BOOK: MACHINIMA. 32 CONVERSATIONS ON THE ART OF VIDEOGAMES

I'm thrilled to announce the release of MACHINIMA. 32 conversazioni sull'arte del videogioco, a new book featuring interviews with international artists using video games to make art. MACHINIMA. 32 conversazioni sull'arte del videogioco expands, in print form, both the exhibition GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY, curated by Vincenzo Trione and I in 2016 at IULM University, in Milan, Italy, and the official catalog, released by Silvana Editoriale in June 2016.  The vast majority of the conversations with the artists featured in the show were produced by the students enrolled in the M.A. in Arts, Cultural Heritage and Markets Program at IULM. As such MACHINIMA. 32 conversazioni sull'arte del videogioco is a collective, interdisciplinary project connecting art criticism, media studies, and new media. Topics discussed range from the practice of appropriating games for making art to the artists' approaches to the medium, providing scholars, critics, and artists a set of invaluable resources to better grasp the meaning and practice of machinima.

Published by Concrete Press, the book is available in Italian on Amazon US, Amazon Italy and Blurb.

Here's a short preview and here's the book's teaser:

MACHINIMA. 32 Conversazioni sull’arte del videogioco
Edited by Matteo Bittanti
Release date: March 08, 2017
Features: Softcover, 158 pages, black and white
Format: 15×23 cm, 6×9 inches
ISBN: 9781366258540
Language: Italian
Price: $15.99

Featured artists:

Larry Achiampong, Rewell Altunaga, Hugo Arcier, Marta Azparren, Benjamin Bardou, Ashley Blackman, David Blandy, Josh Bricker, Joseph Delappe, Claire Evans, Harun Farocki, Foci + Loci, Anita Fontaine, Chris Howlett, Ip Yuk–Yiu, Hui Wai–Keung, Kent Lambert, Lawrence Lek, Les Riches Douaniers, Miltos Manetas, Marco Mendeni, Victor Morales, Oscar Nodal, Baden Pailthorpe, Paolo Pedercini, Tom Richardson, Philip Solomon, Kent Sheely, Georgie Roxby Smith, Palle Torsson, Michiel Van Der Zanden, Angela Washko, Brent Watanabe.

LINK: Concrete Press

HOW TO GET RID OF HOMELESS

On January 8, 2015 CONCRETE PRESS released my new book(s): How to get rid of homeless.

A 600-page epic split in two volumes documenting the so-called “homeless scandal” that affected the newly released game SimCity (Maxis/Electronic Arts, 2013), How to get rid of homeless reproduces dozens of threads concerning “homelessness” that appeared in Electronic Arts’ online forum between 2012 and 2013.

I have collected, selected, and transcribed thousands of messages exchanged by the forum members who first experienced, and then tried to “eradicate”, the phenomenon of homelessness that “plagued” SimCity. From surprise to despair, from shock to resignation, these posts highlight the pitfalls of simulation, the not-so-subtle effects of ideology on game design, and the interplay between play and society, politics and entertainment.

Decontextualized from their original source and reproduced on paper sans the majority of online communication hallmarks (e.g. author’s signatures, side banners, avatar pictures etc.), these textual exchanges create a peculiar narrative. Some of the dialogues’ absurdist tones evoke Ionesco’s plays. Others reveal racist and classist biases, and forcefully introduce - or, rather, reintroduce - a highly political vision that the alleged “neutral” algorithms were supposed to overcome.

So what is How to get rid of homeless, exactly?

It is an act of defamiliarization: the original content is reproduced in a different context. Thus, the forum has been deterritorialized. It is a gesture of reblogging/retweeting/reposting digital content in a physical space.

How to get rid of homeless confers materiality (and thus “weight”) to the ephemerality of online conversations, where editing is a fluid, ongoing activity and can be performed almost in “real-time”. Print adheres to different temporalities and protocols.

How to get rid of homeless is an act of reframing: it gives the original text new shape and meaning by virtue of a novel context. Reproduced on paper, these posts challenge some of the fundamental assumptions about the form and content of the book.

As an edited reproduction of an archive, How to get rid of homeless clearly communicates its self-referential character. As an archive of an archive, How to get rid of homeless is a collection of previously assembled data. The book format is assertive: it attributes value and relevance to content normally deemed trivial and irrelevant.

As How to get rid of homeless appropriates and re-presents a collection of presences (the authors’ statements), but also of absences (e.g. missing images that have disappeared from their respective online archives), the book can be read as a meditation on the writing process itself in the age of digital media.

How to get rid of homeless is available on Amazon in a limited edition of 99.

volume 1

volume 2

Here is the full table of contents in ADD-friendly format (that is, video).

And a critical "text" that provides contextual information (also in ADD-friendly format).