Brenton Alexander Smith

ARTICLE: JOHN CHAMBERLAIN LIVES ON

VRAL is currently showcasing Chris Kerich’s latest project Three Impossible Worlds. To accompany the exhibition, we are discussing several artworks that comprise his oeuvre. Today, we examine his series Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures.

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Like the previously discussed Piles(2018), Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures (2017) utilizes the mechanics of video games in unconventional ways in order to produce glitch art and reveal the underlying systems and hidden ideologies. However, whereas Piles employed violence and repetition to provoke discomfort, Keric’s previous work Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures taps into the joyful anarchy and broken physics of glitch art.

In this series, Kerich builds impossible vehicular constructions using the editor in the soft-body physics driving simulator BeamNG.drive. Vehicles are stacked, fused, and contorted into chaotic sculptures that burst into flames or cause extreme glitching of the physics engine when simulated. According to the artist, this project was inspired by the vernacular YouTube series Car Boys, in which the hosts push BeamNG to its limits to produce an absurdist, often hilarious spectacle.

BeamNG.drive is notable for its advanced soft-body physics simulation which allows vehicles to crumple, deform, and come apart in dynamic ways during crashes. Both Piles and Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures  use exploitation of game systems against their intended purpose in order to surface hidden logics, biases and prerogatives. But whereas the former is painstakingly structured and demanding of both artist and viewer in terms of duration and access (it was originally livestreamed on Twitch for 22 hours), Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures embraces playful serendipity, shorter length, and post facto consumption. It follows in a lineage of glitch art that finds meaning in rupturing systems through technical abuse rather than programmatic critique.

And while Piles implicates masculinity and power relations in its repetitive symbolic violence, Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures has no such explicit agenda beyond visible chaos. In fact, the Car Boys inspiration anchors it firmly in the juvenile but often creative energy of tinkering that many first experience in childhood, usually coded ‘male’: like video games, automobiles are connoted as “boys’ toys”, that is, tools and technologies that promote masculine ideals of competition, power, status, domination, and aggression through play, often emphasizing technical mastery and…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Chris Kerich

Digital Kinetic Sculptures

digital video/machinima, color, sound, various length, 2017, United States.

digital images, 2017, United States.

All images and videos courtesy of the Artist.

Read more about Chamberlain’s sculptures.

Read more about Brenton Alexander Smith.

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

MMF MMXXIII UPDATE: A CHAT WITH MARTIN BELL

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Martin Bell

The Milan Machinima Festival is currently featuring Martin Bell's groundbreaking machinima PRAZINBURK RIDGE in the Counter-Narratives program, alongside three other works. Based on a true story, the machinima is set during World War One, and stars former rugby player for Great Britain Douglas Clark. The athlete finds himself on the Belgian battlefields of Ypres and must rely on his old skills to save himself and his fellow soldiers from shot, shell and poison gas.

Martin Bell has been creating computer graphics all his life. Originally from a Yorkshire mining community, Martin moved to London and became a CG artist over 15 years ago. As an animator and film visualization supervisor, he has created huge action sequences for Hollywood productions such as Jurassic World, James Bond, Marvel, Fast & Furious, 1917, Aladdin, the DC Universe and The Wheel of Time. His first short, PRAZINBURK RIDGE premiered at Wigan & Leigh Film Festival 2022, a BIFA-qualifying festival, where it won the award for Best Animation. It was also selected for SPARK Animation Festival in Vancouver, Clones Film Festival, Tbilisi International Animation Festival, and Dispatches of War Festival among others.

We talked to Martin Bell about his practice as a machinimaker and his first solo project, PRAZINBURK RIDGE.

Matteo Bittanti: Can you describe your trajectory from CGI wizard to filmmaker? What led you to explore cinema as a medium and as an artform?

Martin Bell: I always wanted to make films. When I was eleven, I tried to make an Aliens sequel using DeluxePaint IV on my Amiga: that was probably my first unfinished project, many more would follow. 

Jurassic Park was what sealed it for me though, when dinosaurs suddenly came alive in front of me. I knew I wanted to be a part of that. In my CGI/VFX career I have always tried to steer myself towards the most creative roles possible – I wanted to be an animator to create my own stories, not necessarily other people’s stories. So eventually I ended up in film previsualisation for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and found that to be a role I could be creative in, while contributing to a film franchise I loved. Later, the opportunity to supervise previs came along, and put me in an even more creative position. But meanwhile the desire to create my own films had been growing, and I’d been writing scripts. I’d been introduced briefly to Unreal Engine and knew it could potentially be something I could utilise but I hadn’t had chance to learn it yet, and then Covid-19 hit.

Matteo Bittanti: Very apropos... There’s a new generation of innovative filmmakers that was born during the Covid-19 lockdown. Forced indoors and unclear about the future, hundreds of creative types around the world began experimenting with different kinds of tools and storytelling techniques. Does this story sound familiar to you?

Martin Bell: Oh, very much so! Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns were awful, but I was conscious that it provided an opportunity to reset things, to take stock and think about what might be next. Without any work to focus on and no creative outlet, I knew I needed to make something, and with the time available I could learn Unreal Engine finally. So I decided I’d make a little three-minute short or something, in Unreal, just as a learning exercise. And PRAZINBURK RIDGE was born.

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Martin Bell

PRAZINBURK RIDGE

digital video/machinima, color, sound, 10’, 2022, England

This is a Patreon exclusive article. To access the full content consider joining our Patreon community.

