HOW EXHIBITION | Serious Games
Serious Games
Duration: 2019/08/02 - 2019/11/02
Artists: Alexis Mailles, Feng Chen, Harun Farocki, Jon Rafman, Kent Sheely, Andrew Luk, Lawrence Lek, Matthieu Cherubini, Payne Zhu, Peter Nelson, Wu Chi-Yu
Curator: Fu Liaoliao
Venue：Gallery 6/ 7, 3F, HOW Art Museum, No 1, Lane 2277, Zuchongzhi Road, Shanghai
HOW Art Museum (Shanghai) is pleased to announce that the group exhibition Serious Games will be on view from August 2. Serious Games will present works and projects of both artists and game designers, casting light on the historical development of video games as a form and image, the tension between the mechanism of eSport competition and players from a bio-political point of view, as well as the critiques of spacial politics, historical truth, and future conflicts within the context of video games. Moreover, the exhibition is not limited to present the works directly related to video games, and it also attempts to extend the boundaries of people's notions of game by showcasing works from different perspectives.
Parallel I, 2012
Harun Farocki
Video (double projection), color, sound, 16'
Courtesy of Harun Farocki Foundation
The year 1945 marked the end of World War II.
In 2003, a game named Day of Defeat (DoD)was launched and soon became one of the most known video games centering on the theme of WWII. DoD was based on Half-life, a first-person sci-fi shooter game published in 1998.
In 2001, the 9/11 attacks occurred. Two years before this, Counter-Strike, also a video game based on Half-life, was published.
In 2009, artist Harun Farocki visited Marine Corps Base 29 Palms in California, where he saw soldiers receiving shooting training through computer games that simulated street environment in Afghanistan.
Serious Games III: Immersion
Harun Farocki
Video (double projection), color, sound, 20'. (Loop), Germany 2009
Courtesy of Harun Farocki Foundation
In 1944, Chinatown Fair opened on top of a restaurant in Chinatown, Manhattan. Following the birth and development of arcade games, it became knowns as “NYC's last great arcade” in the 1970s, witnessing the birth of the first batch of professional arcade players on the East Coast.
In 2011, due to the decline of arcade, the Chinatown Fair Arcade was closed. Ten years prior to its shutdown, the first World Cyber Games was held in Seoul, South Korea.
In 2015, a game called Kings of Glory was published in China and launched its own professional league in the following year.
Also in 2016, AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol, world champion and professional Go player of 9 dan rank from South Korea.
Codes of Honor, 2011
Jon Rafman
Single-channel HD video with stereo sound
13'59".
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers Gallery
“Nothing is more serious than the game.”[1]
When Lefebvre wrote down this sentence in 1965, he certainly was not referring to video games, let alone the concept of "serious games”.
As an ancient form of human activity, games have been undergoing drastic changes under the development of science and technology. Until the era of video games, its unprecedented connection with daily life has opened up new possibilities for cognitive space, images and life forms. It has even launched challenges to the present and future way of people's existence. However, in stark contrast to the radical evolutions of the contents and forms of video games and its enormous number of users, games have not yet received enough "serious discussions" because of its natural connection to entertainment.
"Serious games" refer to video games not only for entertainment purposes, but also applied in fields such as education, medical care and social management, etc. Hence, such games are generally referred to as “applied games”. However, the exhibition, Serious Games, doesn't intend to make the distinction between "serious" and “entertainment”. On the contrary, the exhibition seeks to break the stereotypes surrounding video games, trying to investigate video games within the context of the current political dimensions where lines are blurred between machines and human beings, reality and virtuality.
