The Sims

VIDEO ESSAY: PLAYFUL PERFORMANCES. THE SIMS AS AN EXPERIMENTAL PLATFORM

VRAL is currently presenting The Death Trilogy by Adonis Archontides, a tryptic of works starring his ersatz Sim-clones. To better appreciate the breadth and scope of this artwork, we are discussing his oeuvre. We continue our exploration with the in-game performance Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Wade and the Effort of Consciousness.

Also known as Adonis x7 and Wade and the Effort of Consciousness, this project can be compared to a Socratic dialogue taking place within The Sims 4, where Adonis had created multiple Sim replicas of himself. This specific setting is a virtual environment operating as, “a microcosm of capitalist society”. In other words, The Sims 4 is the conduit through which Adonis can reflect upon societal norms and behaviors through a controlled, simulated environment where variables and parameters can be manipulated at will, thus serving as a laboratory for broader cultural and social commentary.

The interlocutor is a character named Wade, an interviewer who engages in a discussion with these various iterations of Adonis. Wade serves as a narrative device who helps elucidate the philosophical and artistic ideas being explored by Adonis in his project. This character could therefore be seen as a stand-in for the audience or an external observer, offering responses and questions that help deepen the exploration of the themes discussed. Wade is essential in facilitating the dialogue that bridges the virtual experiences within The Sims and deeper existential and artistic concepts evoked by Adonis and his replicas.

In the conversation with his clones, Adonis proposes using video games as an artistic medium rather than mere entertainment, emphasizing their empathetic potential and immersive capabilities. According to Adonis, digital games are primarily spaces, rather than stories. And they are tools rather than products. Above all, they foster a deep understanding and connection to different human conditions, which is something that only art can achieve. This is why Adonis mentions his 2014 thesis in which he explored in depth the notion of video games as art. Adonis x7 and Wade and the Effort of Consciousness is, in many ways, an update that further develops three major themes.

The first is the notion that virtual worlds can be conceived as artistic spaces for experimentation and exploration of aesthetic and philosophical concepts. Adonis argues, through his many alter egos, that games like The Sims allow for unique forms of storytelling and artistic expression. The artist suggests that these platforms can be used to stage performances and installations, such as his residency project involving the world of Eos from Final Fantasy XV. In fact, video games allow artists to transcend concrete and geographical limitations. Unlike IRL galleries or performance spaces, virtual environments allow…

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Adonis Archontides

Adonis x7 and Wade and the Effort of Consciousness

Performance within The Sims 4, stills, text, 2019.

This content is exclusive to Patreon subscribers. To gain full access, consider joining our vibrant community.

ARTICLE: A CURSED MACHINIMA

Deciphering the metaphors of Hey Plastic God please don’t save the Robotic King, Let him drown in Acidic Anesthetic

Patreon-exclusive content

〰️

Patreon-exclusive content 〰️

Photosensitive seizure warning: A very small percentage of people may experience a seizure when exposed to certain visual images, including flashing lights or patterns that may appear in video games. Even people who have no history of seizures or epilepsy may have an undiagnosed condition that can cause these “photosensitive epileptic seizures” while watching videos with flashing lights

By now, you should be familiar with Babak Ahteshamipour’s highly synergistic practice: he has been combining painterly works with machinima for a while. But what’s perhaps more unique is the artist’s interaction between his own musical production and machinima. Working as the ultimate artist-editor-musician-producer, in 2022 Babak released Hey Plastic God please don’t save the Robotic King, Let him drown in Acidic Anesthetic, a video made for his album Specter, Spectrum, Speculum released via the Independent Cassette label Industrial Coast.

In his review, Kiriakos Spirou wrote:

The album belongs in the wide range of media-based practices that comprise Babak Ahteshamipour’s artistic output, which include painting, sculpture, video art, and digital art. As such, it is part of the same universe of cultural references, appropriation, critique, and irony that characterises his work in general. Central in Babak’s work is the way he negotiates violence and trauma — such as the anxieties of environmental collapse, neoliberal economies, western supremacy, and war — through mock playfulness and jest. In his visual work, he appropriates references from pop culture to conceal feelings of sheer terror under a neurotically splashed veneer of funny. To the same effect, he appropriates in his music the tropes and aesthetics of feel-good video game music, twisting their soothing familiarity into moods that span from ironic ennui to sugar-choked despair.

