NPC

EVENT: HUI WAI-KEUNG (FEBRUARY 16 - 29 2024, ONLINE)

Parallel V

digital video, single-channel-projection, color, sound, 26’ 14”, 2023, Hong Kong

Created by Hui Wai-Keung

World premiere

Conceived by Hui Wai-Keung as a tribute to Harun Farocki, Parallel V is a continuation of his seminal Parallel I-IV series investigating the operational logic of computer games. The point of departure for Hui is a statement by the late German director on the computer-controller characters’ tendency to repeat the same actions over and over again: “This tragedy revealed the limitations of human freedom of action”. Hui discovered that all NPCs seem trapped in a time-space bond with the player, a relationship of ontological dependence. NPCs live life-like existences; repetitions are inevitable in their simulated lives. And yet, Hui suggests, the algorithmic bounds of games are not absolute, and NPCs still encounter contingencies. Thus, both NPCs and human beings might be better off following Friedrich Nietzsche’s admonition, embracing rather than rejecting repetition.

Hui Wai-Keung is a Hong Kong-born cross-disciplinary artist currently pursuing a PhD in Art Creation and Theory at Tainan National University of the Arts in Taiwan. Hui received his MFA from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong and studied at the Hong Kong Art School. In recent years he has focused especially on game art and algorithmic art, exploring visual possibilities in digital hyperspace. Hui has exhibited widely in solo and group shows in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Germany, Finland, Italy and the USA. Hui has completed artist residencies in Germany, Finland, South Korea, and Japan. Currently based in Taiwan, Hui continues to exhibit and conduct research into narrative, algorithms, possibility, contingency, reenactment, and history.

ARTICLE: GEORGIE ROXBY SMITH VS. THE MADONNA-WHORE COMPLEX

As VRAL current solo exhibition focuses on Georgie Roxby Smith’s new Blood Paintings series, we aim to illuminate her legacy of confrontational game-based art by examining a pivotal early work, Lara Croft, Domestic Goddess I & II, which re-cast the Tomb Raider heroine as a proto-tradwife in her most challenging mission.

The endlessly looping cries of gaming icon Lara Croft echo incongruously over household chores in Georgie Roxby Smith’s 2013 performance and Second Life intervention, Lara Croft, Domestic Goddess I & II. The female explorer’s torture screams punctuate mundane, uneventful acts like washing and ironing clothes. The superimposition of discordant feminine spheres spotlights the bias still dogging video games’ staunchest female characters today. Despite efforts celebrating Lara Croft’s emotional depth and resolve through various reboots and remakes, her graphic anguish feels all too familiarly pinned to outmoded visions of femininity from the franchises’ past.

Having already probed systemic dangers subtly encoded for female avatars through works like The Fall Girl in 2012, here Smith spotlights the lingering identity tensions constraining Lara Croft. The Tomb Raider icon embodies a discombobulating identity bifurcation: aspiring towards fierce, capable heroism on one hand while still confined as an ornament for the traditionally masculine demographic’s visual greed alone on the other. As Croft’s strained persona splits unevenly between feminist icon and fetishized pin-up, she exemplifies unreconciled contradictions of projecting strength while submitting to the objectifying male gaze. By confronting this demeaning binary — akin to the  dichotomy informing the Madonna-whore complex mapping women into mutually exclusive camps of saintly virtue or debased promiscuity — Smith indicts the media forces that tokenize liberatory gestures yet withhold full multidimensional womanhood under paternalistic pretense…


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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

George Roxby Smith, Fair Game [Run like a girl], in-game performance, machinima (color, sound, 13’ 56”), 2015.

Georgie Roxby Smith, Lara Croft, Domestic Goddess I & II, Lara Croft death noises from Tomb Raider (2013), 3D model, Second Life intervention, looped continuously for duration.

Georgie Roxby Smith, The Fall Girl, in-game performance and machinima (color, sound, 8’ 07”), 2012.

Peggy Ahwesh, She Puppet, digital video, color, sound, 15’, 2001.

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ARTICLE: GEORGIE ROXBY SMITH AND THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE NPC RUNNER

As VRAL current solo exhibition focuses on Georgie Roxby Smith’s new Blood Paintings series, we aim to illuminate her legacy of confrontational game-based art by examining a pivotal early work, Fair Game [Run Like A Girl]. Our analysis centers on overlapping themes in Smith’s practice of visual confrontation around gaming’s ingrained normalization of violence towards feminine identity and representation...

