VIDEO: JAKE COURI'S JETTISONED (2022)

Cargo cult

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

Throughout this week, we’ll be exploring Jake Couri’s oeuvre. His remarkable A Precarious Night at Plumb Point is currently on display on VRAL.

We strongly recommend watching this video in full screen while wearing headphones.

Jettison: to get rid of as superfluous or encumbering: omit or forgo as part of a plan or as the result of some other decision; to drop (cargo) to lighten a ship's load in time of distress; to drop from an aircraft or spacecraft in flight.

Jake Couri's single-channel video is a post-human meditation of the idea of descent and arrival. Based on the G-11 Cargo Parachute Assembly, developed primarily for platform airdrops - as of today, the only cargo parachute of this size which is readily available for military use with a maximum payload of 5000 lbs (2267.9 kg) - the piece follows a cluster of three canopies as they slowly and gracefully descend through the atmosphere, giving the viewer the unique perspective of the payload itself. As the canopies idle in the emptiness of space, the clouds slowly disintegrate and reappear in a mesmerizing simulation of the in-between state of descent…

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

This is a Patreon exclusive article. To access the full content consider joining our Patreon community.

VIDEO: JAKE COURI'S A STONE'S THROW (2022)

When the grid leads to grinding, appendices without bodies produce immaterial labor.

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

Throughout the course of this week, we'll be exploring Jake Couri’s oeuvre. His latest work, A Precarious Night at Plumb Point is currently on display on VRAL.

Couri’s A Stone's Throw (2022) delves into the rich historical underpinnings of art history, drawing inspiration from the late Sixteenth-century print series Nova Reperta, illustrating recent geographical discoveries and various scientific inventions of the time. Introduced during a period of intense cultural and technological ferment, Nova Reperta showcases the spirit of innovation and creative experimentation of the late Renaissance. Through its meticulous and highly detailed engravings, it captured the excitement and energy of this historical moment, providing a visual testament to the artists and inventors who pushed the boundaries of illustration as an art form. 

Commissioned by Luigi Alamani between 1587 and 1589, the Nova Reperta series includes twenty prints numbered in the margins. The plates were designated by Jan Van Der Straet then engraved and published by Philippe Galle, his son Theodore and Jan Collaert in Antwerp. In addition to the engravings devoted to the discovery of the New World, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and Amerigo Vespucci to whom America owes its name, the rest of the collection - nineteen prints overall - illustrates man's progress in different areas of knowledge such as copper engraving, the compass, sugar refinery, distillation, the clockwork, and the oil painting technique.

Couri reinterpreted Nova Reperta through the lens of the digital medium - which he aligns with the aforementioned inventions - situating it within the framework of simulation games. The outcome, A Stone's Throw, is, in many ways, an update or, rather, a re-imagining, imbued with a melancholic and uncanny quality that invites the viewer to engage with the piece on a more philosophical level beyond its obvious visual appeal, the repetitive, mesmerizing patterns…

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

This is a Patreon exclusive article. To access the full content consider joining our Patreon community.

VIDEO: JAKE COURI'S FIND YOUR RITUAL (2019)

How can technology ground itself if it's just floating in an ocean of bits?

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

Throughout this week, we’ll be exploring Jake Couri’s oeuvre. His remarkable A Precarious Night at Plumb Point is currently on display on VRAL.

In Find Your Ritual (2019), Couri skillfully employs elements of self-help and wellness exercises to explore the relationship between the digital and the physical. The artist is concerned with the gradual, perhaps inexorable, shift towards a digital existence: in his work, Couri is equally interested in the phenomenon of human beings acquiring machine-like features as machines become more human-like. Both projects are ultimately doomed, but the hybrid nature of this convergence is nonetheless interesting. In this work, the androgynous digital avatar performing all kinds of contortions serves as a metaphor for the blurring of boundaries between the human and the machine, suggesting - both ironically and earnestly - that even artificial realities need a moment of relaxation. They, too, must find their ritual.

The video's setting - a room afloat in an ocean of simulated water - is a nod to the notion of the digital as an immersive experience. The viewer is transported into a virtual environment that is both familiar and uncanny. Couri's use of this setting further underscores the idea that our digital lives are becoming increasingly entwined with our physical lives. Attempting to reach some kind of balance, the avatar - the alter ego of the viewer - ultimately fails to achieve a sense of permanent control, mirroring our own inability to cope in a world that, in the second decade of the Twenty-first century,  has turned into full dystopia…

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

This is a Patreon exclusive article. To access the full content consider joining our Patreon community.

VIDEO: JAKE COURI'S CHEAPSHOT (2020)

In CHEAPSHOT, Jake Couri masterfully blends the digital and the physical, creating a surreal digital landscape in which the main character, the viewer’s alter ego, performs EFT.

