jackson 4 ways: Part I-IV 2009, 1-channel, HD, PAL, Stereo. Ed. of 5 + 2AP, Duration: 32:28mins

"Michael Jackson 4 Ways: Part I-IV is a machinima film designed to activate an immersive space from which to critically and creatively consider how reality and simulated environments both construct and reconfigure our ideas about the nature of subjectivity and identity. The video work explores these new phenomenons through Sims 3, which is a strategic life simulation video game where players construct and control their Sims in various social activities and form relationships in a manner similar to real life. Sims 3 does not have a defined final goal and its gameplay is open-ended. Michael Jackson was a person who cut across international racial and gender divisions with his music and lyrics, but whose personal life created intense contradictions between his private life and his role as a musician. As the copies of the Michael Jackson Sims play out their animated roles in Paris Hilton's house, the accompanying audio tracks expose the political and moral debates surrounding accusations of paedophilia. "Michael Jackson 4 Ways: Part I-IV" questions the slippery position the viewer inhabits, to make informed, truth based decisions over these personal and moral online statements. Where does one locate one's moral and ethical decisions based on the artists aesthetics?" (Chris Howlett)

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?

I would not agree with the idea that machinima has democratised the processes of art making, because the question already assumes that all machinima is art. The problem is that not all machinima is video art because most of the producers of it are not concerned with contextualising it as video art or even care about the history of art which has everything to do with whether or not it's art or not, just like music videos are not video art because they belong to a sub-genre of music. Adding to the problem is that there are also curators, gallery dealers, collectors and artists who don’t consider machinima as video art even if you’ve invested your whole life in framing your practice in terms of contemporary art. I think I would describe its processes quite closely to how Rancière characterises politics and aesthetics as forms of dissensus. It forms a dissensual relationship to the processes of art creation and the institutionalisation of those processes which lead to one naming it as art. This is probably what continually makes it interesting and dynamic for me because it can cut across different hierarchies and sub-cultures, move between discourses and genres (both low and high) which seem incompatible, and yet it can also disrupt and re-orientate perceptual space because of the alternative narratives generated out of a highly controlled and corporatised space. I just feel that there is no consensual agreement as to the framing of it as a particular genre, therefore you can’t bring an idea like democracy into the mix.

Chris Howlett, Bushstalkers, 2012

"Bushstalkers" was a Two Player Interactive Game Mod which used the UT3 game engine to create a giant fantasy forest where two players could explore aimlessly without the capability to shoot their guns. Their only guide was a series of coloured spotlights which pooled up as the players walked into their vicinity, each triggering a personal story from war veterans returning from Iraq. Their stories contained personal, ideological, moral and ethical narratives which complicated the viewers conception of empiracle truth based observations set against the backdrop of a corporate, media driven landscape, and the way we inhabit a particular set of subjective positions. All of the stories were sourced and recorded from online social networks, blogs, websites and news channels. For more information please got to >> http://www.chrishowlett.com.au/flashbacks-metroarts/" (Chris Howlett)

GVA: How do video game aesthetics affect the overall impact of your work? What comes first, the concept or the medium?

Generally, there is no consistent methodology to how certain bodies of work come together. Sometimes the actual software package, modding tool or specific process such as learning how to use AI blueprints to create crowds in Unreal Engine inspire me to think of dance or even musicals; how I might be able to use a large number of individual dancers in a crowd to combine with a series of quasi-politico-abstract video projections on gallery walls, and so on, and so on. In tandem with this is my sculptural practice which relies heavily on traditional studio methods of art production that responds directly to online space in how it can possibly take shape in real, physical space that also has a relationship to minimalist, classical or baroque sculpture. I just lose track now. I used to think that the concept would always drive the medium, but now its just feels like when you’re looking at spaghetti in a bowl and you can’t see where it begins or starts, it’s very similar to how AFL (Australia Football League) is played on screen.

GVA: Why did you choose SimCity Societies to create the Metropolis trilogy?

