Furtherfield’s Game Art programme draws on interdisciplinary practice that takes the engines and culture of digital games as the tools and materials of art practice.
Artists’ work in this field connects both with mainstream art world interests and atypical-audiences-for-art engaging them with aesthetic and game-play experiences that have them question the world in enjoyable ways.
Zero Gamer looks at games played, unplayed and unplayable, the spectator and the spectacle. Sometimes we just like to watch, and machinima, gameplay videos and spectator gaming events take the activity out of interactivity. Zero Gamer presents games that play themselves, video documents of in-game performance, game engine experiments and challenging documentaries on gameplay.
![[giantJoystick] by Mary Flanagan Game/Play exhibition - 22 July - 3 September 2006](https://www.furtherfield.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/3003295736_2092b7a9d0_w.jpg)
Game/Play is a national touring exhibition that explores goal-orientated gaming and playful interaction through media arts practice. This collaboration between Q-Arts, Derby and HTTP, London has provided a framework to develop a context for creative exchange between visitors to the exhibition focusing on the rhetorical constructs game and play. Moreover they showed us these amazing beddings. Projects fall under three main categories: installations, independent video games and online (networked) artworks.
Artists Re:Thinking Games is a publication that looks at how a selection of leading artists, designers and commentators have challenged the norms and expectations of both game and art worlds with both criticality and popular appeal. It explores themes adopted by the artist that thinks and rethinks games and includes essays, interviews and artists’ projects from Jeremy Bailey, Ruth Catlow, Heather Corcoran, Daphne Dragona, Mary Flanagan, Mathias Fuchs, Alex Galloway, Marc Garrett, Corrado Morgana, Anne-Marie Schleiner, David Surman, Tale of Tales, Bill Viola, and Emma Westecott.
Artists’ work in this field connects both with mainstream art world interests and atypical-audiences-for-art engaging them with aesthetic and game-play experiences that have them question the world in enjoyable ways.
“Only when people are able to use computers to produce their own data does information communication technology become genuinely empowering.” – James Wallbank
Furtherfield is committed to delivering on promise of the Zero Dollar Laptop manifesto with a series of workshop programmes with different community groupw. The Zero Dollar Laptop, is a recycled laptop running Free Open Source Software (FOSS) that is fast and effective- now and long into the future; repurposing otherwise redundant technology, gathering dust in bedrooms and offices across the country.
Pilot workshops with the clients of St. Mungo’s Charity for Homeless People ran for twelve weeks in 2010, where participants learned about using their laptop from core of installing their own operating system to customising their own machines, writing articles and creating images to share and publish via social media. Download the full report pdf here.
The next steps are to implement the Zero Dollar Laptop at a European scale in coordination with European media labs. The initiative is gaining momentum, with interest from Budapest, Nantes, Madrid, and Brussels Visit the Zero Dollar Laptop Blog here.
The project is part of Furtherfield’s Media Art Ecologies programme.
Editors Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Corrado Morgana.
Digital games are important not only because of their cultural ubiquity or their sales figures but for what they can offer as a space for creative practice. Games are significant for what they embody; human computer interface, notions of agency, sociality, visualisation, cybernetics, representation, embodiment, activism, narrative and play. These and a whole host of other issues are significant not only to the game designer but also present in the work of the artist that thinks and rethinks games. Re-appropriated for activism, activation, commentary and critique within games and culture, artists have responded vigorously.
Over the last decade artists have taken the engines and culture of digital games as their tools and materials. In doing so their work has connected with hacker mentalities and a culture of critical mash-up, recalling Situationist practices of the 1950s and 60s and challenging and overturning expected practice.
This publication looks at how a selection of leading artists, designers and commentators have challenged the norms and expectations of both game and art worlds with both criticality and popular appeal. It explores themes adopted by the artist that thinks and rethinks games and includes essays, interviews and artists’ projects from Jeremy Bailey, Ruth Catlow, Heather Corcoran, Daphne Dragona, Mary Flanagan, Mathias Fuchs, Alex Galloway, Marc Garrett, Corrado Morgana, Anne-Marie Schleiner, David Surman, Tale of Tales, Bill Viola, and Emma Westecott.
In collaboration with FACT – http://www.fact.co.uk
http://www.furtherfield.org
http://www.http.uk.net/
Publisher: Liverpool University Press (31 Mar 2010)
Language English
ISBN-10: 1846312477
ISBN-13: 978-1846312472
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/1846312477
We explore collaborative working to establish new sustainable ways of sharing knowledge, ideas and resources, and increase participation in the arts.
