machinima

INTERVIEW: ALEXANDER BLEY ON PLATFORM

Alexander Bley is a visual artist and VFX supervisor based in Berlin. He is particularly driven by class consciousness, a theme that permeates his work, including projects like Platform, currently on display on VRAL.This film, co-directed by Steffen Köhn and Johannes Büttner, uses machinima techniques and classic CGI to explore the parallels between dystopian capitalist futures and current realities. We talked with Alexander about his machinima work for Steffen Köhn and Johannes Büttner’s groundbreaking Platform.

Matteo Bittanti: Could you begin by outlining your methodology and practices as a VFX and CGI specialist? What drives your creative and technical decisions? Can you share some information about your background and upbringing?

Alexander Bley: Generally, my methodology depends on the specific tasks and the suitability of my current toolset. If my tools are inadequate, I consider what additional tools could be used, whether it's feasible to incorporate them within a reasonable timeframe, or if additional support is necessary. This decision-making process starts with clear communication about the task, understanding the vision of the directors or clients. Moodboards are particularly helpful during this phase, and I enjoy collaborating with clients or directors to develop ideas further. Any medium that helps align everyone involved, such as music, movies, games, or other pop culture references, is welcome. When production begins, I strive to have a precise understanding of the project, making animatics and similar tools invaluable. Creatively, I prefer to produce work that is not overly polished, embracing technological limitations or even “mistakes” (such as stretched textures) as a counterpoint to the highly polished digital aesthetics prevalent in the 21st century.

So, my background, let’s see... I’ve always been into visual stuff - drawing, comics, movies, computer games — but I also had an interest in technical things. That led me to study audiovisual media at Beuth College in Berlin. The program mostly focused on lens-based picture making, which didn’t quite satisfy me. So, I spent my free time in front of a computer doing tutorials and experimenting with VFX software like After Effects. My twin brother and I were raised by a working-class single mom in a town near Dortmund. Back then, Dortmund was going through a rough time due to globalization, with a lot of steel and coal jobs disappearing. I’m also half Greek, and the Greek community is the largest immigrant group where I grew up. This mix of experiences and my background has given me a strong class sensitivity, which is a big part of why I’m motivated to work on projects like Platform…

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With a strong interest in both visual and technical aspects of media, Alexander Bley pursued audiovisual media studies at Beuth College. Dissatisfied with the lens-based focus of the program, he dedicated his free time to learning VFX software such as After Effects. Raised in a working-class family near Dortmund, Bley’s upbringing in a declining industrial town has significantly influenced his artistic motivation. Bley’s work spans various media, including immersive installations like Memoria, which combines ethnographic research with science fiction elements inspired by William Gibson’s Johnny Mnemonic. He has also worked on music videos, such as Nanti-Hell, employing advanced VFX techniques and facial tracking. His diverse portfolio demonstrates his ability to merge creative and technical skills across multiple platforms and genres.

Alexander Bley’s personal website

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REVIEW: ALICE BUCKNELL’S THE ALLUVIALS AT GAMESPLAYART (APRIL 4 - MAY 4 2024, LOS ANGELES)

Our recent visit to Gameplayarts, a novel art gallery and hub for game-based video art located in Los Angeles, presented an opportunity to engage with Alice Bucknell’s remarkable multimedia artwork, The Alluvials. On display between April 4th – May 4th 2024 as both machinima and video game, The Alluvials examines ecological crises and anthropogenic impacts, with a focus on water scarcity in a speculative future Los Angeles.

The Alluvials combines a variety of media, including a playable game, video narratives, 3D city scans, and creatively modified gaming environments to richly convey its ecological themes. This multimedia integration promotes an immersive experience that seamlessly bridges the digital and concrete realities, ideally suited for an art gallery setting where the two can coexist harmoniously. At Gameplayarts, the amalgamation of on-site installations and screen-based experiences was carefully curated by Jamin Warren, showcasing a grasp of the medium’s nuances seldom observed in contemporary art venues.

The exhibition space was characterized by vibrant, multicolored lighting casting a surreal glow across the room, enhancing the immersive quality of the installation. Multiple large screens were strategically placed around the space, each displaying various scenes or interactive prompts from the game. The setting included uniquely shaped, wooden installations resembling natural forms like trees, which were integrated with the gaming screens, adding an organic touch to the high-tech environment. Powerful black gaming computers with glowing green lights, running the interactive game components, were sitting on white pedestals, emphasizing their importance to the functionality of the exhibition and, more in general, to the crucial role they play in our increasingly digital world. The seating arrangement included several beanbag chairs with a distinctive camouflage pattern, providing a casual and comfortable viewing experience. Overall, the neon outlined on the wooden installations and the strategic lighting contribute to a visually striking and engaging atmosphere. The exhibition also featured themed merchandise — such as camouflage hats displayed on a lit table — aligning with the overall aesthetic of the installation. Another part of the exhibition included large panels with digital art, each representing game environments or thematic elements related to The Alluvials. These artworks used a pixelated style and were bathed in the same vibrant lighting that dominates the space.

Bucknell’s narrative in The Alluvials emphasizes nonhuman and elemental perspectives — such as the Los Angeles River, wildfire, and the historic sycamore El Aliso — to highlight the interconnectedness of natural elements and challenge the prevalent human-centric view of the environment. Rather than anthropomorphizing these non-human actors and entities, Bucknell maintains their inherent agency, aligning her work with intellectual explorations like James Bridle’s Ways of Being, which provides a thoughtful synthesis on understanding intelligence and agency in various forms.