[1] Review of Kostas Axelos’ Toward Planetary Thought, Henri Lefebvre, 1965
Serious Games I: Watson is Down, 2010
Harun Farocki
Video (double projection), color, sound, 8'. (Loop)
Courtesy of Harun Farocki Foundation
Play as a way of critique
In 2011, after over 50 years of the shutdown of Chinatown Fair Arcade, Jon Rafman interviewed some legendary gamers who had once "fought" there. As these pro-gamers described the intense but short-lived thrill of victory, the artist raised a question in his work Codes of Honor, “in a world where history and tradition mean less and less, how could we achieve redemption and construct a continuous self?” Payne Zhu’s work Ladder System, discusses the mechanism of the ranking system of eSports games from the opposite view of a game developer. Payne treats the Ladder System as a 24/7 real-time updating talent management system and super control machine that integrates functions of monitoring, ranking, selecting, rewarding and penalizing.
LADDERS SYSTEM, 2018
Payne Zhu
3 Channel Video，4K，11’49”，2018
Courtesy of the artist and MADEIN Gallery
Lawrence Lek’s work 2065, applies the game rules of the virtual world into the reality of the future. With all work taken care of by algorithms, the online game world where people and AI fight all day and night becomes the only space for human to live and work in the future. Players who initiate a rebellion in this magnificent future world of game claim that "it's a game without heroes, enemies, winners and losers. To explore in an open world mirrors the mindset of the player".
2065, 2018
Lawrence Lek
HD Video, stereo sound, duration: 5'
Courtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles HQ Gallery
Game theorist and critic Ian Bogost once pointed out that “we must begin to understand what games can offer us today: how they can serve as a mirror that presents a new view of our own experience of the world rather than as an window polished to an incrementally greater shine, facing that same green pasture of familiarity.”[2] Feng Chen's work The Darker Side of Light: Shadow, specifically discusses the characteristics of "light" as a material and interface. The difference between the light we see through the eyes trained by the nature and technology and the light reflected in technological media is also discussed repeatedly in this ongoing piece of work.
[2] Chapter 9 “A way of Looking”, How to Talk about Videogames, Ian Bogost, 2015
The Darker Side of Light: Shadow, 2018
Feng Chen
LED lights, monitors, camera, programming RGB Controller
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Capsule Shanghai
Kent Sheely offers an alternative way of practicing and transforming the rules and materials of game in his DoD (Day of Defeat War Journalism). Instead of actually participating in battles, the artist, under the identity of a journalist, captured pictures of battles in the WWII-themed game DoD and made a series of technical adjustments to accomplish the tasks of a "war correspondent". Here, gameplay becomes an issue of recording actions. The artist doesn't deny the interconnection between his work and News-game; and as early as in 2009, he had already started using game engines to process real World War II documentary photos.
DoD (Day of Defeat War Journalism)
Kent Sheely
Video
Courtesy of the artist
Re-engage the engaged
The debates on whether art should be "socially-engaged" or "for art’s sake" have never stopped. Just like the controversies around "participatory art" today: the question that whether art can be more effectively and deeply engaged in public issues and public life has never received a definite and convincing answer. But in the field of video games, this problem does not seem to exist. It "participates" and "intervenes" naturally and the only question seems to be how to critically re-engage with such natural intervention. Matthew Cherubini's Afghan War Diary connects to Counter-Strike's game servers through a software, bringing more unknown players into his game, and retrieving real-time debris each time a player successfully makes a kill. The debris triggers a chronological search in the WikiLeaks database, which contains more than 75,000 secret US military reports about the war in Afghanistan. Based on the retrieved data, the site shows the actual locations of the attacks on Earth. Therefore, this work is produced by the virtual killings by the players of Counter-Strike.
Afghan War Diary, 2010
Matthieu Cherunibi
Online Video, infinite
Courtesy of the artist
Also based on the re-creation of Counter-Strike and co-designed by Peter Nelson, Andrew Lu and Alexis Mailles, AUTOSAVE: REDOUBT is a recreation of the specific areas of the bunkers and tunnels in Kowloon Peninsula during World War II, transforming them into a playable map of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. This project criticizes the application of 3D computer game technology in virtual archaeology - these technologies should not be considered real or neutral. Rather, they should be understood as a simulation of military visions.
