balenciaga collaboration
A 25 minute video loop with previously unreleased tracks by DJ Hell, made in collaboration with Balenciaga.

Here is a dramatic tension in his work between the real and the imagined in his use of often-appropriated digital objects to create virtual landscapes, which frequently contain elements – animals, machines, fragments of videogames – that are recognisable from our day to day life. This creates a symbiotic relationship between the digital and the real. In a very real way digital space has now become an intangible reality. The worlds built by Robak have a distinctly cinematic sensibility that hyperbolises the shine and dramatic effects of 3D rendered animation. The aesthetic of his work is supremely important, drawing the viewer into a truly alluring, indulgent and strangely gratifying environment. There is a further challenge to the void between high-art and the worlds of 3D animation and gaming, in the intersection between depiction and simulation. This can be partially attributed to the vernacular of advertising Robak is so proficient at utilising.

Abb
A playful balancing act by a robotarm. This enormous machine balancing itself on a stainlesssteel semi sphere. When the arm moves, stretches, the balance point of the entire construction shifts which makes the whole machine lean over until it -almost- tips. The robot seems curious to find its tipping point, searching for the limits of balance without ever really being able to fall over. The machine is playing a children’s game with enormous power and robotic precision.

Hotfix
In the midst of the pandemic, people experience every day that technology such as smartphones and the Internet make social distance bearable. With his AR sculpture, Manuel Rossner shows how technology can become a hotfix, a quick solution to an unexpected challenge. “Hotfix” with its bubbles and lines is a playful introduction to problem solving through gamification.

Skin Sucka

A project conceived with Clive van Heerden, Jack Mama (Philips Design Probes) and Bart Hess, Skinsucka explores a vision of our nano technology future whereby bio technology and robotics come together to question our attitudes of a synthetic future. Skinsucka reveals a future where microbal robots live in our shared spaces and autonomously they will undertake menial tasks such as cleaning our homes by eating the dirt. ‘Skinsuckas’ clean the skin, removing the vestiges of make up and providing the remedies to combat the excesses of the night before They swarm over the body extruding metabolized household dirt, dressing the body in a daily ritual of real time, customized manufacture – yesterday’s discarded clothing ready for recycling.” Clive and Jack’s work has consistently brought very diverse skills together in new innovation processes. In the late 1990’s they took designers and other creative skills into Philips Research labs in the Redhill, London and New York and created a specialist studio in London to develop the skills, materials and technologies for a host of Wearable Electronic business propositions in the areas of electronic apparel, conductive textiles, physical gaming, medical monitoring and entertainment.

MÆ Motion Afterefffect
MÆ – Motion Aftereffect explores motion-capture, ready-made 3D models and monologues found online, ranging from experiences with virtual reality in live gameplay to out-of-body experiences and astral projection tutorials. The work addresses the impact of emerging consumer technologies associated with AR – Augmented Reality, VR – Virtual Reality, MR – Mixed Reality, XR – Extended Reality and 360° video. Monologues sourced from the internet provide the infrastructure for the work; an in-ear monitor feeds Olafson the monologues onstage, challenging her to listen and speak simultaneously. This dual action of listening and speaking enables her to embody a state of presence that references data streaming, live processing, and gaming. As a performer she becomes a conduit, medium, or interface, broadcasting edited monologues from the internet to the audience. The action of performing the work becomes like playing a video or VR game.

surprisingly this rather works
“Surprisingly This Rather Works” is a spatial intervention at ST. AGNES / KÖNIG GALERIE and at the same time a virtual extension of its exterior. The entire gallery is transformed into a gaming environment inspired by the 1990s game show “American Gladiators” and so-called gyms that are used for cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence by companies such as Open AI in San Francisco.
The visitor turns into an avatar and interacts with objects that are part of a parcours. These objects broaden the perspective on what painting and sculpture can be in the digital realm.

Secret Power
In towering vitrines built from computer servers, Denny gathers images and ephemera from the Snowden leaks, the NSA’s design decks, and gaming visuals that inform the aesthetics of intelligence networks. Situated within the over-400-year-old Biblioteca Marciana, a lavish Renaissance repository for some of the world’s oldest maps and documents, the exhibition connects current intelligence networks to past systems of record-gathering.

Full Body Games
file festival

Full Body Games is an interactive installation that allows users to engage in an unencumbered, full body gaming experience. The Full Body Games system projects the user’s silhouette in front of them in relation to simple graphic game objects with which they can interact. The user can select from four different games: Color Shooter, Two Touch, Duck and Jump, and Sorter. All games were designed to be quick, simple, intuitive and encourage dramatic movement.

Dan Pinchbeck, Robert Briscoe, Jessica Curry, Jacky Morgan, Nigel Carrington, Ben Andrews & Samuel Justice
Dear Esther

“A deserted island… a lost man… memories of a fatal crash… a book written by a dying explorer.”

“Dear Esther” is a ghost story, told using first-person gaming technologies. Rather than traditional game-play the focus here is on exploration, uncovering the mystery of the island, of who you are and why you are here. Fragments of story are randomly uncovered when exploring the various locations of the island, making each journey a unique experience.

file festival

Magnavox Odyssey
Even if you’re a devoted fan of video games, there’s a decent chance you’re not familiar with the name Ralph H. Baer. This should be considered gamer high treason considering Baer’s importance in creating the concept of home video games and the vast, varied entertainment ecosystem now built upon them. Despite being the one to push the dominoes toward an industry that currently makes billions of dollars annually, the bulk of the gaming community has largely forgotten about him.Now a 91-year-old widower, the German-born Baer is the inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey, the world’s first video game console. The Odyssey is predated in the games-on-screens space only by experiments like Willy Higinbotham’s Tennis for Two and the coin-op dud Computer Space. But Baer also has a long and distinguished record as an engineer and inventor. The list of patents and gadgets in his name encompasses surgical-cutting equipment, “muscle-toning pulse generators,” submarine-tracking radar systems, video simulations for trainee pilots, talking books and talking doormats, iconic ‘80s toys like SIMON and Laser Command, and even launch displays and a lunar-resistant camera grip for the Saturn V and Apollo 11 space programs.

ケリーリチャードソン
켈리 리처드슨
קלי ריצ’רדסון/
凯利·理查森
mariner 9
Mariner 9 presents a panoramic view of a Martian landscape set hundreds of years into the future, littered with the rusting remains from various missions to the planet. Despite its suggested abandoned state, several of the spacecraft continue to partially function, to do their intended jobs, to ultimately find signs of life, possibly transmitting the data back to no one.
Mariner 9 was created using scenery-generation software employed by the film and gaming industries in combination with technical data from NASA’s missions to Mars to produce a faithful artist’s rendering of Martian terrain, populated by the debris from centuries of exploration through real and imagined spacecraft in the centre of a duststorm. “Cinematic tropes of sci-fi films abound, but any search for a clear narrative is frustrated. Presented with minimal action, we wonder instead about the search for life beyond our own planet and the simultaneous destruction of life on earth.” (Laurel MacMillan, Programmer for TIFF Future Projections)

Moving Mario
file festival
“Moving Mario” definitely doesn’t reproduce Super Mario Bros in another way. By partially grabbing the concept and some of the key elements behind the TV game development, Moving Mario tries to challenge some of the traditional game elements. Throughout the gaming process, players can rethink the relationship between the player and the game. This work consists of basic set-up only: there isn’t any side-scroller or background scrolling. Moving Mario is actually demonstrating the mentioned concept and setting up a platform for players to visualize this concept while participating in it. Let’s move Mario!