ARTICLE: SØREN THILO FUNDER'S CHILDREN'S GAMES (PUZZLED)

Søren Thilo Funder, still from Children's Games (Puzzled) - FACTORY WORKERS UNITE, HD Video installation, 48'00", Dimensions Variable, 2019.

Working through the puzzle game.

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In his unique exploration of the intersection of play, community, and knowledge production, Søren Thilo Funder and Tina Helen aka FACTORY WORKERS UNITED document the playful assemblage of a 4000-piece jigsaw puzzle inspired by Pieter Bruegel the Elder's iconic painting Children's Games (1560). Titled Children's Games (Puzzled) (2019), this immersive video captures the artists and a diverse group of collaborators, adults and children, gathering around the seemingly mundane activity of piecing together a puzzle. Filmed from a bird's-eye view, the slow and deliberate process of (re)constructing the image from a myriad of fragments becomes a site for rich conversation and collective reflection.

The choice is not random: with Children's Games (1560), Pieter Bruegel the Elder offers a kaleidoscopic vision of childhood play, filled with an astonishing array of activities and characters. Yet, beneath the surface of this charming and whimsical scene lies a darker undertone. The chaotic jumble of bodies and games seems to suggest a world in which innocence and joy are constantly under threat from the violence and disorder that lurks just out of sight. Despite the painting's undeniable technical mastery and richly detailed composition, it is this underlying tension between play and danger that makes Children's Games such a powerful and enduring work of art. Bruegel's vision of childhood, with all its contradictions and complexities, remains as relevant and provocative today as it was when it was first painted over four centuries ago.

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Matteo Bittanti

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ARTICLE: SØREN THILO FUNDER'S SANDBOX LIFE IS HELL

Søren Thilo Funder, cop2_cit (sandbox life is hell), Computer Generated Image, Photographic Print, Light box, 84x210cm, 2021

Hell is other people’s skins.

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In his 2021 thought-provoking artwork cop2_cit (sandbox life is hell), Søren Thilo Funder presents us with a simulacrum of a riot cop, constructed entirely from elements of a popular video game, Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games, 2013). This post modern twist on traditional portraiture challenges us to consider the role of simulation and representation in contemporary art. The avatar is presented as a deconstructed object, inviting the viewer to explore - and perhaps reassemble - its various components. From weapons to fabrics, each element is laid out for the viewer to piece together, offering an apparently playful, imaginative view into the world of game-based simulations. cop2_cit (sandbox life is hell) urges us to question the relationship between reality and simulation, and the ways in which games and other digital media can shape our perceptions of the world. 

Thilo Funder reframes the notion of custom-made skins, that is, visual modifications to the appearance of an object in a digital environment, such as a video game or virtual reality simulation. In the context of video games, skins are often used to customize the appearance of playable characters or objects in the game world. They may be created by the game developers or by individual players, using custom software or other tools. Custom-made skins can take many forms, from simple color changes to more complex designs that incorporate new textures, patterns, or even three-dimensional models. Skins can be created using a variety of tools and techniques, including digital painting, 3D modeling software, and image editing programs. Once created, skins can be shared online and downloaded by other players, allowing for a vibrant and diverse ecosystem of user-generated content. There's a long tradition within the context of game art to redesign skins in order to appropriate, alter, and subvert the ideology inherent to a video game…

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Matteo Bittanti

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NEWS: MMF MMXXIII: THEME, POSTER, AND TICKETS!

“NEITHER ARTIFICIAL NOR INTELLIGENT” IS THE THEME OF THE SIXTH EDITION OF THE MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL

Milan, Italy - Today, January 19 2023, we are delighted to unveil the theme and poster of the upcoming edition of the Milan Machinima Festival which will take place both on site and online between March 19 - 26 2023.

“Neither Artificial Nor Intelligent” (NANI) is how Kate Crawford— research professor of communication and science and technology studies at the University of Southern California and a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research — describes artificial intelligence in her award-winning book Atlas of AI (2021). According to Crawford, “AI is neither artificial nor intelligent. It is made from natural resources and it is people who are performing the tasks to make the systems appear autonomous.”

Likewise, the new edition of the Milan Machinima Festival will address the growing influence of artificial intelligence on storytelling and visual narrative, but also the rhetoric surrounding this technique. Such a theme is consistent with the current VRAL exhibition, Colossal Cave Adventure - The Movie, created by Thomas Hawranke and Lasse Scherffig with AI-generated visuals. In this case, the AI system receives on an 8 second interval a new textual description taken from Will Crowther’s 1978 Colossal Cave Adventure’s source code and generates a new scene. The question then becomes: Who is the author of Colossal Cave Adventure - The Movie? Thomas Hawranke and Lasse Scherffig? Will Crowther? Stable Diffusion? All of them? None? As this example illustrates, AI-based art raises several questions related to authorship, creativity, originality and more. The 2023 edition of the Milan Machinima Festival will try to address the potential and pitfalls of this technique.

The festival’s poster was designed by Jordy Veenstra, one of the most talented artists working with machinima today. “The initial keywords given to me were NPC and AI”, said the Dutch artist and filmmaker. “In tandem with this year’s theme, my first thoughts were: pseudo-intelligence, digitization, dehumanization, empty shells, algorithms, compulsory movement and/or execution — as in NPC speech and movement —, the contrast between real/fabricated and the visualization of code.“

Consistently with this premise, Veenstra used AI-based tools to generate the artwork. As he explains: “The work was created with the Dall-E AI provided by OpenAI and in my eyes ideally captures this idea. White experimental, dehumanized masses looking like NPCs, with truly absurd poses; just standing there, surrounded by experimental ‘white’ code blobs; simply looking around restlessly and waiting for someone, anyone, to give a quest to, to be useful and to have their code finally executed. To have their own quest completed.”

Patron supporters can access to additional content related to Veenstra’s process in creating this amazing poster. They can also review alternative artworks.

The Milan Machinima Festival MMXXIII takes place between March 19 - 26 2023, online and on site. On March 25 2023, a special screening will take place at the Museum of Interactive Cinema in Milan, Italy.

Tickets are on sale now; seats are limited.

Jordy Veenstra is a video editor, motion graphics designer, 2D animator, and experimental filmmaker based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In his practice, Veenstra connects art and narrative with technology and software through the medium of experimental film. His works have been exhibited at the 2020 and 2022 Milan Machinima Festival. His monumental Regression I-III was featured in VRAL S01. His more recent AR3NAE was presented in the ongoing VRAL S03.

Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI was published by Yale University Press in 2021. The Italian translation, Né intelligente né artificiale. Il lato oscuro dell’IA, was also released 2021 by Il Mulino.

DALL-E and DALL-E 2 are deep learning models developed by OpenAI to generate digital images from natural language descriptions, called "prompts". DALL-E was revealed by OpenAI in a blog post in January 2021, and uses a version of GPT-3 modified to generate images.

Additional information about MMF MMXIII will be shared in the upcoming weeks, so stay tuned.