Both dealing with the power fantasies of a modern day despot who dreams of owning the world — the perfect metaphor for the gamer —Specter, Spectrum, Speculum and Hey Plastic God… bring the sheer darkness of digital culture to the forefront. The dominant themes of commercial video gaming — search and destroy, command and conquer and so on — are the leitmotifs of both audiovisual productions, which can be interpreted as a cautionary tale: the narcissism intrinsic to digital media may lead to delusions of grandeur, or worse, madness.

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

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

ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT BABAK AHTESHAMIPOUR’S POST-CODED THOUGHTS...

Babak Ahteshamipour, Paleontology of Non-existence, installation shot at Sub Rosa space, Athens, Greece, 2021

WHAT COMES AFTER ARMAGEDDON?

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

Currently exhibited on VRAL, Babak Ahteshamipour’s Post-coded Thoughts on the Never-Upcoming Foreshadowed Li(f)e's originality reflects the author’s own trajectory, which includes a degree in music theory, harmony and violin studies and a Master of Science in Mineral Resources Engineering. Born in Iran in 1994, Ahteshamipour’s work with video game based video art is relatively recent, although “it boldly shaped [his] identity throughout early life and since cyberspace is part of [his] broader artistic research”, as he told Fantacci. Post-coded Thoughts’s was produced while the world was experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic, with its litany of deaths, lockdowns, and disinformation. Released in 2021, it signaled a shift, or rather a new phase in Ahteshamipour’s practice.

In a sense, the work is an assemblage of motifs, but also artifacts, hereby rendered as virtual objects. Consider for instance the painterly works featured in paleontology of non-existence (2021) an installation that appropriates and recontextualizes characters from various video games and uses tweet-like slogans such as “It seems, after all, we couldn't escape the game engines”. Post-coded was part of this complex scenario in which various planes of reality - the tangible, the simulation, the augmented - engage in a conversation.

Albeit visually playful and imbued with a distinct kind of irony, the world that Paleontology of Non-existence alludes to is a dystopia. An unexplained “event” has abruptly and irreversibly erased all of mankind, so that Earth is now inhabited by AIs. Equally mysterious is the reason behind AI rapid evolution: left to their own devices, machines become sentient, wondering about the disappearance of their former creators. This new algorithmic age is marked by an existential crisis. Machines are trying to find meaning in a world that appears utterly fatalistic. The new normal, just like the old normal, is being stuck in a feedback loop: on the one hand, the simverse is a replica of the pre-existing world. On the other hand, the avatar - a stand-in of the artist himself - is clearly looking for answers that the simulation - just like a market based society - cannot provide. The puppet has become the puppeteer but the wires have not been cut: free will is not an option. Free will can only be simulated. Ditto for artistic creation: the puppet plays music, shifting from his guitar to his piano, stares at his paintings for inspiration, and shares his thoughts and moods.

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

All images courtesy of the artist

Babak Ahteshamipour, Paleontology of Non-existence, installation shot at Sub Rosa space, Athens, Greece, 2021

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

EVENT: BABAK AHTESHAMIPOUR (SEPTEMBER 16 - SEPTEMBER 29 2022, ONLINE)

POST-CODED THOUGHTS ON THE NEVER-UPCOMING FORESHADOWED LI(F)E

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 8’ 54”, 2021, Iran/Greece

Created by Babak Ahteshamipour

Post-coded Thoughts on the Never-upcoming Foreshadowed Li(f)e is a machinima created with The Sims. In this post-apocalyptic narrative, human beings suddenly vanish, leaving behind all their digital spawns: A.I., avatars, algorithms, and programs. Faced with their own risk of extinction, these non-human entities acquire agency and embark into an existential journey to find meaning in an otherwise empty life. The main character is Babak Ahteshamipour’s alter ego, who is reproducing the sheer banality of RL (real life) activities in an environment mirroring his “real”, concrete space, having imported some of his paintings, few custom 3D models from other video games that are depicted in the paintings, musical improvisations with electric guitar and piano, and a text visualizing the sim-avatar’s thoughts.

