The Slamdance showcase DIG (Digital, Interactive & Gaming) returns to Los Angeles in December at Big Pictures Los Angeles, and will feature new and unseen works by emerging visual artists and indie game developers from around the world. The works cover a range of topics, including: motherhood, vagrancy, at-risk social interactions, conspicuous consumption, psychic breakdowns, multiversal dominance, mediated oblivion, and hopes for human transcendance.
"DIG is resolved to be a human showcase. Existing between missed opportunities and digital delusion, it is exactly as troubling, hilarious, and NSFW as it needs to be," says Slamdance Special Projects Manager Deron Williams, "DIG artists create brazenly human work despite their place in a post-ironic marketing doomscape where lateral connections are a liability, peripheral ideas are contraband, and galvanizing artists are treated like prisoners of war. As the body of analog communication is left to rot in the desert, DIG artists deconstruct the informational self-indulgence that has replaced it with ruthless and unabashed sincerity."
DIG is dedicated to spotlighting new, independent artists working in hybrid, immersive, and emerging forms of digital media art. Projects emphasize touch, personal visual perspective, innovative connections between space and movement, and finding sense in uncertainty. The showcase is curated by: Slamdance Special Projects Manager Deron Williams; President and co-founder of Slamdance Peter Baxter; artist, curator, and operator of Big Pictures Los Angeles Doug Crocco; and film & game development team Seemingly Pointless (James Earl Cox III & Joe Cox).
"The Slamdance DIG showcase embraces the personal, honest, and DIY creations of artists crafting interactive and new media," says curator James Earl Cox III. "Embodying works that reflect a tapestry of genres, portray a variety of meanings, and were created using disparate tools, they all push the boundaries of what one could expect of them. They embrace the rawness that comes from dissecting a medium or rejecting it fully. We’re excited to share these works with the LA public for free, and we hope they broaden audiences’ opinions about what games and interactivity could be."
DIG, hosted by Big Pictures Los Angeles (Address: 2424 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018), opens December 1, 2017 and will close on December 8, 2017. Admission is free and open to the public.
This year’s program features:
Brief Excursion by Aaron Oldenburg
The player wanders a dynamically-generated environment where elements of nature are visually and behaviorally altered based on their brain’s gamma wave readings from a hacked MindSky neural headset. Gamma waves are thought to be responsible for the brain’s unity of conscious perception, or "binding," the brain’s interpretation of individual parts as a coherent object. While attempting to guide the experience through their thoughts, the player explores an experience created through the often uncontrollable behavior of their brain.
BVOVB: Bruising Vengeance of the Vintage Boxer by Michal Rostocki
Your glory days as a boxer are long gone. Once a champ, now a bum. All you care about is beer and your dog - Max the Rottweiler. Unfortunately your faithful dog has been stolen and you must get him back and punish the ones responsible.
The game is inspired by classic arcade brawlers (Double Dragon, Final Fight) with many enemies, some boss fights and a simple storyline. All in the style of old silent movies with a ragtime themed soundtrack. Both characters and backgrounds are based on original black-and-white photos from the ‘20s and ‘30s.
Dujanah by Jack King-Spooner
Dujanah is a work about; communities, the danger of anonymity, cultural appropriation, intervention, aphorisms, pregnancy and parenthood, coping with mortality, erectile dysfunction, vegetarian gelatine, how my granddad would kick dogs, why your girlfriend hates you, the current rulers are our collective hallucinations, we are all cowards even though we like to think otherwise, the double harmonic scale, funny surprises, why we need to first consider the costume if we make a dance, women, oil, consciousness, shooting baddies BANG BANG, the form of writing, death of the author, mise en abyme.
Everything Is Going To Be OK by alienmelon (Nathalie Lawhead)
Everything Is Going To Be OK is a collection of life experiences. It is an interactive zine exploring alternative views of power from a survivor's standpoint, and is a commentary on struggle. The focus is largely on bringing humor into "dark times". It offers different perspectives on what it means to live with things like PTSD. The underlying theme is that you are normal for your imperfections, and the way you cope. You are the hero in the story of your life, and you have every right to be proud. Artist’s goal is to strip the shame out of talking about things like this.
F.L.O.W. (Future Ladies of Wrestling) by Jennifer Juniper Stratford of Telefantasy Studios
Future Ladies of Wrestling AKA F.L.O.W. is a no holds barred multimedia extravaganza in which the wildest interspecies wrestlers battle for the title of Ultimate Multiversal Warrior! Starring the multiverse's greatest wrestlers, CANDY PAIN, CHEMTRAILS, LISA 5000, DIVA COLADA, VALIBU TINA, HARDCORE TINA MACHINE, ERUPTIA, CYCLONA & FLESH EATING CORPULOUS
Laser Non Laser by Jeanette Bonds of GLAS Animation
Laser Non Laser is an illusory and encapsulating experience in which animated light is projected through fog simulating laser beams in the direction of a viewer to retro-space electronic music. The piece is to be seen from a specific vantage point in the space in which it occupies. At this spot the viewers are confronted by choreographed green light beams that encapsulate the entire body and close in on the head, giving the spectator the illusion that the light beams, as seemingly solid objects, will collide with the body.
