Jeremy Couillard

Programming Pyramids

Jeremy Couillard has been working in his new project "My Time in the Cult of Melting Ancestors" for around a year. Jeremy has created diverse number of pieces, including a great 19 min. video you can watch into the post, several acrylic paintings, and kinetic sculptures which are connected together with the video and are all controlled by a plinth in the center of the exhibition at Louis B James in NY,  a solo show that will be running til next May 31, 2013. See more;

Press release, (an essay on Super Mario):

"A Japanese playing card company, loosely translated as Leave Luck to Heaven, develops a video game based around a new mythology where its participants become two Italian plumber brothers, who, by undergoing a Joseph Campbell-style hero’s journey through giant green pipes, are transported to a realm of evil turtle beings and anthropomorphic mushrooms. They discover in themselves god-like powers through plants, fungi and astral guidance, as they travel through realms, or worlds, under, on, and above ground. Dark worlds, day worlds, ice worlds, worlds on treetops, worlds underwater. The brothers can break brick walls with their heads, jump on bullets, walk through walls and go down hidden tubes; they accumulate coins to purchase their reincarnation and climb secret plants hidden in boxes to walk on clouds. In lava-soaked, labyrinthine brick castles they battle giant turtle soldiers in order to rescue a human princess, who is always in another castle and replaced with a mushroom man. They finally find her in the 8th world, after completing something perhaps similar to the Buddhist 8-fold path. 

Mario is the first hero created in the computational realm. At his core he is binary numbers, code, and logic gates. He is electrons travelling through a Ricoh 2A03 8-bit processor. Through all of us he was brought to life by manipulating an early Christian symbol of the cross and two red Japanese suns on a controller hooked up to a minimalist grey box reminiscent of Robert Morris plugged into a glass tube of deflection coils and electron guns. Children sat in dark rooms engaged in the first of many computational cultist rituals under the glow of the cathode containing images of the plumber hero who could be almost telepathically controlled. Soon Mario embarked on a myriad of adventures to new worlds: riding egg-eating baby dragons; battling robed ghosts, naked ghosts, and other increasingly complex enemies. Then Game Boy came out: the first portable computational mythology. Soon after, 

Mario discovered the mathematical third dimension, began jumping through paintings to enter his worlds. He climbed mountains, went to new planets and galaxies, discovered computational gravity, and began to collect crystals along with coins. Mario is an analog for lo-fi spirituality and digital age mysticism. His cosmology is every bit as cryptic as the Popol Vuh, as Vedic rituals or symbolic flesh eating, though from the beginning his story is one we don’t believe but in which we are every bit as invested."

MY TIME IN THE CULT OF MELTING ANCESTORS

Acrylic paintings on panel - 48"x48"

Installation at Louis B James

http://www.louisbjames.com

Floor 1: An installation of paintings, kinetic sculpture and dioramas built around a 20ish minute video that takes place in the space you observe it in. Kinetics react to the video and are all controlled by a plinth in the center.

Floor 2: A beeping meditation room that is activated by pushing a red button. A mandala begins to spin, 6 screens light up and start beeping. The viewer is invited to use the beeps and images for meditation.

Nicolas Boillot

Loops of Marvel vs Capcom , 2013

Nicolas Boillot is highly inspired and uses as a main visual source several video games to create his abstract and chaotic loop animations. From the two animated pieces here in the post, the gif above "Loops of Marvel vs Capcom" and the video into the post "Geometry Wars", Nicolas Boillot extract and accumulate only the moving parts, on a loop of 25 images/frames. As he told us; he tries to gather, by this process, a selection of what our eyes undergo when we play the video games. Movements are like "a candy" for our eyes and brain, and by these accumulation, confrontation, he tries to unveil in an empirical way what game designer conceives to keep us hooked. See more;

You can see more of his mesmerizing animated loops working through gif in this previous post and check out more of his loops at this ongoing series, here.