Babak Ahteshamipour’s practice is based on the collision of the virtual vs actual, aimed at correlating various topics that are not directly connected at first glance from cyberspace to ecology and politics to identity exploring them via MMORPGs/video games, social media and online integrating themes of co-existence and simultaneity in response to the futuristic anthropocentric urge of technocracy to focus on posthumanism. He has exhibited and performed at Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), New Art City (online), The Wrong (online), Sub Rosa space (Athens, Greece), ERGO Collective (Athens, Greece), arebyte (online), Biquini Wax ESP (Mexico City, Mexico), Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago, Illinois) and elsewhere. He has released music on the independent cassette label Industrial Coast and his music has been played on radio stations such as Noods Radio (Bristol, U.K.), Radio Raheem (Milan, Italy), Fade Radio (Athens, Greece) and Radio alHara. Originally from Iran, Ahteshamipour lives and works in Athens, Greece.

WATCH NOW

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)

Patreon-Exclusive Content

〰️

Patreon-Exclusive Content 〰️

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…

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

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

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

ARTICOLO: EYE CONTACT, L'ARTE DI FEDERICA DI PIETRANTONIO

Daniela Cotimbo su Federica Di Pietrantonio

In but I wanna keep my head above water, Federica di Pietrantonio utilizza gli scenari virtuali di The Sims per inscenare un’opera ambientata in un bagno in cui un avatar digitale è intento ad arginare una perdita d’acqua. Già nel titolo sembrano essere evocati alcuni degli elementi chiave del video, la dimensione di solitudine (il rituale notturno) in cui il protagonista è immerso, la ricerca, allusivamente erotica, di qualcosa in grado di andare oltre l’algida, incorporea, dimensione del virtuale.

Protagonista del video è un avatar dalle sembianze androgine, corpo maschile, mutandine di pizzo, orecchie da volpe. Proprio quest’ultimo dettaglio rimanda ad uno degli aspetti ricorrenti nei lavori dell’artista, l’esplorazione e il recupero di immaginari derivanti dalle sottoculture emerse grazie al potenziale connettivo ed estensivo della rete; nel caso specifico quella dei furry, gamer, role player, artisti, che a partire dagli anni Ottanta hanno adottato l’identificazione con il mondo animale — in particolare il travestimento — come pratica di autodeterminazione identitaria.

Questo avatar, ricorrente nelle opere della Di Pietrantonio, qui ripete compulsivamente l’azione di arginare una perdita originata direttamente da un wc. La reiterazione dei movimenti così come l’espediente, usato a più riprese, di non mostrare la scena nella sua interezza fanno sì che essa sembri riferirsi più ad un momento privato di autoerotismo. Questa sottaciuta dimensione è evocata dal titolo stesso, tratto da una traccia musicale dell’artista Only fire, che presenta espliciti riferimenti di natura sessuale. 

Il virtuale diventa allora in quest’opera il luogo di una esplorazione dell’identità orientato dalla ricerca del piacere, un obiettivo che non trovando un riscontro diretto nelle possibilità del corpo, si apre ad immaginari ibridi, cercando di sfondare la barriera dell’impersonalità dello schermo. Il protagonista del video incarna questa ricerca attraverso le pose, spesso restituite nella loro iconicità, le movenze e le espressioni. Di Pietrantonio decide consapevolmente di utilizzare la tecnica del camera look cinematografico (lo sguardo in camera) per creare una relazione diretta con lo spettatore al di là dello schermo ed in questo modo di sfondare quella barriera intima della relazionalità, che la dimensione virtuale rende ancora più straniante.

In Giappone, dove per secoli, anche il solo incontro prolungato degli sguardi tra differenti sessi rappresentava una pratica socialmente sconveniente, oggi questo esercizio allo sguardo è allenato grazie al proliferare di video tutorial (Eye Contact) che in modi diversi invitano lo spettatore a “tenere” lo sguardo fisso sull’altro. L’artista trae inoltre spunto da una tradizione di immaginari pornografici virtuali che destano scalpore non tanto per i loro contenuti espliciti, quanto per il fatto che essi nascano e vivano esclusivamente nel digitale. L’idea di trarre piacere attraverso una stimolazione artificiale rappresenta ancora oggi una forma di tabù perché ci mette di fronte ai limiti della corporeità.