Furtherfield and Drake Music have come together to create ‘We Share’, a new initiative, building on and developing the combined creative assets, specialisms and strengths of these two organisations and collaborating closely with other groups in the field. In the first phase of this initiative our organisations are testing and piloting new ways of working, with a view to other partners joining us during the second phase.
To explore the possible benefits of organisational collaboration in:
The first of these projects has been to develop shared web infrastructure and organisational websites for participatory arts organisations using Free and Open Source Software and processes. The next stage of this project is to develop a business plan and seek investment to broaden the reach of our offer.
This regular live show highlights current activity and controversies around contemporary practices in art and technology, discussing events, exhibitions, debates and their social contexts with all manner of player and participant. Features include lively debate and interviews with artists, techies, writers and curators, interspersed with bleeding-edge music, some from Furthernoise.org, and a rolling programme of experimental creative adventures for your amusement.
First series hosted by Marc Garrett, artist, writer and co-founder of furtherfield.org with reviews and interviews by art historian & writer Charlotte Frost and Ruth Catlow artist co-founder of the furtherfield.org.
Second series hosted by Marc Garrett joined by Irini Papadimitriou & Jonathan Munro.In addition to Furtherfield’s invited guests this series will feature interviews with many of the 30 artists showing in the exibition of DIY, hacking and open source projects, Unleashed Devices as part of
NODE.London. Irini has worked with Jonathan Munro of TINT to curate the exhibition at Watermans.
The programme is part of ‘Hyperlink: Media Art Contexts’ whose principal aim is to present and promote high-quality contemporary media art work, alongside critical discussion of past, present and future media art in a contemporary art context.
“All my life people have been telling me I was unique and then I saw myself on camera and realised I was – there is only one me! The film was a great achievement.”
Participants: 20 Year 4 students from Southwark Park Primary School.
Artist: Michael Szpakowski (video artist, composer and facilitator)
The Investigators followed a group of Year Four children and their teacher through their science studies for an entire school year.
Michael Szpakowski and Furtherfield made a documentary film with the children from Southwark Park Primary that examines the investigative skills in Science. The project focused on developing the use of digital media within the classroom, and as a tool for learning that the children can use themselves. Around a framework of footage shot in lesson time and on trips out is assembled other material – creative writing and artwork by the young people as well as re-enactments and discussion of the lessons.
Partners: Creative Partnerships, A New Direction, Southwark Park Primary School
Is it possible to hold an international media arts conference without a single participant getting on a plane?
The Rich Networking Series began as a thought experiment about ways of convening artists, curators, technologists, musicians, thinkers and researchers in geographically distant venues to share their knowledge, experience, perspectives and approaches to sustainable international collaboration and exchange. Participants and organisations continue to explore the range of existing networking activities and frameworks that are already used to stimulate exchange and collaboration between groups of people attending international conferences, fairs and networking events.
Rich Network Series has continue to grow and inspire the development and execution of several experimental projects:
Telematic Eating: Furtherfield is experimenting with intimacy and connection over remote networks. A series of dinner parties co-ordinated by Pollie Barden will bring together two remote groups to dine together working with projectors, cameras, sound and the Laptop Potluck. The first will be a in partnership with Alex Haw of Latitudinal Cuisine.
If not you not me by Annie Abrahams. This networked performance art exhibition at Furtherfield’s gallery, Winter 2010 sensitised participants and audiences to glitches in communication and invited them to experience and reflect on different ways of being together in a machine-mediated world. Find out more.
We won’t fly for art campaign: An initiative started in 2009 by Ruth Catlow and Marc Garrett. They pledge to not fly for art for six months only if 6 other people agreed to replicate the pledge. To date 96 people have signed the pledge. Find out more.
Feral Trade Cafe: For 8 weeks in Summer of 2009, Furtherfield’s gallery was converted into Cafe where the food and drinks are sourced and traded over social networks. Find out more.
Rich Networks and all it’s spawned projects are part of Furtherfield’s Media Art Ecologies programme.
Partners include SCAN and MARCEL.
A Mail-Art project across physical and digital networks in collaboration with the Dark Mountain Project; to question the stories that underpin our failing civilisation and to craft new ones for the age ahead.
This was the second Do It With Others (DIWO) E-Mail-Art project initiated by Furtherfield. The first DIWO experiment in 2007 extended the Do-It-Yourself ethos of early net art, characterised by curiosity, activism and precision, towards a more collaborative approach, using the Internet as an experimental artistic medium and distribution system to foment grass-roots creativity.
