The eagerly anticipated 7th edition of the Milan Machinima Festival will take place from March 11th-17th, 2024 at IULM University in Milan, Italy. We will soon announce the full program of events, guests, speakers and workshops. But today we’re happy to reveal the official poster designed by visionary artist Babak Ahteshamipour.
Currently based in Athens, Greece, Babak brings an interdisciplinary background spanning mining engineering, materials science and avant-garde creativity to his boundary-defying practice. Blending technology and culture, his work melds gaming, online subcultures and ecological issues to explore modern identity and coexistence. Babak’s innovative artworks have been showcased internationally at venues like Pompidou Center and New Art City, as well as VRAL in 2023, and 2022. Additionally, is remarkable work In Search of the Banned Dictionaries that contain the Words for the Things You Wish you could Express but You are Unable to With Common Words was screened at the 2022 Milan Machinima Festival.
Babak’s vivid new poster design epitomizes the festival’s ethos of propelling machinima into unmapped creative frontiers. Electrifying colors and fantastical shapes blend gaming visuals with mysterious organic shapes, suggesting unexpected artistic dimensions virtual worlds could unlock.
“We’re thrilled Babak’s singular aesthetic is infusing this year with such daring imaginative energy,” says Matteo Bittanti, the festival’s artistic director. “His free-spirited art truly embodies the boundary-breaking, risk-embracing spirit at the heart of machinima. Babak’s work stretches limits and blows open new horizons for virtual creativity. He is basically saying: machinima is radioactive and we all bask in its glow.”
Amidst the flames and monoliths, this striking poster signals a phoenix-like rebirth for the bold, ever-evolving art form of machinima. The Milan Machinima Festival MMXXIV promises to ignite blazing new creative fires across uncharted dimensions.
In his statement, Babak elaborates on the inspirations behind this mythic vision:
“In the heart of an inferno-kissed terrain, where flames dance with the abandon of recklessness, a desperate portal breathes forth the ethereal ghosts of the quantum fabric. In this land, the psyche of non-organic intertwines with the mechanical and gives birth to the grotesque and the gore cosmic energies — a testament to a world teetering on the precipice.
Within of this tapestry of dissonant chaos, anthropocentric echoes navigate the chasm between accelerated technological singularity and the relentless greed-fueled rhythms of consumerism. Alien tendrils coil around the delicate threads of reality and the hues of ecological decay whisper the ode of a turbulent dystopian headbanging, where each brutal riff unfolds a haunting reminder of the consequences woven into the fabric of voracious desires.
A convergence of the surreal and the intimate, an otherworldly mirror, hope stands trial against the toxic mists of gleeful lust and blindfolded technocracy.”
Babak Ahteshamipour is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and musician based in Athens, Greece with a background in mining and materials engineering. His practice is based on the collision of the virtual vs the actual, aimed at correlating topics from cyberspace to ecology and politics to identity, exploring them via gaming, online and pop subcultures with a focus on themes of coexistence and simultaneity. Ahteshamipour’’s work has been presented at festivals, venues, galleries and spaces, museums and institutes such as Centre Pompidou, New Art City, The Wrong, Neo Shibuya TV, University of North Texas, The Networked Imagination Laboratory (McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario), Biquini Wax ESP, Experimental Sound Studio, Milan Machinima Festival, [ANTI]MATERIA, ArtSect Gallery, and Ametric Festival. Ahteshamipour has released music on the independent cassette label Industrial Coast and on the cassette label Jollies. His music has been played on radio stations such as Fade Radio, Radio Raheem, and Radio alHara. He has performed and shared the stage with artists such as HELM, Zoviet France, The Nam Shub of Enki, Gaël Segalen, Sister Overdrive, and Kiriakos Spirou. He has created video clips for artists such as Fire-Toolz, Digifae, and B.MICHAEEL. His work has been featured on magazines such as CTM Festival’s magazine, KIBLIND, und. Athens, Our Culture Magazine and ATTN: Magazine.