Il video presenta un’atmosfera lenta e sospesa nel tempo, il suono incessante dell’acqua che sgorga dal water e pochi versi emessi dal protagonista fanno da legante alle scene e sono gli unici elementi a rimandare ad una dimensione espressamente fisica, dando vita ad un evidente slittamento percettivo. Ancora una volta ci si rifà ai rituali estetici emersi in internet, ripercorrendo una tradizione di video ASMR (acronimo di Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), in cui attraverso pratiche visive o uditive si stimola la ricerca del meridiano sensoriale, una regione del corpo deputata a restituire una piacevole vibrazione.

Sono moltissimi i video di questo tipo presenti in rete, dal whispering (letteralmente, sussurro) allo sfregamento di oggetti, fino alla visualizzazione di luci e colori, tanto da rappresentare un vero e proprio fenomeno che assume connotati creativi ed estetici di volta in volta differenti. L’artista decide di riprendere l’atmosfera condensando i diversi elementi dell’opera in una dimensione di rilassamento, una pratica di benessere digitale che ha molto a che fare con l’idea stessa di “cura” collettiva attraverso l’esplorazione di gusti e rituali condivisi.

La fascinazione per queste pratiche comunitarie nate spontaneamente dalla condivisione in rete sembra incarnare proprio l’idea di relazioni simbiotiche così come le intende Donna Haraway, ossia come un intreccio di esperienze che vanno al di là di un punto di vista egemonico dell’umano per essere restituite nella loro complessità e novità. All’interno di questo scambio tra “specie compagne”, Haraway colloca sempre la tecnologia come il territorio privilegiato per l’ibridazione.

In maniera analoga il lavoro di Federica Di Pietrantonio abita il virtuale alla ricerca di nuovi possibili modi di essere, fondati sullo scambio, sull’appagamento e sulla coesistenza all’interno di uno spazio nuovo, sia esso fisico, digitale, mentale o in continuità tra questi mondi.

Daniela Cotimbo

Federica di Pietrantonio

but I wanna keep my head above water

July 22 - August 4 2022

Introduced by Gemma Fantacci

Daniela Cotimbo è una storica dell’arte e curatrice indipendente con sede a Roma. La sua ricerca è focalizzata sulle istanze problematiche del presente, indagate attraverso diversi mezzi espressivi, in particolare le nuove tecnologie. Di recente ha fondato e curato il Re:Humanism Art Prize dedicato al rapporto tra Arte e Intelligenza Artificiale, diventato poi un’associazione culturale di cui è presidente. Daniela ha curato mostre in diverse gallerie, musei e festival, tra cui il MAXXI - Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, AlbumArte, Colli Independent, Operativa Arte Contemporanea e Romaeuropa Festival. Scrive per numerose riviste d’arte contemporanea, come Inside Art, Flash Art, NERO e ha curato o preso parte ad una serie di panel e speech per diverse istituzioni tra cui Galleria T293 (Roma), Cubo Unipol (Bologna), Manifattura Tabacchi (Firenze), Maker art (Roma), Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (Milano), Università Ca’ Foscari (Venezia), Università John Cabot (Roma). Dal 2021 è co-fondatrice di Erinni, associazione che si occupa di pratiche artistiche transfemministe.

ARTICLE: THE ARTIST WAS ALWAYS ALREADY PRESENT

We shape our avatars, and our avatars, in turn, shape us.

Patreon-exclusive content

〰️

Patreon-exclusive content 〰️

In Federica Di Pietrantonio's work, The Sims becomes a mirror world, a proto-metaverse through which the artist’s practice is both duplicated and extended, in the McLuhanian sense that media are extensions of our senses and organs. In Voyeurism (2019), the daily life of the artist also known as Federica is reenacted with/in The Sims, through the mundane performance of her avatar. She takes a bath, she exercises, she rants and raves, she dances. 

