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
VIDEO: VICTOR MORALES' NEW FIGURATIVE SERIES
A new series of videos from Venezuelan-born, NY-based artist Victor Morales are uncanny, mesmerizing, and morbidly fascinating.
Here's the incredible FigureFiguring, a dance scene sui generis which degenerates in a plastic-elastic copulation that defies the laws of physics.
Below is Figures and Branches, starring an avatar of Donald Trump.
It all started with FigurativeMoves, featuring a melting, shapeshifting Trump.
Morales' work consists of "an exploration of video game engines as simulation environments, where death and physics are transformed into dramatic and comedic real time performance".
Morales' work Maria (2016) is currently on display in the GLITCH level of GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY.
Here's a recent interview with the artist.
Ashley Blackman, Clouds, 2016 (still frame from installation)
INTERVIEW: ASHLEY BLACKMAN
IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, ASHLEY BLACKMAN - THE YOUNGEST ARTIST FEATURED IN GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY - DISCUSSES HIS FASCINATION FOR FALLOUT 4, IN-GAME PHOTOGRAPHY, AND THE WEATHER-AS-A-CREATIVE-CATALYST IN ENGLAND.
Ashley Blackman’s Clouds (2016) was featured in the NEW DIRECTIONS screening, a collateral event of GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY on May 25, 2016.
GVA: Can you briefly describe your education and upbringing?
I’m currently studying Fine Art at Falmouth University and previously I studied a Foundation Degree at Bristol School of Art Queens Road where I also studied Fine Art.
Ashley Blackman, Future /.Bodies. 112 v.1, 2016
GVA: When and why did you begin using video games in your artistic practice?
It’s not much of a sophisticated or serious answer but I have only just recently, in the last few months begun using video games as a major part of my practice, I was in a sort of rut at some point not knowing where my work was going and I decided to sit down and think about what I enjoy in general to my personal life and one of those things was video games. there wasn’t any particular artists that influenced the work it was more me thinking “What if I take my artistic processes of making work and do that in the video game”. Luckily for me I have a game called Fallout 4, a huge open-world role-playing game that I could explore and create work.
GVA: Why did you specifically choose video games to make art? What do you find especially fascinating about this medium? Its interactivity? Agency? Aesthetics? Theatricality?
As bad as it sounds I think it was down to my laziness at the time and the rubbish English weather not wanting me to go outside. It got to a point where I was getting bored of playing the game and I put the controller down and the camera started circling around my character and the more I looked at the image the more hypnotic it got. The game had created its own film; with its main character at the centre of this desolate yet tranquil setting of a coastal metropolis surrounded by a dead countryside, and it got me thinking that the work was there already made, and I just had to capture what was happening.
GVA: Digital games often create parallel, alternative experiences for their users. How do you relate to complex relation between reality and simulation? How do you address this tension through your work?
I don’t necessarily address any form of tension but I do try to create work that the viewer would perceive as "real". For example I’ve started a SnapChat series where I use video game imagery in the context of humorous social media conversation where I copy captions from my friends ‘snapchats’ and recreate the image in-game with the caption.
I also have an ongoing photography series where I go around the video game taking photos of expansive landscapes and cityscapes and professionally printing the image and with this presentation the viewer could assume the photo was taken somewhere in the real world, so I guess I do address a form of tension through the viewers's reaction to the work.
Ashley Blackman, Swings, 2016
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?
I view the copyright issue as appropriation: It’s a complicated issue, one that can be argued from both sides. However within my work I view the video game as another art space to explore my practice, in certain situations it is appropriate to gain permission from the developers depending on the type of work and if it’s being sold. Richard Prince is a good example of how extreme things can get with appropriation if massive amounts of money are involved, but with his Instagram series the people who posted the images lose ownership because it’s on a platform where that image can be taken by anyone. Video games on the other hand always will be the developer’s game, the game was meant to be played not appropriated.
GVA: Would you agree that machinima has democratized the art making process, as some critics have suggested? Has it lowered the entry barrier for creators of video art, as some critics argue?
I do agree that machinima has democratized the art making process in its lowest form by that I mean you just have to buy the game to create work. However to create machinima it requires another level of creative drive; you have to have a conceptual idea and then you need to understand how you can create that within the boundaries of video games. But in its simplest form, yes, machinima has democratized the art making process.
Ashley Blackman, press any button to start, 2016
GVA: How do video game aesthetics affect the overall impact of your work? What comes first when developing a new project: the concept or the medium?
The post-apocalyptic world in Fallout 4 holds an aesthetic landscape that’s still recognizable to the audience as real life. By not incorporating the main factors of the game within my films, such as the main story line, I’m masking the true identity of the game. By creating the work I’m giving the audience more to relate to from a non-virtual standpoint; recreating real life themes in a hyper realistic setting.
GVA: What do you find fascinating about Fallout 4? What prompted you to start filming in virtual environments?
My first encounter with the virtual space was when I started creating work looking into online activity and how much time I spend on ‘the net’ and not necessarily for work purposes but more for procrastination. A lot of my work was looking at the overload of information we intake online for example: I would have one video crammed full with multiple videos all playing aloud with web pages popping up randomly all at once to give you an understanding of how much we interact with the internet on a daily basis. The reason I started using Fallout 4 was probably because I was bored of looking for work to do in the real world, as bizarre as that sounds and probably because I enjoy playing video games a lot. Fallout 4 can give you an expansive world that can idealize aspects from real life but also gives you the controlled randomness of the NPCs (Non-Playable Characters) you interact with and the ability to film whatever you want to express or show without there being any restrictions.
Ashley Blackman, crows, 2016