Simcity Societies was a social engineering and city-building simulation game which attracted me because I could see how easily I could use its immersive soundtracks, game physics and models to talk about a number of ideas I was thinking about at the time around how ideology and propaganda inhabits the body, why we take on particular belief systems and how does architectural space influence our psychological decision making which can have unforeseen and disastrous consequences for those around us. It also had quite a ridiculous process whereby once you placed a building onto the terrain the Simoleons would automatically scurry out of their dwellings and just start walking off into the infinite sunset, so you had to work out your fenced territory before you started to place your buildings. The whole process just ended up being an exercise in how to create a gated community regardless of the societal values that the game developers came up with such as productivity, prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority, and knowledge. The simulations in these types of games just give me great pleasure in thinking about the artificial in society, what’s real and what’s a fiction and where do we assign true value.

GVA: Is Metropolis a critique of the now-pervasive notion of smart city and of Silicon Valley’s obsession for finding technological solutions to urban and social issues?

I was not thinking of the architecture in the societies I built as representing an actual city or even a dumb city, if you can call them that, I was just trying to create an abstraction, like a modernist abstract painting which uses repetition, reduction and the grid as its guiding motif. This was a strategy to make the viewer think of their underlying structures as signs which ultimately break down (e.g. the experience of walking down the road from the Forum to the Colosseum in Rome) or those which doggedly persist into the future in their current state; to think of them as a metaphorical space or psychological zone where ideas about exclusion, alienation, conformity and entropy would trigger critical modes of thinking. In Australia I would not characterise us as being obsessed with technological solutions. It’s actually the reverse. We don’t need to be because we have unlimited resources and a small population; we can dig big holes, burn raw material, cut down trees and pollute the atmosphere which is then sold off to China which in turn repeats the game. We are in a state of de-evolution.

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INTERVIEW: MARTA AZPARREN

IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, SPANISH ARTIST OSCAR MARTA AZPARREN DISCUSSES THE PARADOXICAL NATURE OF COPYRIGHT LAW, HER PASSION FOR EDUARDO CHILLIDA, AND THE AESTHETICS OF MACHINIMA.

A graduate in Fine Arts of Madrid Complutense University, Marta Azparren works across disciplines and genres, including video art, visual arts and net.art. Her work has been shown in exhibitions, festivals, and international fairs around the world including The New Media Film Festival (Los Angeles), DFA’s Dance on Camera Festival (New York), Art Beijing (Pekin), Festival Videoformes (Clermont-Ferrand), Festival Facing the Artwork (Werkleitz-Centre for Media Art, Halle), Kassel Dokfest (Kassel), MADATAC (Madrid), Feria ESTAMPA (Madrid), LOOP (Barcelona), Images du Futur (Montreal), Festival MOVES (Manchester), Festival de Videoarte de Camaguey (Cuba), Festival Óptica (Gijón y Madrid), VAD Festival (Girona), Festival Escena Contemporánea (Madrid), Museo de América (Madrid), Premi Videodansa (Barcelona), la Nuit Blanche (Paris), la Noche en Blanco (Madrid), Cervantes Institute (Paris and Manchester), Machinima Expo (Jury Award), Videomix La Casa Encendida (Madrid), TV Metrópolis programme (TVE 2), Photoespaña Clic&Rec, Festival Visual 09 (Net.art. Award Madrid), C Arte C, Espacio Enter, Cologne Off Festival (México), Festival Digital Marrakech (Morocco), CeC - Carnival of eCreativity (Sattal, India), Spanish Cultural Centre in Santiago de Chile, Rosario, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, México D.F, Miami, La Paz, Managua, San Salvador, among others. Azparren lives and works in Spain.

Marta Azparren's The Goalkeeper and the Void is currently on display in the ASSEMBLAGE 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?

Marta Azparren: I studied Fine Arts, Video, and Design. I also try to keep learning about anything that captures my attention...

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

Marta Azparren: Beckett, Pasolini, Viola, Godard, Velázquez, Woolf, Celan, Von Trier, Dreyer, Hanneke, Nöel, Zidane, Jelinek, Lennon & McCartney, Taniguchi, Bergmann... I draw from all the sources I can get my hands on, regardless of its discipline, time or context.

