Category: Exhibitions

The Endless Forest at Laguna Art Museum

wowfawn
Just giving Blizzard some tips on how to create MMOs…

Opening tonight, The Endless Forest is a part of an exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum, in the Los Angeles area in California. The show is dedicated to World of Warcraft and sponsored by Blizzard. But curator Grace Kook-Anderson decided to contrast the Awesome Art of the dungeon masters with the far more modest creations of regular media artists such as Alexander Galloway, John Klima, Eddo Stern, yours truly and many others. Sounds like an epic battle!

We’ve been told that the Forest is looking wonderful in projection, it will be playable in the museum on two computers. If you can’t make it there then play online and see if you can find the two deer controlled by visitors in the museum.

wowdeer-laguna2 wowdeer-laguna

They’ll probably be asleep. 😉 So cast some Forest Magic on them! :)

1999 called… it wants it’s net.art back!

We are part of an online exhibition on Rhizome.org called:

Splashback_rhizome

Alright, now I am going to use some antiquated terminology… try to stay with me….

We once made a “splash page” for this website called Rhizome. It was a website about “net.art” don’tchaknow…

Oh lots of websites had splash pages back then, it was a sort of introduction to the site you were about to experience. Of course, sites were a very different thing in my day….
People used this coding language that was known as “HTML” back then.
YES we just coded that up in your basic “text editor” we didn’t have or need these fancy-schmancy Web 2.0 thingamabobs or CSS or CMS and browser uploaders or whathaveyou… we just coded it up, uploaded the page to the server, and off it flew!
Now, this so-called “net.art” was very very interesting stuff…
And it was ART… well… at least to the Internet of the day it certainly was! We figured a new medium deserved a new kind of artwork. One that was about the medium and FOR the medium! We knew, even then, that this Internet thing was going somewhere! So what if we had to walk in the snow, uphill, without shoes, to get there. We liked it FINE! 😉

So, take this journey to the heart of the turn of the century internet with this selection of net.art pages from our humble selves, then better known as Entropy8Zuper!, and some of the all-time greats!

http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/splashback/

Artists include: Annie Abrahams, Daniel Garcia Andujar, Ben Benjamin,
heath bunting, Gregory Chatonsky, Shu Lea Cheang, Andrew Childs, Curt
Cloninger, David Crawford, Mark Daggett, Joshua Davis, Entropy8Zuper!,
Andrew Forbes, Valery Grancher, Matthew Hoessli, Olia Lialina, David
Lindeman, jimpunk, JODI, Yael Kanarek, Lucas Kuzma, Antonio Mendoza,
Mouchette, MTAA, Robbin Murphy, Nettmedia, Scott Paterson, Pavu,
Waldemar Pranckiewicz, Reinis, Satellite01, Sigma6, Starry Night,
Eugene Thacker, Jake Tilson, Maciej Wisniewski, Young-Hae Chang Heavy
Industries

http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/splashback/
http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/splashback/
http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/splashback/
http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/splashback/
http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/splashback/
http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/splashback/
http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/splashback/
http://www.rhizome.org/art/exhibition/splashback/

(url repeated, for that old-school flavor.)

The Path Experience. YBCA, San Francisco.

It was Tuesday March 24th. The game had only been out for a week. There had been a few reviews but nothing compared to the deluge we’ve had since we got back home. Lots of people were in town for the Game Developers Conference. We invited about 80 people, friends and press, to meet us at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for a reception and live performance of the game, which up til then most of them had never seen.

This was the very very first time all the people who worked on the game were together. (Hans Zantman, who was the technical artist on the game couldn’t come to SF but) Michael and I and Laura Raines Smith and Kris Force and Jarboe were all there. It was amazing to see everyone together after working long distance off and on for 2 years!

Everyone had their part to play during that evening. After a bit of bread and wine we lead the crowd up to the Screening Room, a little cinema in the YBCA.

