Past 16th July, Kunsthalle New in Chicago presented the -one night only- exhibition 'A Small Forest', a presentation curated by Bea Fremderman and Nicholas O' Brien. It included the work of artists Michael Manning, Camilla Padgitt-Coles, Kate Steciw, and myself. The exhibition focused on "delicate landscapes developed and appropriated by artists that have been found and manipulated within the space of the screen..."

"The exhibition's premise is wonderfully illustrated by Michiel van der Zanden’s Painting LargeFlatMap100. This brings up issues of relationality, being, and, of course, aesthetics. At once a joke, a provocation and a mediation, van der Zanden’s piece explores spatiality and visual relations within a virtual world. Make sure to watch until the end and you’ll be rewarded with cacophony." Joel Kuennen - ArtSlant

For more information and images, check www.kunsthallenew.com (Exhibitions -> Past-> A Small Forest)

Beautiful designed and well-playable Flash site by graphic designers Aleksandra and Daniel Mizielińscy. Here you can play 80's LCD games, on-screen, no download needed.

www.pica-pic.com

Look at my earlier post about LCD games too...
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Previous post reminded me of this episode by online cult figure ANGRY VIDEO GAME NERD. This one's about game glitches (errors); a classic in my opinion.

Also check this post.
Angry Video Game Nerd's homepage

New stop-motion video by Rymdreglage: Rymdreglage - Raise your little hand. Kind of a sequel to 8-bit trip.

A lot of the retro/8bit/Lego/pixelation/nostalgia is played out. But it won't get any better than this!

Note the bugged text and low res graphics in some parts.

(c) www.rymdreglage.se

From 16 till 19 August, two of my Machinima-like videos (Pwned Paintings # 1 and # 2), will be shown at PLATINE Festival, (Elektronische Kunst und alternatieve Spielvormen) Cologne, Germany.






Check www.platine-cologne.de

History was made with these entertaining and addictive, beautifully designed artefacts...Electronic handheld games.

"Game & Watch is a line of handheld electronic games produced by Nintendo from 1980 to 1985. Created by game designer Gunpei Yokoi, each Game & Watch features a single game to be played on an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen in addition to a clock and an alarm (thus, 'Game & Watch').
Gunpei Yokoi, traveling on a bullet train, saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time." -Wikipedia


My nostalgia collecting mania was triggered by this book:

Electronic Plastic, 2000. www.handhelden.com

Here you can find some cool G&W emulators (!): www.zophar.net/gw.html,
and this is the most complete handheld database: www.handheldmuseum.com (it's worth its name).
And finally, the blog of a fanatical collector: www.balduin.wordpress.com/category/game-collection.

After days of struggling with The Sims 3™, Sims Create-A-World-Tool, S3PE Package Editor and various editing software, I managed to finish my first version of this video, 'Painting FlatMap100 (The Sims 3)'.

Painting LargeFlatMap100 (The Sims 3), 2010, Digital Video, 4:41 min from Michiel van der Zanden on Vimeo.

My new video, based on traditional landscape paintings. It also shows my painted-over farmhouse model.

Some while ago, I was caught by a romantic landscape painting, which represented a watermill in a picturesque scenery...Because I had just started to work with the digital 3D creation program Blender 3D, I thought it would be a nice idea to re-create a traditional landscape painting: In a digital form, but with using painted parts.
I decided to realize a part of this idea by making a model, typical for the landscape were I'm from: Noord-Brabant. So for a starting point, I took an old “kortgevelboerderij” (farmhouse with a short front: characteristic for this part of The Netherlands). In Blender 3D, I made a simple digital model of it, inspired by traditional landscape paintings. On this model, I put textures, all cut out from pictures of different paintings. This process of 3D-modelling resulted in several ‘rendered’ images.
These images of the digital model were used as sketches, and translated into a real-life model in wood (Thx MU project-team!). The dimensions of it, are about 110 x 120 x 100 (h x l x w) in cm's.
The next step was to paint the model, first with universal primer, and then with acrylic paint plus a 'thickening' medium. Because I also wanted to scale up the brushstrokes, I spent at least 15 liters of this thick paint, applied with big brushes.
(See picture, and June 18th post: Hier & Daar exhibition, MU, Eindhoven and Kop Foundation, Breda).


The photos I made, of my finished, painted farmhouse, I put back on the original digital farmhouse model, in Blender 3D. The rest of the Romantic scenery was also built in Blender, by using different images of paintings I found online. By doing so, I completed my ‘painting’.
Blender 3D is also ideal for making animations and interactive applications. So I showed the different elements in the painting, as single objects. These objects are displayed in a rotating manner, as in a showroom, or on a (market-) stand: The objects slowly rotate 360 degrees, and turn the other way around, into their old position. The video is looped with the intention of being an film equivalent of a painting, which is always a still representation: There’s only one camera position, no start or end.
Also, there’s no sound in the video, the choice to do that, is a conscious one, I didn’t want to add too much ‘effect’ to it. The total silence is strong and present in its own way.

Michiel van der Zanden, 2009

I noticed that a lot of sceneries in Empire Total War (PC-game, 2009), show similarities with 17th century seascape paintings.

Sometimes, when playing a game, you come across bizarre situations. Programming errors, that weren't intended to happen, messing up the game's graphics, physics, or A.I. These errors are called bugs, or glitches. A bug is more like a typical error, like random freezing, or crashes. A glitch is an aspect in-game, that creates unintended gameplay and strange behaviour. This allows you to experience a game in a way, the developers didn't want you to, which can result in very funny situations. Some good examples I found online:

Nexus TV about the Unintended Uses show (12 February - 6 March 2009) at Nexus/ Foundation for today's art, Philadelphia. I participated with my video Pwned Paintings # 2 .

I grew up near the city of Eindhoven, in the south of The Netherlands. It’s one of the bigger Dutch cities, and much of the it’s growth is due to electronics company Philips and Daf trucks.
Philips used to have their own science museum called Evoluon. Back in the 80’s, this was the ultimate school trip. The building was like an UFO /flying saucer which had landed in the city.
The Evoluon as a museum closed down in ’89. But I like this idea of outdated futuristic technology (I love retro stuff). And the Evoluon brings back memories. Also the Evoluon being a museum gives it something extra. So, right now I’m modeling some new stuff based on the Evoluon, in Blender 3D.

I found this pics and video’s online, also check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoluon and http://www.dse.nl/~evoluon

This video participates in the Unintended Uses show at NEXUS Foundation, Philadelphia. Targeted paintings in a museum shoot-out. By doing so, I’m breaking the videogame’s original intention. From the PC game "Mafia" (also see January's post).