FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Crowd Control Wins the 2024 Milan Machinima Festival Critics Choice Award
Milan, Italy – The Milan Machinima Festival is thrilled to announce that Crowd Control by Jonathan Carroll and Cat Bluemke (SpekWork Studio) has been honored with the 2024 Critics’s Choice Award. This recognition serves not only as a testament to the creativity and skill of Carroll and Bluemke but also highlights the critical role of arts funding — in this case, the Canada Council for the Arts — in nurturing innovative digital explorations.
This groundbreaking Unity 3D project, hereby presented as a game video essay, emerged as a standout in a field of international submissions, captivating jurors and audience alike with its innovative exploration of artificial intelligence and its impact on collective action and historical revolt, particularly within the context of the French Revolutionary mob as depicted in Assassin’s Creed: Unity (2014). This work is part of the duo Assassin’s Creed Art History series, which includes previously self-published game essays Gameworkers and Guildworkers (2020) and Blindspot (2021).
Crowd Control delves into the intersections of crowd simulation technology and the surveillance industry, questioning the role of technology in shaping the possibilities of collective action in both the past and the future. Through its insightful text by Cat Bluemke, compelling design and programming by Jonathan Carroll, and engaging narration by Romanne Walker, the project reflects on the evolution of crowd representations from art history to contemporary video game simulations, redefining the notion of video essay, machinima, and desktop cinema.
The selection of Crowd Control was overseen by an esteemed panel of jurors, including Marco De Mutiis, a digital curator at Fotomuseum Winterthur; Henry Lowood, a curator and scholar at Stanford University; Jenna Ng, a multi-award-winning researcher; and Martin Zeilinger, a senior lecturer in Computational Arts and Technology at Abertay University. Their diverse expertise in digital culture, machinima studies, and the intersection of art and technology played a pivotal role in identifying Crowd Control as a work that embodies the festival’s mission to explore the avant-garde and innovative frontiers of digital storytelling.
The Milan Machinima Festival extends heartfelt congratulations to Jonathan and Cat for their remarkable achievement. The duo presented their work in person on March 14 2024 in the Game Video Essay special program. Crowd Control stands as a compelling examination of how digital and interactive media can not only represent historical and contemporary phenomena but also provoke critical reflection on the destructive force of US-driven techno-capitalism.
For more information about Crowd Control, please visit Spek Studios’ website.
About the Milan Machinima Festival
The Milan Machinima Festival is a leading international event dedicated to exploring the artistic, scholarly, and critical potentials of machinima, a form of filmmaking within real-time, virtual 3D environments. Through its annual presentation of works that challenge traditional narratives and aesthetics, the festival celebrates the innovative convergence of digital gaming, cinema, and video art.
About SpekWork Studio
Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll create art that delves into the themes of work and play, manifesting through video games, performances, and expanded reality experiences. Their collaborative projects, which began in 2013, critically examine how technology mediates both labor and leisure. Operating often under the banners of SpekWork Studio and Tough Guy Mountain, their partnership has produced an intriguing portfolio of work. As SpekWork, they specialize in developing video games, virtual and augmented reality experiences, and mobile applications, intricately exploring the interplay between users, workers, and players. This body of work not only reflects on the technological regulation of daily activities but also invites reflection on the broader implications of digital interaction in modern society.
Work cited
Cat Bluemke, Jonathan Carroll, Crowd Control, digital video, color, sound, 8’ 08”, 2023, Canada.
Narration by Romanne Walker.