The Dark Mountain Project is ‘a new cultural movement for an age of global disruption.’ It aimed to ‘question the stories that underpin our failing civilisation, to craft new ones for the age ahead and to write clearly and honestly about our true place in the world.’ Do It With Others (DIWO) at the Dark Mountain, a mail-art project at HTTP Gallery, is a cultural collaboration for this age. “Uncivilisation,” the Dark Mountain Manifesto, called for a cultural response to our current predicament. Its challenge was offered to network-minded artists, technologists, writers and activists as a provocation – to work together to re-envision the narratives and infrastructures that govern our relationships with the natural world, and how they might be unravelled and rewoven to reconfigure our place in it. As “Uncivilisation” concludes, ‘the end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop.’
Artists, technologists, writers, activists and all other living beings were invited to correspond with each other across physical and digital mail networks, and the exhibition at HTTP present the results of this process. These have been gathered and the presentation devised during an Open Curation event, involving collaborators in real and virtual space. Transmissions shown in the exhibition include collaborative image-threads, net artworks, digital videos, drawings, paintings on wall and paper, sound works, and the full text of the discussion generated on the NetBehaviour list presented in numerous forms. The opening also featured a performance representing a central controversy arising during the project. The exhibition offered new myths and maps for future uncivilisation at HTTP Gallery.
More about The Dark Mountain Project and Furtherfield
The Dark Mountain Project is curated by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine. http://www.dark-mountain.net
Paul is the author of One No, Many Yeses and Real England. He was deputy editor of The Ecologist between 1999 and 2001. His first poetry collection, Kidland, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry.
Dougald writes the blog “Changing the World (and other excuses for not getting a proper job).” He is a former BBC journalist and co-founder of the School of Everything, and has written for and edited various online and offline magazines.
This project is part of Furtherfield’s on-going Media Art Ecologies programme, which aims to provide opportunities for critical debate, exchange and participation in emerging ecological media art practices, and the theoretical, political and social contexts they engage.
For details about the project, visit: http://http.uk.net/diwodarkmountain
For information about past events: 2009 | 2010
Do you want to Do It With Others in the future?
E-Mail: go to http://netbehaviour.org, subscribe to the NetBehaviour email list, correspond and join the explosive discussions in image, text, sound, movie and code.
Inclusive filmmaking workshops to create a documentary challenging community perceptions of Grove Park Special School.
Participants: 20 students between the ages of 10 and 14 from Grove Park Special School in Brent
Artist: Michael Szpakowski (video artist, composer and facilitator)
20 students between the ages of 10 and 14 from Grove Park Special School in Brent explored and challenged community perceptions of the school in a series of visits and interviews with leading figures in the local community. The students, teachers, learning support assistants and Michael Szpakowski worked collaboratively in small groups to make a documentary film about the Borough of Brent, and the people who live and work there. Visits were made to 3 locations over 10 weeks: Brent Town Hall, Fryent Country Park and the nearby IKEA superstore. They were chosen because of their significance as providers of essential local community services. During these visits and interviews the students were encouraged to look outward and find their voices in the local community and throughout this process students and staff had the opportunity to learn valuable filmmaking and editing skills. The project has culminated in a DVD film, for distribution to all participants.
Partners: Creative Partnerships, Grove Park Special School
The Whispers Project was started to create an opportunity for those who did not wish to participate in debate and discussion (because of language barriers, time issues etc) to be seen equally and become involved by submitting their own and others’ creative projects. The Whispers Project shines light on the hidden talent of frequenters of the Netbehaviour list.
How this is created:
Subscribers to the NetBehaviour list add to the project by placing two links to their own work and one link to someone else’s work.
This project was first posted to the list on 19th May 2004. In a vote on 4th June 2004 NetBehaviourists decided that this networked project should be made available here for public viewing. The most recent addition was made on August 6th 2004. The public face of this networked project is updated on the request of list users. If you feel that it’s time for an update please just copy and paste the list below into the body of the email, add your own info and send to the list.
