The Sims 4

VIDEO ESSAY: THE ART OF VIRTUAL RESIDENCY

VRAL is currently presenting The Death Trilogy by Adonis Archontides, a triptych of works starring his ersatz Sim-clones. To better appreciate the breadth and scope of his work, we are discussing his Sims-based oeuvre. We continue our exploration with the in-game performance Adonis and the Labour of Artistic Production. This project stands out as one of the most inventive integrations of The Sims within an avant-garde context to date, where the processes of art-making and video game mechanics are seamlessly intertwined, creating a fruitful dialogue.

Adonis and the Labour of Artistic Production (2017-2018) centers on the personal and artistic journey of Adonis Archontides during his virtual art residency within The Sims 4, as captured through a series of Instagram posts. The project – which began in December 2017 and concluded in February 2018, in preparation of Archontides’ first solo exhibition, which opened on February 22nd, 2018 – explores themes of artistic creation, the transient nature of beauty and inspiration, and the interplay between personal life, gaming interactions, and creative expression. During his virtual residency, Adonis investigated the essence of artistic labor and the impact of the environment on creativity, sharing interesting insights into his artistic process. Like Marshall McLuhan, Adonis seems to share the idea that media – video games included – create environments, rather than just “content” or “messages”.

Like the subsequent work, Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Adonis and Wade and the Effort of Consciousness, Adonis and the Labour of Artistic Production relies on digital platforms to chronicle the construction of identity and reality in virtual or digitally mediated environments. However, while the former focuses on the multiplicity of self and philosophical explorations within a simulated game world, the latter engages more with the physicality of the artistic process and its documentation in real-time, offering a more intimate look at the everyday life and productive cycles of an artist. Together, both projects showcase Adonis’s ongoing interest in merging life and art with digital means, continually pushing the boundaries on how art is created, experienced, and discussed in the age of video games. 

The residency was cleverly narrated through a series of posts on Instagram. Adonis and the Labour of Artistic Production developed in stages, from…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Adonis Archontides

Adonis and the Labour of Artistic Production

Performance documentation in The Sims 4, screenshots, Instagrams posts, 2017-2018

All images courtesy of Adonis Archontides

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ARTICLE: THE LOCKDOWNS NEVER ENDED

Adonis Archontides, Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics, digital video, sound, color, 4’ 05”, 2020, Cyprus.

VRAL is currently presenting The Death Trilogy by Adonis Archontides, a tryptic of works starring his ersatz Sim-clone. To better appreciate the breadth and scope of his video art, we will we will embark on a critical exploration, beginning with Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics.

Archontides’s Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics (2020) is an introspective short machinima created with/in The Sims 4 (2014). Originally developed as part of a broader cultural initiative by the Cypriot Cultural Services during the COVID-19 pandemic, this work was among fifty projects that received accolades for promoting audio-visual creativity in challenging times. This machinima leverages Will Wright’s popular simulation game to explore themes of repetition and monotony, resonating with the enforced isolation and government mandated "social distancing" experienced globally during a series of shelter-in-place initiatives. Watched in 2024, this work feels at once anachronistic and very timely, remote and fresh. 

The premise of Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics is deeply influenced by the Simulation Hypothesis, a concept prevalent in science fiction - and particularly loved by Silicon Valley’s edgelords - where reality as we know it is posited as an elaborate artifice, a cruel joke concocted by a superior, likely malevolent, intelligence. In Archontides’ piece, this “theory” is subtly referenced through the repetitive, looped nature of the Sims’ existence, mirroring the monotony of lockdown life, which seems to have lost its sense of progression, its teleology. The protagonist, a Sim replica of Adonis himself, navigates the so-called daily life in a state of perpetual loop, echoing the equally apathetic anti-hero of…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited 

Adonis Archontides

Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics

machinima/digital video, color, sound, 4’ 05”, 2020. Cyprus.