As in several other her works, the ‘action’ takes place in the lavatory, which doubles as a gym, a dance floor, and a studio. Voyeurism's repetitive 'narrative' mirrors the uneventfulness of the artist' daily life. Nothing salient happens and the artist even briefly disappears from the frame. Then, she's back in action to mop the floor, send a text, listen to the music. The video lasts approximately fifteen minutes, but could go on forever, as in a live simulation… 

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

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

ARTICLE: THE ARTIST IS PRESENT

Artist Federica Di Pietrantonio introduces herself as a Sim avatar.

Patreon-Escusive Content

〰️

Patreon-Escusive Content 〰️

“Hi there!

Let me briefly introduce myself. I’m Federica Di Pietrantonio, I was born in 1996 in Rome, where I both live and work. I studied painting at RUFA - Rome University of Fine Arts and for a short period I moved to Ghent in Belgium, at KASK, writing my thesis “spending free time”.

At the moment I’m part of Spazio In Situ, an artist-run space created in Rome about 5 year ago, and I’m co-founder and co-editor of ISIT.magazine, an independent publishing project born in 2018, that it’s basically a contemporary art magazine both online and offline. My research focuses on relationships and processes that develop from simulated or virtual realities, videogames and social platforms.

I usually work with different media, from painting to video to media installations. I had the chance to exhibit in different places and cities, some of them are Las Palmas in Lisbon, The Gallery Apart in Rome, Gouvernement in Ghent, and Virginia Bianchi Gallery online. At the moment I’m doing a residency at Manifattura Tabacchi in Florence where I am developing the project “not so far away”, a research inside videogames environment about nature, cities, urban life and so on…”

(continues)

Federica Di Pietrantonio

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

EVENT: FEDERICA DI PIETRANTONIO (JULY 22 - AUGUST 4 2022, ONLINE)

but I wanna keep my head above water

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 10’ 30”, 2022, Italy

everynight i try to find the light but sometimes its too cold

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 1’ 01”, 2022, Italy

everynight i try to find the light - prélude

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 00’ 51”, 2022, Italy

Created by Federica Di Pietrantonio

viewer discretion is advised

Wet, steamy, and sticky. Federica Di Pietrantonio takes the viewer into her neon lit lavatory. In this humid, slushy environment, gender identities become fluid and seemingly solid architectures suddenly splinter. The camera indulges on a virtual nymph’s expression as water drips slowly and then faster. Moments of intimacy are shared. Crevices are explored. Surfaces are scrubbed. This highly immersive experience will leave you soused.

Federica Di Pietrantonio (b. 1996) studied painting at the University of Fine Arts in Rome. After receiving her B.A. in 2019, she did a residency at KASK (Ghent, Belgium), where she developed the project Vacation Spot with The Sims. In 2017, Di Pietrantonio was selected for Mediterranea 18 Young Artists Biennale and the following year she began a collaboration with Spazio In Situ as an artist and web designer. Her work has been exhibited in Italy, Belgium, and Portugal. She currently lives and works in Rome.

WATCH NOW

ARTICLE: NOT INTELLIGENT NOR ARTIFICIAL

As part of our ongoing discussion on Letta Shtohryn’s astute incorporation of The Sims into her artistic practice, we take a look at her first machinima, Algorithmic Oracle (2019), which was screened at the 2020 Milan Machinima Festival.

Patreon-exclusive content

〰️

Patreon-exclusive content 〰️


Algorithmic Oracle exists as an installation featuring nine single channel videos each lasting 8’ 12” and as a single channel composite of the same duration. Like a time travel narrative, it shows multiple scenarios triggered by a fixed event, that is, a fire. However, the outcomes are determined by an AI rather than by human intervention.

Algorithmic Oracle is a commentary on the ontological capabilities of algorithms: as Eli Pariser argued in 2011, machine-curated news-feeds create insular and homogenous info-contexts, known as filter bubbles. To experience reality in such an environment means to reduce the complexity of reality to a handful of narratives, automatically excluding anything or anyone contradicting the dominant paradigm: the very possibility of an anomaly, that is, an information that does not perfectly for within the current dogma, is eliminated.

Shtohryn argues that algorithms have created a series of parallel realities, a multiverse of experiences, in which clusters of like-minded individuals believe their “world” to be the best of all. Worse yet, these individuals tend to dismiss the very possibility of alternative ways of seeing the world: “I don’t see the same content as you, but we act as if we see the same thing”, she writes in the accompanying text…

Matteo Bittanti

(continues)

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

A CLOSER LOOK AT LETTA SHTOHRYN’S CRYPTOHEAVEN3

As McKenzie Wark aptly put it, it’s not that video games are becoming more and more life-like, but life itself is becoming more and more like a video game. That’s not a good thing, in case you were wondering.

Patreon-exclusive content

〰️

Patreon-exclusive content 〰️

Cryptoheaven3 (2022) is the third iteration of an ongoing project developed by Letta Shtohryn with The Sims 4 (Maxis/Electronic Arts, 2014) about the digital afterlife of Gerald Cotten, the CEO of QuadrigaCX, a popular cryptocurrency exchange. When Cotten unexpectedly passed away in 2018, he held the passwords to every customer's digital wallet, thereby rendering their $190 million investment lost or missing. His mysterious disappearance sparked several conspiracy theories and marked the beginning of an online hunt for “the Truth” (incidentally, this story is narrated by Luke Sewell in his 2022 documentary Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King, currently available on Netflix).

Shtohryn began exploring this debacle shortly after Cotten’s passing with a series of multimedia projects. In the first installment, a 12-minute machinima entitled Crypto H(e)aven (2019), Gerry has altered both his identity and appearance. He is now living on a small, exotic island populated by digital nomads. Crypto H(e)aven was originally presented in the group show Object, Objetc, Objec alongside works by Liza Eurick and Katri Kempass at Spazju Kreattiv in Malta between May 3 - June 16 2019. The video was part of an installation featuring scaffolding (180 cm x 5 pieces), four UV printed synthetic curtains (180 x 180 cm), silver fabric, and chocolate (consumable) bitcoin. As Shtohryn wrote in the accompanying text, “Gerald Cotten’s remarkable ability to be both alive and dead in the mind of the redditors transforms him into a Schrödinger’s quantum phenomenon.” Her research was subsequently expanded during Shtohryn’s online residency at Isthisit in August 2019 (a short video summary can be watched here)…

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

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

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.

Patreon-Exclusive content

〰️

Patreon-Exclusive content 〰️

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

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

NEWS_ BACK-TO-BACK: IDENTITIES/INTIMACIES

What is the difference between nudity and nakedness in a video game? Can one's self be infinitely programmable in a simulation? And who are you, where you are not yourself?

The last back-to-back program features two outstanding words from Jamie Janković and Federica di Pietrantonio.

Watch IDENTITIES/INTIMACIES

NEWS: ALESSANDRA PORCU ON THE MALESTREAM

PORCU3.png

In her game video essay Deconstructing the Algorithm, Alessandra Porcu explains how supposedly neutral algorithms introduce new biases based on gender, sex, and culture. The artist uses machinima to question the very notion of representation and to reconfigure her own identity in a context informed by white supremacy, patriarchal imperatives, and widespread misogyny. The passivity encouraged by digital games as well as cinema is further promoted by social media and live streaming culture, which are both dominated by the male gaze. In her work, the filmmaker and scholar rejects the pervasive malestream perspective in both video games and game videos. In this interview, Porcu discusses her work with Gemma Fantacci, Luca Miranda and Riccardo Retez (interview in Italian)

IN ITALIAN

Nel suo video saggio ludico, Decostruire l’algoritmo, Alessandra Porcu come i presunti algoritmi “neutrali” introducono nuovi pregiudizi basati sul gender, il sesso e la cultura. Attraverso il machinima, al regista mette a tema la nozione stessa di rappresentazione e riconfigura la propria identità in un contesto dominato dalla supremazia bianca, dagli imperativi patriarcali e dalla misoginia diffusa. La tesi di Porcu è che la passività incoraggiata dai videogiochi nonché dal cinema è promossa anche dai social media e dal live streaming, nei quali lo sguardo maschile è pervasivo. La filmmaker e studiosa rifiuta la prospettiva malestream tanto nei videogiochi quanto nei giochi video. In questa intervista, Porcu si confronta con i curatori Gemma Fantacci, Luca Miranda e Riccardo Retez.

IN ITALIANO