The Milan Machinima Festival is delighted to showcase Crowd Control by Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll, as part of our special program, Game Video Essay. We cordially invite you to an exclusive screening on March 14, 2024 at IULM University, where you will have the unique opportunity to experience this captivating work alongside the creators themselves.
How will artificial intelligence shape the peasant revolts of the future? Looking at the ways that crowd simulation technology has intersected with a growing surveillance industry, this machinima focuses on the representation of the French Revolutionary mob in Assassin’s Creed Unity (2014). Reflecting on depictions of crowds in art history up to the contemporary crowd simulations of video games, Crowd Control examines how these technologies foreclose upon the possibility of collective action within the real world.
Canadian artists Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll specialize in game design, expanded reality, and performance. United under their collective persona as SpekWork Studio, they make experiences that span the digital spectrum, from interactive games and comics to immersive reality experiences and live performances. These projects probe technology’s ability to obscure the lines between work and play. They explore technology’s duality as both a labour-saving device and tool of exploitation. Their works often engage with the struggles of precarious and feminized workers, the demographic that often finds itself at the crossroads of technological advances and pitfalls. They draw inspiration from their lives as precarious digital freelancers while learning from their communities and the oppressive systems they seek to unravel. Recently they’re focusing on the ways work imprints upon our bodies and health by drawing on personal histories. With ten years of exhibition history, they’ve shown internationally with prominent institutions like Rhizome and the New Museum (2020) and the Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) as part of the American Pavillion’s corollary exhibits. Recently, they’ve exhibited with the Singapore Art Museum (2023), Art Gallery of Regina (2023), the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie (2022), InterAcess (2021), and Eyelevel Gallery (2021). With the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Rhizome, and multiple provincial arts councils, the pair has self-published much of their interactive work online, making them freely available to a global audience.
Read more about the 7th edition of the Milan Machinima Festival
