minecraft

MMF MMXXIV: GAME VIDEO ESSAY

Image by Dall-e 3

The Milan Machinima Festival MMXXIV is excited to unveil the 2024 Game Video Essay series, featuring a curated selection of international machinima that boldly departs from traditional narrative structures. Join us on Thursday, March 14, at Sala dei 146, IULM 6, for screenings of four groundbreaking works that push the boundaries of the documentary form, including two insightful presentations by the creators themselves.

Game video essay

March 14 2024, 14:00 - 17:00

Sala dei 146

IULM 6, IULM University

Via Carlo Bo 7, 20143 Milano

curated by Matteo Bittanti

Artists and filmmakers: Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll, Guilhem Causse, Ekiem Barbier, and Quentin L'helgoualc’h, Gina Hara, Yemen Liu.

Introduced in 2019, Game Video Essay showcases innovative machinima that transcends traditional narrative structures to explore a wide range of topics, from cultural and philosophical to environmental and abstract, using video games as an expressive canvas. These works diverge from conventional storytelling in machinima, instead offering a rich analysis and commentary on diverse issues through the unique perspective of video games. By repurposing game visuals and mechanics, these essays invite viewers to engage deeply with subjects that challenge and expand the dialogue beyond gaming into a broader cultural and societal context.

The Milan Machinima Festival is proud to present these game video essays as a testament to the evolving potential of games and video essays alike, fostering a deeper appreciation for this dynamic form of expression. The featured works in this year’s program explore themes of environmental change, artificial intelligence, virtual identity, and the role of machinima in contemporary art.

Yewen Liu’s Irreversible documents Greenpeace Poland’s innovative project to recreate the Bialowieża Primeval Forest within the virtual world of Minecraft. The forest, which has faced numerous challenges such as deforestation and ecological shifts, serves as a poignant symbol of the ongoing struggle against irreversible environmental changes. Liu’s machinima captures this virtual reforestation effort, juxtaposing it against the backdrop of the forest’s real-world struggles.

In Crowd Control, Canadian artists Cat Bluemke and Jonathan Carroll examine the intersection of crowd simulation technology and the growing surveillance industry, focusing on the representation of the French Revolutionary mob in Assassin’s Creed Unity. By reflecting on depictions of crowds in art history and contemporary video game crowd simulations, the work questions how these technologies might shape the future of collective action and social unrest in an era of artificial intelligence.

Guilhem Causse, Ekiem Barbier, and Quentin L’helgoualc’h’s full-length documentary Knit’s Island delves into the online game DayZ, exploring a 250 square km virtual space where players enact a survivalist fiction. Using avatars, the filmmakers interact with the game’s community, blending in-game experiences with personal stories. The film investigates the dawn of virtual life integration and its implications for our world, offering insights into online interactions, virtual friendships, and the boundaries between digital and real-life identities.

Gina Hara’s MachinimaBodiesSpaceRhythm is a pioneering episodic series that showcases the voices of women and non-binary creators within the machinima sphere. Situated at the intersection of video games, cinema, and digital art, the series illuminates machinima’s unique, hybrid nature. Hara not only highlights machinima’s artistic potential but also prompts reflection on digital identities and the medium’s role in contemporary art.

These four works demonstrate the power of game video essays to explore complex themes and ideas, leveraging the unique affordances of video games to create compelling and thought-provoking experiences. By blurring the lines between gaming, cinema, and digital art, these essays challenge our understanding of what is possible within the machinima medium and invite us to consider the profound ways in which video games can shape our perceptions of the world around us.

As we navigate an increasingly digital landscape, the Game Video Essay platform serves as a vital platform for artists and filmmakers to interrogate the role of technology in our lives and to imagine new possibilities for creative expression. Through their innovative use of video game engines and their willingness to push the boundaries of traditional storytelling, these creators are charting new territories in the world of machinima and beyond.

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

MMF MMXXIII UPDATE: A CHAT WITH COLIN STAGNER

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT

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PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️

The Milan Machinima Festival is proud to present Colin Stagner's new machinima Pictures of an Exhibition, which invites viewers to embark on a thought-provoking journey through space within Minecraft. Divided into three movements, each accompanied by classical music, this machinima delves into traditional cinematic themes of innovation, tribulation, and contemplation against the cosmic backdrop of outer space.

In his explorations of the conventions and relationships between coding, film, and game design, Colin Stagner seeks to comprehend how the digital realm engenders our lived reality. Hailing from the heartland of the United States, Stagner's practice is one of technological experimentation, with a focus on uncovering the hidden mechanisms that undergird the digital. While some may be tempted to categorize Stagner as an artist, he resists such a label, instead identifying himself as a software engineer who uses his skills to probe the limits of what is possible within the coded world. By drawing on his deep understanding of programming languages and their potential applications, Stagner creates works that challenge our preconceived notions of what is possible in the world of technology.