What type of work? Net artists, new media academics, soft groups, net writers, code geeks, new nedia producers, net/new media curators, net/new media activists, networkers, new media performers, net sufi’s, psychogeographical, net artist blogs, net communities etc…
Name: Jan Robert Leegte
Home: http://www.leegte.org
featured: http://www.leegte.org/works/spatial/xpodium/index.htm
chosen: http://splash.ctrlaltdel.org/zdwe.html
Name: Rich White
work: falling off a chair
work : butterfly effect
choice cut – wires : http://www.ertdfgcvb.ch/p1/wires.html
Name: Ivan Monroy-López
work: G=1=U=2=G=1=U=2 http://www195.pair.com/imonroyl/tiniestblog.html
chosen work: the photostatic retrogade archive http://psrf.detritus.net/index.html
chosen work: the island chronicles http://boingboing.net/island/
Name: Bituur Esztreym & Rico da Halvarez on behalf Elles, Otto von Strassenbach
Work: http://vnatrc.net/ –http://bigfruit.vnatrc.net/ —
http://elsa.vnatrc.net/ –http://bienvenidonumero6.biz/
Chosen work: http://www.periferico.org/
Name: Sofia Oliveira sofiaoliveira@atmosferas.net
Work http://www.atmosferas.net/en
Chosen work(s)- The Secret Lifes of Numbers http://www.turbulence.org/Works/nums/
Name : Clément Charmet
http://cl3mos.free.fr
fleur: http://cl3mos.free.fr/fleur/eng/
untitled : http://clemos.free.fr ( better with IE )
chosen work : http://www.quasar.org
Name: T Wells
Contratv – http://www.contratv.net
Midiatatica.org – http://www.midiatatica.org
Chosen work – http://delete.tv
Name: Annie Abrahams
http://www.bram.org/info
‘painsong’ http://www.bram.org/pain
Chosen work : http://vnatrc.net/YAST/index_html
Name: Patrick Simons
Home: http://www.gloriousninth.com (Collaboration with Kate’ Southworth)
http://www.gloriousninth.com/flaming.html
http://www.gloriousninth.com/who_owns_them_controls.html
Chosen work: http://www.theyrule.net/theyrule.html (the Dick Cheney’ map)
Name: Ryan Griffis
temporary travel office – http://www.yougenics.net/traveloffice
subRational eRuptions (curator + interface)-http://www.turbulence.org/curators/griffis/index.html
Chosen work – Bureau of Inverse Technology’s Kits http://www.bureauit.org/kit/
Name: Ruth Catlow
rethinking wargames – http://www.low-fi.org.uk/rethinkingwargames/
domestic idols – http://www.furtherfield.org/rcatlow/domestic_idols/
Chosen work- Views from the ground floor by Jess Loseby: http://www.viewsfromthegroundfloor.com/
*Name: Phil
*Home – *http://www.medialounge.org
*project -* http://www.love-machine.org
*commercial -*http://www.spill.net
Name: Andi Stamp
Directed and produced: http://www.bbc.co.uk/shootinglive
Member of: http://www.theculturecompany.co.uk
A bit of fun: http://www.artrumour.com/
Name: Ana Carvalho
a long time ago – http://virose.pt/alingua/
and work in progress http://www.iana34.com/tale_about_urban_piracy
Chosen work: http://www.subtle.net/tunnel/
Name: lo_y
current Home – http://lo-y.de.vu
my universe – http://google.com/search?q=lo_y
Chosen work:’ Social Fiction – http://socialfiction.org
*Name: Patrick Lichty
*General – * http://www.voyd.com/voyd
*Subversive -* http://www.theyesmen.org
Chosen Work: US Dept of Art and Technology http://www.usdept-arttech.net/
Maf’j Alvarez Homepage: http://www.mafj.co.uk
Stroke: http://www.sciart.org/partners/1998/98_29.html
Chosen Work- Milkkitten by Tanya Meditzky http://www.milkkitten.com
Mark Cooley
Workhttp://www.war-product-war.com
http://art-design.smsu.edu/cooley
Chosen work(s) Stop Shopping Tour my dads strip club http://www.mydadsstripclub.com/tour.htm
*Name: Joseph and Donna
*Mediated – *http://www.electrichands.com
*Conceptual -* http://www.corporatepa.com
*Chosen work:-‘ The POINT CDC – by various’ *http://www.thepoint.org
Name: Tamar Schori
Oodlala – http://www.oodlala.net
Memolog – http://www.memolog.net
Beadgee – http://www.tamar-schori.net/beadgee/beadgee.html
Chosen work:-‘ Memecodes – by Philipp Lenssen’ http://memecodes.outer-court.com/
Name : Chris Webb
Frequency Love – http://www.furtherfield.org/cwebb/frequency_love/
Screen Moments – http://www.furtherfield.org/cwebb/screenmoments/vsmixes
Chosen Work’ Dennis Cucumber – Remixing the web
http://www.denniscucumber.com/default1.htm
Name: Sim Winter
Home – http://www.soy.de
Colored Thoughts – http://www.soy.de/coloredThoughts/index.php3
Chosen work:-WebTV by Jimpunk – http://544×378.free.fr/(WebTV)/FFFFFF.htm
Name: Marc Garrett
Turmoil – http://www.furtherfield.org/mgarrett/turmoil/
Hardware – http://www.furtherfield.org/mgarrett/hardware/index.htm
(View only in Internet Explorer)
Chosen work:- Box Explorer – by Andy Deck
http://www.artcontext.org/list/art/2002/boxplorer.html
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