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EVENT: ADONIS ARCHONTIDES (APRIL 26 - MAY 9 2024, ONLINE)

The Death Trilogy

performance documentation, digital video and audio recorded in The Sims 4, 33’ 05”, 2024, Cyprus

Created by Adonis Archontides

Za woka genava (I think you are hot), Ya gotta wob’ere! Ya gotta wob’ere! (Don’t give up! Keep trying!) and Za woka genava (I think you are hot) form a trilogy in which Archontides delves into the use of video games as a platform for documenting dual performances, those of himself and his avatar, Adonis (Sim), created within the popular simulation game, The Sims 4. This unique collaboration highlights a peculiar interdependence: although Archontides controls the outcomes of their joint endeavors, both entities contribute essential roles to their creative process. These performances unfold under the passive gaze of an audience, drawn into a somewhat sadistic voyeurism. Yet, crucially, Adonis (Sim) remains unaware of his reality as a digital construct, performing actions dictated by Archontides that, while impossible in the real world, are completely feasible within the game’s algorithmic constraints. The Death Trilogy pushes the boundaries of digital life and death, as evidenced in the final moments of each piece. Here, viewers witness Adonis’s resurrection, a thematic echo of the limitless possibilities afforded by simulated environments.

Adonis Archontides is a multidisciplinary artist who studied Illustration & Visual Media at the University of the Arts in London. His works are satirical and introspective; they often investigate the production of identity as a conscious or subconscious process, and the porosity between fiction, reality, and simulation. Part of his research focusing on his namesake Adonis, an ancient Greek nature deity, revolves around the effects of time on the interpretation of myths. An avid gamer, Archontides believes in the artistic potential of video games which often uses as raw material in his artistic practice. He has been collaborating with an avatar of himself created in the popular simulation game The Sims 4, juxtaposing Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey with an artist’s career trajectory through an episodic narrative. Archontides lives and works in Limassol, Cyprus.

MMF MMXXIV: ADONIS ARCHONTIDES

We are elated to introduce Adonis Archontides’s Ya gotta wob’ere! Ya gotta wob’ere! (Don't give up! Keep trying!) at the 2024 edition of the Milan Machinima Festival.

Ya gotta wob‘ere! Ya gotta wob’ere! (Don’t give up! Keep trying!) (2019) by Adonis Archontides is the third installment of a trilogy developed with/in The Sims 4 between 2018 and 2020, alongside Za woka genava (I think you are hot) (2019) and Sulsul! Plerg Majah Bliff? (Hello! Can I do something else please?) (2018). In all of these works, Archontides crafts challenging scenarios for Non-Player Characters (NPCs), exploring the challenges of our increasingly digital existence. Echoing Angela Washko’s seminal Free Will Mode, this work prompts reflection on control and chaos, agency and surveillance. In her essay titled “When our reflections/avatars die, do they go to heaven?”, Eria Dapola described Adonis’ performance as evocative of a world filled with silent but brutal conflicts, with the artist cast as a non-traditional hero navigating through passive-aggressive violence. The video work highlights the dynamic between the artist and avatar, showcasing a relentless survival effort in a confined, yet transparent space. Additionally, curator Chloe Stavrou suggests that Adonis (Sim) embodies a struggle of futile resistance against the game’s implacable algorithmic logic, culminating in inevitable failure followed by virtual resurrection. What is indisputable is that this repetitive cycle interrogates the concept of autonomy within digital spaces. A Sim running on a treadmill to their demise, compelled to repeat the action over and over, without any meaningful goal or higher purpose, is a poignant metaphor for life in the 21st century.

Adonis Archontides, a multidisciplinary artist with a background in Illustration & Visual Media from the University of the Arts London, creates works that are both satirical and introspective. His art delves into identity formation as a deliberate or unconscious act and explores the blur between fiction, reality, and simulation. His research includes an exploration of his namesake, Adonis, the ancient Greek deity of vegetation and desire, examining how interpretations of myths evolve over time. An enthusiastic gamer, Archontides sees significant artistic value in video games, often incorporating them into his practice. Recently, he has embarked on a collaboration with his own avatar in The Sims 4, weaving together Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey and the artist’s career path into an episodic narrative. Archontides is based in Limassol, Cyprus, where he continues to live and work. His work Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics was featured in the 2021 edition of the Milan Machinima Festival. 