In her 2015 performance Fair Game [Run Like A Girl], Georgie Roxby Smith hijacks the marginalized female non-playable characters in Grand Theft Auto V, stretching their flight animations into disturbing prey. As her sadistic avatar stalks and toys with these sexualized bots in the streets (and hills!) of Los Santos, their loops of cowering and screaming indict the misogyny hard-coded into this digital Californication. 

Before examining the work, the ominous title warrants exploration. As Emma Griffin explains in her monumental work, “fair game” historically traces back to the hunting fields of 19th century Britain, where it was used to denote legal and ethical parameters around which animals could be hunted during a given season. Anything deemed within the boundaries of “fair game” – open for sporting, capture, or killing – was considered unprotected prey. Already by the late 1800s however, the idiomatic implications had extended more broadly to refer to anything – or for that matter, anyone– that dominant powers or social forces considered appropriate targets for criticism, ridicule, sexualization or attack without fear of consequences or concern over consent. Victim blaming was implicit; in the cultural view, targets labeled “fair game” were themselves presumed to invite trouble or violence due to defiant or nonconforming attitudes, appearances, or behavior.

In choosing Fair Game as the title of her intervention, Smith knowingly evokes the historical associations of marking feminine bodies as vulnerable game ripe for one-sided, unethical hunting by more powerful and forceful antagonists. Her interrogation lays bare gaming ecosystems and cultures enabling the chasing and tormenting of women without consequences under the veneer of play and the pretext of fun. Let’s now concentrate on the second part of the title. The bracketed “run like a girl” also carries insidious coding limitations into culture. The phrase has history mocking supposedly inherent feminine weakness and first surfaced as a comment denouncing “inadequate masculinity”. Specifically, it critiqued women’s alleged lack of power, speed or coordination.. 

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Georgie Roxby Smith, Fair Game [Run like a girl], in-game performance, machinima (color, sound, 13’ 56”), 2015

Georgie Roxby Smith, 99 Problems [WASTED], in-game performance, machinima (color, sound, 4’ 45”), 2014

Georgie Roxby Smith, Blood Paintings, digital video, color, sound, 11’ 06”, 2024

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ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT STEFAN PANHANS AND ANDREA WINKLER’S FREEROAM À REBOURS, MOD#I.1. PART THREE

Japanese TikToker Natuecoco in her signature cat ears and wig.Courtesy of Natuecoco

Our 2024 VRAL program opened by spotlighting Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler’s Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1. This 16-minute experimental video from 2016-2017, a “machinima sui generis”, warrants extended analysis in its own right and we highlighted key themes in our extended conversation with the artists. But since contextualizing unique works within broader cultural spheres often proves illuminating, we will situate Freeroam À Rebours within surrounding phenomena that inspire comparative examination and share (perceived) resonances.

Part one is available here

Part two is available here

As you may know, the phenomenon of NPC (Non-Player Character) streaming was pioneered by the Japanese performer Natuecoco, a content creator known for her distinctive cat ears and colorful wigs, who embarked on an experimental journey in October 2021. In many ways, she set a standard, introducing a template that others followed almost verbatim. Her livestreams, characterized by the obsessive repetition of catchphrases in Japanese and Korean — along with precise, almost robotic movements — captivated a global audience. Her daily performances, lasting up to an hour and a half, would see a surge of interaction as viewers sent tokens to elicit specific responses.

Her online performances, however, began earlier. Also known within the US context as the “Ohio Queen” or “Eringi”, Natuecoco initially established her online presence on Twitch in 2019. Over three years, she amassed over 12,600 followers, though she retired from Twitch streaming in February 2022. Her social media trajectory, marked by an Instagram debut in December 2019 and a TikTok presence from March 2020, has showcased her cosplay selfies and self-portraits, alongside promoting her Twitch activities. However it is herTikTok content that gained significant traction, with one video achieving over 1 million plays in December 2021. In February 2022, Natuecoco shifted her focus to TikTok Live. Collaborating with fellow TikToker Satoyu0704, also known as the “Ohio Final Boss”, she engaged audiences in NPC-like performances, gaining notable popularity. Their partnership became a hallmark in Japanese meme circles on TikTok, with their collaborative content often going viral. According to Know Your Meme, Satoyu0704’s nickname “Ohio Final Boss” emerged due to his catchphrase “Ohayo,” Ohio memes on TikTok, and the broader “Final Boss” trend. This led to Natuecoco being dubbed the “Ohio Queen” as part of their collaborative lore (1).

