End of the world

MMF MMXXIII UPDATE: A CHAT WITH STANISLAW PETRUK

Stanislaw Petruk

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

The Milan Machinima Festival is excited to present Stanislaw Petruk's The Remnants, a short film created with the Unreal Engine set five years after a global disaster, where the remaining population is struggling to survive as the planet slowly dies. The machinima portrays the struggle for survival and the harsh reality of human nature in a post-apocalyptic world.

The Remnants will be exclusively screened at the Museum of Interactive Cinema on March 25 2023 as part of the Utopia/Dystopia program. Buy your ticket here.

Born in 1987, Stanisław Petruk is a filmmaker and Sr. VFX artist at Avalanche Studios in Sweden. He has directed several shorts and worked on video games such as WWE Immortals, Mortal Kombat, Agents of Mayhem, The Walking Dead, and Saints Row. He lives and works in Stockholm.

Matteo Bittanti discussed the creative and technical process behind The Remnants with the filmmaker, Stan Petruk.

Matteo Bittanti: Although you’re very young, you’ve already lived in several countries. How would you describe, comparatively, the social and cultural perception of video games in Russia, Poland, and Sweden, where you currently live and work?

Stanislaw Petruk: The great thing about the games is that they are very international. And here I am talking not only about players, but also about developers. And I think on the development side it is even more visible. You can easily move from one company to another even in a different country and work pipeline will be identical, same about the language – English for all communication and documentation.

Matteo Bittanti: You describe yourself as a self-taught artist, as you crafted your skills as a VFX artist and as a filmmaker mostly through online courses, tutorials, and hard work. Can you discuss your upbringing as somebody who “grew up on the internet”, so to speak?

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Stanislaw Petruk

The Remnants

digital video, sound, 7’ 7”, 2022, Sweden

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

EVENT: MARTINA MENEGON (SEPTEMBER 30 - AUGUST 13 2022, ONLINE)

when you are close to me I shiver

video recording of live simulation

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 7’ 47”, 2020, Italy

Created by Martina Menegon

Sound design by Alexander Martinz

when you are close to me I shiver is an algorithmically controlled live simulation, hereby presented as a video recording, that is, a real-time generated virtual experience that takes place in a version of the future in which humans, out of desperation, gather in masses on the last remaining piece of land. Inspired by the walrus scene in the documentary Our Planet narrated by David Attenborough and produced by Silverback Films, the project proposes a scenario encompassing ongoing environmental and personal crises. The video depicts a desolated island populated by 3D-scanned clones of the artist herself. Through these perceivable avatars, the artist creates a new identity that arises out of plurality, proprioceptively renegotiating the fragility of both the physical and the virtual self and its realities.

Martina Menegon (Italy, 1988) is an artist working predominantly with Interactive and Extended Reality Art. In her works, Martina creates intimate and complex assemblages of physical and virtual elements that explore the contemporary self and its phygital corporeality. She experiments with the uncanny and the grotesque, the self and the body and the dialogue between physical and virtual realities, to create disorienting experiences that become perceivable despite their virtual nature.

WATCH NOW

ARTICLE: GET LOST IN THE WOODS

Babak Ahteshamipoiur, Occupy Determined Neural Systems District and Take Action to get Rid of Them, Acrylics and oil pastels on canvas, 2021

GHOSTING IS REAL

Patreon-exclusive content

〰️

Patreon-exclusive content 〰️

Developed in collaboration with Nathan Harper, The Lost Woods is both a medium and a message. A 3D virtual gallery space accessible online, it is an exhibition context and an archive featuring 30+ artifacts exploring the notion of virtual identity and artificial intelligence. The artists describe the experience in video game terms:

You appear in a dark forest shrouded in green fog. Ancient trees tower up into the murky skies. Before you lies a massive tree stump with jagged edges. Next to it on the left is a tunnel. The forest is inhabited by strange beings and floating brightly colored texts.

The works on display in The Lost Woods are both "new" and remediated, to borrow Bolter and Grusin's term. Ahteshamipoiur's paintings such as The Fires that Burn are Never the Ones that were Meant to Burn (2021) and Occupy Sad Neural Systems District and Cry to get Rid of Them (2021) have been digitized and incorporated within this fluid, navigable space, replete with video game tropes, characters and props. In some cases, metaphors are crystalline, if not literal - such is the case of ghosting, thanks to Super Mario 64's various ectoplasms - in other cases, they are more nuanced. Characters from previous works, such as the Grim Reaper from The Sims — and the video currently shown on VRAL — make an appearance as well. 

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

This is a Patreon exclusive article. To read the full text consider joining our Patreon community.

ARTICLE: IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD (OF WARCRAFT) AS WE KNOW IT

THE WORLD IS DYING, BUT WHY BOTHER? I’VE MADE IT TO LEVEL 70 IN WOW!

Patreon-exclusive content

〰️

Patreon-exclusive content 〰️

World of Warcraft, one of the most popular massively multiplayer role playing games of all time, has been appropriated, hijacked, and repurposed by Babak Ahteshamipour for 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 (2022). The outcome of an extended production phase which began with the creation of an alter ego — a Blood Elf Warlock which was then “evolved” through a process leveling up — the video is equal part documentation and self expression. Such a complicated and time-consuming procedure was necessary for the artist’s avatar to access all the areas of the game, so that the player-director could explore different scenarios, regions, and dungeons, and capture the salient footage. As you know, machinima is hard work. Interestingly, the “action” is presented not from the customary third person view of the game, but from the first-person perspective, usually associated with first-person shooters. The absence of a recognizable body onscreen makes the experience at once disembodied — and thus uncanny — and more immersive, because the viewer can freely project their identity onto the protagonist, whomever they may be. Ahteshamipour calls this state of affairs “transcendental”, as identity becomes inseparable from the act of viewing: the player-spectator is, at once, the all seeing eye of a demiurge.

The artist describes 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 as a commentary on escapism, in the sense that gaming is generally perceived as a form of entertainment that provides players with alternative situations, “fun” challenges, and entire worlds to their ordinary lives. This tendency to escape real life is becoming more and more popular as the planet is dying before our eyes: climate change, environmental catastrophes, air pollution and micro-plastics are rendering Earth increasingly inhabitable (“DOOM”). It comes as no surprise as Silicon Valley companies are pushing hard for metaverses and simulations: incapable or unwilling to change the status quo - because it’s not economically advantageous — video game companies and social media platforms have been systemically encouraging users to drop out and log in: the planet is dying, but this simulated world looks so good on the screen:

“It is so cool to pretend to love the sight of a dying world from a privileged perspective”.

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

This is a Patreon exclusive article. To read the full text consider joining our Patreon community.