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

EVENT: LETTA SHTOHRYN (JULY 8 - JULY 21 2022, ONLINE)

CRYPTOHEAVEN3

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 5’ 39”, 2022, Ukraine

Created by Letta Shtohryn

Cryptoheaven3 (2022) is the third iteration of an ongoing project developed with The Sims 4 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 $190 million lost or missing. His mysterious disappearance sparked several conspiracy theories and marked the beginning of an online hunt for “the Truth”. Letta Shtohryn began exploring this event shortly after Cotten’s passing with Crypto H(e)aven (2019) and Cryptoheaven 2.0 (2020, in collaboration with curator Kat Zavada). The latest installment, Cryptoheaven3, is a hybrid of machinima and net.art combining The Sims 4, text messages, forum posts, and GIFs. Cotten is on a remote island enjoying the good life — sunbathing, getting daily massages, and imbibing exotic cocktails — while former QuadrigaCX users and conspiracy theorists speculate about his untimely demise.

Letta Shtohryn (Ukraine/EU) is an artist and researcher who works predominantly with media art, sculpture and imagery. She investigates the complex relationship between the physical and digital realm. She explores embodiment through a post-humanist lens, considering non-human life forms, machines, avatars, aliens, monsters, and ghosts. Being fascinated by deception, Letta also explores the relationship between fact and myth-making. Her methodical frameworks include speculative investigations, world building, and storytelling. Her tools feature virtual reality, augmented reality, textile, sculpture, video, machinima, and imagery. Her academic background is in Philosophy/Sociology (University of Vienna), Photography (Kunstschule Wien), and Digital Art (MFA/UM). Letta is the founder of digital platform Whatdowedonow.xyz and holds the position of Research Excellence Award Fellow at The Immersion Lab, University of Malta. Her work has been shown internationally.

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NEWS: KELLY RABBACHIN ON THE RABBIT HOLE

“My goal was to remake Lewis Carroll’s tale Alice in Wonderland introducing a dramatic mood largely absent in the original text and by borrowing Gus van Sant’s cinematic gaze in Last Days, a movie which reconstructs the last days of Kurt Cobain. As such, The Rabbit Hole is a hybrid text, situated at the intersection of cinema, literature, popular culture, and video games. The project was originally developed after embarking in a research on machinima, hereby defined as a new medium for audiovisual production within digital environments. Using popular video games such as The Sims 4 and Grand Theft Auto V, I created two distinct sequences, highlighting the two worlds where the narrative takes place and the character’s evolution (or devolution), both aesthetically and emotionally. Scene after scene, the promise of a new world of adventure is negated: the violent fall of the character inThe Rabbit Hole is contrasted to Alice’s much more joyful journey down the rabbit hole, which is described as “without gravity” in the original text. One plummets, the other floats. And while in Carroll’s story, those who live in Wonderland welcome Alice and join her as she explores the new world, the protagonist of my machinima is left to his own devices. All the characters he meets in this new reality are either aloof or aggressive. My goal with The Rabbit Hole was to appropriate and transform a well known story, remediating its narrative elements and iconography, presenting a different take that contrasts with both the original story and with the tools used: I chose a cinematic style relying on a fixed camera and panoramic shots. I also focused on marginal and peripheral elements within the game environments, favoring a slow pace over the intense, frantic pace of most video games”.

(Kelly Rabbachin)