Natuecoco’s approach to NPC streaming is both innovative and intriguing and remains baffling and hypnotic even today. She adopted the persona of a video game NPC, known for their predictable behavior and repetitive actions. However, Natuecoco added a unique twist, combining her routine with a more nuanced and puzzling performance. The eerie resemblance of her movements to a character in a video game led viewers to refer to her as the “original AI queen”, as Yooni Han wrote in a widely read profile piece for Business Insider in 2023.

The major inspiration of Natuecoco’s ongoing performance is cosplay, which scholars like Frenchy Lunning (2) describe as a multilayered, complex practice comprisin four main dimensions…

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Matteo Bittanti

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ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT STEFAN PANHANS AND ANDREA WINKLER’S FREEROAM À REBOURS, MOD#I.1. PART TWO

Cherry Crush ASMR

Our 2024 VRAL program opened by spotlighting Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler’s Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1. This 16-minute experimental video from 2016-2017, a “machinima sui generis”, warrants extended analysis in its own right and we highlighted key themes in our extended conversation with the artists. But since contextualizing unique works within broader cultural spheres often proves illuminating, we will situate Freeroam À Rebours within surrounding phenomena that inspire comparative examination and share (perceived) resonances.

In our previous article, we compared PinkyDoll’s TikTok NPC streaming to Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler’s 2016-2017 video artwork Freeroam À Rebours – two cultural artifacts involving video game character behavior reenactment with vastly different aesthetics and framing, not to mention intent.

We characterized PinkyDoll as an ongoing sexualized doll performance on social media pursuing viral fame and profit. In contrast, Freeroam À Rebours operates as avant-garde art aiming to critically analyze media culture and deconstruct simulations. PinkyDoll loosely borrows from Grand Theft Auto iconic imagery while Freeroam À Rebours closely recontextualizes specific Grand Theft Auto V mechanics. Lastly, PinkyDoll represents viral internet trends capitalizing on sexual tropes for views and money whereas Freeroam À Rebours pushes experimental boundaries to interrogate human-machine interaction.

We applied Sigmund Freud’s theory of the uncanny to decode both cultural phenomena, noting shared qualities of repetition and distorted familiarity. Yet clear divergences emerged on critical perspectives. For instance, Freeroam À Rebours is explicitly framed as a meditation on experimentation, failure aesthetics, and broken simulations. We noticed how Freeroam À Rebours lacks any direct, explicit reference to the very notion of viral media, social platforms, and attention economics and it is extraneous to hypersexualization and objectification that connotes Pinkydoll’s performances.

Expanding our analysis, we now relate Freeroam À Rebours to adjacent TikTok NPC streaming phenomena and the wider ascent of sexualized ASMR/cosplay performances. These intimate online practices often present fantasized personas, leveraging scalable platforms, gamified interactions, and participatory culture…

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Matteo Bittanti

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ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT STEFAN PANHANS AND ANDREA WINKLER’S FREEROAM À REBOURS, MOD#I.1. PART ONE

Pinkydoll, source: The New York Times, 2023

Our 2024 VRAL program opened by spotlighting Stefan Panhans and Andrea Winkler’s Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1. This 16-minute experimental video from 2016-2017, a “machinima sui generis”, warrants extended analysis in its own right and we highlighted key themes in our extended conversation with the artists. But since contextualizing unique works within broader cultural spheres often proves illuminating, we will situate Freeroam À Rebours within surrounding phenomena that inspire comparative examination and share (perceived) resonances. We begin our critical discussion by provocatively juxtaposing Freeroam À Rebours, Mod#I.1 with Pinkydoll’s performances on TikTok. This surprising collision between avant-garde video art and sexualized social media spectacle may first appear discordant. Yet, we believe that exploring affinities and divergences could uncover deeper truths. What crosstalk might emerge by contrasting these works’ differing aims, aesthetics and receptions as they meet in the wider landscape of contemporary media culture? A word of advice: keep an open mind.

One of 2023’s most discussed TikTok “phenomena” blurred the lines between the real and the simulated. The so-called NPC streaming genre features content creators endlessly repeating canned gestures, catchphrases, and stilted movements in response to viewers’ “gifts” that cue different reactions. They embody non-player video game characters, predictable and limited in their responses, as if not quite human or, perhaps, post-human. Viewers are drawn to the surreal, hypnotic spectacle.

To grasp the allure of NPC streaming, it is useful to spotlight TikTok’s both participatory affordinaces and business model enabling this phenomenon. The platform allows direct viewer engagement through digital “gifts”: that is, users pay performers to enact repetitive reactions that evoke programmable game characters. This transaction triggers an unconventional power dynamic: viewers request machine-like responses from creators roleplaying as robotic entities of narrow capability. The performers dutifully oblige, echoing simulated automatons, reducing their agency in a subtly objectifying, sexualized manner.