Fighhhht !!, 2013

Geometry Wars, 2012

LA Game Space needs your support!

LA Game Space is a project which really excites me and I'm sure it does as well to a lot of people involved in the digital field, specially because its goal is going to be to support art, games, artists and designers around the world. LA Game Space hopefully will be a place for game innovation, education, and exhibition, where all of us can play and make and study and showcase games. A place where we will rediscover what games have been, and re-imagine what games can be. Its artists residences which are the beating heart of the Space. The residents will be creators from diverse backgrounds working collaboratively to create experimental game projects. LA Game Space will provide residents with work space, exhibition opportunities, and feedback from an equally diverse group of bright minds. It's goal is to free residents from the limitations often presented by commercial game development.

The directors of the project Daniel Rehn and Adam Robezzoli have been working on this for over 3 years. Now, after thoughtful planning, building an amazing network of supporters, and finding the perfect location, need your help! They started a kickstarter project to try to get the budget of $250.000 goal (the project will only be funded if at least $250,000 is pledged by Friday Dec 7). The campaign behind of this project is another issue I love, as it offers a lot of different possibilities and prices to support (from $15,25, 55..) the backers can have a bunch of stuff such as 30 games, digital prints created by well known makers and artists which have been mentioned hero on the blog, and even for $5K you can be in the game as a playable character in Gaijin Games' RUNNER2! and more good stuff. See the video into the post to see the awesome space and more;

LA Game Space consists of four core components:  "ARTIST RESIDENCES (mentioned above).

Our GALLERIES will host large-scale exhibitions, interactive installations, performances, and retrospectives that can only be achieved at a space like this. We will be sharing catalogs, exhibition documentation, and the conversations surrounding gallery events online for everyone's benefit.

GAME RESEARCH LABS will enable live gameplay recordings including useful metadata such as button presses, pulse rate, face-tracking, and eye movement. These recordings will be made available online for researchers worldwide. The lab will also provide access to a wide variety of platforms and devices—both historical and contemporary—and support experimental hardware and interface projects.

Our SPEAKER SERIES will feature new dialogues with both traditional and nontraditional game-makers. Our WORKSHOPS will introduce newcomers to the medium and explore new processes and perspectives with experienced creators. Most events will be archived and available (for free) online. These events will also be livestreamed, and a moderator at the space will enable worldwide, remote participation."

Support LA Game Space here, there is a lot of people following a unique goal; make it happens!! :)

▼

▼

▼

 SUPPORT IT AND MORE INFO ABOUT LA GAME SPACE HERE!

Videoscape - Compress Process by Rosa Menkman

Compress Process, 2012 is the latest great project by Rosa Menkman. It is an online virtual environment where Menkman has transported a big part of her glitches, errors and distortions as an interactive virtual form. It's quite exciting to see the work of Rosa taking this interactive direction as in this way we can feel and explore more those glitches. 

A monochromatic cloudy world, where the user controls an abstract body created of some de-structured polygons, robotic extremities and a human head, it goes around the environment contemplating the different kind of distortions which happens while you moves it. (Navigate with the arrow keys, use spacebar for jumping and to toggle videos on/off) you can try it here into the post as Rosa Menkman has had the pleasure to leave us to embed the piece here!

(Btw, while I was doing the post and testing the online version embedded here, I had some external glitches into the virtual environment, viewing my own desktop and the interface of the blog mixed with the Compress Process world! check it here 1, 2, coincidence?) See more;

Videoscape - Compress Process, 2012

---

How many efforts are required in order to watch

Whenever I use a 'normal', transparent technology, I aim to see 'through' the actual machine. I have learned to unsee its interface and all structural components, to be able to understand its message and use the technology as fast as possible. In a way I have learned to become blind to (certain parts of) technology.

Similar lines of development have taken place in my perception of sound. As Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer wrote: "We have no ear lids. We are condemned to listen. But this does not mean our ears are always open." Over the years I have learned to close my ear lids and even might have lost (or never developed) some of the sensitivities needed for 'deep listening' (or 'deep watching').