Watch The Rabbit Hole

“Rimediando in chiave drammatica il racconto di Lewis Carroll Alice nel paese delle meraviglie ed utilizzando lo sguardo cinematografico di Gus van Sant in Last Days, che segue il personaggio di Kurt Cobain nei suoi ultimi giorni di vita, The Rabbit Hole è un esempio di ibridazione tra linguaggio cinematografico, letteratura, cultura di massa e videogioco. Il progetto nasce dopo una scrupolosa ricerca di tesi di laurea sul machinima, inteso come nuovo medium di produzione audiovisiva nell’ambiente fluido del Web 2.0. Utilizzando i videogiochi The Sims 4 e Grand Theft Auto V, è stato possibile creare due sequenze ben distinte che mettono in evidenza i due mondi dove si svolge la narrazione e il cambiamento del personaggio, sia estetico che introspettivo. Scena dopo scena, la promessa di un mondo delle meraviglie è infranta: la caduta violenta del personaggio in The Rabbit Hole è in contrapposizione con la discesa fluttuante di Alice nel buco del coniglio, che nell’opera originale è descritta come “senza gravità”. Se nel racconto originale i personaggi del mondo delle meraviglie sono pronti ad accogliere Alice ed accompagnarla nel suo viaggio, nel machinima il personaggio andrà alla ricerca di interazioni con i personaggi che incontra, senza successo: questi scapperanno o adotteranno un approccio violento. L’intento di The Rabbit Hole è di trasformare una storia celebre, di rimediarla e di interpretarla in un modo alternativo, in contrapposizione sia con il racconto originale, ottenendo una storia derivata ma diversa, sia con gli strumenti utilizzati: adottando uno stile cinematografico che predilige la camera fissa e riprese panoramiche, nonchè focus su ambienti di gioco marginali e periferici, il machinima opera in controtendenza rispetto ai ritmi frenetici che il testo videoludico impone al videogiocatore nella sua fruizione canonica”.

(Kelly Rabbachin)

Guarda The Rabbit Hole

NEWS: BACK-TO-BACK BAD TALES

We’ve unlocked another back-to-back feature: BAD TALES, featuring Cris Obermann and Kelly Rabbachin

Another wild juxtaposition: Cris Ubermann, a prolific French experimental filmmaker fascinated by philosophy and psychology, uses Grand Theft Auto V to adapt a fable by Jean De La Fontaine, “The wolf and the dog”. Meanwhile, Kelly Rabbachin — a first-time machinimaker and recent graduate from Milan, Italy — appropriated the same game along with The Sims 4 to remake Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. These wild experiments in filmmaking should come as no surprise: after all, video games are the folk tales of the digital generation. What’s the moral of this story? As William Gibson famously said, “The street finds its uses for things”.

Watch BAD TALES

A CLOSER LOOK AT WELCOME TO MY DESERT NEXUS

VRAL is presenting Kara Gut’s Welcome to my Desert Nexus as part of our Fall 2021 program. Welcome to my Desert Nexus, which will be accessible online until September 30, is a three-act play performed within a video game, focusing on two players within Red Dead Redemption Online as they encounter existential quandaries in the digital desert. Part table-read, part live gaming event, Welcome to My Desert Nexus introduces theatrical forms of expressions, stimulating emotional responses in the audience, in the contexts of video games. The performance, which has a duration of 44’ 50”, is situated at the intersection of different spatialities, temporalities, and media. Among other things, the work is complemented by a script laser printed with custom stamped illustrations, saddle stitched and designed by fellow artist Clara Gatto with Bulk Space which was presented at Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair, 2021. The full script is accessible here in PDF form. Welcome to my Desert Nexus is indicative of the complexity of the video game form, which transcends the boundaries of the screen to engage multiple senses.

The intersection between theatre and digital gaming is becoming more and more prominent. In October 2020, amidst a global pandemic, Canadian playwright Celine Song performed Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull with/in The Sims 4 and broadcast her entire performance in two installments on Twitch, as part of New York Theatre Workshop’s Artistic Instigators program, which was introduced to support both creatively and economically artists unable to perform on stage due to Covid-19 restrictions. Song introduced alternative ways to experience the popular life simulator, blurring the boundaries between the performer’s body and the avatars acting on the screen.

More recently, a selected number of players of the popular post-apocalyptic video game Fallout 76 have begun reenacting scenes from popular movies and play, including A Clockwork Orange, Hamlet, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and West Side Story, and they are currently working on a major production of Macbeth. One of the most popular groups using Bethesda’s game as a stage is The Theatre Company, “operating the Charleston Playhouse Theatre, the Watoga Opera House, Grafton Globe, & Morgantown Moulin Rouge.” In all cases, these performance adopt a calmer, more distanced approach to the bleak themes of the original video game, ignoring its “established narratives”. Here’s an image of the troupe performing at Moulin Rouge theatre via their avatars (source: Twitter)

MOTH DANCE.jpeg

VRAL will be exploring these hybrid forms - “video game augmented theatre” - that re-imagine the very notions of “performance” and “play” using a variety of platforms, poetic language, and collective practices in the upcoming months.

Matteo Bittanti