MMF MMXXIII UPDATE: A CHAT WITH BRENTON ALEXANDER SMITH

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The Milan Machinima Festival is delighted to introduce Brenton Alexander Smith's The Impossibility of Things Disappearing. Featured in The Neo Avant-garde program, Smith's work will be available between March 19-26 2023 exclusively on the MMF website.

His previous machinima Things Are Different Now, was featured in 2020 as part of VRAL. Read an interview by Luca Miranda here. 

Brenton Alexander Smith is an Australian artist whose work delves into the intricate interplay between humanity and technology. He creates pieces that evoke a range of emotions, from discomfort to nostalgia, and draws on a variety of media, both digital and tangible, to craft immersive installations that feature both sculptural and video components. One of Smith’s primary concerns is addressing the cultural anxieties that arise from our dependence on technology. His work reflects this by imbuing machine detritus with human-like qualities and expressions. The result is a thought-provoking commentary on our relationship with technology and the role it plays in shaping our lives. Smith earned a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of NSW in Australia in 2020, and his work has been exhibited internationally, as well as in his hometown of Sydney. His solo exhibitions include I Feel Like a Nervous Wreck (2019) at the virtual gallery of Closed on Monday Gallery and Together with Machines (2015) at the Akureyri Art Museum in Iceland. He has also participated in The Wrong Biennale (2019) in Valencia, Spain, and received the Friedman Foundation Travelling Scholarship in 2014.

In the following interview, Brenton Alexander Smith discusses the main inspirations behind his new artwork:

Matteo Bittanti: The impossibility of things disappearing is a captivating exploration of the intersection between life and death, and the notion of agency beyond the living. Can you speak to the inspiration behind this work, and how you approached creating a sense of liveliness and movement in a desiccated fish?

Brenton Alexander Smith: This work started as a technical challenge that I set for myself. I’ve worked with BeamNg.drivebefore to make similar kinds of videos but it was always within the constraints of the car theme of the game. I would use mods that other people have created to open up new ways of making, but the subject matter always began with a car. I wanted to see if I could put something else into the simulation to see how it would behave. I set about learning how to make my own mod for the game.

The idea was to replace the car with something different, perhaps something organic. I decided to go with the desiccated fish because it was part of an old video artwork I made during a residency in Iceland that I had been meaning to expand on. It was a video of a factory machine that packaged fish to be sent to Nigeria to be used as soup stock. I took a screenshot from the video and selected one of the dried fish from the image to be turned into a 3D object.

I think about the work in terms of resurrection. The original fish has surely been turned into soup by now, but here we see its specter rotating on screen. This is partly what I’m getting at with the title of the work. Matter doesn’t disappear, it can only become something new. In the same way images (like the fish) can be reused, reinterpreted and resurrected.

Matteo Bittanti: BeamNG.drive was designed to simulate the experience of driving with “realistic” physics. By using it to create an artwork, you subverted its intended purpose, well beyond your previous works. Can you address the role of BeamNG.drive in the creation of this piece, and how the simulation’s realistic physics affected the final product? Also, can you describe the process of creating the mod and how it enabled you to use the game’s physics simulation as an “animation” technique? Is this the first installment of a new series, à la The Soft Crash (2020)?

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Brenton Alexander Smith

The Impossibility of Things Disappearing

digital video/machinima, color, sound, 6’ 10”, 2022, Australia

This is a Patreon exclusive article. To access the full content consider joining our Patreon community.

MMF MMXXIII: THE NEO AVANT-GARDE

INTRODUCED BY/INTRODOTTO DA MATTEO BITTANTI

INTERVIEWS BY/INTERVISTE DI MATTEO BITTANTI

MARCH 19-26 2023/19-26 MARZO 2023 (ONLINE)

The Neo Avant-Garde emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as a continuation and redefinition of earlier Avant-Garde movements from the early 20th century. Its artists sought to expand the definition of art by pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable and rejected traditional forms and techniques. They utilized new media and technologies, such as photography, film, and performance art, and emphasized collaboration and collective creation instead of the idea of the solitary genius artist. This led to new art forms, including happenings, installations, and conceptual art, which prioritized the viewer's experience.

Machinima, a filmmaking form that utilizes real-time computer graphics engines to create movies, shares several affinities with the Neo Avant-Garde in contemporary art. It challenges traditional boundaries between media, namely film, video games, theater, and other digital media by utilizing the language of the video game to create cinematic narratives that disrupt conventional notions of what constitutes a "film." Machinima also exemplifies the Neo Avant-Garde's collaborative ethos, with artists frequently working together to bring their visions to life.

The Neo Avant Garde program features cutting edge works by Babak Ahteshamipour, Iain Douglas, Mark Coverdale, Kara Güt, and Brenton Alexander Smith. Ahteshamipour’s In Search of the Banned Dictionaries that contain the Words for the Things You Wish you could Express but You are Unable to With Common Words reinvents self-representation by appropriating World of Warcraft. Kara Güt’s Hurt/Comfort explores the concept of confession through the lens of live-streaming. Brenton Alexander Smith's The Impossibility of Things Disappearing is a haunting vignette that defies easy categorization. 

Additionally, the Neo Avant-Garde program will showcase an onsite screening of Christian Wright's Body Language, exclusively at the Museum of Interactive Cinema on March 25, 2023. Purchase your ticket here.

Matteo Bittanti

WATCH THE ONLINE PROGRAM NOW

EVENT: VRAL #6_BRENTON ALEXANDER SMITH (JULY 17 - JULY 30 2020)

THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW

Digital video, color, sound, 7’ 01”, 2020 (Australia)

Created by Brenton Alexander Smith

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.

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