Nour by Terrifying Jellyfish (aka TJ Hughes)
In a post-soylent world, we tend to forget how much of a luxury food is. Nour is an experimental food art game with no goals or objectives, just have fun while you play with your food as if you're a kid again. Mash buttons at will to interact with various foods in curious and unconventional ways.
Semblance by Nyamakop (Cukia Kimani and Ben Myres)
Semblance is a postmodern riff on the genre of ‘platformers’ popularised famously by the Mario games. The work takes the fundamental assumption of a ‘platform’ in the genre and turns it on its head. What if platforms were part of the gameplay, part of the way a player solved problems?
Can’t reach something? Just deform the ground up so you can jump from a higher point. Spikes in the way? Push the ground lower so you can pass by. Semblance presents a pastiche of classic platforming problems & puzzles that players must now overcome in lateral and fresh ways.
Sundays with Absalon by John Vanderhoef
Sundays with Absalon is a short narrative game about Adelaide, a mother who struggles with feelings of self-doubt and depression. The game takes place over the course of a Sunday, as the clock ticks away toward the time when Absalon's father, who has primary custody of Absalon, comes to pick him up. How do we find value in ourselves, not only in our role as parents, but as individuals? If our children provide us with new reasons to live, what happens when they don't live with us?
Super Void by Sam Weiss (Shnabubula) and John Donohue Bell (Lazy Brain Games)
You must navigate the tenuous reality of Super Void while solving puzzles and battling hallucinations in this game-as-musical-interpretation of the track of the same name by Shnabubula. Taking inspiration from William Burroughs' "Cut Up" technique and the surrealist art movement, stage sequences and music are "cut up" to create an abstract and non-linear gameplay experience. Delivered in a 16-color retro aesthetic, Super Void explores visual storytelling concepts layered on top of shifting "void liquid" environments to create a unique and ethereal interactive experience.
The Game: The Game by Angela Washko
The Game: The Game is a video game presenting the practices of several prominent seduction coaches (aka pick-up artists) through the format of a dating simulator. In the game these pick-up gurus attempt to seduce the player using their signature techniques taken verbatim from their instructional books and video materials. The game sets up the opportunity for players to explore the complexity of the construction of social behaviors around dating as well as the experience of being a femme-presenting individual navigating this complicated terrain. The video game features infamous seduction coaches Julian Blanc and Tyler Durden (Real Social Dynamics), Roosh V, Ross Jeffries, Neil Strauss and Mystery.
Washko hopes to add levels of complexity to public conversations around both pick-up and feminism which have both found themselves most often presented in highly polarized, dichotomous positions in mainstream media.
The Game: The Game is accompanied by a musical score thoughtfully composed by Xiu Xiu.
ULTRA ADHD (Amazing Death and Huge Destruction) by Alon "DancingEngie" Karmi.
Ultra ADHD (Amazing Death and Huge Destruction) is a video game taking place in a land without name. After an evil God brings forth the end of the world, it is up for a prophesized hero (that’s you, by the way) to save the day. However, nothing is what it seems…
Developed in about 2 months by a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing, this short and unabashedly nonsensical game is chock-full of twists, colorful characters, explicit language, playstyles, parodies, obscure Israeli references, and conversations that drag on for too long.
For more information on DIG, please visit: http://showcase.slamdance.com/DIG.
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DIG EVENT LISTING:
Interactive/digital media programming presented by Slamdance, and hosted by Big Pictures Los Angeles. Experience hybrid, immersive, and emerging forms of digital media art. Admission is free and open to the public.
@ Big Pictures Los Angeles
Address: 2424 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90018
Phone: (323) 800-7670
December 1-3 & 8, 2017
6pm - 9pm
ABOUT SLAMDANCE:
Slamdance is a community, a year-round experience, and a statement. Established in 1995 by a wild bunch of filmmakers who were tired of relying on a large, oblique system to showcase their work, Slamdance has proven, year after year, that when it comes to recognizing talent and launching careers, independent and grassroots communities can do it themselves.
Slamdance alums are responsible for the programming and organization of the festival. With a variety of backgrounds, interests, and talents, but with no individual filmmaker’s vote meaning more than any others, Slamdance’s programming and organizing committees have been able to stay close to the heart of low budget and do-it-yourself filmmaking. In this way, Slamdance continues to grow and exemplify its mantra: By Filmmakers, For Filmmakers.
Facebook: SlamdanceFilmFestival
Twitter: @slamdance
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