The video component of The Alluvials primarily functions as a narrative medium, delivering its story through a blend of visual and auditory elements without necessitating direct interaction from viewers. It utilizes custom-built game environments, drone-captured 3D scans, and altered imagery to craft its message. Complementing the machinima, a video game element extends the narrative across five distinct levels, each embodying different gaming genres and environmental themes. This interactive aspect allows visitors to explore the story through the roles of non-playable characters (NPCs), such as wildfire and the LA River, thereby deepening their engagement with the presented ecological issues.

The game challenges conventional gameplay mechanics across various genres — first-person shooter, walking simulator, open world, puzzle platform — encouraging viewers to critically think about ecological and environmental issues. In other words, the video and game components work in synergy: the video provides a controlled, author-driven exploration, while the video game offers a participatory, player-driven engagement, emphasizing personal involvement in the ecological challenges depicted.

The Alluvials critiques the management of natural resources and engineered ecosystems in Los Angeles, scrutinizing the repercussions of human interventions and market dynamics on the environment. It also underscores the significance of data in representing and understanding ecological issues by incorporating real pollution statistics into its aesthetic and narrative structure. Recognizing the indigenous Tongva People and their historical relationship with the LA River, Bucknell connects present ecological challenges to deeper historical and cultural narratives, highlighting a long-standing, respectful interaction with nature.

By integrating concepts of “game ecologies” and queer gaming strategies, the artist not only challenges traditional gaming conventions but also promotes more inclusive and ecologically conscious gaming practices. Through the practice of worlding to co-construct new realities, the project advocates for a shift from anthropocentric ideologies towards a more symbiotic relationship with the environment.

In essence, The Alluvials serves as both a speculative exploration and a critical reflection on environmental degradation, technological mediation, and the potential for a future that redefines relationships between humans and nonhumans. The exhibition at Gameplayarts presented a strikingly curated fusion of art, technology, and interactive media, providing visitors with a multi-sensory journey that disrupts conventional views of video art and gaming.

Colleen Flaherty is a visual artist living and working between Los Angeles and Milan

Gameplayarts is located at 5511 W. Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles California

Read more about Alice Bucknell’s work

All photographs courtesy of Gameplayarts. Credits: Sam Hanke

All videos and images of The Alluvials courtesy of Alice Bucknell

EVENT: THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S GUIDE TO LOS SANTOS (MAY 25 - JUNE 23 2024, LENZBURG, SWITZERLAND)

Image courtesy of Mattia Dagani Rio, 2023

What does it feel like being a photographer in Los Santos? A new group exhibition aptly titled The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos which will be featured at the Lenzburg Fotofestival in Lenzburg, Switzerland, from May 25 to June 23, 2024, tries to answer that very question. Turns out there are many answers.

The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos

May 25 - June 23 2024

Curated by Marco De Mutiis and Matteo Bittanti

Thu-Fri: 2-5 PM
Sat-Sun: 10 AM–5 PM

Dammweg 19
5600 Lenzburg
Switzerland

The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos interrogates the ontological boundaries between physical and virtual spaces through an examination of photographic practices within the context of Rockstar North’s record-breaking 2013 video game Grand Theft Auto V. Situating Los Santos as a simulacrum of Los Angeles — the epicenter of global image production —, the exhibition explores the emergence of this fictional locale as a site of artistic experimentation and critical inquiry.

Curated by Marco De Mutiis, Digital Curator at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, and Matteo Bittanti, Associate Professor in Media Studies at IULM University in Milan, the exhibition explores the influence of video games — encompassing their aesthetics, logics, and tools — on photography, through the works by artists working at the intersection of post-photography, video games and art, including 2girls1comp, Raphael Brunk, Alan Butler, Mattia Dagani Rio, Elizabeth Desintaputri, Claire Hentschker, COLL.EO, and Georgie Roxby Smith.

Through meticulous in-game capture techniques and cunning manipulations of code, this cadre of international artists rupture the veneer of mimetic realism that shrouds Los Santos, opening fissures wherein the underlying algorithms and tacit ideological assumptions underpinning these contested spaces are hijacked. At once playful and critical, the featured projects — several of which have never been presented before — challenge the stability of categories such as the virtual, the real, and the hyperreal within an increasingly gamified culture.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an online resource and a database detailing significant post-photographic interventions within Grand Theft Auto V and, later on, a “how-to-photograph-the-virtual” critical guide.  

Read more about The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos

ARTICLE: THE LOCKDOWNS NEVER ENDED

Adonis Archontides, Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics, digital video, sound, color, 4’ 05”, 2020, Cyprus.

VRAL is currently presenting The Death Trilogy by Adonis Archontides, a tryptic of works starring his ersatz Sim-clone. To better appreciate the breadth and scope of his video art, we will we will embark on a critical exploration, beginning with Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics.

Archontides’s Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics (2020) is an introspective short machinima created with/in The Sims 4 (2014). Originally developed as part of a broader cultural initiative by the Cypriot Cultural Services during the COVID-19 pandemic, this work was among fifty projects that received accolades for promoting audio-visual creativity in challenging times. This machinima leverages Will Wright’s popular simulation game to explore themes of repetition and monotony, resonating with the enforced isolation and government mandated "social distancing" experienced globally during a series of shelter-in-place initiatives. Watched in 2024, this work feels at once anachronistic and very timely, remote and fresh. 

The premise of Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics is deeply influenced by the Simulation Hypothesis, a concept prevalent in science fiction - and particularly loved by Silicon Valley’s edgelords - where reality as we know it is posited as an elaborate artifice, a cruel joke concocted by a superior, likely malevolent, intelligence. In Archontides’ piece, this “theory” is subtly referenced through the repetitive, looped nature of the Sims’ existence, mirroring the monotony of lockdown life, which seems to have lost its sense of progression, its teleology. The protagonist, a Sim replica of Adonis himself, navigates the so-called daily life in a state of perpetual loop, echoing the equally apathetic anti-hero of…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited 

Adonis Archontides

Adonis and the Lockdown Tactics

machinima/digital video, color, sound, 4’ 05”, 2020. Cyprus.

