INFINITE GRAVEYARD
digital video, color, sound, 666’, 2020 (Russia)
Created by Mikhail Maksimov
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Mikhail Maksimov first encountered videogames at the age of twelve. His first time was with Clive Townsend’s Saboteur! (1985) on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Subsequently, he fell in love with first-person shooters – Doom II in particular – which he played on a personal computer installed in a dentist’s office. Later in life, Maksimov turned his fascination for gaming into an area of artistic experimentation because he felt that unlike cinema and contemporary art, video games are less reliant on curatorial arbitrariness and can reach a broader public via alternative channels, e.g. the internet, rather than a traditional museum or gallery. Infinite Graveyard is part of Maksimov’s ongoing exploration of gaming mechanics and aesthetics. Presented on VRAL as a 666 minutes gameplay video recorded by the artist, Infinite Graveyard is a commentary of the endless cycle of death in an age marked by toxic positive thinking, stultifying gamification, and neoliberal imperatives.
Mikhail Maksimov is an artist and filmmaker whose practice revolves around game engines, 3D graphics, algorithms, and neural networks. Among his most recent (and radical) projects is SAR, Sanatorium Anthropocene Retreat! (formerly known as MOMAM, Museum of Modern Art Massacre), a dystopian first-person shooter set in the artworld and inspired by the writing of Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway. After graduating in Architecture from the Moscow State Construction University and receiving an MFA from the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, Maksimov took part in several exhibitions and festivals, including the Moscow Modern Art Biennale, Venice Biennale of Architecture, New Horizons International Film Festival, the Moscow International Film Festival, Manifesta, Kansk Video Festival, the International Festival of Cinematographic Debuts “Spirit of Fire”, Locarno Festival, Hamburg KurzFilmFestival, Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, and many more. Maksimov lives and works in Moscow.
FORWARD, UPWARD, IN ALL DIRECTIONS
digital video, color, sound, 19’ 16”, 2018 (Ukraine)
Created by fantastic little splash
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Both poetic and prosaic, Forward, upward, in all directions is a psychedelic trip inside VRChat, a free-to-play massively multiplayer online virtual reality environment created by Graham Gaylor and Jesse Joudrey. Introduced in early 2017, VRChat has gained popularity in the last few years thanks to the incessant activities of live streamers. Evocative of virtual worlds of the early Zeroes like Second Life but enhanced by virtual reality immersion, VRChat has now spawned several paratexts, including a weekly online newspaper, talk shows, and podcasts. Players create their own avatars based on popular characters from video games, television, anime and movies and hang out online. Forward, upward, in all directions depicts a neo-tribal community interacting through technology, focusing on rituals of a growing subculture.
fantastic little splash is a collective comprising journalist, filmmaker and visual artist Lera Malchenko and artist and director Oleksandr Hants, whose artistic practice examines the nature and flow of information: its generation, distribution and transmutations. Fantastic little splash is especially interested in alternative realities, the collective imaginary, the notion of utopia and dystopia. Their work is situated at the crossroads of media studies, architecture, and anthropology. Established in 2016, are based in Dnipro city, Ukraine.
CRUCIFIXION AND EPIPHANY
digital video, color, sound, 22’ 59”, 2020 (Hong Kong)
Created by Edwin Lo
Introduced by Luca Miranda
A follow up to Those Who Do Not Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It (2020) and The Rupture of Promised Land (Or We Can Never Get There) (2020), Crucifixion and Epiphany is a commentary on religious iconography through the lenses of video games and archival materials. Using the format of desktop documentary, Lo disrupts the conventional dichotomies – real vs. simulacral, fiction vs. fantasy – to visually articulate the “downfall of mankind” narrative. Following Kevin B. Lee’s dictum that desktop cinema has cinematic aspirations but operates as a blank canvas, Lo’s screen performance is a captivating and multi-layered visual experience. Crucifixion and Epiphany is a creative (re)mix of multiple sources, a hybrid of machinima, desktop cinema, and archival footage. A study in media res, this work is the outcome of an experimental practice that resembles the vernacular obsession for narrativizing the so-called lore of popular fantasy video games on YouTube and Twitch.
Edwin Lo is an artist and researcher working with sound in various contexts and media such as performance, text, recording, video, installation and video games. Lo received a Master of Arts from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His work was exhibited in several countries, including Hong Kong, United States, Berlin, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Paris, Brazil, Switzerland, Sweden, and Shanghai. His work was presented by the Goethe-Institut and Para/site in Hong Kong, the Tokyo Arts and Space, the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, Loop in Barcelona and Meinblau Projektraum in Berlin. His artist residencies include China, Germany, Japan. Lo lives and works in Hong Kong.
