#latitude53

Artist Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo constructed this sawdust floor tapestry on July 28, 2017 at Latitude 53. This video captures gallery visitors interactions with the tapestry at the exhibition opening and artist talk on July 29th.

For designer/developer Kelsey Prud’homme working in an interdisciplinary setting is almost second nature. With a foot in the door of both the fine art world and the technical realm of game development, her latest project Game Start – which just finished its run at Latitude 53’s ProjEX gallery space – brings together a group of 25 creators who collaborated to bridge the gap between technical communities and visual arts practices in Edmonton.

Game Start features six games created by different interdisciplinary teams that blur the edges between what we traditionally view as art and gaming culture. All of the games are purposely designed not to focus on achieving a specific goal, but rather utilize the unique staging as a way of providing a disarming vehicle for self-reflection and introspection.  

The exhibition consists of: Idiosyncrasy, a play on a Buzzfeed style quiz where the user answers questions based on what they feel best represents them, resulting in a one-of-a-kind takeaway art piece printed for them;  Mandala, a meditative game where the player creates their own mandala from images of watercolour plants according to their perceptions of beauty;  Miscommunications, a dual player game where each individual is given a set of opposing goals without knowing the other’s objectives are different; Produce Panic, a Dance Dance Revolution inspired rhythm game where the built-in no-win narrative directly opposes the bright and happy visuals; Robot Petting Zoo that explores the human tendency to attach a persona and feelings to inanimate objects; and The Box, a virtual reality game that provides an out of body experience and forces the viewers to question the reality of the encounter.

In Prud’homme’s opinion, a lot of the works in this collective could not really exist outside of a gallery setting, based of their physical nature, which she thinks really appealed to the gallery programmer at Latitude 53. “The games are all rather open ended, allowing viewers to search for deeper meaning in what they are experiencing,” says Prud’homme. “The users are required to interact directly with the work to find meaning. The process requires more conversation between creator, work, and viewer than more traditional fine art pieces that are primarily passive in consumption.”

For example, in The Box, the virtual reality environment gives the viewers an out of body experience that toys with the idea of an experience – although mediated – as something that is or isn’t real. “A lot of people are quick to write off their experiences as not real. But no, the things you feel and do online are real experiences, they are just mediated by a different thing,” explains Prud’homme. “You don’t read a book and think about the emotions you have as being fake. The emotions you feel are real.”

There are many philosophical questions explored in the exhibition, but it also serves a broader purpose of expanding definitions of what a game can be, along with promoting a stronger connection between current technology and contemporary art. When the exhibition first opened, many of the attendees were friends of the developers, and the show served as their first introduction to a “typical” art experience. “A lot of people came up to me and told me they had never seen games treated so seriously as art before. It’s something they had never encountered in Edmonton, or anywhere else,” recalls Prud’homme.      

Prud’homme welcomed the opportunity to bring two separate but equally innovative communities together to create something that would engage multiple senses – from the beautiful and unique design work from the designers, to the sound design that added new and often juxtaposing layers of meaning, to the carefully crafted games made a reality by the highly skilled developers. “A lot of artists I know, and developers I know are scared of the other half,” says Prud’homme. “Artists say “I can’t use technology, and computers are hard”. And on the other side, developers say “I’m not an idea person”. Code is creative work. You have to know how to solve these problems and make solutions that are good and work well. And artists can learn technical skills.”

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This is Our Land: Tarzan & Arab at Latitude 53, Edmonton, Jan 10 to Feb 15

This is Our Land: Tarzan & Arab January 10–February 15 in the ProjEx Room Curated by Kelty Pelechytik Opening Reception: Friday, January 10 at 7:00 pm, featuring Paul Fischer’s documentary film TARZAN & ARAB. Tarzan & Arab, AKA twins Ahmed & Mohamed Abu Nasser, are painters & filmmakers from Gaza now living as refugees in Jordan. They [&hellip

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