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EVENT: BABAK AHTESHAMIPOUR’S VIOLENT VIOLINS EXPOSED (APRIL 11-14 2024, ATHENS, GREECE)

We are very happy to announce that VRAL is officially sponsoring Babak Ahteshamipour's new pop-up show at Okay Initiative Space in Athens, Greece to accompany the launch of his new album Violent Violins Exposed.

Ahteshamipour is introducing three new machinima and presenting stills, characters and 3D models from different video games and media franchises such as Optimus Prime (Transformers) and Sweet Tooth (Twisted Metal) printed on fabric. The event will unfold between April 11-14 in the Greek capital. VRAL is a sponsor alongside und. athens.

Read the full press release below:

Violent Violins Exposed is a pop-up show & live performance curated by Okay Initiative Space as a presentation of Babak Ahteshamipour’s same titled album released on the cassette label Jollies (Brooklyn, NYC) on the 3rd of April of 2024. The show is a gamified exploration of blackened dreams, despair and violence woven by accelerating technocapitalism, parallelized with the accelerating tendencies of cars, screeching tires, roaring engines and militarized machines, as a haunting reminder of the collateral damage wrought by technological hubris. It seeks to unravel the interconnectedness between technological singularity, cybernetic warfare, environmental degradation, waste and pollution, from extractivist activities fueling geopolitical conflicts to the fetishized pursuit of capitalist immortality.

Tires have the potential of being representative candidates of accelerating technocapitalism: they are rapidly and massively produced, consisting mostly of synthetic rubber — which is synthesized from petroleum byproducts — and carbon black filler produced by burning fossil fuels. After their lifespan is over they are either dumped in landfills or recycled through grinding or burning — a practice that is highly pollutant. As Lesley Stern writes in A Garden or A Grave? (2017) Regarding landfills filled with tires in the San Diego – Tijuana region “Heidegger predicted: when the tool breaks, you notice its thingness — though the tire in Heideggerian terms is not a thing, lovingly handcrafted; it is a mass-produced and ugly object.”

The show unfolds in an immersive audiovisual installation based on the three video clips created via video games that focus on vehicles, racing, machines and combat: Twisted Metal: Black (2001), Need for Speed: Carbon (2006) and Transformers (2004) — in combination with 3D animation. The video clips were created for the album's three singles, and the installation includes four fabric prints featuring characters from the aforementioned video games as well as Xenoblade Chronicles.

The walls of the room are adorned with quotes that echo the undead dogmatism of Lady Deathwhisper and the scourge from World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King and the machinist desires of Magos Dominus Reditus from Warhammer 40,000. These quotes serve as reflections on the transhumanist tendencies of accelerationism that align with technological singularity: “Our combined decay-phobia and techno-heroic fantasies keep our imaginations trapped in the spinning haze of the monotechnological, accelerationist narrative. There is a persistent and maniacal desire for limitless production and production without decay.”, as Shuyi Cao and Remina Greenfield underline in Soft Rot, Sweet Rot, Bitter Rot: The Politics of Decay, published in Heichi Magazine (2021).

Violent Violins Exposed eventually serves as a catalyst for contemplation, urging towards a revaluation on the automated nihilism that mainstream discourses passively impose and the escapist memefied extremist online ideologies that emerge in response to the face of technological singularity and accelerationism. It beckons for a reconsideration of a symbiotic and integral relationship with technology that is empathy driven rather than having a divide-and-conquer strategist as a puppet master.

Watch a video clip based on the track “Machinist Auxiliaries, Needles of Needless Emphasises” featuring alternating footage of Ahteshamipour playing the video game Twisted Metal: Black and AI generated rock blasting with a text about violence/extractivism and its connections to warfare and nihilism.

Babak Ahteshamipour, Machinist Auxiliaries, Needles of Needless Emphasises, digital video, sound, color, 4’ 43”, 2024.

Watch a video clip based on the track “When Death Parties, Everyone Shows up Dressed as a Skeleton” which features a segment showing hyper-processed footage from the 2004 Transformers video game for the PlayStation 2and another unfolding within a 3D animated eerie alien landscape with a hovering spaceship and a grotesque necromantic portal installed in the middle.

Babak Ahteshamipour, When Death Parties, Everyone Shows up Dressed as a Skeleton, digital video, sound, color, 3’ 47”, 2024.

MMF MMXXIV: CARSON LYNN’S QUEER RAGE

Carson Lynn, A bronze anvil falls to the earth., digital video, color, sound, 6’ 35”, 2023.

Debuting in the Slot Machinima program at MMF MMXXIV, A bronze anvil falls to the earth. marks a seminal moment in Carson Lynn’s oeuvre. This work masterfully synthesizes digital artistry, game-based performance, and socio-political discourse into a singular, compelling narrative. Crafted in 2023, with a duration just shy of seven minutes, it epitomizes the transformative potential of machinima as a platform for both artistic innovation and poignant political dialogue.

