FULL VIDEO OF MARCO DE MUTIIS LECTURE ON MAY 27 2016 NOW AVAILABLE
DESCRIPTION: Photo and camera modes have started to appear in more and more video games, allowing players to capture an instant of the game world. Often mimicking some aspect of the camera interface and the act of photographing, games have been attempting to simulate photography, sometimes incorporating it into the mechanics of gameplay. So quite often we find ourselves in front of a screen, looking through a virtual viewfinder, interacting with simulated aperture settings and controlling the amount of depth of field of our in-game image. Playing games we also encounter fictional clients and digital photography teachers rating our safari pictures, telling us how to frame an image, to get closer, or giving us a disappointing C+ because our subject is not facing the camera. In short: there seem to be all sorts of strange simulations, remediations, and mutations of photography appearing within games, questioning what it means to photograph and to play and how the two are interconnected. “VIDEO GAMES AND PHOTOGRAPHY: A BRIEF HISTORY” is an attempt to illustrate the complex relationship and diverse interplay between photography and video games.
THE SPEAKER Marco De Mutiis is an artist and curator with a focus on language, perception and communication. His works deal with the human necessity of expression through the act of coding and decoding system of signs, and the urgency to translate thoughts and feelings into symbols. Exploring that balancing act between an irrational and subconscious need to communicate and the impossibility of pure unmediated expression, he often attempts to unravel the polarisation between signal and noise, sign and meaning. His works have been shown in festivals and museums internationally. As a curator his research lies in the exploration of new forms of photographic practices beyond the camera, mutations and remediations of photography, and new approaches to the way images are created and distributed. Currently, Marco works as digital curator for Fotomuseum Winterthur and research associate at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Switzerland). De Mutiis lives in Zurich, Switzerland.
