MMF MMXXIII UPDATE: A CHAT WITH BEN NICHOLSON

We are delighted to share an interview with Ben Nicholson, the author of the tonic of battersea park which will be screened at the Interactive Museum of Cinema, Milan, Italy on March 25 2023 as part of the MMF MMXXIII in the program Neither Intelligent, Nor Artificial.

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Ben Nicholson’s the tonic of battersea park is a poetic machinima that employs a procedural generated environment to evoke the constructed aura of “nature”. Using the video game Proteus and the writing of Henry David Thoreau, Nicholson creates a unique visual and auditory experience. At the heart of the machinima is the concept of domesticated nature. The appropriation of game’s procedural generated environment allows Nicholson to create a sense of lo-fi, pixellated beauty. The use of Thoreau’s words though the filter of ChatGPT adds another layer of depth (and irony) to this apparently simple machinima, imbuing it with an algorithmically generated quality. In the tradition of the avant-garde, the tonic of battersea parkchallenges traditional notions of art and pushes the boundaries of what is possible with machinima.

Ben Nicholson is a film writer, curator, and moderator. His writing has appeared in publications such as Sight & Sound, The Guardian, and Hyperallergic. Ben is the chief shorts reviewer for The Film Verdict and the founder of ALT/KINO, a project that showcases alternative voices and visions particularly in the realm of experimental film. He is also the artistic director of the Alpha Film Festival, which had its first edition in March 2023. Ben has curated programs for festivals such as Sheffield Doc/Fest and Open City Documentary Festival, and moderated events for the Barbican Centre, ICA, and more. He holds a Master of the Arts in Film and Screen Media from Birkbeck College and has served on juries at the Go Short Film Festival and the Arab Cinema Center’s Critics’ Awards.

Matteo Bittanti: In the realm of contemporary video art and experimental cinema, machinima has emerged as a distinctive genre that challenges traditional notions of filmic creation. Can you expound upon your interpretation of this genre, and where you locate its place within the audiovisual landscape? Additionally, I’d love to hear about your initial encounter with machinima, and how it has influenced your artistic practice.

Ben Nicholson: I think my first encounter with machinima came back in 2018. I don’t recall the precise piece of work I came across first, but I do recall going on voyage of discovery while researching a piece I was writing on smart cities, and I was thinking about digital renderings of landscapes. I was trying to pull together my thoughts on certain moments in Theo Anthony’s essay documentary Rat Film and was reading Michael Crowe’s An Attempt At Exhausting A Place in GTA Online. Somewhere in amongst that, a friend recommended Total Refusal’s Operation Jane Walk and Jonathan Vinel’s Martin Cries. I never looked back and, I think, Martin Cries remains the machinima I cherish the most.

How I locate it and how it has influenced me are perhaps a little more nebulous to define, but I’ll try. I think I am someone that has been fascinated for some time in the potential of the compilation film, the video essay or, more generally, artworks made using found materials. Some of my favourite filmmakers of recent times – Peggy Ahwesh, Stephen Broomer, Bill Morrison, Soda_Jerk, Jean-Gabriel Périot, Lewis Klahr, Catherine Grant – have excelled in appropriating and adapting to fascinating effect. For me, the machinima I adore tends to often feel like something of an extension of that kind of practice. It is perhaps a little more malleable than existing video footage, in certain circumstances, but there is a similar tension in the way these films draw out their own narratives and meanings through liberated imagery – often in a way that can feel challenging to, or radically at odds with, the material’s original purpose. There are many other examples where machinima allows for a glorious virtual sandbox, but the found footage element appeals most to me.

(continues)

Works cited

Ben Nicholson

the tonic of battersea park

digital video/machinima, color, sound, 2’ 37”, 2023, England

Made with Proteus (Ed Key, David Kanaga, 2013) and ChatGPT (OpenAI, 2022

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EVENT: JASON ROUSE (JUNE 10 - JUNE 23 2022, ONLINE)

KOSSOFF FLEES UKRAINE

digital video/machinima (2160 x 1440), color, sound, 31’ 12”, 2022, Northern Ireland

Created by Jason Rouse

Machinima, landscape painting, first-person shooters, walking simulators, and photogrammetry. Jason Rouse’s new artwork is a triumph of remediation as it incorporates, repurposes, and transforms a variety of media, genres, and aesthetics. It is simultaneously an art history lesson and a meditation on current events delivered via Unity 3D. As the title suggests, this work is about Leon Kossoff (1926–2019), one of the most influential British painters of the XIX century, who was also the son of two Ukrainian refugees fleeing persecution during the 1903-1906 pogrom. Kossoff Flees Ukraine reconstructs that miraculous escape through the forests and mountains of Europe, while updating the narrative to another tragedy, the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia. The outcome is a document about the past that speaks about the contingent moment.

Jason Rouse (b. 1985) is an Irish artist living and working in Cardiff, Wales. In Rouse’s work, digital and traditional arts converge, creating unexpected results. Rouse has painted game landscapes, developed interactive games, and experimented with generative spaces. Rouse has been a finalist with Lumen Prize for Digital Art, exhibited at the inaugural Westmorland Landscape Prize and selected for the 2020 BEEP Painting Prize. He has received a Wales Art International grant for SWITCHed, an exchange program between Arcade Cardiff and Galerie RDV, Nantes. His album of solo Irish traditional music on Uilleann Pipes has won critical acclaim from both press and peers.

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NEWS: MMF MMXXII DISPATCH #5

Hello everyone,

My name is Matteo Bittanti and I am the artistic director of the Milan Machinima Festival, which showcases game-based video art at the end of the end of history. 

On behalf of the entire curatorial staff, I am happy to reveal additional details about the fifth edition, which takes place between March 21st and 27th 2022.

The Milan Machinima Festival - a non-profit project that was born at IULM University in Milan - is made possible by the contribution of several people. In this dispatch, I’d like to share some details about our curatorial staff. Specifically, I would like to introduce three key curators: Gemma Fantacci, Luca Miranda, and Riccardo Retez.

Gemma Fantacci is a Doctoral candidate in Visual and Media Studies at IULM University. Her research focuses on the relationship between counter-gaming practices and the avant-garde. She holds an MA in Arts, Markets and Cultural Heritage from IULM, and an MA in Game Design from the same institution. She is interested in machinima, in-game photography and the visual arts. Gemma is the Communication Manager of the Milan Machinima Festival and co-curator of VRAL. 

Among her most recent publications is VRAL SEASON ONE published by Concrete Press, which she co-edited with Matteo Bittanti. Introduced in April 2020 amidst a global pandemic, VRAL is a uniquely curated game video experience, offering screenings of machinima created by artists and filmmakers whose work lies at the intersection of video art, cinema, animation, and gaming. The book collects all Season One’s interviews (i.e., exhibitions 01 to 21), including extra content previously released online. The second volume in the series will be released in the upcoming months 

Luca Miranda is an artist and independent researcher. His scholarly practice focuses on the relationship between reality and simulation. He is especially interested in the notion of the avatar as an aesthetic entity. Luca is interested in the logic of game mechanics and notions such as immersion, identification, and interpassivity. He received a Master of Arts in TV, Cinema and New Media at IULM University, Milan, and previously a B.A. in Media and Art from the University of Bologna. In 2018, he co-founded Eremo, an artistic collective based in Milan operating at the intersection of video game, sound art, performance and contemporary art. His most recent publication is titled GIOCARE A CAMMINARE (Walking as a game) which focuses on the walking simulator, a video game genre that has emerged in the last decade in the context of the so-called indie scene. The book examines the origins, development, and influence of this genre sui generis within the field of digital gaming. Additionally, the author compares the aesthetics, mechanics, and ways of playing the walking simulator with several works and artistic practice, suggesting that the two have much in common.

Born and raised in Florence, Riccardo Retez received a Master's Degree in Television, Cinema and New Media from the IULM University in Milan in 2019 and a Degree in Graphic Design and Multimedia from the Free Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in 2017. Passionate about cinema, video games and visual culture, Riccardo has produced several short films and video clips. He is the author of MACHINIMA VERNACOLARE (Vernacular Machinima), the first academic study of the Rockstar Editor, a popular video editing software embedded in Grand Theft Auto V (2013). The author describes the dynamics of production, consumption and distribution of machinima within the fandom community, which now represent an increasingly complex media ecosystem. 

This year, Gemma, Luca and Riccardo are each curating a special program that will be exclusively screened on March 26 at the MIC, the Museum of Interactive Cinema in Milan. Tickets are still available on EventBrite although seats are limited.  

For more information about the Milan Machinima Festival please visit the official website.

Stay tuned for more and thank you for your attention.