In A bronze anvil falls to the earth., Lynn employs gameplay as a performative act, leveraging the dark, violent, feral world of Bloodborne to weave a narrative rich in Greek mythology and fueled by a palpable queer rage. This machinima blends the grim aesthetics and challenging gameplay of a video game renowned for its gothic environments, eldritch horrors, and brutally unforgiving combat with themes of resistance, suffering, and defiance against oppressive forces. Bloodborne’s setting, Yharnam, a cursed city plagued by a mysterious blood-borne disease transforming its inhabitants into beasts, serves as the perfect backdrop for Lynn’s counter narrative and relentless slaughter. The game’s emphasis on solitary exploration and the constant threat of death mirror the solitary struggle against the “blood-drunk beasts”, a metaphor for the violence and hatred faced by queer and trans individuals in the current environment. That is, the intense battles serve as a metaphor for the LGBTQ+ community’s real-world struggles against oppression, emphasizing the significance of perseverance and the quest for acceptance…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Carson Lynn, A bronze anvil falls to the earth., digital video, color, sound, 6’ 35”, 2023.

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NEWS: LEARN AND PRACTICE THE ART AND CRAFT OF MACHINIMA

Il Varco and Lago Film Fest are delighted to announce the third edition of the internationally acclaimed residency, Nouvelle Bug. This unique program is dedicated to the exploration and production of cinema within the realms of video games and Artificial Intelligence. Set against the picturesque backdrop of Revine Lago, this intensive week-long experience combines webinars and live lessons designed to immerse participants in the experimental frontier of Cinema. Under the guidance of the most renowned filmmakers in this niche, attendees will not only gain invaluable insights but also actively engage in the creation of avant-garde short films. Arrive with ideas and leave with a masterpiece that pushes the boundaries of traditional filmmaking.

The workshop is designed to familiarize participants with cutting-edge techniques, supporting them through the development and production phases of their short film projects. Moreover, these projects will have the opportunity to compete for awards offered by prestigious partners such as Gargantua Distribution, Gioia Film, Sayonara Film, and Lago Film Fest.

Participants will explore new aesthetics and solutions introduced by the widespread use of artificial intelligence, learning to adopt a machine-like perspective. This approach not only opens up new vistas for storytelling but also prompts a reflection on humanity’s god-like role in software creation and its implications for our future.

Through this workshop, filmmakers will embark on a journey to discover and harness the unique narrative power of digital worlds, translating them into compelling cinematic experiences. Nouvelle Bug stands as a beacon for those eager to pioneer the fusion of technology and art, offering a platform to redefine the essence of storytelling in the digital age.

TUTORS

The tutors for the workshop include:

  • Andrea Gatopoulos, a Rome-based film producer and director with a background in Modern Literature from Sapienza University, Rome. His work, which explores virtual environments, includes the project Bit-Reality and the short film Happy New Year, Jim, presented at the 54th Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes. His productions have been featured in over 100 festivals worldwide, such as Cannes, Venice, Rotterdam, and Camerimage.

  • Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis, an artist and filmmaker trained at Le Fresnoy, known for exploring the intersection of identity, technology, and the virtual world. His work Maalbeek,a deep dive into the fragmented memory of a Brussels terrorist attack victim, was selected for the 59th La Semaine de la Critique and won the 2022 César for Best Short Documentary.

  • Total Refusal Crew, a pseudo-Marxist media guerrilla group focusing on the artistic intervention within mainstream video games to expose their underlying political messages. Their films have been showcased at numerous festivals, including Berlinale and Locarno, and their research has been featured in museums and art fairs globally.

  • Gala Hernández López, an artist filmmaker and researcher applying a feminist and critical perspective to analyze discourses within virtual communities. Her film La Mécanique des fluides won the 2024 César for Best Documentary Short Film and the 2023 Experimental Work Award from la Scam (France), among other accolades. She regularly conducts workshops and lectures at prestigious institutions and festivals.

CALENDAR

March 28th 2024 Opening of the call for entries

June 15th 2024 Closing of the call for entries

June 28th 2024 Announcement of the 30 selected directors

August 18th 2024 Start of the workshop

October 1st 2024Selection of the winning project

MMF MMXX: PLASTIC FANTASTIC?

Prior to the unveiling of Inner Migration in the Slot Machinima program of the MMF MMXXIV, the British artist, environmentalist, and scholar Andy Hughes had already captured critical acclaim with his first game-based video work, Plastic Scoop, a powerful reflection on climate change and plastic pollution, shot with/in the virtual landscapes of Grand Theft Auto V. To fully appreciate the trajectory of Hughes’ artistic journey from the sun-soaked streets of Los Santos to the neon-lit corridors of Night City, it is essential to revisit this remarkable piece.

Plastic Scoop made its debut in the context of the 2020 Milan Machinima Festival, where it was lauded for its innovative approach to environmental commentary, blending the fictional metropolis created by Rockstar Games with pressing global issues. This work not only serves as a testament to Hughes’s evolving narrative and visual style but also as a cornerstone in the dialogue between digital culture and environmental sustainability.

Even better, Plastic Scoop jolts viewers into confronting the dichotomy between the ludic fantasy and the rapidly deteriorating physical world. Hughes ingeniously appropriates the immersive, hyper-realistic graphics of Grand Theft Auto V, subverting Los Santos and turning escapist power fantasies into canvases for environmental critique. The 24 minute machinima opens with a jarring juxtaposition: a vivid crimson ocean sunset is shattered by missile fire from an ominous helicopter, while archival audio celebrates plastic innovation with an oblivious, hyperbolic zeal. This striking incongruity immediately signals Hughes’s intent to destabilize the boundaries between fabricated digital spaces and real-world ecological crises. We are then introduced to symbolic character vignettes that further this unsettling contrast, including an African American astronaut emerging from the polluted waters to explore a factory as an alien planet, a clown plummeting in slow-motion against decaying industrial backdrops, a man ritualistically shooting plastic bottles and litter on a sidewalk…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Andy Hughes, Plastic Scoop, digital video, color, sound, 23’ 59”, 2019

Andy Hughes, Inner Migration, digital video, color, sound, 10’ 00”, 2023

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MMF MMXXIV: INNER MIGRATION, OR “WELCOME TO DYSTOPIA”

Andy Hughes crafts a thought-provoking narrative using a montage that juxtaposes in-game footage from Cyberpunk 2077 with historical archive film, illustrating a chilling vision of a dystopian future dominated by corporate powers.

