Angewandte Festival

If/then – or? The white cube phase of prototyping Experimental Game Cultures.

In the exhibition of the first hybrid game-culture assemblages from the new master's program Experimental Game Cultures, we focus on the conscious change of established dynamics of the game, reflecting both the dark side and the intensity of the games — in ludic arrangements between human and non-human actors.

The aim of the "game exhibition" experience room in our studio/atelier PSK is a critical reflection on the social impact of games and at the same time the prototypical development of innovative game concepts and approaches: We aim to introduce game changer games!

Sebastian Scholz - AFTERGLOW

Something is underneath the floor. It tries to catch the marbles that are circling around it. Or does it try to push them away? It is hard to tell, but since it cannot succeed in neither the one, nor the other, it does not really matter anyway. This might seem a little frustrating, but it is a pleasure to watch and listen to.

Your role in this game is more the one of an observer than of a player. Once you accept that your influence is very limited, you will be able to see that observing can be almost as satisfying as playing yourself.

Wassily Bartuska - AQUORAPHOBIA

How would you deal with being stuck?

Will you turn to acceptance to find a sense of comfort or will you struggle to escape?

Become Sisyphus

Klimentina Milenova - SKINS.II

SKINS.II is an interactive visual novel researching the controversies of today’s human interdependencies with technologies. It aims to reveal poetic research on the multidimensional notions of skin in the phygital* world, to uncover the intertwined and complex relationships between the concepts discovered. The foundations of our virtual selves are questioned. The project is done in collaboration with multiple A.I. systems to demonstrate the limitation of information definition such systems tend to have, resulting in reinforcement of biases. What does it mean to have skin in the virtual? The aim is to question the political prejudice behind the concept of skin and the following aspects of A.I. algorithms mirroring such actions.
Humans create the algorithmic realm of computer- and network-supported data and information, including the conveyance of unconscious biases. What happens when we step into the virtual world or the Metaverse? Are our social media profiles acting as a passport to this realm? What would be your skin if you could be anyone in the digital world. How can you prove to me that you are not a robot?

*phygital - a blend of the physical and the digital. Collins Dictionary

ADRIAN HAIM - WATER BOTTLE DREAM

Mixed machinima/digital game. Excerpt, work in progress.

The work is focusing on the impossibility of imagining an alternative world in the current historical situation, a circumstance described as CAPITALIST REALISM by Mark Fisher.

Voiceover: Jan-Wieger van den Berg | Acting & Modding: RCPisAWESOME | Game used for Machinima production: Red Dead Redemption 2 by Rockstar Games

LITTO+ SYSTEMKOLLEKTIV - MIRRORING FUTURE: 2030 GAME OVER VS REPLAY

Mirror mirror on the wall, what is the future of us all?

A room installation at PSK 1st floor

Aliya Davletova ABSTRACT UTOPIA

I am a circle, you are a circle, she is a circle, he is a circle, they are circles. Everyone is happy.

I am a circle, you are a circle, she is a circle, he is a square.

I am a circle, you are a circle, she is a circle, they are circles. Everyone is happy.

I am a circle, you are a triangle, she is a circle.

I am a circle, she is a circle, they are circles. Everyone is happy.

I am a circle, I am happy.

I am a square, she is a circle.

I am a square.

You are a circle, she is a circle, he is a circle, they are circles. Everyone is happy.

Everyone is happy. Everyone is happy. Everyone is happy.

The Abstract Utopia simulates a radically simplified version of the world. There is no gender, no race, no disease, no sexual orientation, no social class, no economy, no global issues, and no reason for war. There is only the geometrical form of the body. In the Abstract Utopia everything is simple, beautiful and easy. Аs long as you fit a particular geometric shape.

Maxim Shchapov - *NEOZYMANDIA MONUMENTALIS*

*Neozymandia Monumentalis* invites players to explore a fantastical obscure

–monument, to climb a mysterious silver tower. Ascend the structure, observe the environment changing based on progress, and experience different perspectives on the monumental structure. At the culmination of the process, the player is offered to examine their own path and the remnants of the monument.

Humans build monuments to reach higher, to demonstrate power and dominance, to preserve ideas and achievements. Yet nothing stands forever, in an ever-changing world an attempt to forever solidify something or to endlessly prevail seems futile, if not tragic. Thus, *Neozymandia Monumentalis* is a memorial to hubris. Hubris to hope to outlast time and history. Hubris to hope to find bliss at the top of the tower.

This work is inspired and informed by The Monument to the Third International by Vladimir Tatlin, The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley, the novel Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, and my own reflections on the politics and the ideology of modern day Russia.

Bernhard Staudinger - THREADS

Threads (work in progress) is a project related to words, images and memory.

Appropriating elements of classic word-games, Threads is an invitation to players to engage with letters distributed across a grid to find words, which are then transferred into abstract graphic images. The translation process follows a set of defined rules, which connects word and image, and thus creating a relation between them.

The connection between word and image is not arbitrary, which means that every combination of letters creates a specific image. With continued engagement, the understanding of the correlation between word and image grows. Over time, players are able to make connections between the two forms of representation. The image becomes a graphic expression of the written form, referring to the same source.

Some questions…

Can we forget the (lexical) meaning of a word, but remember a meaning conveyed by an image?

Can we take images to memorize meanings of words, sentences and language conventions?

For the presentation of Threads at the Angewandte Festival 2022, a thermal printer is used for the final output of the generated images. The device creates a tangible object in form of a print on paper. Prints can be collected, put together, repurposed or simply thrown away. And as thermal printing fades with time, these printed objects are also a small nod to the transience of our memory and the way we engage with our environment.

Concept: Bernhard Staudinger

Technical realization: CODING LAB, Die Angewandte -

Jonas Bohatsch, Bernhard Staudinger

Marlene Mautner DECOLONIZED NATURE

keyboard controller:

for up and down: f, v

for left, right, forwards, backwards: j, l, i, k

3D controller:

use hands towards the objects to move

“Decolonized Nature” is dedicated to redefine categories such as nature and

culture based on the critical debates about the Anthropocene as well as the ideas of the Holobiont and the Gaia hypothesis. (Margulis 1997) (Lovelock 1972)

Currently I am working on the transformation of these themes into a game that will serve as a tool to integrate viewers and make environmental issues tangible. The Art-Game becomes a ludic

experience about relations between people and environment. (Jahrmann 2021) The story begins on Earth of a near future. Plant species that have proven to be suitable candidates for life on Mars are genetically modified for the harsh environmental conditions. Their task is to create an atmosphere for humans.

Unexpectedly, unknown bacteria starts transforming plants as soon as DNA appears. Similar to the real Wolbachia bacterium, the fictional Erythro bacterium is capable of altering its hosts DNA. (Kirksey 2018) Instead of terraforming Mars for human purposes, a new life form begins to unexpectedly and uncontrollably transform the Martian landscape. A single large organism emerges that

composts all matter (Harraway 2016). Connection of virtual, material and living world. The controller artifact, which will be overgrown with lychen serves as a bridge between reality and virtual worlds. It is an artifact of the 3D game world which transforms through a biological process. The lychen serves as a metaphor for the organisms transforming through the fictional erythro-bacteria. The controller overgrows and no longer serves its original purpose. The bacterium/lychen is now in control. The virtual organisms are generated using three-dimensional Generative Adversarial Networks based on 3D objects of plant models. For now you can see the prototype oft he organic controller which is actually not yet overgrown with lychen. -The planned controller will be 3D printed with organic material which serves as soil for the lychen.