I gave greetings and introduced all collaborators. Then, Laura and Michael did the intro of all the characters. After that, the lights dimmed and main event started. I played the game on the big screen while Kris wove an ambient soundscape from the game soundtrack. Jarboe sang everyone a Lullaby and told them the tale of Little Red Ridinghood as only she can. The performance lasted for about 45 minutes. A lovely time was had by all. It was atmospheric and just a bit frightening. But then, that’s how we like things on The Path. 😉

Thanks to Amy, Lisa, Jose and Guy at the YBCA for all their good humor and help to pull this event off! Thanks to Creative Capital for their sponsorship. And special thanks to Michael Jennings and his crew at Small Potatoes catering for bringing all that bread!

We had so much fun doing the event that we do desire to do it again sometime. The combination of game and live performance was inspiring for us!

The Graveyard at Mediamatic, Amsterdam

Rather rude of us not to have mentioned it before now -.- BUT
The Graveyard is currently part of an exhibition called “Ik R.I.P” at Mediamatic!
Its an experiential deathbed playground, fairly intense looking (and silly also as it is hard to think about death without some humor, that would be too depressing.)

And here’s a description.

What happens to your online profile after you die? Do you want it to remain online, so friends can leave a message in your memory? Or do you prefer having it deleted, so no confusion can arise about your death? These questions are the inspiration for the new exhibition Ik R.I.P., the third in the series about self-representation on the internet.
With The Travelers, a series of death portraits by Elizabeth Heyert, coffins from Ghana, the computergame The Graveyard, ‘test-dying’ in a casket, the new website www.ikrip.nl and more…
Opening hours: Wed – Fri from 12.00 to 19.00 hrs, and Sat + Sun from 12.00 to 18.00 hrs.

The show is running til April 12th.
more info here.

Description of the show on We Make Money Not Art.

I’d say it clearly is a game, but one which hits a somber note that is fairly hard to achieve in this medium.
Plugimi about “The Graveyard”

IndieCade Call for Submissions

IndieCade is a very interesting festival for wide variety of independently created games. We’re happy to say that we have been part of the festival (both as developers and jurors) at several occasions. So we encourage everyone who’s making something that is perhaps to special or strange for the usual game channels to submit their projects. IndieCade is quickly growing in size and importance and is run by some of the nicest and smartest people in gaming.

IndieCade invites independent game artists and designers from around the world to submit interactive media of all types – from art to commercial, ARG to abstract, mind-bending to mobile, serious to shooter, as well as academic and student projects – for consideration. Work-in-progress is encouraged.

A diverse jury of creative and academic leaders will select entries for top prizes at the IndieCade 2009 Festival. All entries for the Festival will also receive consideration for presentation at all 2009 IndieCade international exhibitions including:
IndieCade 2009 Events:
IndieCade @ E3, Los Angeles (June 2-5)
IndieCade Asia TBA
IndieCade @ SIGGRAPH, New Orleans (Aug 5-7)
IndieCade 2009 (Oct 1-10)
IndieCade Europe, GameCity, UK (Oct 26-29)

Submissions Deadline: April 30, 2009 at Midnight PST.

For more information and to enter: www.IndieCade.com.

This Is Indie!

A little video we made last year because Celia Pearce asked us to. 😉 Its about our thoughts on Independent game development, sort of. It was never used (I believe her response was “what did you make that with? a cell phone camera??” ha! little did she know we don’t HAVE mobile phones!) But we found it so delightfully silly that I’m posting it now in honor of the (first annual) IndieCade International Festival of Independent Games which starts today 10/10/2008. And in which The Graveyard is nominated for an award!

…see also…

The Graveyard selected by Indiecade for E3

The Graveyard has been selected by IndieCade to be shown at their annual independent games showcase at E3 in Los Angeles, from 15 to 17 July.

IndieCade is an interesting project that promotes independent games from a refreshing new angle. As far as we can tell, their selection is more focussed on the artistic side of the medium with less hardcore tendencies than, for example, the Independent Games Festival. As a result, they are much more forward looking and more independent of games industry trends. Which makes for a nice selection of games.

Photo Post: GDC 2008: Independent Games Festival

We had a great time participating in the IGF this year with The Path! Even though we didn’t get the prize, seeing so many people play the demo every day taught us a lot about what is going right with the game as well as what is going wrong (-.-)! Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth. We got so much excellent feedback, along very sore feet and hoarseness from talking so much, but we are looking forward to (hopefully) doing it all again next year!

2008-02-22 at 15-27-13

photos here and some videos here: