Art & Video Games: A Look at how Video Games are Breaking Free

Anyone who's spent a few frustrated hours playing Flappy Bird knows that video games have been rapidly evolving and diversifying over the past two decades, aided in part by the diminishing costs of development and distribution. These falling costs have helped usher in a new wave of creativity in video games, allowing artists and developers to experiment more with video games as a diverse artistic medium. Full-body motion tracking and control, immersive virtual reality headsets, touch screens, open-source software libraries and inexpensive, hackable hardware have given artists and developers a broader canvas than ever before.

This meetup will explore the unique ways that artists, developers, universities, museums, and galleries have been: creating new forms of physical input and feedback, interrogating the traditional paradigms of play mechanics, locating universities as sites of study and creation of games as emergent, multi-disciplinary art forms, defining criteria for the exhibition and inclusion in gallery and museum space, and even pushing the boundaries of what type of electronic games qualify as "video" games.

Schedule:

7:00pm – Doors

7:30-8:30pm – Presentations and question-and-answer session

8:30-10:00pm – Conversation continues over wine & snacks

Speakers:

Jamin Warren (http://killscreendaily.com/) is the founder of the arts and culture company Kill Screen. Formerly a culture reporter for the Wall Street Journal, Jamin has been a vocal advocate for games as culture and serves as an advisor to MoMA's department of Architecture and Design. Jamin hosts also PBS's Game/Show and his thoughts on games and digital culture have been featured in the New Yorker, New York Times, Paris Review and others. Jamin is also a frequent contributor to NPR, and has spoken at SXSW, Tribeca Interactive, XOXO, and more.

Phoenix Perry (http://phoenixperry.com/) focuses on embodied games and user experiences. As an adjunct Professor at NYU she teaches game development and design, visual design and web development. From digital arts practitioner to Creative Director, she has extensive experience in new media, design, and user interfaces. A consummate advocate for women in game development, her speaking engagements include GDC, The Open Hardware Summit at MIT, Indiecade, Comic Con, Internet Week, Create Tech and NYU Game Center among others. Perry's creative work spans a large range of disciplines including drawing, generative art, video, games, interfaces and sound. Her projects have been seen worldwide at venues and festivals including the GDC, E3, Come out and Play, Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science, Lincoln Center, Transmediale, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, LAMCA, Harvest Works, Babycastles, European Media Arts Festival, GenArt, Seoul Film Festival and Harvestworks. In 2011 she co-authored the book, Meet the Kinect with Sean Kean and Johnathan Hall. Finally, she has curated since 1996 in a range of cultural venues, the most recent of which is her own gallery, Devotion Gallery until 2014. Devotion was a Williamsburg gallery focused on the intersection of art, science, new media, and design.

Jason Eppink (http://jasoneppink.com/) creates interactive experiences, curates events and exhibitions, and throws raging art parties as the Associate Curator of Digital Media at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City. When he's not doing that, Jason Eppink engages in public space magic, open source scheming, moving image mischief, photon reappropriation, and linguistic subterfuge. Good Magazine proclaimed him one of the top 100 most important, exciting, and innovative people making our world better and changing the way we live. Jason also corrupts young minds as an
adjunct professor at New York University, where he teaches students how
to make animated GIFs and video games under the auspices of art.

Kaho Abe (http://kahoabe.net/) is a NYC-based game designer and media artist interested in improving social and personal experiences through the use of technology, fashion, and games. Kaho is currently the Artist-in-Residence at the NYU Game Innovation Lab where she develops games with custom controllers with the goal of fostering more face-to-face interaction during play. An important part of her practice is sharing her work, methodologies, and techniques with youth and adults through teaching classes, workshops, and afterschool programs on designing and building alternative physical-game controllers. She is an Educational Fellow at Eyebeam where she co-hosts a monthly play-testing event with Come Out and Play.

Kunal Gupta (http://babycastles.com/) is one of several founders and a co-director of the Silent Barn, an all-ages studio, residency, and event space in Brooklyn. He is also founder and director of Babycastles since 2009, an art games movement in New York City with exhibitions at the Museum of Natural History, La Gaite Lyrique, Museum of Art & Design, Telfair Museums, Science Gallery, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of the Moving Image, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Clocktower Gallery, and SFMOMA.