In Andy Hughes’s Inner Migration (2023), a motorcycle races through Night City’s neon-lit streets. Recorded hyper-realistic in-game scenes from Cyberpunk 2077 are juxtaposed with black and white archive film footage — à là Adam Curtis — revealing cooling towers overlaid with early space-age imagery. The dystopian future depicted in CD Projekt Red’s futuristic world offers a vivid portrayal of an urban landscape where powerful corporations not only govern technological advancements but also play a significant role in shaping and exploiting people, places, and the environment.

Hughes’s avatar travels through the landscape, running across a trash mountain and swimming backwards into a sunset. We also see and hear archive material from Out of This World (1964) and To New Horizons (1940), two promotional American domestic films created by General Motors that present future worlds. Exploring this virtual world like a post-modern day flâneur, the artist looks for what the French philosopher Michel Serres described as soft pollution. While we can measure what Serres described as hard pollution —- the poisoning of the Earth — we ignore at our peril the disastrous impact of the soft pollution created by sound and images on our psyche..

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Works cited 

Andy Hughes, Inner Migration, machinima/digital video, colour, sound, 10’ 00”, England

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MMF MMXXIV: GINA HARA

The Milan Machinima Festival is excited to unveil Gina Hara’s latest project Machinima Bodies Space Rhythm, as part of our Game Video Essay program. We warmly invite you to an exclusive screening event on March 14, 2024, hosted at IULM University. This presents a rare chance to experience Hara’s groundbreaking work firsthand, with the added privilege of an introduction by the artist herself.

Gina Hara’s Machinima Bodies Space Rhythm is a pioneering episodic series that delves into the realm of machinima filmmaking from the perspectives of women and non-binary creators. This project aims to showcase their distinct voices 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. World premiere.

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.

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

MMF MMXXIV: CAT BLUEMKE AND JONATHAN CARROLL

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

MMF MMXXIV: MADE IN ITALY

Image: Dall-e 3

The Milan Machinima Festival MMXXIV is proud to showcase the 2024 edition of Made in Italy, a curated screening of machinima created by emerging Italian artists. On Friday, March 15, three films will be screened in the Sala dei 146, with introductions by the artists themselves.

Made in Italy

March 15 2024, 14:00 - 15:00

Sala dei 146

IULM 6, IULM University

Via Carlo Bo 7, 20143 Milano

curated by Matteo Bittanti

Artists and filmmakers: Alberto Calleo, Simone Fiorentino, Elia “marasma” Strazzacappa.

The Italian machinima community is a vibrant, eclectic and experimental hub that thrives on collaboration and innovation, pushing the boundaries of creative expression through real-time computer graphics engines. These artists, often hailing from art and film schools, are not only redefining the intersection of virtual and physical realms but also addressing critical contemporary issues such as technological advancements and their societal impact.

Through their work, Italian machinima artists embark on explorations across a spectrum of themes, reflecting the multifaceted nature of modern society and the intricate dance between technology, art, and human experience. Their creations delve into the digital age’s influence on identity and self-expression, provide commentary on social and political dilemmas, blur the lines between reality and fiction, and ponder the implications of relentless technological integration into our lives. Additionally, they celebrate Italy’s rich cultural legacy by weaving traditional elements into digital narratives and experiment with the digital medium’s inherent visual properties, such as glitches and pixelation, to make unique artistic statements.

This year, the festival’s Made in Italy program honors the creativity and craftsmanship of three Italian machinima filmmakers, highlighting their diverse styles and thematic explorations:

Simone Fiorentino’s Hold On for Dear Life captures the essence of human resilience and connection in a war-afflicted city, offering a profound commentary on survival and solidarity amidst chaos.

Alberto Calleo’s The Desert of the Real, utilizing the Unreal Engine, reflects on the simulacrum concept, navigating the evolving dynamics between humans and technology, and the blending of physical and virtual experiences.

Elia “marasma” Strazzacappa’s Uncanny’s Dream presents a haunting reinterpretation of a Fabrizio De André’s song through the digital landscapes of Half-Life 2 and Garry’s Mod, exploring themes of nostalgia, alienation, and the digital footprint on the consciousness of younger generations.

Together, these works exemplify the innovative spirit and rich thematic depth of the Italian machinima scene, spotlighting the unique contributions of young Italian artists to the ongoing discourse on art, technology, and society in the age of video games and artificial intelligence.

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

MMF MMXXIV: ANDY HUGHES

We are excited to present Andy Hughes’s Inner Migration at the upcoming edition of the Milan Machinima Festival.

Inner Migration is an exhilarating ride through Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City, blending game footage with archival films to contrast dystopian futures with past visions of utopia. Hughes transport the viewer into a world under corporate dominance, juxtaposing scenes of environmental and societal neglect with optimistic mid-20th-century American propaganda from Out of This World (1964) and To New Horizons (1940). Inner Migration focuses on Michel Serres’s notion of soft pollution, highlighting the insidious impact of the media on our psyche amidst a backdrop of technological and environmental decay. The film prompts reflection on our expectations for the future against the reality shaped by technological advancement and corporate power. It questions the disparity between historical optimism and the current global situation, suggesting that for some, the dystopian imagery of Night City may already be their reality. Inner Migration encourages a reevaluation of our internal landscapes, confronting the cognitive dissonance between the past’s hopeful promises and today’s challenging circumstances.

