EVENT: KAMILIA KARD (DECEMBER 2 2022, 9 PM CET, LIVE)

The MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL is delighted to announce its first machinima live performance on its brand new Twitch channel. Curated by Gemma Fantacci, the inaugural show is Kamilia Kard’s Toxic Garden - DANCE DANCE DANCE. Join us tonight Friday December 2 at 9 pm Central European Time (CET)!

Toxic Garden - DANCE DANCE DANCE is an online participatory performance created within Toxic Garden, a unique map designed by the artist for Roblox (Roblox Corporation, 2006) in which participants can perform a common dance by donning custom skins that change randomly. A visual commentary on toxic human behaviors, DANCE DANCE DANCE is inspired by the defense mechanisms of poisonous plants. Its development took place during the residency at Lavanderia a Vapore and it involved dancers who contributed in the creation of the choreography. Designed and developed by Kamilia Kard, aka KKlovesU4E. Music of the Performance by Raffaella Bresciani. Sound design of Toxic Garden’s map by Cristina Katja Angeloro.

Kamilia Kard is an artist and scholar based in Milan. Her research explores how hyper-connectivity and new forms of online communication have modified and influenced the perception of the human body, as well as our gestures, feelings and emotions. Her practice spans from digital paintings to websites, from video installations to 3D printed sculptures, from interactive virtual environments and video games to AR facial filters. Her work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, public spaces and online venues. Highlights include: A.dition Gallery, South Korea (2022), Careof, Milan (2021); Marséll, Milan (2021); Museo Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare (2021); Milan Machinima Festival (2021); Galerie Odile Ouizeman, Paris (2020); Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris (2020); Dimora Artica, Milan (2020); Olomouc Museum of Art (2020); Metronom, Modena (2018, 2019 and 2020); EP7, Paris (2019); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2018); iMAL, Brussels (2018); Digitalive @ REF, Rome (2018); Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2017); Triennale di Milano (2017); Centro Cultural São Paulo (2017); La Quadriennale di Roma (2016); Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2015); Hypersalon, Miami (2015); The Wrong Biennial, online (2014); Museo del Novecento, Milan (2013). She is the author of Arte e Social Media. Generatori di sentimenti (Postmedia Books 2022) and the editor of Alpha Plus. An Anthology of Digital Art (Editorial Vortex 2017). She often lectures about her artistic practice and research. She has a Ph.D in Digital Humanities (University of Genova), and she teaches Multimedia Communication and Aesthetics of New Media at Accademia di Brera in Milan, Italy.

To watch the perform, please visit

MMF_VRAL on Twitch

Kamilia Kard

Toxic Garden - DANCE DANCE DANCE

December 2 2022 at 9 PM CET, free

The edited video recording will be available on December 3 2022.

ARTICLE: AMIR YATZIV'S LIVE ANIMATION THEATER

Amir Yatziv, Glass Widow, live animation theater, 2022

I have seen the future of theatre. His name is Amir Yatziv.

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Israeli artist Amir Yatziv’s ongoing experimentation with video game technologies to reinvent theater is breaking new grounds with Grass Widow, “a play for three digital characters and one actress” which debuted at ArtPort in Tel Aviv on June 16 2022. It is also one of the most elaborate productions so far by Yatziv, whose stunning project The Kingdom of Shadows, was featured on VRAL S02 in 2021. An actress, Neta Spiegelman, is standing on an almost bare stage. Behind her, the interior of an apartment consisting of five separate rooms is projected onto a large screen. Often the scene is represented from above, blueprint-style, evoking the aesthetics of video game maps. 

As in previous performances, Spiegelman is wearing a motion capture suit that records her body and facial movements, transferring them to three digital avatars inside the apartment, so that they can act and perform live. There’s no delay or lag of any kind. Yatziv, the director, is synchronizing the character played by the actress with her virtual figures on screen in real time, using an Xbox One game controller. He is also acting in the play. Everyone is multi tasking, pardon, multi performing.

Grass Widow reinterprets Jean Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, which incidentally was the point of departure of Kara Güt’s Welcome to my Nexus (VRAL #30), another bold experiment in media convergence, an hybrid of gaming and theater before a live audience…

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

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A CLOSER LOOK AT KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

The current VRAL show features Amir Yatziv’s groundbreaking work Kingdom of Shadows, a multimedia project focusing on an unusual audition: an actress (Neta Shpigelman) is trying to win the part of a computer game character in a successful series, Final Fantasy. The setup is both spartan and dense.