Yet, for all its resonances with command-control dynamics, this parasocial relationship remains grounded in consent and direct remuneration. In other words, the performers voluntarily adopt constrained, submissive personas because they provide lucrative opportunities. Audiences understand these limits as conditions of a (literally and metaphorically) limited exchange that produces puzzling visual pleasures.

Consider the case of Pinkydoll, the online persona of Canadian content creator Fedha Sinon, who gained viral popularity on TikTok in the summer 2023 for her NPC livestreams…

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Matteo Bittanti

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MMF MMXXIII UPDATE: HARDLY WORKING BY TOTAL REFUSAL

The labor of game

Hardly Working

Total Refusal, machinima, 20’ 30”, Austria, 2022

Join us for an exclusive screening at the Museum of Interactive Cinema in Milanas part of Neither Artificial Nor Intelligent program, Milan Machinima Festival 2023 on March 25 2023 at 4 pm (directions)


Total Refusal’s latest work, Hardly Working, is shedding light on the lives of non-player characters (NPCs) in video games. The machinima, which premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival in the Summer 2022 alongside a terrific performance by the collective, explores the daily lives of these NPCs — characters that are typically in the background of video games — and the work they do to create the illusion of a bustling digital world.

With ethnographic accuracy and maniacal detail, Hardly Working follows the routines and activity patterns of NPCs, including a laundress, a stable boy, a street sweeper, and a carpenter. These characters are portrayed as Sisyphus machines, trapped in a cycle of labor that is analogous to work under capitalism, with its relentless pursuit of “bullshit jobs” (David Graber).

Hardly Working has received massive critical acclaim, winning the Best Direction Award and the Junior Jury Award at the Locarno International Film Festival. It has also been screened at several other festivals around the world, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Black Canvas Festival de Cine Contemporáneo in Mexico, and the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Canada.

Other screenings include the Seminci - Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain, the VIENNALE in Austria, the Filmmaker Film Festival in Italy (where it won the Premio della Giuria Award), and the IKF Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur in Switzerland. Hardly Working has also been screened at the KFFK/Kurzfilmfestival Köln N°16 in Germany, the Bosphorus Film Festival in Turkey, the Uppsala International Short Film Festival in Sweden, and the PÖFF Shorts in Estonia.

Hardly Working has also won several awards, including the Best Austrian Animation ASIFA Award and Audience Award at the Best Austrian Animation Festival in Austria, the Best Screenplay Award at the Usak Film Festival in Turkey, and the Best Concept Award at the Winter Apricots: Prilep International Film Festival in Macedonia. It has also been screened at the Max Ophüls Preis in Germany, the Vilnius Internation Short Film Festival in Lithuania, the FIPA Doc International Documentary Film Festival in France, and the Stuttgarter Filmwinter in Germany.

In 2020, the Milan Machinima Festival screened How to Disappear (2020), “a game video essay on the nature of war - both real, that is, unmediated, and remediated through ludic means”, and in 2021, the collective’s short Featherfall was featured in season 01 of VRAL.

Hardly Working is a fascinating look at the lives of NPCs in video games and the commentary it offers on the nature of work under capitalism. Its success at festivals around the world suggests that audiences are interested in exploring these themes and are eager to see more from Total Refusal, a self-described pseudo-marxist media guerilla that explores and practices strategies for artistic intervention in contemporary computer games. It works with tools of appropriation and rededication of game assets.

Matteo Bittanti

Read more about Hardly Working

Read an interview with Total Refusal (2021) about Featherfall, dreams, and simulations

Read Regine Debatty’s review

Trailer

The artists

The self described pseudo-marxist media guerilla Total Refusal explores and practices strategies for artistic intervention in contemporary computer games. It works with tools of appropriation, manipulation, and decontextualization of game assets. Their films and performances have been presented in several festivals and museums around the world, including the MOMA in New York and the Locarno Film Festival. Total Refusal’s current members are Susanna Flock Adrian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf.

