Épuisement, Juliana Riska, Kim Boldt, Loraine Stary, and Dorian Reunkrilerk, 3:51, 2016
As a part of Artists Run Chicago 2.0 at Hyde Park Art Center, VGA Gallery presents Personal Action, Public Display: A Balcony of Video Game Art. For this exhibition, VGA will program the entire projection façade of the HPAC that viewers can see from either inside or outside of the building depending on the time of day. The projections offer a mix of machinima (or animation made with video game engines) and two interactive pieces that visitors can play through their own mobile device. As a group of artworks they offer an introduction to video game art as a discipline leveraging private, personal devices into collective acts of digital expression.
VGA Gallery was included in Artists Run Chicago 2.0, but due to unforeseeable circumstances, we were unable to play the digital façade during most of the exhibition run. Instead, HPAC has been kind enough to allow a separate five-week exhibition of Personal Action, Public Display.
Exhibition viewing hours are FREE and open for reservations and limited walk-ins. VGA Gallery and the Hyde Park Art Center encourage visitors to reserve timed tickets in advance of their visit to facilitate social distance.
Reserve your tickets here: hydeparkart.org/plan-your-visit
Works featured in Personal Action, Public Display
A Noise Monster!
Jon Cates & Jake Elliot with Ei Jane Janet Lin, digital video, 3:29, 2016
“You're on an endless beach after the unnamed apocalypse but the world didn't end like they said it would, it carries on after all, like always... The beach is beautiful, sine waves, seagulls and gently crashing vaporwaves abound, but lonely until we found ourselves our new friend: a cute little glitch kitten who kitten glitches! This is "A Noise Monster" by Jake Elliott && jonCates, a game for kids and adults who love to play with glitches and aren't afraid of being monsters.”
blu blu blu
Isabelle Arvers & DUO b, digital video, 2:29, 2015
blu blu blu is a video game engine glitch created by Isabelle Arvers during her residency at Ruralscapes in June in Brazil. It is her first collaboration with the Brazilian artist duo Duo B for the song recording of a river surrounding the residency. blu blu blu is a glitch of a mountain representation floating in the sky.
Freefall
Palle Torsson, 2:16, 2011
Based on a game modification of Half-Life 2, this machinima depicts nondescript dark suited characters plummeting into an endless tunnel. A metaphor of man's fall in the iron cage of technology.
Surface Analysis
Jon Chambers, 3D animation, facial recognition software, p5.js, local wifi, 2019
Gallery-goers can use their own phone to connect to the piece and interact directly with Surface Analysis. Jon Chambers’ work is interested in how we negotiate our physical and virtual lives within overlapping themes of consumerism, surveillance, play, environmental impact and future histories.
8000 People
Knut LSG Hybinette, 1:26, 2013
“What Happens when 8000 people runs towards you. It is common feeling when done watching this animation: nothing. Knut’s projects explore the ideas of failed Utopias, the violence that we as humans too eagerly too embrace.”
Danny L Harle - Ashes of Love
Sam Rolfes, 3:28, 2016
Created using VR, motion capture and face capture, this music video uses performative practices to create a completely remote—and manic—digital dance party.
Shortwave
Joel Corelitz, collaborative musical platform, 2016
Players connect by going to a website which turns their phone into a musical controller. Users can use their own phone to connect to the piece and interact. Joel Corelitz believes technology should be a unifying and creative force. Our phones often feel like distractions from our surroundings. Shortwave was developed to bring us closer together by engaging people in the joy of cooperative play while in the same space.
Lara Croft, Domestic Goddess, I & II
Georgie Roxby Smith, 2:14, 2013
Georgie Roxby Smith’s hacked Lara Croft Tomb Raider video game shows the familiar icon for violent femme fatale bad-assery in the throes of orgasmic housekeeping, a scene that could be read as neo-Friedan, with her "domestic goddess" subject trapped between the banally physical and the extraordinarily virtual.
Épuisement
Juliana Riska, Kim Boldt, Loraine Stary, and Dorian Reunkrilerk, 3:51, 2016
Behind this clever meditation on walls and wall decoration lies a deep critique of capitalism and the mass production of uniqueness that informs its ideology.