ANIMAL CROSSING: ALL MINE
digital video, color, sound, 7’ 05”, 2020 (United States)
Created by Brent Watanabe
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Conspicuous consumption is the implicit goal of innumerable video games, but Animal Crossing: New Horizons is, by far, the most shameless celebration of capitalism. Released in March 2020, the latest installment of the popular series became the most popular video game during the most intense months of the Covid-19 lockdown in Europe and the United States. A commercial triumph – more than twenty two million copies sold in four months – New Horizons gave players the possibility to escape from their brick-and-mortar homes and relocate to a minuscole island in the middle of the ocean. All they had to do was to purchase the innocent sounding “Deserted Island Getaway Package” from a development company called Nook Inc. Lured by the promise of playful evasion and endless growth, American artist Brent Watanabe soon found himself enslaved by perpetual debt, surrounded by a mountain of waste, and forced to compulsively perform bullshit jobs. An unofficial adaptation of Maurizio Lazzarato’s The Making of the Indebted Man, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is one of the most sophisticated simulation of neoliberalism ever concocted: suffice to say that players must take a mortgage on their virtual houses to start “playing”. Assuming the role of a modern day Robinson Crusoe with entrepreneurial skills, Watanabe spent more than one hundred fifty hours hoarding as many consumer goods as possible and displaying them on his island. He documented his performance with a machinima.
Brent Watanabe is an artist combining a background in traditional materials and practices (drawing, sculpture) with emerging technologies (computer programming, electronics), exploring an artistic field still uncharted. For over a decade, Watanabe has been creating computer-controlled gallery installations populated by kinetic sculpture, drawing, projection, and sound. His 2016 project, San Andreas Deer Cam was streamed live on the internet, had over 800,000 visitors in the first three months, and was mentioned in several international publications, including New York Magazine, the BBC, and WIRED. Watanabe has participated in several group shows and screenings nationally and internationally, including Through Machine Eyes curated by James Bridle at the NeMe Arts Center, in Limassol, Cyprus, Game Changers at MassArt Art Museum, in Boston and Playmode at the MATT Museum, in Lisbon, Portugal. He has had recent solo exhibitions at SOIL Art Gallery (Seattle, 2006), McLeod Residency (Seattle, 2008), Jack Straw New Media Gallery (Seattle, 2009), Gallery 4Culture (Seattle, 2011), Anchor Art Space (Anacortes, Washington State, 2013), and Bumbershoot Music and Arts Festival (Seattle, 2016).
We’re happy to announce the release of volume one in the new series GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES edited by Matteo Bittanti: Machinima vernacolare by Riccardo Retez.
Available both on Amazon and Blurb in Italian, Machinima vernacolare examines the relationship between cinema, television, and video games, focusing on fandom productions that made machinima into a recognizable expression of popular culture and one of the most popular examples of user generated content.
Retez focuses on Grand Theft Auto V’s Rockstar Editor, a popular video editing tool used to created countless machinima. The author describes the production, consumption and distribution practices within an increasingly complex media environments. The analysis, which is accompanied by six case studies, demonstrates that far from being passive users, video game players can become guerrilla video makers.
Born and raised in Florence, Riccardo Retez received a Master's Degree in Television, Cinema and New Media from the IULM University of Milan in 2019 and a Degree in Graphic Design and Multimedia from the Free Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 2017, where he studied the relationship between technology-based art practices culture and the humanities. Passionate about cinema, video games and visual culture, in the past five years Riccardo produced, edited, and directed several short films and video clips. Machinima vernacolare is his first book.
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.
To learn more about Machinima vernacolare, please visit this page, which includes a video walkthrough (in Italian).
To learn more about GAME VIDEO/ART STUDIES, please click here.
Siamo felici di annunciare la pubblicazione del primo volume della nuova collana GAME VIDEO/ART. STUDIES diretta da Matteo Bittanti: Machinima vernacolare di Riccardo Retez.
Disponibile su Amazon e Blurb in lingua italiana, Machinima vernacolare esamina il rapporto tra cinema, televisione e videogiochi e le dinamiche del fandom videoludico che ha elevato il machinima a una marca di riconoscimento delle produzioni user generated.
Retez esamina il Rockstar Editor, il software di montaggio video integrato a Grand Theft Auto V (2013),. L’autore descrive le dinamiche di produzione, consumo e distribuzione del machinima all’interno di un ecosistema mediale sempre più complesso. L’analisi, impreziosita da sei studi di caso, attesta che gli utenti di videogiochi non sono consumatori passivi di testi audiovisivi, bensì soggetti attivi in grado di comprendere e manipolare i significati variabili codificati in tali testi, proponendo sofisticati remake.
Nato e cresciuto a Firenze, Riccardo Retez ha conseguito una Laurea Magistrale in Televisione, cinema e nuovi media presso l’Università IULM di Milano nel 2019 e una Laurea in Graphic Design e Multimedia presso la Libera Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze nel 2017, dove ha studiato la relazione tra la cultura tecnico-artistica e tradizione umanistica. Appassionato di cinema, videogiochi e culture visive, Riccardo ha realizzato numerosi cortometraggi e videoclip. Machinima vernacolare è il suo primo libro.
Laboratorio critico e creativo, la collana 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 per dare voce a una nuova generazione di ricercatori così come a studiosi consolidati.
Per ulteriori informazioni su GAME VIDEO/ART STUDIES, cliccate qui.