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

Marta Azparren: I began creating video games with an artistic intention (as a part of a net.art collective velcroart.net), we made a few ones but my favorite is simul.art a simulator of artistic life. The goal of the game was hanging a picture on the walls of the museum. The player chooses an artistic profile, negotiating between talent, productivity and creativity, and has to develop an artistic and successful career. During his/her career the player/artist must take a lot of decisions that affect his/her personal and artistic development, the market value of its artwork, its prestige, its media appearances... and that makes him/her go forward or backward towards its goal. The game was created as an artwork, a sort of critic to the art market, but as a game it was very addictive too!

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?

Marta Azparren: When I made art with video games the key difference was, for sure, interactivity. Playing creates a very different experience of the work of art, it involves the player in a very intimate way, letting him or her thinking and taking decisions while he/she plays and enjoys the work. When I use existing video games to make a film, as it is the case in The Goalkeeper and the Void, what really attracts me is the chance to control all the pieces of a big production (characters, scenarios, camera movements, weather, colors...) just sitting at my computer. I like to make films the same way I draw or paint, being autonomous and having all the control over the process. When you have to shoot in real life you have to delegate a lot of choices, share aesthetic decisions and let a percentage to hazard; here you can choose everything, even design the faces of your actors... Of course there is animation, but then you need a work team, you can't do it all alone, or it will take months or years to finish it. Machinima allows you to create films in the most independent way.

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?

Marta Azparren: Every fiction creates an alternative experience to reality, as a good book does, in fact I think this is what art is all about, alternatives to the real world, or just ways to tolerate it or learn how to deal with it. Digital games add the act of playing, which makes this immersion in virtual reality more effective and more addictive. If applied to the reception of the artistic experience, this interactivity and this straying into the artwork while playing with it, make it more deeply intense. I think the research of art perception in interactive virtual environments is just beginning and I think that could be a source of intense aesthetic experiences.

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?

Marta Azparren: Well, copyright law is paradoxical; on the one hand it supposedly protects artists and the integrity of their artwork, but at the same time, art history advances through successive copies, replicas, imitations and especially collages made from fragments of works from the past. A very interesting sector of video artists works exclusively with found footage, reinventing, dissecting and deconstructing material already recorded and transforming it into different artworks and this is widely accepted as an artistic product. In my opinion, machinima is just another form of found footage with more control tools. In the case of Goalkeeper... there are advertising boards of the company that created the game, at stadium perimeter. I could have chosen to remove them in post-production because they are anachronistic elements which appears in supposedly old images, but I decided not to because it is clear that all images belong to a video game, it is a clear convention and I felt it like a kind of courtesy with the game creators not denying its origin. And there they are, all these advertising boards every time you see the film. Companies should consider machinima as an opportunity, not as an attack to their rights.

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?

Marta Azparren: When the first domestic video cameras appeared, they said it was the democratization of cinema... But that allowed artists to work alone with their cameras without any shooting team behind which led to a different way of recording images, more casual, exploring the intimacy, watching their bodies, recording public social issues or exploring the limits of the video tool in a way that was unthinkable for cinema. Video art (art in general) is not about technique, if it was so, it would be easier... And what's wrong in democratizing art making, anyway?

GVA: How do video game aesthetics affect the overall impact of your work? What comes first, the concept or the medium?

Marta Azparren: In my practice, the concept always comes first. I think very carefully what I want to show and then I choose the medium that fits my needs. Video games have a very particular and very recognizable aesthetics; using a video game to make a film, immediately implies accepting this convention, which I think that it's not very different from using, for example, puppets in theater.

GVA: How and why do you use Pro Evolution Soccer to create The Goalkeeper and the Void?

Marta Azparren: Chillida was goalkeeper in the 1940s so there isn't any existing film or TV footage of him playing. I didn't really want to shoot a film trying to recreate those old football matches. I wanted to show a kind of "schema", as a drawing board of his thoughts about art, space and football, as if it where motion graphics. And machinima came as the perfect option. I chose Pro Evolution Soccer, because I have played with it and I knew I could create an avatar that looked like Chillida, change colors, control the camera and its movements, etc.

