Jonathan Carroll

MMF MMXXIV: CROWD CONTROL IS AWARDED THE CRITICS’ CHOICE AWARD

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.

Contact: To contact the curators, please click here.

MMF MMXXIV: CAT BLUEMKE AND JONATHAN CARROLL

The Milan Machinima Festival is delighted to showcase Crowd Control by Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll, as part of our special program, Game Video Essay. We cordially invite you to an exclusive screening on March 14, 2024 at IULM University, where you will have the unique opportunity to experience this captivating work alongside the creators themselves.

How will artificial intelligence shape the peasant revolts of the future? Looking at the ways that crowd simulation technology has intersected with a growing surveillance industry, this machinima focuses on the representation of the French Revolutionary mob in Assassin’s Creed Unity (2014). Reflecting on depictions of crowds in art history up to the contemporary crowd simulations of video games, Crowd Control examines how these technologies foreclose upon the possibility of collective action within the real world. 

Canadian artists Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll specialize in game design, expanded reality, and performance. United under their collective persona as SpekWork Studio, they make experiences that span the digital spectrum, from interactive games and comics to immersive reality experiences and live performances. These projects probe technology’s ability to obscure the lines between work and play. They explore technology’s duality as both a labour-saving device and tool of exploitation. Their works often engage with the struggles of precarious and feminized workers, the demographic that often finds itself at the crossroads of technological advances and pitfalls. They draw inspiration from their lives as precarious digital freelancers while learning from their communities and the oppressive systems they seek to unravel. Recently they’re focusing on the ways work imprints upon our bodies and health by drawing on personal histories. With ten years of exhibition history, they’ve shown internationally with prominent institutions like Rhizome and the New Museum (2020) and the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) as part of the American Pavillion’s corollary exhibits. Recently, they’ve exhibited with the Singapore Art Museum (2023), Art Gallery of Regina (2023), the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie (2022), InterAcess (2021), and Eyelevel Gallery (2021). With the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Rhizome, and multiple provincial arts councils, the pair has self-published much of their interactive work online, making them freely available to a global audience.

Read more about the 7th edition of the Milan Machinima Festival