A PRECARIOUS NIGHT AT PLUMB POINT
Digital video (2160 × 3840), sound, color, 24’ 04”, 2023, United States
Created by Jake Couri
Sound Design: Kris Force
Environment Artist: Francou Bosch
Voice Artist: Matthew Curtis
A Precarious Night at Plumb Point finds our lead character positioned at sea, guided by the innate voyeurism hard coded into the world of gaming. Possessed by an internal dialogue, the viewer is presented with an assemblage-like simulation indicative of first-person exploration games, survival adventures, and cinematic trailers. Structurally based on the tragic fate of the first cruise ship intended for pleasure voyages, the SS Prinzessin Victoria Luise reached its unexpected demise the night of December 16th, 1906, after crash landing at Plumb Point Lighthouse. We follow our lead character aboard a modern-day cruise ship as he traverses through a series of environments led by the result of his perceived reality.
Jake Couri’s practice leverages digital space, employing computer-generated characters, environments, and conditions for the viewer to navigate. The artist examines the relationship between digital and physical reality, leaning on the possibility of making sense of the human condition through CGI avatars, cinematic effects, and theatrical sound composition. After completing a BFA in Fine Arts from Syracuse University, Jake Couri moved to San Francisco, where he received his MFA in Fine Arts with honors at California College of the Arts. His work has been shown at Superposition Gallery in Los Angeles, California (2019), Public Records in Brooklyn, New York (2020), and 4Culture in Seattle, Washington State (2021). He completed an artist residency at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass Village, Colorado (2019). He currently lives and works in New York City.
ROCK, STAR, NORTH
Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 23’ 05”, 2016-2022, Scotland
Created by Calum Rodger
In 2016, inspired by Basho, William Wordsworth and Nan Shepherd, Glasgow-based poet Calum Rodger undertook a poetic odyssey inside San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto V’s hyperreal replica of California. In 2017, he chronicled his journey in a 20-minute performance poem titled Rock, Star, North, which premiered at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh in May of that year. In 2021, the poem achieved its final form: a machinipoem, composed entirely of footage from the game, alongside an all-new reading and updated text, which we are now presenting as part of VRAL S03.
Calum Rodger is a Glasgow-based poet working in print, performance and digital forms. He was Scottish National Slam Champion 2019 and holds a Doctorate in Scottish Literature from the University of Glasgow. In the last few years, he has worked extensively at the intersection of poetry and gaming.
COLOSSAL CAVE ADVENTURE – THE MOVIE
Digital video (1024 x 1024), sound, color, 55’ 33” 2022, Germany
Created by Thomas Hawranke and Lasse Scherffig
January 6 - 19 2023
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
vral.org
An adaptation sui generis of an early text-based adventure games, Colossal Cave Adventure - The Movie remediates the program developed by Will Crowther in 1976 based on the architecture of the Mammoth Cave complex in Kentucky. The original game used text to describe the environment whereas the animated film uses AI-generated visuals. Every eight seconds, the AI system receives a new textual description, taken from Colossal Cave Adventure’s source code, comprising 379 inputs ranging from narrative descriptions of nature to jargon from the vocabulary of speleologists to single words meaning an object, a compass direction, or an exclamation. The camera constantly moves downwards, digging through geological layers and exposing new cave spaces again and again.
Born in 1977 in Bergisch Gladbach, Germany, Thomas Hawranke is a media artist and researcher whose practice investigates the influence of technology on society and the impact of computational logic onto human-animal-machine relationships. In his eclectic interventions, Hawranke operates at the intersection of performance and video art: a central concern of his is bringing to the surface the ideologies that inform everyday life. Hawranke graduated in Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne and received a PhD from the Bauhaus-University in Weimar, Germany, with a dissertation on the modification of video games, also known as modding, as a method for artistic research. Since 2005, he has been a member of susigames, an independent art label founded in 2003 that investigates alternative gaming’s approaches, and he is the co-founder of the Paidia Institute in Cologne. His works have been presented at several exhibitions and festivals, including the zkm_gameplay in Karlsruhe and the RENCONTRES INTERNATIONALES PARIS/BERLIN. Hawranke lives and works in Cologne, Germany.
