HOW TO FLY
digital video, color, sound, 6’ 23”, 2020 (United Kingdom)
Created by David Blandy
How to Fly was originally presented by John Hansard Gallery in Southampton as part of the Digital Array programme supported by the Barker-Mill Foundation.
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Originally commissioned by John Hansard Gallery in the United Kingdom and exhibited in May 2020, How to Fly uses the format of online video tutorials to explore ideas about life, nature, and technology. Created during the most intense months of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe, How to Fly begins with the artist providing detailed information on how to make a short video about flying using the tools available on a computer, such as the Rockstar Editor, a popular video editor embedded in Grand Theft Auto V. “Hi guys. I’ve been thinking about making a film about flying,” the artist calmly tells the viewers in voiceover, before illustrating the process step by step. The entire procedure takes place on a computer screen: flying is enacted with the touch of a few strokes on the keyboard and experienced virtually. But How to Fly is not an ironic commentary on the state of the world. It is not earnest either. So, what is it? You decide.
David Blandy’s practice consists of in depth investigations into the pop cultural forces that he experienced throughout his life, from hip hop and soul, to computer games and manga. His works slip between performance and video, reality and construct, using references sampled from the wide, disparate sources that construct and constantly reassemble his sense of self. David Blandy’s films are distributed through LUX. The artist is represented by Seventeen Gallery in London. Blandy’s work has been shown at numerous public institutions including Tate, London, UK; FACT, Liverpool, UK; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; INIVA, London, UK; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; Spike Island, Bristol, UK; Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Modern Art Oxford, UK; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany; Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, UK. Blandy lives and works in London.
We’re delighted to announce a new series, GAME VIDEO/ART STUDIES.
GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES is a new series of books published by Concrete Press and inspired by GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY (2016), an exhibition curated by Matteo Bittanti and Vincenzo Trione with the collaboration of the students of the Degree Course in Arts, Heritage and Markets of IULM University of Milan, an official event of the XXI Century International Exhibition of the Triennale di Milano. Design After Design.
GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES examines the complex interaction between digital gaming and the visual arts through academic contributions situated at the intersection of different disciplinary areas – game studies, art criticism, visual studies, media studies and cultural studies – and gives voice to a new generation of researchers as well as established scholars.
Both a critical and creative laboratory, GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES promotes open dialogue, constructive debate, and sometimes idiosyncratic investigations of ideas, practices, and artefacts that – by their very nature – occupy different layers of today’s visual culture. Using a comparative rather than specialized approach, GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES probes the most diverse visual experiences inspired by digital gaming.
The Scientific Board includes Valentino Catricalà, Maker Faire Europe; Gabrielle Jennings, ArtCenter College of Design, Los Angeles, California; Joseph DeLappe, Abertay University, Scotland, Marco De Mutiis, Fotomuseum Winterthur; Jenna NG, University of York; Enrico Gandolfi, Kent State University; Stefano Locati, Università IULM; Henry Lowood, Stanford University; Paolo Ruffino, University of Liverpool and Eddo Stern, University of California, Los Angeles.
Edited by Matteo Bittanti, GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES will make its debut in September 2020 with the first release. The books will be Italian, English, and bilingual.
Siamo felici di annunciare la nuova collana GAME VIDEO/ART STUDIES.
Pubblicata da Concrete Press, la nuova collana GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES nasce come spin-off della mostra GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY (2016), curata da Matteo Bittanti e Vincenzo Trione con la preziosa collaborazione degli studenti del Corso di Laurea di Arti, Patrimoni e Mercati dell’Università IULM di Milano, evento ufficiale della XXI Esposizione Internazionale della Triennale di Milano, XXI Century. Design After Design.
Nello specifico, GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES riprende e insieme espande gli spunti generati dall’esibizione e dalle iniziative successive dell’Università IULM, tra cui il MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL, proponendo ai lettori contributi accademici inediti che si collocano all’intersezione di ambiti disciplinari eterogenei – game studies, critica dell’arte, visual studies, media studies e cultural studies – per dare voce a una nuova generazione di ricercatori così come a studiosi consolidati.
Laboratorio critico e creativo, GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES promuove un dialogo aperto, un confronto costruttivo e una disamina non necessariamente ortodossa di temi, pratiche e fenomeni che, per loro natura, s’intersecano con differenti livelli della cultura visiva. Privilegiando un approccio comparativo anziché specialistico, GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES scandaglia le più diverse esperienze mediali ispirate dal e al videogioco.
Il comitato scientifico include Valentino Catricalà, Maker Faire Europe; Gabrielle Jennings, ArtCenter College of Design, Los Angeles, California; Joseph DeLappe, Abertay University, Scotland, Marco De Mutiis, Fotomuseum Winterthur; Jenna NG, University of York; Enrico Gandolfi, Kent State University; Stefano Locati, Università IULM; Henry Lowood, Stanford University; Paolo Ruffino, University of Liverpool e Eddo Stern, University of California, Los Angeles.