Andy Hughes works across photography, painting, sculpture, and digital media, with a focus on littoral zones and plastic waste politics. He studied Fine Art at Cardiff University and received a photography scholarship at the Royal College of Art, London. Hughes was the first Artist in Residence at Tate Gallery St. Ives and collaborates with non-profits like Surfers Against Sewage and the Plastic Pollution Coalition in Los Angeles. In 2013, Hughes contributed to Gyre: The Plastic Ocean, a pioneering project linking science and art to address marine plastic pollution, alongside notable figures like Mark Dion and Carl Safina. This initiative led to a National Geographic film, an exhibition, and a book, supported by entities such as the NOAA and Smithsonian Institution. In 2022, Hughes embarked on a six-month residency at Gapado AiR, South Korea, creating artworks that meld reality with surrealism, addressing themes from the ocean to plastic waste. This residency marked a significant phase in his career, deepening his exploration of environmental concerns through art. His groundbreaking work Plastic Scoop was screened in 2020 at the Milan Machinima Festival

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MMF MMXXIV: KARA GÜT

We are thrilled to announce that Kara Güt’s unclassifiable video work Lurker1, will be screened at the seventh edition of the Milan Machinima Festival.

The video begins with a statement: “This is an edited version of the last three nights of twitch user Lurker1’s stream made from recordings sent to me by user creep_by_radiohead in late 2019. Both users have since been deactivated. For the full unedited stream, please contact me”. What follows is a documentation of Lurker1 as he practices the any% speedrun of the game Dark Souls III and talks to the sole chat participant creep_by_radiohead.

Kara Güt is an artist living and working in Ohio, specializing in image-based digital media. Her artistic inquiry delves into the contours of human intimacy as shaped by the digital era, exploring themes of constructed detachment from reality and the intricate power dynamics within virtual spaces. Güt’s work has garnered national and international attention, with notable exhibitions at the Hybrid Box in Hellerau European Centre for the Arts, Dresden; Thomas Erben Gallery, New York; and the Singapore Art Museum. She received an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and she boasts affiliations with institutions such as The Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University. Güt’s creative endeavors have also been enriched by residencies at SPACES, Pioneer Works Tech Residency and she has been honored as a 2023 Knight Art + Tech Fellow, marking her a point of reference in the sphere of art, online cultures and technology. Her groundbreaking work Hurt/Comfort was screened at the 2023 edition of the Milan Machinima Festival.

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

MMF MMXXIV: STEVEN COTTINGHAM

We are thrilled to reveal that Steven Cottingham’s latest work, As far as the drone can see, will be showcased in the upcoming edition of the Milan Machinima Festival.

With As far as the drone can see, Steven Cottingham navigates the complex terrain of warfare representation in the digital age, specifically through the lens of the military simulation software, ArmA 3, and its exclusion of female figures. Highlighting a critical perspective on the flood of images emerging from contemporary conflict zones, the artist questions the authenticity of such visuals, noting that some are generated from ArmA 3, which despite its realistic military portrayal, omits women entirely. Cottingham’s film intervenes by using open-source modifications to introduce a female journalist character into the game, engaging with a genderfluid guerrilla group. This narrative seeks to challenge the game’s gender biases and explore the potential of digital simulations to represent complex realities of conflict, including gender and power dynamics. The use of a drone symbolizes both an observer’s detachment and an omnipresent witness to these dynamics, suggesting a reflection on how conflict and its representation are inseparably entwined with media.

Steven Cottingham is an artist deeply engaged with the notions of virtual realism and visualization politics. His work critically examines the influence of emerging image technologies - including bodycams, surveillance advertising, military simulation software, and AI in prisons - on social behavior. Through filmworks and video essays likeA Camera Captures Images, A Court Sets Them Free and Postphotorealism, Cottingham explores the circulation of images and their impact on law enforcement and public perception, emphasizing the constructed nature of imagery to uncover the societal and technological processes that create meaning. His practice, which incorporates computer vision, animal crypsis, and documentary methods, invites a reevaluation of life under surveillance. Cottingham’s contributions have been recognized in venues such as Wil Aballe Art Projects, The 8th Floor, and The Polygon Gallery, among others. He co-edited the periodical QOQQOON (2018-2021) and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program (2021-2022). Based in Vancouver, Canada, his work is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the BC Arts Council, highlighting his critical exploration of modern image-making and its societal effects. His monumental work Chain Link was featured on VRAL in 2022.

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

ARTICLE: GEORGIE ROXBY SMITH VS. THE MADONNA-WHORE COMPLEX

As VRAL current solo exhibition focuses on Georgie Roxby Smith’s new Blood Paintings series, we aim to illuminate her legacy of confrontational game-based art by examining a pivotal early work, Lara Croft, Domestic Goddess I & II, which re-cast the Tomb Raider heroine as a proto-tradwife in her most challenging mission.

The endlessly looping cries of gaming icon Lara Croft echo incongruously over household chores in Georgie Roxby Smith’s 2013 performance and Second Life intervention, Lara Croft, Domestic Goddess I & II. The female explorer’s torture screams punctuate mundane, uneventful acts like washing and ironing clothes. The superimposition of discordant feminine spheres spotlights the bias still dogging video games’ staunchest female characters today. Despite efforts celebrating Lara Croft’s emotional depth and resolve through various reboots and remakes, her graphic anguish feels all too familiarly pinned to outmoded visions of femininity from the franchises’ past.