The quest to make the public re-hear certain sounds, to educate the listener and to 'open up ear lids', has been a subject pursued by many different sound artists. Acousmatics for instance, a strand of sound art developed by the French composer and pioneer of musique concrète Pierre Schaeffer, lets the audience listen to the sounds originating from behind a "black veil". The source or instrument of the sound remains unseen and unknown while the non-representational or formalist sound forces the audience to focus on active listening. Another example can be found in Murray Schafers work on soundscapes. In his book The Tuning of the World (1977), Schafer created a subdivision between the different sounds in the world. He uses this not only as a compositional structure, but also to educate his students about the many sounds they have grown accustomed to and as a result no longer hear.

Both Schaeffer and Schafers work involve the studying and education of the perception of sound. And their work has made me wonder, has similar research and work been made in the visual arts? Does some form of acousmatic video or even acousmatic videoscapes exist? What would this look like and could glitches play a role in this form of art?

Glitch art (which is a derivative of technological glitch) is an art form that uses glitches not just on a technological level, but also conceptually and esthetically. While watching glitch art, the audience perceives glitches without (often) knowing how they came about, which gives them an opportunity to concentrate on their form - to interpret its structures and to learn more from what can actually be seen. In a sense many glitches follow the principle of acousmatics visually.

A videoscape should be a place where artists can create a new, visual ecology that can give playful feedback on the technological conventions that control the spectator in their everyday life. In these conceptually fueled videoscapes we can open our eyes for the unreasonable and give form to what we so often have tried to obfuscate in both audio and visual media, namely artifacts.

The main subject of most glitch art is 'critical perception'. Critical in this sense is twofold; either criticizing the way technology is conventionally perceived, or showing the medium in a critical state. Glitches release a critical potential that forces the viewer to actively reflect on the technology. The acousmatic videoscape thus uses critical trans-media aesthetics to theorize the human thinking about technology; it creates an opportunity for self reflexivity, self critique and self expression.

The acousmatic videoscape is a space in which I can perceive output outside of my goggles of speed, transparency and usability. The new structures that unfold themselves can be interpreted as a portal to an utopia, a paradise like dimension, but also as a black hole that threatens to destroy the technology as I knew it. Here is a purgatory; an intermediate state between the death of the old technology and a judgement for a possible continuation into a new form of seeing and using, a new perspective…

---

Rosa Menkman

This scape is part of a larger series developed during Menkman's Emare residency at Cante, San Luis Potosi, Mexico, July-August 2012. With support of Cante, Impakt, The Netherlands Embassy in Mexico, The Mondrian Foundation, CONACULTA and FONCA

Play it here (below), please wait until to load it.
Larger online version here. (or just click right button below and select full screen)
Download it here (only for Mac) 130 Mb

Click images to enlarge_

ECCOS by Andrew Norman Wilson

A slowed-down video of Ecco the Dolphin gameplay is used to create an experimental philosophical space that focuses on the phenomena of waves, this space is called "Center for Wave Change" by Andrew Norman Wilson. He tells us more about ECCOS, a 6 hours meditation video which is part of the "Center for Wave Change", a proposal project for the ongoing Rhizome Commissions. 

"ECCOS is based on an .mp4 video file of the gamer “RickyC” beating the Sega Genesis game Ecco the Dolphin in just under 80 minutes. I have slowed down the original file to a duration of six hours, because six hours is the maximum duration for sequences with high audio data rates in Final Cut Pro. I have applied “echo” filters on both the audio and video tracks, and pushed all values within those filters to the maximum. Full length video coming to DVD/VHS soon. Soundtrack available on CD/Cassette soon." See more;

"ECCOS will become the source media for an experimental philosophical space I'm developing called the Center for Wave Change, in which overlapping aesthetic cues and general objectives are borrowed from both science centers and new age centers to focus on a shared interest: the phenomena of waves. Within the installation, light waves, sound waves, and water waves are manipulated as mediums for scientific display, relaxation, and aesthetic experience. These varied waves are reflected, diffused, refracted and diffracted by tools such as video projectors, projection screens, a video camera, mirrors, waterbeds, and more." - Andrew Norman Wilson.

More information about the project here.




Ecco Diagram for the installation component of Center for Wave Change.

Victor Morales

Victor Morales performances with tridimensional environments usually using a game engine called Cryengine. His solo work consists of an exploration of video game engines as simulation environments, where death and physics are transformed into dramatic and comedic real time performance. 

Victor tells us more about his work; "I work with video game engines to make visual art. I usually show my visuals in live performances, generally in collaboration with other artists: musicians, dancers, actors and other visual artists. I like using this medium in performance because of its real time nature, I can trigger my images live, so it is a perfect tool for performance. I like to explore the surreal and psychedelic, and my process of making images is about the pursuit of "errors, glitches and wrongdoings" within these amazing pieces of software; in other words I try to "misuse" the software to find unexpected, unnatural and unique moving images. I generally use the Cryengine and it's Sanbox Editor, which in my opinion is the most powerful digital visual tool out there; sometimes I like to use the Source Engine and its developer tools combined with Garry's Mod. I like to modify these engines to get my own look and feel, and, whenever possible, i make original textures, models and write my own code." See more;

The first video below consists in a kind of "portfolio" where Victor Morales has mixed a lot of works he performed in real time. Here you can see an example about a performance Victor made with Hannes Strobl and Ulrike Sowodniok at Festspielhaus St. Pölten. Based on Schubert's Winterreise. And the last video here on the posts shows a full piece called "Vogelstimmen".

Vogelstimmen

"This is a piece "performed" along Messiaen's "en Sourire". It was performed with the TonKünstler Orchestra at the Festspielhaus in St Pölten, Austria on September 26, 2009. As you can see in the beginning I "attempted" to montage the visuals to the music, an idea that I abandoned towards the second part of the piece (after the fade out). I most say that this piece simply "intersects" the music, I am not looking for representation or marriage of media/meaning; I am just looking for intersections a la Venn's diagram. 

I used the cryengine 2 to make the 3d space/map. I performed it using quartz composer to control the montage in realtime and to add some effects. This version is NOT real time and it is missing most of the effects."

Oliver Payne - Keiichi Tanaami at Studiolo

Perfect Cherry Blossom is an exhibition by Keiichi Tanaami, 1936 and Oliver Payne, 1977, at Studiolo, Zurich. "The exhibition title is not only a symbol for flourishing spring and peace but also the name of one of the most advanced and violent Japanese Bullet Hell Games. A video game made by gamers for gamers from a time before the gaming industry turned into a home entertainment device." See more;

"In Oliver Payne’s collages (images below) stickers of Japanese Bullet Hell Games are arranged on torn out pages of an ancient Greek sculpture catalogue. Payne transforms the violent imagery of these videogames into psychedelic explosions of color. Greek statues serve as a background and a reminder of the fantasy worlds produced in Japanese arcade games, which often picture rural Europe. Sounds of an arcade field recording give a notion of manic playfulness towards the exhibited works.

In the films by Keiichi Tanaami (see some of these films .mov at Contemporary Art Daily) pop culture from east and west meet. Abstracted, post-traumatic impressions from the Great Tokyo Air Raid are combined with LSD fantasies and aesthetics of consumption merge with hallucinatory erotic desires. Tanaami is one of the most influential Pop Art artists of post-war Japan. His work had a great impact on a younger generation of artists working with pop aesthetics in Japan and abroad like Oliver Payne." - Studiolo

Perfect Cherry Blossom

Keiichi Tanaami and Oliver Payne   

November 17th 2011 – January 28th 2012 at Studiolo

via | Contemporary Art Daily