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

Throughout this week, we’ll be exploring Jake Couri’s work, whose remarkable video A Precarious Night at Plumb Point is currently on display on VRAL.

We’ll begin with CHEAPSHOT (2020), which we briefly mentioned in our interview. 

In CHEAPSHOT, Couri employs digital art techniques to present a fluid and ever-shifting world that blurs the distinction between reality and the virtual realm. Utilizing computer graphics through Unreal Engine, the artist conjures a sense of hyperreality, echoing Jean Baudrillard's apt definition. This effect is further amplified by the use of aural cues, as sound designer Aaron Emmanuel's aural dissonance creates a feeling of disquiet and instability. The sudden alternation of gentle sounds with unexpected and jarring noise mirrors the emotional upheavals caused by the barrage of information, constant notifications, and overwhelming stimuli that come with living in a perpetually connected, “always on” digital world.

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

This is a Patreon exclusive article. To access the full content consider joining our Patreon community.

ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT JORDY VEENSTRA'S AR3NA

SPACES AND (NON) PLACES

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

Quake III Arena is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and released in 1999. The game became popular for its fast-paced multiplayer action and its modding community, which produced a variety of custom levels, game modes, and other modifications. One may argue that one of the most successful types of mod was machinima, which is generally described as the use of real-time 3D engines to create animated films.

Machinima made with Quake III Arena allowed players to create their own characters and use in-game tools to record and edit gameplay footage into video. These “movies” could be used to tell stories, create music videos, or recreate scenes from popular movies and TV shows. The ability to create and share machinima was an important part of the Quake III Arena community, and many players became skilled at using the game’s versatile tools to create high-quality videos. They competed with each other outside of the game, in a sense. Machinima can be understood as an example of the kind of unexpected, unplanned gameplay known as emergent gameplay, in Katie Salen’s definition or “High-performance play” to borrow Henry Lowood’s definition. For a more in-depth analysis of machinima’s roots, I recommend the Stanford historian’s insightful essay “Video capture: Machinima, documentation, and the history of virtual worlds”, included in essential The Machinima Reader (MIT Press, 2011).

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

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

ARTICLE: LANGUAGE GAMES, CRYPTOCURRENCIES, AND SIMLISH

DO YOU TALK CRYPTO?

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

〰️

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

What if Geremy Cotten was still alive? Is he enjoying the good life on a remote island with other crypto scammers, drinking fancy drinks and swimming into the ocean? Is he in crypto heaven? Whether his death was an unexpected outcome or a meticulously planned scam culminating with a suspiciously timed disappearance, we’ll probably never know. Nonetheless, Ukrainian artist Letta Shtoryn provides fascinating answers in machinima form. In her speculative fiction Cryptoheaven3, she casts the former founder of QuadrigaCX as a permanent party animal. Sim-Cotten is having endless fun on an exotic island, while thousands of people around the world wonder if they will ever see their investments returned in one form or another (short answer: not a chance).

Through cleverly juxtaposed quotes about this mysterious event collected from several sources, including Reddit, Twitter, news websites, YouTube comments, and Jeremy Cotten himself, Shtoryn develops different storylines resulting in an ever expanding narrative. Shtoryn appropriated The Sims 4 to create a counter-narrative. Letta imagines Cotten’s hypothetical identity change, while also emphasizing the obsessive behavior of internet users seeking possible anomalies in his death certificate and clues of a larger scam. In Cryptoheaven3, The Sims 4 character editor used to shape the appearance of Cotten’s avatar can be compared to digital plastic surgery. Jeremy’s appearance changes before our eyes and with the touch of a button. Now you see him, now you don’t.

For the record, the investigation into his death has brought to light the true nature of QuadrigaCX, that is, a cleverly concocted Ponzi scheme to embezzle money from investors. This twist in the investigation prompted internet users and unsuspecting victims to suggest even bolder speculations about the affair. In Shtoryn’s speculative fiction, Sim-Cotten is living the good life, enjoying daily massages, alternating session of sunbathing and swimming into crystal clear waters. At night, he drinks cocktails, and dances on the beach with his acolytes, a tribe of “digital nomads”. Meanwhile, comments from amateur internet investigators and those who have invested (read: lost) their life savings in QuadrigaCX pop up on the screen as a reminder that people did not forget and certainly did not forgive Cotten. We hear conversations in Simlish, a mesh-up of different languages, a meaningless word salad, an incomprehensible idiom that players nonetheless try to decipher as a form of meta-play. In Cryptoheaven3, Sim-Cotten is either talking on the phone or to other party animals on the island. He is likely plotting the next scam while extolling the virtues of crypto.

(continues)

Gemma Fantacci

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