AUTOSAVE: REDOUBT, 2018
Andrew Luk, Alexis Mailles, Peter Nelson
Computer game modification with custom sound and installation
Courtesy of the artist
In and out of the game: whose field?
Wu Chi-Yu's work, Asia Air, is a game that does not take place in a game interface. Through a "non-existent VR viewing experience", Wu Chi-Yu simulates the viewing mode of future human beings with video devices and discusses the airspace relations in Asia with related flight images, aerial camera images, UAV no-flight maps, air combat command maps, flight airspace, controlled airspace and the corresponding flight regulations, the use and restriction of the sky, and among other issues.
Asia Air, 2018
Wu Chi-Yu
Three-channel video installation and documents
Courtesy of the artist
Serious Game I-IV, which is also used as the title of this exhibition, is created by Harun Farocki during his visit to the US Naval Base in 2009. Farocki explores the links between virtual reality and the army: how can the fictional scenes of computer games be used for the training of the U.S. armies before deploying war zones and for the psychological care of traumatized soldiers when they return? As a summary of the first three pieces, the fourth one Serious Game IV: A Sun without Shadow points out that the shadows of all objects in a video game are determined by the imaginary position of the sun - a computer image of the sun shines over the virtual landscape, and this image is produced for war purpose. However, in Serious Game III, which discussed the post-war trauma treatment, there was no shadow of the sun as treatment cost less than war preparation.
Serious Games IV: A Sun without Shadow, 2010
Harun Farocki
Video (double projection), color, sound, 8'. (Loop)
Courtesy of Harun Farocki Foundation
This virtual, shadowless sunshine is not irrelevant to our real life. In today's web interface, even those who never play video games are already video-gamers. It's all about how we define game and its meaning to us. Through the revolution of perspectives, interfaces, and operations brought about by video games, along with games' continuous inclusion of elements of war, violence and pornography, they will repeatedly and increasingly intertwine themselves into our daily lives.
This is not a game for dream. Nothing is more serious than the game.
昊美术馆 HOW ART MUSEUM
昊美术馆（上海）
HOW ART MUSEUM (SHANGHAI)
昊美术馆（上海），图片©昊美术馆
昊美术馆（上海）是具备当代艺术收藏、陈列、研究和教育功能的全新文化机构，坐落于上海浦东，共有三层展览和活动空间，总面积约7000平方米，于2017年9月正式对外开放。昊美术馆首创“夜间美术馆”的运营模式，常规对外开放时间为周二至周五下午1点至夜间10点，周末及节假日开放时间为上午10点至夜间10点。此举能让更多观众在工作之余前来美术馆观展，昊美术馆也举办“国际策展人驻留项目”、“户外电影节”、“雕塑公园”等国际交流项目和户外活动，以此建立全新的艺术综合体和浦东新地标。
昊美术馆（温州）
HOW ART MUSEUM (WENZHOU)
昊美术馆（温州），图片©昊美术馆
昊美术馆（温州）延续昊美术馆（上海）的“夜间美术馆”运营模式，是浙江省首家"夜间美术馆"，常规对外开放时间为下午1点到夜间10点，周末及节假日开放时间将向前延长为上午10点至夜间10点。昊美术馆（温州）将持续为公众呈现丰富的公共教育及户外艺术项目，引领融合艺术、设计、科技的全新生活方式。
扫描以下二维码，你也可以关注我们的
官方微博
观看更多精彩的内容哦！
昊美术馆官方微博
同时，按以下方式关注昊美术馆官方抖音账号
现在还能一同参与抖音全民艺术季活动
参与方式：
1． 打开抖音编辑观展文案及话题#抖出我的艺术；
2． 并在发布时添加位置“昊美术馆”。
3． @抖音艺术季
昊美术馆官方抖音
即将展出 Upcoming
昊美术馆（温州）
HOW ART MUSEUM (WENZHOU)
正在展出 Current
昊美术馆（上海）
HOW ART MUSEUM (SHANGHAI)