Having already probed systemic dangers subtly encoded for female avatars through works like The Fall Girl in 2012, here Smith spotlights the lingering identity tensions constraining Lara Croft. The Tomb Raider icon embodies a discombobulating identity bifurcation: aspiring towards fierce, capable heroism on one hand while still confined as an ornament for the traditionally masculine demographic’s visual greed alone on the other. As Croft’s strained persona splits unevenly between feminist icon and fetishized pin-up, she exemplifies unreconciled contradictions of projecting strength while submitting to the objectifying male gaze. By confronting this demeaning binary — akin to the  dichotomy informing the Madonna-whore complex mapping women into mutually exclusive camps of saintly virtue or debased promiscuity — Smith indicts the media forces that tokenize liberatory gestures yet withhold full multidimensional womanhood under paternalistic pretense…


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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

George Roxby Smith, Fair Game [Run like a girl], in-game performance, machinima (color, sound, 13’ 56”), 2015.

Georgie Roxby Smith, Lara Croft, Domestic Goddess I & II, Lara Croft death noises from Tomb Raider (2013), 3D model, Second Life intervention, looped continuously for duration.

Georgie Roxby Smith, The Fall Girl, in-game performance and machinima (color, sound, 8’ 07”), 2012.

Peggy Ahwesh, She Puppet, digital video, color, sound, 15’, 2001.

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ARTICLE: GEORGIE ROXBY SMITH AND THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE NPC RUNNER

As VRAL current solo exhibition focuses on Georgie Roxby Smith’s new Blood Paintings series, we aim to illuminate her legacy of confrontational game-based art by examining a pivotal early work, Fair Game [Run Like A Girl]. Our analysis centers on overlapping themes in Smith’s practice of visual confrontation around gaming’s ingrained normalization of violence towards feminine identity and representation...

In her 2015 performance Fair Game [Run Like A Girl], Georgie Roxby Smith hijacks the marginalized female non-playable characters in Grand Theft Auto V, stretching their flight animations into disturbing prey. As her sadistic avatar stalks and toys with these sexualized bots in the streets (and hills!) of Los Santos, their loops of cowering and screaming indict the misogyny hard-coded into this digital Californication. 

Before examining the work, the ominous title warrants exploration. As Emma Griffin explains in her monumental work, “fair game” historically traces back to the hunting fields of 19th century Britain, where it was used to denote legal and ethical parameters around which animals could be hunted during a given season. Anything deemed within the boundaries of “fair game” – open for sporting, capture, or killing – was considered unprotected prey. Already by the late 1800s however, the idiomatic implications had extended more broadly to refer to anything – or for that matter, anyone– that dominant powers or social forces considered appropriate targets for criticism, ridicule, sexualization or attack without fear of consequences or concern over consent. Victim blaming was implicit; in the cultural view, targets labeled “fair game” were themselves presumed to invite trouble or violence due to defiant or nonconforming attitudes, appearances, or behavior.

In choosing Fair Game as the title of her intervention, Smith knowingly evokes the historical associations of marking feminine bodies as vulnerable game ripe for one-sided, unethical hunting by more powerful and forceful antagonists. Her interrogation lays bare gaming ecosystems and cultures enabling the chasing and tormenting of women without consequences under the veneer of play and the pretext of fun. Let’s now concentrate on the second part of the title. The bracketed “run like a girl” also carries insidious coding limitations into culture. The phrase has history mocking supposedly inherent feminine weakness and first surfaced as a comment denouncing “inadequate masculinity”. Specifically, it critiqued women’s alleged lack of power, speed or coordination.. 

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Georgie Roxby Smith, Fair Game [Run like a girl], in-game performance, machinima (color, sound, 13’ 56”), 2015

Georgie Roxby Smith, 99 Problems [WASTED], in-game performance, machinima (color, sound, 4’ 45”), 2014

Georgie Roxby Smith, Blood Paintings, digital video, color, sound, 11’ 06”, 2024

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ARTICLE: GEORGIE ROXBY SMITH, AVATAR MARTYR

VRAL is currently presenting Georgie Roxby Smith’s Blood Paintings as a single channel video. To fully appreciate the significance of this series, we are exploring various artworks in her oeuvre. Our discussion continues with the 2014 in-game performance and machinima 99 Problems [WASTED], in which she lays bare the destructive ideological apparatus turning a woman from playable protagonist to disposable puppet. An apparatus revealed in all its banality through this avatar’s hopelessness before the blasé machinery of suicide.

A scantily clad, blood splattered female avatar takes position underneath a grimy Los Santos overpass, nonchalantly pressing a pistol barrel to her temple. Face impassive, she pulls the trigger without hesitation or emotion. As the crack of the gunshot fades, her body collapses limply to the ground. But the scene soon repeats in a different setting; the nameless woman reappears in different locations of an ersatz Los Angeles, apparently unscathed. She promptly turns the gun on herself once more. And then again. And again. Welcome to Georgie Roxby Smith’s 99 Problems [WASTED].

Rather than embrace the free-roaming escapades and rags-to-riches schemes promised by Rockstar Games, Smith pursues vicarious self-destruction via her avatar in order to critique the game’s normalization of disproportionate feminine victimization and sidelining. Each gunshot shrieks for recognition by game publishers and players alike of women’s ritualized vulnerability, marginalization, misrepresentation, and fleeting relevance in adventures coded around masculine power fantasies and patriarchal prerogatives.