GVA: In The Goalkeeper and the Void, you cite several quotes by the basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida. Why did you choose him? What is the relationship between football and sculpture?

Marta Azparren: A few years ago I was visiting Bilbao (Basque country, where Chillida was born) and I discovered that he was the goalkeeper of his city team, Real Sociedad, and that was very surprising for me. We are used to see football and art as opposite things, as if it was impossible to enjoy a good match and then watch a Kieslowski's film. Chillida, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Umberto Eco, were exceptions to this rule. Chillida was one of the greatest Spanish sculptors of the XX century, but he always talked about football as an inspiration, he said that he have applied to art things that he have learned as a goalkeeper. In my video I collect all his quotes about football (in interviews, books, diaries) where he reflects on this relationship. I can imagine him under his goal developing all those deep thoughts about time, space, void, geometry and I wonder how would the Twentieth century sculpture (or football history) have been, hadn't he broken his knee…

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VIDEO: PIETRO RIGHI RIVA, QUALCOSA DA DIRE (VIDEO)

ORA DISPONIBILE LA versione integrale della presentazione di Pietro Righi Riva, "Qualcosa da dire" che si è tenuta alla IULM di Milano il 13 maggio 2016. 

In questa pungente e stimolante presentazione, Pietro Righi Riva illustra una serie di tecniche tutt'altro che convenzionali per la creazione di video game. Secondo Riva, oggi i videogiochi "non funzionano". Cosa possono fare i creatori per reinventare il medium? Quali sono le ispirazioni possibili per cambiare le regole del (video)gioco?

LO SPEAKER

Pietro Righi Riva, classe 1985, dirige lo studio di produzione di videogiochi Santa Ragione. dal 2010 con il quale ha sviluppato giochi sperimentali vincitori di premi internazionali, tra cui il gioco di corse in soggettiva FOTONICA (2011), il gioco di esplorazione astratto MirrorMoon EP (2013) e il gioco di guida narrativo Wheels of Aurelia (2015). Righi Riva ha conseguito un dottorato in Interaction Design al Politecnico di Milano e ha collaborato con l'Istituto dei Ciechi di Milano per la realizzazione di un catalogo di strumenti per il game design accessibile. Dal 2016, coordina l'innovativo Master Universitario GAME/PLAY. Design, Direction & Production alla IULM. Righi Riva vive e lavora a Milano.

INTERVIEW: OSCAR NODAL

IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, MEXICAN ARTIST OSCAR NODAL TALKS ABOUT HIS FASCINATION FOR GLITCHES, THE REPETITIVE NATURE OF DIGITAL GAMES, AND DATA CORRUPTION.

Born in Juarez, Mexico in 1986, Oscar Nodal is a visual artist who engages with new media technology, synthetic imagery, and simulated environments. As art critic Emmanuel Villareal writes, “Nodal's work by moments examines video purely as an electronic technology of signal processing and transmission that shares these properties with other electronic media, notably television. But most of all, portrays video as a medium in its own right by articulating specific media language in a step-by-step construction of a videographic-aesthetic vocabulary, at times, successfully establishing an emergent semiotic system by which video becomes a medium that can be truly distinguished from alternative media.”

Oscar Nodal's Sleepy Existence 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?

Oscar Nodal: In 2012, I received a BFA in Visual Arts with a concentration in video production at University of Juarez, in Mexico. I’m currently enrolled in a MA in Studies and Creative Process in Art and Design at the same institution. Currently, I am investigating glitches as a narrative agents in machinima.

Oscar Nodal, Puppy Sound John, 2015

"Made using RPG Maker X ACE Visit http://www.oscarnodal.com/#!psj/ca7a for full Puppy Sound John experience Music "Valentine" by The Losers" (Oscar Nodal)

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

Oscar Nodal: Initially, popular culture. As I was growing up, books, comic books, and movies always captivated me. I was especially interested in understanding their storytelling techniques. I spent a great part of my childhood writing short stories and drawing comics. The true epiphany was Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs in the early Nineties. After watching that movie my whole life changed. I knew I wanted to work with an audiovisual medium. Finally, during my BA studies I encountered the work of such artists as Maya Deren, Matthew Barney, Bill Viola, Stan Brakhage, Ingmar Bergman, and Christoph Schlingensief. They were incredibly influential in my understanding of art, film, and performance.