Lasse Scherffig is an artist and scientist with a background in cognitive science/machine learning and computer science. Scherffig is interested in the relationship of humans, machines, and society; cybernetics and the technological infrastructures of communication and control; and the cultures and aesthetics of computation and interaction. His work oscillates between computer science and experimental artistic practices, engineering and amateur/DIY methods, science and humanities. A professor of Interaction Design at Köln International School of Design, he previously served as the Department Chair of Art and Technology at San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught as assistant professor. Scherffig co-founded the artist group Paidia Institute and off topic, magazine for media art. His art projects have been shown at numerous exhibitions. Lasse holds a doctoral degree in Experimental Computer Science from KHM, Academy of Media Arts Cologne.
AR3NA
digital video/machinima (2048x858), color, sound, 35’ (original), 2022, The Netherlands
Created by Jordy Veenstra, 2022
AR3NA is a visual study of Quake III Arena; its environments and its textures. It is also a complex work of media anthropology: a deeper critical look at more than two-hundred maps in which millions of battles have been fought since 1999. With a production time frame and a duration exceeding those of most experimental machinima, Veenstra’s AR3NA is a meta-commentary on video game play, architecture, space and places.
Jordy Veenstra is a video editor, motion graphics designer, 2D animator, and experimental filmmaker based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In his practice, Veenstra connects art and narrative with technology and software through the medium of experimental film. His work examines often overlooked social and artistic concerns. His works have been exhibited during the 2020 and 2022 editions of the Milan Machinima Festival and the equally astounding Regression Trilogy was featured as a show on VRAL in 2020.
TOXIC GARDEN - DANCE DANCE DANCE
recording of live performance inside Roblox on December 9 2022, color, sound, 9’ 59”, Italy
created by Kamilia Kard
introduced by Gemma Fantacci
Toxic Garden - DANCE DANCE DANCE is an online participatory performance created within Toxic Garden, a unique map designed by the artist for Roblox (Roblox Corporation, 2006) in which participants can perform a common dance by donning custom skins that change randomly. A visual commentary on toxic human behaviors, DANCE DANCE DANCE is inspired by the defense mechanisms of poisonous plants. Its development took place during the residency at Lavanderia a Vapore and it involved dancers who contributed in the creation of the choreography. Designed and developed by Kamilia Kard, aka KKlovesU4E. Music of the Performance by Raffaella Bresciani. Sound design of Toxic Garden’s map by Cristina Katja Angeloro.
Kamilia Kard is an artist and scholar based in Milan. Her research explores how hyper-connectivity and new forms of online communication have modified and influenced the perception of the human body, as well as our gestures, feelings and emotions. Her practice spans from digital paintings to websites, from video installations to 3D printed sculptures, from interactive virtual environments and video games to AR facial filters. Her work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, public spaces and online venues. Highlights include: A.dition Gallery, South Korea (2022), Careof, Milan (2021); Marséll, Milan (2021); Museo Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare (2021); Milan Machinima Festival (2021); Galerie Odile Ouizeman, Paris (2020); Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris (2020); Dimora Artica, Milan (2020); Olomouc Museum of Art (2020); Metronom, Modena (2018, 2019 and 2020); EP7, Paris (2019); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2018); iMAL, Brussels (2018); Digitalive @ REF, Rome (2018); Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2017); Triennale di Milano (2017); Centro Cultural São Paulo (2017); La Quadriennale di Roma (2016); Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2015); Hypersalon, Miami (2015); The Wrong Biennial, online (2014); Museo del Novecento, Milan (2013). She is the author of Arte e Social Media. Generatori di sentimenti (Postmedia Books 2022) and the editor of Alpha Plus. An Anthology of Digital Art (Editorial Vortex 2017). She often lectures about her artistic practice and research. She has a Ph.D in Digital Humanities (University of Genova), and she teaches Multimedia Communication and Aesthetics of New Media at Accademia di Brera in Milan, Italy.