The settings chosen by Smith for her suicide(s) add another layer of meaning through provocative juxtapositions. Her avatar enacts public immolation before storefronts boasting suggestive names such as “Heroin Chic” to “Hole”. Likewise, the protagonist’s ritualized demise unfolds around caricatures of consumerism and vanity, as selfie-snapping tourists remain oblivious next to the bloodshed. A rather explicit ad for “hamburger meat” near a bus stop functions as a background for another death. Boys toys, i.e., signifiers of masculinity, also frame some vignettes, as sports cars and firearms signifying power and control. Through these judiciously chosen environmental factors, Smith further implicates the saturating messages that enable the devaluing of women’s lives and identities across societies both real and virtual. 

The ceaseless repetition produces surprising effects: the initial shock of Smith’s female avatar brutally committing suicide soon gives way among viewers to contrasting feelings ranging from desensitized ennui to warped anticipation…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

George Roxby Smith, 99 Problems [WASTED], in-game performance, machinima (color, sound, 4’ 45”), 2014

Georgie Roxby Smith, Blood Paintings, digital video, color, sound, 11’ 06”, 2024

Brody Condon, Suicide Solution, DVD documentation of in-game performance, 19’, 2004

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ARTICLE: GEORGIE ROXBY SMITH, GLITCH WITCH

VRAL is currently presenting Georgie Roxby Smith’s Blood Paintings as a single channel video. To fully appreciate the significance of this series, we will explore various artworks. Our discussion starts with Smith’s landmark 2012 in-game performance and machinima The Fall Girl.

Like an anxious dancer condemned to endless pirouettes, the female protagonist of Georgie Roxby Smith’s The Fall Girl spins helplessly down a bleak mountain passage in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, contorted by an inadvertent “death glitch.” With her avatar locked in this ceaseless loop of hellish torture, Smith captures extended footage exposing the anguished animation frame-by-frame in its punishing inertia. She isolates this doom loop from surrounding gameplay, forcing viewers to confront imagery typically blinked past and easily forgotten.

Removed from context, this tableaux vivant sui generis betrays the ingrained misogyny encoded subtly into gaming worlds, worlds populated largely by male creators and players enacting adventures through the restrictive lens of a decidedly masculine gaze. Bug or intentional vignette, the isolated scene reduces Skyrim’s expansive questing freedom to the ruthless physics binding female characters: they must ultimately submit to situations, no matter how treacherous, tied to their prescribed femininity. It’s in the game! It’s codified! It is what it is!

In other words, the revolution we witness here is literal, or, rather physical: the female character is spinning on her axis, over and over again. This revolution as continual rotation leads to a revelation. Through this glitch excavation, Smith moves beyond the industry’s celebratory talk of interactivity as freedom, “abdication of authorship”, “co-creation” and “emergent” player stories, pervasive in fandom studies and game studies. Instead, recalling feminist film theory traditions, she confronts gaming technology’s uncanny knack for magnifying the most disturbing drives and assumptions underlying popular culture. Stuck in her deadly spin, The Fall Girl becomes less individual than archetype or trope, a sacrificial testament to the cyclical violence awaiting game heroines straying beyond plastic pedestals into masculine power fantasies.

Even Lara Croft, hailed once as groundbreaking virtual female representation, submitted to famously voyeuristic death scenes accentuating her hyper-sexualized physique rendered vulnerable, as both Miltos Manetas and Peggy Ahwesh remind us…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Georgie Roxby Smith, The Fall Girl, in-game performance and machinima (color, sound, 8’ 07”), 2012.

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ARTICLE: JOHN CHAMBERLAIN LIVES ON

VRAL is currently showcasing Chris Kerich’s latest project Three Impossible Worlds. To accompany the exhibition, we are discussing several artworks that comprise his oeuvre. Today, we examine his series Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures.

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Like the previously discussed Piles(2018), Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures (2017) utilizes the mechanics of video games in unconventional ways in order to produce glitch art and reveal the underlying systems and hidden ideologies. However, whereas Piles employed violence and repetition to provoke discomfort, Keric’s previous work Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures taps into the joyful anarchy and broken physics of glitch art.

In this series, Kerich builds impossible vehicular constructions using the editor in the soft-body physics driving simulator BeamNG.drive. Vehicles are stacked, fused, and contorted into chaotic sculptures that burst into flames or cause extreme glitching of the physics engine when simulated. According to the artist, this project was inspired by the vernacular YouTube series Car Boys, in which the hosts push BeamNG to its limits to produce an absurdist, often hilarious spectacle.

BeamNG.drive is notable for its advanced soft-body physics simulation which allows vehicles to crumple, deform, and come apart in dynamic ways during crashes. Both Piles and Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures  use exploitation of game systems against their intended purpose in order to surface hidden logics, biases and prerogatives. But whereas the former is painstakingly structured and demanding of both artist and viewer in terms of duration and access (it was originally livestreamed on Twitch for 22 hours), Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures embraces playful serendipity, shorter length, and post facto consumption. It follows in a lineage of glitch art that finds meaning in rupturing systems through technical abuse rather than programmatic critique.

And while Piles implicates masculinity and power relations in its repetitive symbolic violence, Dynamic Kinetic Sculptures has no such explicit agenda beyond visible chaos. In fact, the Car Boys inspiration anchors it firmly in the juvenile but often creative energy of tinkering that many first experience in childhood, usually coded ‘male’: like video games, automobiles are connoted as “boys’ toys”, that is, tools and technologies that promote masculine ideals of competition, power, status, domination, and aggression through play, often emphasizing technical mastery and…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Chris Kerich

Digital Kinetic Sculptures

digital video/machinima, color, sound, various length, 2017, United States.

digital images, 2017, United States.

All images and videos courtesy of the Artist.

Read more about Chamberlain’s sculptures.

Read more about Brenton Alexander Smith.

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