Curata da Matteo Bittanti, GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES farà il suo debutto nel settembre 2020. I libri saranno disponibili in lingua italiana, in inglese e in edizioni bilingue.
EVEN ASTEROIDS ARE NOT ALONE
digital video, color, sound, 17’, 2019 (Iceland)
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
In the vast and hostile world of New Eden, trust is not a given. How can one make friends in the depths of space? Even Asteroids Are Not Alone explores social relationships within Eve Online, a multiplayer game where hundreds of thousands of players mine, trade and fight their way through computer-generated galaxies far away from the world as we know it. By weaving together the experiences of fourteen individuals from around the globe, the filmmaker shows a different story: The ability of online games to forge communities and bridge the space between people, countries, and continents. Entirely shot within Eve Online, Even Asteroids Are Not Alone is a insightful ethnographic video game essay.
Jón Bjarki Magnússon is an award-winning journalist, writer, and filmmaker from Iceland currently living in Berlin, Germany. He studied Creative Writing at the University of Iceland in 2009-2012, published a book of poetry ― The Lambs in Cambodia (and you) ― in 2011, and received a Master of Arts in Visual and Media Anthropology at Freie Universität, Berlin. Even Asteroids Are Not Alone was his first film, followed by Half Elf (2020), a feature length documentary. Even Asteroids Are Not Alone won the RAI and Marsh Short Film Prize at the RAI Film Festival 2019 and was screened internationally at several festivals, including Transmediale.
The fourth edition of the MACHINIMA FILM FESTIVAL will once again take place at IULM University (Milan, Italy) during the Milano Digital Week, which celebrates the driving forces that are reshaping art, culture, and technology of Italy’s most vibrant city.
Filmmakers and video artists engaged in the practice of appropriating, repurposing, and remixing video games are encouraged to send us their work for consideration. All submissions will be judged by an international panel of jurors comprising scholars, curators, and critics. A Critics' Award will be awarded to the most groundbreaking work.
Screenings of selected machinima will be curated around different themes and presented in different sections. The most interesting submissions are those which seek to capture or highlight a specific facet of contemporary life, from politics to art, from violence to creativity, from technology to ideology, through the aesthetic lenses of digital gaming.
The deadline for submissions is December 15, 2020.
The full program will be announced in February 2021.
Please carefully read our simple submission guidelines and requirements below before sending your work.
INTERNATIONAL OPEN CALL FOR NEW MEDIA ARTWORKS
GUIDELINES:
The Milan Machinima Festival defines machinima as any digital video made using video game technology (game engines, game tools, assets such as characters, items, environments etc.).
A preference is given to machinima created with/in video games rather than virtual worlds such as Second Life.
Submissions must be 10 minutes or less in length. The minimum duration is 2 minutes.
Submissions must have been produced between January 1, 2020 and December 15, 2020.
Multiple versions of the same machinima will not be considered.
Acceptable submission formats: digital video files only.
Acceptable exhibition formats: mp4, avi, mpg, Quicktime file (ProRes 422).
Each submission requires a one-time, nominal submission fee of 15 euros. Submissions that have not been accepted will not be refunded.
The applicant holds the sole responsibility of copyright clearance of any copyrighted material in the machinima.
The submission must include an accompanying artist statement/description no longer than 500 words in English.
The MMF is under no obligation to provide comments regarding submitted machinima to any applicant.
All applicants must complete the official festival submission form located on FilmFreeway.
Submission deadline: December 15, 2020
THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW
Digital video, color, sound, 7’ 01”, 2020
July 17 - July 30 2020
VRAL
Introduced by Luca Miranda
Things are different now (2020) is both a variation of The Soft Crash (2020 – ongoing) and a complementary, consequential conversation with Brenton Alexander Smith’s other works I Feel Like a Nervous Wreck (2019) and Inverted Black Box (2020). All these works center on an impossible dialogue between the human and the machine. Things are different now tests the limits of the physics simulation in the driving game BeamNg.drive. The video shows a twitching car located in (or rather, on) a multi level car park environment. The jerky motion makes the vehicle look vulnerable and fragile, but the absurdity of the situation has comical undertones as well. Crashforms, the name given by the artist these hybrid artifacts, are both living corpses and the embodiment of one’s desires. In Things are different now, the machine is no longer a human prosthesis or appendix. It is transfiguration.
Brenton Alexander Smith is an Australian artist whose work explores the relation between the human and the mechanic, and the affective and sentimental responses generated through this relationship. Smith deliberately avoids narrative structures, preferring instead an apparently chaotic openendedness. Imbued with a sense of uncanny, his work transports the viewer into media res, that is, in a series of always already unfolding events. Smith received a Bachelor in Visual Arts in 2014 at the Sydney College of Arts in Australia and took part in several group and solo exhibitions. He exhibited at Kudos Gallery in Sydney, Australia and at The Wrong Biennale (2019) in Valencia, Spain. His solo exhibitions include I Feel Like a Nervous Wreck (2019) in the virtual gallery of Closed on Monday Gallery and Inverted Black Box (2020) in the Black Box Space in Sydney.
