8-bit

EVENT: BABAK AHTESHAMIPOUR’S HEY PLASTIC GOD PLEASE DON’T SAVE THE ROBOTIC KING… (DECEMBER 8 - 21 2023, ONLINE)

Hey Plastic God please don’t save the Robotic King, Let him drone in Acidic Anesthetic

single-channel digital video, color, sound 5’ 33”, 2023, Iran/Greece

Created by Babak Ahteshamipour

Hey Plastic God please don’t save the Robotic King, Let him drown in Acidic Anesthetic explores the mental disintegration of a cyber-king plagued by hallucinations fueled by narcissism, megalomania, and a relentless desire for power and grandeur who finds himself spiraling into a self-created abyss. The video juxtaposes Ahteshamipour’s real-life paintings with digital landscapes from Super Mario 64 and Super Mario 64 DS video games, thus blurring the lines between physical and digital realities. This artistic choice symbolizes the ever-growing influence of digitalization on our daily lives and challenges the separation between these two realms, and the predominant androcentric narratives in gaming culture.

Babak Ahteshamipour is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and musician based in Athens, Greece with a background in mining and materials engineering. His practice is based on the collision of the virtual vs the actual, aimed at correlating topics from cyberspace to ecology and politics to identity, exploring them via gaming, online and pop subcultures with a focus on themes of coexistence and simultaneity. Ahteshamipour’’s work has been presented at festivals, venues, galleries and spaces, museums and institutes such as Centre Pompidou, New Art City, The Wrong, Neo Shibuya TV, University of North Texas, The Networked Imagination Laboratory (McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario), Biquini Wax ESP, Experimental Sound Studio, Milan Machinima Festival, [ANTI]MATERIA, ArtSect Gallery, and Ametric Festival. Ahteshamipour has released music on the independent cassette label Industrial Coast and on the cassette label Jollies. His music has been played on radio stations such as Fade Radio, Radio Raheem, and Radio alHara. He has performed and shared the stage with artists such as HELM, Zoviet France, The Nam Shub of Enki, Gaël Segalen, Sister Overdrive, and Kiriakos Spirou. He has created video clips for artists such as Fire-Toolz, Digifae, and B.MICHAEEL. His work has been featured on magazines such as CTM Festival’’s magazine, KIBLIND, VRAL (Milan Machinima Festival), und. Athens, Our Culture Magazine and ATTN: Magazine.

ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT ALEKSANDAR RADAN’S THIS WATER GIVES BACK NO IMAGES

VRAL is currently exhibiting Aleksandar Radan’s This water giver back no Images. To better contextualize this exhibition, we will be discussing some highlights from Radan’s eclectic oeuvre. Today we take a closer look at this remarkable video installation.

Produced in 2017, Aleksandar Radan’s This water giver back no Images is a 6-minute video work exploring the boundary between reality and simulation in digital worlds, created by manipulating landscapes and characters from Grand Theft Auto V. This work is strictly connected to the poem “No Images” (1922) by William Waring Cuney and Nina Simone’s song “Images” (1964), which address the inability of marginalized groups to see positive reflections of themselves mirrored back from society.

Radan incorporated an excerpt of Simone’s live 1964 recording of “Images” in his video. As her vocals play, the GTA-derived visuals distort – palm trees warp, avatars phase in and out of being. The looping images center on a mysterious, uncanny, pale gray avatar seated numbly in a room, lying outside by palm trees, and watching Simone sing on a television nested incongruously among levitating flora...

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Aleksandar Radan

This water gives back no Images

3-channel video installation, 6:12 min, loop, 2017, Germany; hereby presented as a single-channel digital video

This is a Patreon exclusive content. For full access consider joining our growing community.

ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT LARS PREISSER’S HOME/NOME

VRAL is currently showcasing Lars Preisser’s HOME/NOME. Today we take a deep dive into this fascinating installation by discussing its unintended relation to Fumi Omori's equally mesmerizing Home Sweet Home.

Both featured in Season 4 of VRAL, Fumi Omori’s Home Sweet Home and Lars Preisser’s HOME/NOME are two installations that leverage video games to explore themes of domesticity, memory, and the concept of “home”. Despite their shared conceptual interests, the projects differ significantly in their artistic approaches and techniques.

A key distinction lies in the artists’ choice and use of the video game medium. Both appropriate and decontextualize Nintendo's product, but their approach and outcome are considerably different. Omori employs Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020), a contemporary social simulation game, as the primary artistic material. By contrast, Preisser resurrects the vintage Super Nintendo title Mario Paint (1992). Omori’s adoption of Animal Crossing reflects her personal connection to the game as a source of escapism during the Covid-19 pandemic. The resulting machinima takes advantage of the game’s customizable architecture and interior design features. Preisser’s selection of Mario Paint stems from his childhood memories of using the game in the original apartment depicted in HOME/NOME. The retro aesthetic becomes a temporal bridge to the past.

Their divergent game texts contribute to major technical differences between the artworks. Home Sweet Home consists of digital video incorporating photogrammetry and impossible architecture constructed within Animal Crossing’s virtual world. The immersive 3D environment allows Omori to translate real memories into imaginative spaces unbound by physical constraints. On the other hand, HOME/NOME relies on lo-fi pixel art animation created through Mario Paint’s limited 2D drawing tools. Preisser opts for a…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Lars Preisser, HOME/NOME, video installation, SNES game consoles, animation, video, Hi8, miniDV, Bang & Olufsen 90s TV sets, hereby presented as digital video, color, sound, 4’ 16, 2021-2022, Germany

Fumi Omori, Home Sweet Home, machinima/digital video, color, sound, 2’ 35”, 2023, Japan

This is a Patreon exclusive content. For full access consider joining our growing community.

ARTICLE: NO, IT’S NOT “JUST A GAME”

VRAL is currently showcasing Firas Shehadeh’s Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023). To contextualize his work, we are looking at some of his most significant projects. Today we examine his 2013 multimedia project Guerrilla 8-bit.

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

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PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

In a thought–provoking blend of historical narrative and video game aesthetics, Firas Shehadeh’s Guerrilla 8-bit showcases in a nuanced, perhaps counterintuitive style the parallel evolutions of two seminal yet apparently disconnected events: the formation of the Black September Organization (BSO) and the birth of 8-bit computing. Conceived in 2013, this brief yet impactful video installation – clocking at one minute and forty-seven seconds – is augmented by a series of digital prints that beckon viewers to reevaluate the intricate relationship between technological and socio-political upheavals.

The BSO, which emerged in the waning years of the 1960s, was a militant collective committed to the liberation of Palestine. Composed of an undefined number of libertarian fighters hailing from Palestine and beyond, the organization aimed not merely to free their homeland but also to protect refugees and internationalize the Palestinian cause.

Coinciding with this socio-political ferment was the advent of 8–bit computer processors, a technological milestone that would later serve as the catalyst for a worldwide digital revolution. Guerrilla 8-bit ingeniously unites these seemingly disparate timelines, employing 8-bit technology as a medium to reexamine…

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Matteo Bittanti


Work cited

Firas Shehadeh

Guerrilla 8-bit, digital video (4:3), color, sound. 1' 47", series of digital prints, 2013, Palestine

All images and videos courtesy of the Artist


This is a Patreon exclusive content. For full access consider joining our growing community.