Her performance is evaluated by a famous Japanese computer game director, played by Eliya Tsuchida. Several avatars are auditioned for this role, which requires them to repeatedly cross the thin line that separates reality from fiction, until it completely disappears. A conceptual tour de force, Kingdom of Shadows is also a remarkable technical feat: the human actor is wearing a motion-capture suit on stage that captures her movements and facial expressions and instantly translates them into those of her digital counterpart on a giant screen, who is perceived, by the viewers, as the “real” actor. Her acting thus is simultaneously captured and translated by way of performance-capture technology. We see extreme closeups, weird angles, abrupt moves, and funny gestures, although we are perfectly aware that something is lost, including the fact that Shpigelman — gesticulating onstage in her black bodysuit — is extremely pregnant.

Kingdom of Shadows is a meditation on the proliferation of doppelgängers, replicas, and avatars in contemporary culture, a theme that also recurs in Yatziv’s latest project, Non Player Character (2021). However, it is not a warning about replacement, extinction or body snatching. On the contrary, the artist sees the avatar as a synthesis of the human and the post-human.

the avatar [embodies] the best of the human and the best of the machine. This is something new for me, but I look at this work as an experiment. What I am trying to do is to combine the strengths of these two agents, the machine and the human being. (Amir Yatziv)

At the same time, the work seems to suggest that any attempts to reach a “solid” emotional connection between the parties involved, suggesting that technologically mediated social distancing today is a prerequisite for professional success and, perhaps, even for emotional survival.

Interestingly, Kingdom of Shadows has been presented under various guises. The current VRAL show features a recording of the live animation performance that took place at the Jerusalem Theater during the Israeli Festival in June 2021, but there’s an additional performance that took place at Artport Tel Aviv 2021 on July 7 2021 which adds new elements, including a new epilogue and a completely different coda. The artist is considering more iterations. In that sense, Kingdom of Shadows is not a single text, but like a video game, is many different texts at once, many possible worlds, an incubator of fantasies.

Matteo Bittanti

EVENT: VRAL #31_AMIR YATZIV (OCTOBER 1-14 2021)

KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

Recording of live performance, sound, color, 11’ 20”, 2021 (Israel)

Created by Amir Yatziv

Actors: Neta Shpigelman, Eliya Tsuchida

Computer graphics: Yuliya Bogonos

Courtesy of the Artist and Galleria Laveronica

Three avatars are auditioning for the role of a video game character under the vigilant eyes of a Japanese game designer. A human actor, wearing a motion-capture suit, executes a set of actions in real life that are simultaneously performed by her virtual counterpart on a giant screen. Spectators see both. Conceived and produced by Amir Yatziv, this live performance blurs the lines that traditionally separate theater from digital gaming and invites viewers to consider the porosity between reality and simulation. Inspired by the romantic encounter of two characters in Final Fantasy, Kingdom of Shadows investigates changing notions of identity, performance, and communication in a screen-based world.

Born in Israel, Amir Yatziv lives and works in Tel Aviv. After receiving a B.A. in Computer Science at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, he studied Arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. He directed several short films which were often exhibited as art installations as well. Among his solo exhibitions are This is Jerusalem Mr. Pasolini, Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Israel (2013), This is Jerusalem Mr. Pasolini, Galleria Laveronica, Modica, Italy (2012), Antipodes, Ramat-Gan Museum of Art, Tel-Aviv (2010). Group exhibitions include Too early, too late. Middle east and modernity, curated by Marco Scotini, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (2015), Space Oddity, A capsule exhibition, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany (2014), La guerra che verrà non è la prima, 1914-2014, MaRT, Rovereto (2014), Recalculating Route, 4 Mediations Biennale, Poznan (2014), CounterIntelligence, Hart House, curated by Charles Stankievech, University of Toronto, Canada (2014), Time Pieces, Nordstern Videokunstzentrum, curated by Marius Babias and Kathrin Becker, Gelsenkirchen, Germany (2014), Measure for Measure, curated by Drorit gur-arie and Hila Cohen-Schneiderman, Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Israel (2014), Give Us The Future, curated by Frank Wagner, n.b.k Berlin, Germany (2014), Artists’ Film International, Whitechapel Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2014), Multiplicity, NURTUREart, curated by Marco Antonini and Hila Cohen- Schneiderman, New York (2014).

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