Painting

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

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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. 

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Matteo Bittanti

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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!

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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”.

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Matteo Bittanti

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ARTICLE: I DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU, BUT I NEED A VACATION SPOT

Federica di Pietrantonio, Vacation Spot in Gent (back to Rome), Rufa Space, Pastificio Cerere, Rome (Italy), 2019 photo by Eleonora Cerri Pecorella

Today is the last day to watch Federica Di Pietrantonio’s but I wanna keep my head above water. As a finissage, we revisit her groundbreaking project Vacation Spot (2019)

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As in the case of Letta Shtohryn's practice, this Sims-based machinima is part of a larger, multimedia project as Di Pietrantonio’s work ranges freely over painting, video, installations, and performances.

The heterogeneity of Di Pietrantonio’s approach and her ability to use different media to create an evolving universe in which the digital and the material converse with each other without any abrupt interruption is especially manifest in her project Vacation Spot, which she developed at Rufa Space, Pastificio Cerere in Rome as well as Gouvernement in Ghent, Belgium in 2019.

Di Pietrantonio's universe mixes avatars like the ubiquitous Foxy and classic icons of art, creating striking juxtapositions. Vacation Spot is closely related to Voyeurism, the short machinima we discussed a few days ago. But there are also objects - tangible objects - in the gallery space: her playground is all encompassing…

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Matteo Bittanti

Federica Di Pietrantonio, Vacation Spot in Gent, 2019, installation view, Gouvernement (Ghent, Belgium), photo by Andrea Frosolini

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