Riccardo Retez talked to Colin Stagner about Pictures of an Exhibition:

Riccardo Retez: Inquiring into the nature of machinima as a creative practice, I am compelled to ask: what inspired your engagement with this unique medium? Before I delve into the intricacies of your recent work, Pictures of an Expedition, could you describe your personal relationship with machinima? How do you conceptualize this technique, and what purpose does it serve in your artistic vision? Put simply, what is the significance of designing, producing, and ultimately releasing a machinima for you as an artist?

Colin Stagner: My first introduction to machinima was courtesy of the early episodes of Red vs. Blue (Burns, 2003). To produce any film, it is necessary to convince the viewer that the limitations of the medium form a “reality” of sorts. While some films lack sound or color, machinima directors are forced to accept more unusual limitations. In Red vs. Blue, every character must always wear a helmet and hold a weapon. The series embraces these absurdities and plays them for laughs. Interesting constraints make for interesting art.

In an odd but narratively convenient coincidence, I was first introduced to my chosen medium, Minecraft (Mojang, 2010), through machinima. In addition to numerous demo videos, I also recall watching music machinima such as In Search of Diamonds (Dead Worker’s Party, 2010) and others which have been lost to time. These convinced me that the game was worth playing.

At that time, in 2011, I had absolutely no idea that I was going to make a film.

As a software engineer by trade, my only formal education in movie-making was a “Films Appreciation” course from my undergrad years. That and, I suppose, all the films I had ever seen. As this project has taught me, machinima is a uniquely accessible medium for film. There is no need to perfect the kinesthetics of performance or the technical details of sound and image capture. Reducing these barriers expands the range of possible contributors – more artists, more art. The challenge, beyond the physical act of doing, is to create a work that complements or transcends the original “text” of the game and forms a meaningful connection with its audience.

(continues)

Riccardo Retez

Works cited

Colin Stagner

Pictures of an Expedition

digital video/machinima, color, sound, 6’ 07”, 2022, United States of America

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VIDEO: GINA HARA IN CONVERSATION WITH MARIE LEBLANC FLANAGAN

CONTEXT IS KING

Patreon-exclusive content

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Patreon-exclusive content 〰️

We are happy to share with our Patreon subscribers — courtesy of Ada X — a video recording of the presentation of AI The End, which Gina Hara produced during her residency in late 2021. The conversation was moderated by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan and took place on Zoom on December 9th, 2021. In the video, Hara provides crucial information about her creative process, the underlying logic of AI and Minecraft, and the development of AI the end, Valley’s precursor. The entire conversation is approximately 45 minute long.

EVENT: GINA HARA (SEPTEMBER 2 - SEPTEMBER 15 2022, ONLINE)

VALLEY

digital video/machinima (1280 x 720), color, sound, 7’ 06”, Hungary/Canada

Created by Gina Hara

Inspired by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) software in mental health contexts, Gina Hara uses the world of Minecraft as a backdrop for a series of exchanges with an AI-powered chatbot, called Robin, developed specifically for the project. Both the process and the resulting narrative are documented in this short machinima.

Gina Hara is a Hungarian-Canadian filmmaker and artist. She holds an MA in Intermedia, an MFA in Film Production and worked with film, video, new media, gaming, and design. Waning (2011), her first fiction film, was nominated for a Best Canadian Short award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Your Place or Minecraft (2016), a machinima web series focusing on game studies, is currently available on YouTube. Hara’s full length documentary Geek Girls (2017) explores the notion of subculture from women’s perspective and was screened internationally, including IULM University in 2018 during the Gender Play conference. Her artworks have been exhibited by several institutions including the New Museum in New York, the Budapest Kunsthalle and the City of Montreal. Hara lives in Montreal, where she works as Creative Director of the Technoculture, Art and Games Research Centre.

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EVENT: SJORS RIGTERS (APRIL 22 - MAY 5 2022, ONLINE)

THE VIRTUAL FRONTIER

digital video, color, sound, 3’, 2020, The Netherlands

Created by Sjors Rigters

The popular video game Minecraft exemplifies the inner contradictions of the digital age. Lauded by many pundits as a highly creative form of entertainment, the so-called “digital LEGO” is a powerful vessel for neoliberal ideologies and hyper-capitalistic imperatives, with its frenzy of accumulation, extraction, circulation, production, and exploitation. An effective indoctrination tool now pervasive in thousands of US elementary schools, Minecraft is a techno-dream of endless growth, a manifesto for the perpetuation of devastating patterns of consumption, competition, and destruction. Informed by colonialist principles, its gameplay elevates numbing grinding routines into a recipe for the good life, casting the player as both a conqueror and an entrepreneur. In his video The Virtual Frontier, Dutch designer Sjors Rigters brings to the foreground the toxic message of one of the most successful video games of all time.

Sjors Rigters (b. 1995) is a graphic designer specializing in visual identity and editorial design. After receiving his BA in Graphic Design at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, he opened his own studio. Sjors lives and works in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

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