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

Oscar Nodal: I first started using video games in 2011 during a hacking workshop in which I circuit bent an NES console, then I mixed real time game play with a remix of user-found glitches in Super Mario Bros 3. Subsequently, I started producing machinima as a way to explore other media beside video, as a way to expand my storytelling skills. I found impossible to ignore the creative possibilities offered by machinima.

Presentation: Oscar Nodal: Glitch as a narrative agent in machinima, May 5 2016, IULM University, Milan.

GVA: Why did you specifically choose a videogame to make art? What do you find especially fascinating about this medium? Its interactivity? Agency? Aesthetics? Theatricality?

Oscar Nodal: One of the things I found most fascinating is the fact that narrative in games does not exist by itself, but it is intertwined with gameplay. That is, to understanding narrative, we must play. There’s also a cultural aspect that I find terribly exciting. As we interact with games we are aware of their cultural underpinnings. These layers of meaning are often highlighted by machinima because this is a much more contemplative medium, one that encourages reflection and meditation upon gestures, ideas, and goals.

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?

Oscar Nodal: To create my machinima, I used Sleeping Dogs, an open world action game developed by Sega. The game is set in a very lively and dynamic urban environment. Things happens, characters come and go all the time. The protagonist can wander through the streets and explore the city. He is a proxy of my own experience in the digital sphere, where I can be an actor, but also a director and editor at the same time. These affordances are unknown to other media, such as cinema or photography.

Oscar Nodal, The Battle for the Wastelands, 2016

"A glitchy machinima made using a modified Sega Genesis and "Victorian"." (Oscar Nodal)

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?

Oscar Nodal: In many ways, yes. Machinima offers a cheaper solution than producing a short film for many creators that want to tell a story. At the same time, I think machinima is a medium that differs profoundly from cinema or television. There are certain stories that could be told effectively only through machinima.

GVA: How do videogame aesthetics affect the overall impact of your work? What comes first, the concept or the medium?

Oscar Nodal: When it comes to machinima, the medium always comes first. There are several things I must consider before imagining a story. The game genre, for instance, is a significant constraint as it limits my choices and possibilities. I am talking about things like camera controls, physics, character movements, types of environments and interactions with non-playable characters... All these factors shape, and in some cases determine, the aesthetics of the resulting work.

Oscar Nodal, Glitch Upon a Time in The West, 2016

"A glitchy machinima made using Red Dead Redemption by Rockstar Games. Song "Far Away" by Jose Gonzalez"

GVA: In your machinima Sleepy Existence how and why do you use this particular game, Sega's Sleeping Dogs?

Oscar Nodal: I used Sleeping Dogs because its environments are pulsating with (artificial) life. This game provides an author with almost endless possibilities to create stories. In a sense, open world games are narrative engines. I was very familiar with Sleeping Dogs because I had played obsessively, so using it as a storytelling platform came natural to me. I was able to exploits its potential as well as its limitations. Above all, I loved the fact that although Sleeping Dogs is an action game, it emulates several mundane tasks, e.g. going to the restroom, buying groceries, being stuck in traffic and so on. These “interstitial” actions became the central focus of my story.

GVA: In Sleepy Existence, the main character lives in a cruel and illegal world, without taking part in it but simply dealing with daily ordinary problems. Does the repetition of the key player’s actions enforce this idea or does it have an aesthetic function only?

Oscar Nodal: This repetition was meant to communicate the idea that the character is simply drifting through life. Stuck in a daily routine, the protagonist seems to operate in auto-pilot. However, the glitches he gradually experiences disrupt this apparent order, so he starts questioning the logic of his own surroundings, and ultimately, the true nature of his own self.

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