Total Refusal, photo by Sarah Fichtinger, 2022

Hardly Working

Total Refusal, machinima, 20’ 30”, Austria, 2022

Milan Machinima Festival MMXXIII

Saturday March 25 2023, from 4 pm

MIC - Museo INTERATTIVO DEL CINEMA

Fondazione Cineteca Italiana

Manifattura Tabacchi - Viale Fulvio Testi 121, 20162 Milano 

ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT GINA HARA'S VALLEY

YES, THE FUTURE DOES SOUND LIKE A CHATBOT

Patreon-exclusive content

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Patreon-exclusive content 〰️

Exclusively featured on VRAL until September 15 2022, Gina Hara’s latest project Valley was originally developed during a three month artist residency at Ada X (October-December 2021) under a different title. Originally founded in 1996 as Studio XX, Ada X (2020-) is a bilingual feminist artist-run center located in Montréal, Canada committed to exploration, creation, and critical reflection in media arts and digital culture. Its main goals are making accessible, demystifying, equipping, questioning, and creating art and culture to contribute to the development of a digital democracy. Ada X hosts residencies, workshops, discussions, exhibitions, performances, and educational activities. Hara’s residency was supported by Algora Lab, an interdisciplinary academic laboratory that fosters a deliberative ethics of AI and digital innovation and analyzes the societal and political aspects of the emerging algorithmic society. Gina Hara is an artist-filmmaker with a background in new media and video art. Her work focuses on marginalized narratives from feminist and immigrant perspectives, specifically in the context of social media and games culture. Entitled AI the End, the original video - which you can watch here - was officially unveiled on Thursday December 9, 2021.

Gina Hara’s ongoing interest in the proliferation of artificial intelligence assistants offering pseudo mental-health help online piqued during the Covid-19 pandemic, which was marked by social isolation and an unprecedented lack of IRL interactions. Specifically, Hara draws a parallel between video game playing and AI-assisted mental health. Such a comparison is remarkable because it provides a possible explanation for the rise of digital gaming as neoliberalism became the world’s dominant ideology: taken to its extreme yet logical consequences, we may suggest that there’s a direct connection between mental disorders and video games. The more psychologically unstable we become due to the conditions of the environments we live in, the more we play Minecraft and the likes. Which is to say: the more unstable, precarious, broken, and unpredictable the World becomes, the stronger the need to exert some kind of control and agency over another kind of world, a simulated world in which we are cast as a powerful demiurge. As the Neoliberalism project succeeded in excising democracy from politics, disenfranchising the masses and replacing it with the so-called “freedom to choose” which pair of sneakers you can buy on Amazon, video games introduced a form of pseudo participation through interactivity. TED Talk “gurus” and Silicon Valley’s “edgelords” call this phenomenon “democratization”, a word that  like “friend”, “community”, “like” has no real meaning outside of the Big Tech bubble, or rather, has purely transactional implications.

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Matteo Bittanti

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NEWS: TOTAL REFUSAL WINS BEST DIRECTOR AWARD AT THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL ("PARDI DI DOMANI")

TOTAL REFUSAL’S HARDLY WORKING (2021) WON THE BEST DIRECTOR’S AWARD IN THE PARDI DI DOMANI SHORT FILM COMPETITION AT THE 2022 LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL

A pungent critique on the labor conditions of NPCs in open world games — and specifically Red Dead Redemption 2 — Hardly Working is a meta-documentary on what would be called “extras” in a cinematic production: NPCs or non-player characters. In fact, the narrative function of such characters is limited, if not marginal and they seem to have no real agency or autonomy.

Hardly working is a 20 minute “ethnographic exploration of the work and daily life of non-player characters, the digital extras in video games. Their labor loops, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.”

As the artists explain:

Here a laundress, a stableman, a street sweeper, and a handyman are the four main characters of this film. With ethnographic precision, the film observes their daily work: a rhythm composed of loops that makes them work daily and tirelessly. Their work neither results in a product, nor does it change anything about their status quo. In light of Hannah Arendt description of ‘animal laborans’ – in contrast to the acting subject –, the NPCs as individuum are an exaggeration as their work performance actually manifests their status.

The Pardi di Domani competition is described by the curators as “a territory for expressive experimentation and innovative formal poetry, [which] showcases short and medium length films as world or international premieres. The section consists of three competitions: Concorso internazionale, with works by emerging filmmakers from all over the world; Concorso nazionale, for Swiss productions; and Concorso Corti d’autore, with short works by established directors.” This year, the Best Auteur Short Film was awarded to Big Bang by Carlos Segundo and the Best International Short Film prize went to Sovereign by Wara. Total Refusal’s well deserved award from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, is a major recognition for machinima as a form of art.

Originally founded by Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf, Total Refusal describes itself as “a pseudo-marxist media guerilla focused on the artistic intervention and appropriation of mainstream video games. We upcycle video games in order to reveal the political apparatus beyond the glossy and hyperreal textures of this media.”

Read more about Hardly Working

Red more about Total Refusal

Images and videos courtesy of the Artists