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ARTS TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM AT SERPENTINE
The Serpentine Arts Technologies program challenges and transforms the role that modern technology can play in culture and society through artistic interventions and collaborations. Part of the Serpentine’s commitment to supporting new artistic experimentation, the program initiates and supports artists in the development of ambitious works that use such technologies as medium, instrument or subject, often working beyond the gallery walls. One of the program’s initiatives is Artist Worlds, an experimental commissioned series that uses virtual world building to provide insight into an artist’s practice and expanded worldview. For 2023, Serpentine has collaborated with Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan on a multi-level download program game and an additional blockchain-based project built on the energy-efficient Tezos blockchain. Titled Third World: The Bottom Dimension, the consciousness raising game “rose out of frustration with the centralization of power, knowledge and resources in contemporary Brazil, with inequality, difficulties of access and navigation particularly concentrated for blacks and indigenous peoples,” Eva Jäger, Curator of Arts Technologies and Co-Researcher at the Creative AI Lab at the Serpentine and King’s College London, tells designboom.
On 25 November 2022, Serpentine Arts Technologies will also launch the third edition of Future Art Ecosystems (FAE), the annual strategic briefing by and for the cultural sector. Launched in 2020, the initiative provides concepts, references, language and arguments that can be integrated into operational programs to build 21st century cultural infrastructure. The third edition, entitled Building Hybrid Worlds, focuses on emerging Web3 technologies and their implications for practitioners, organizations, funders and policy makers. ‘Through a series of interviews with art specialists, Web3, cryptoDWeb, Innovation Policy and Civil Society, FAE3 formulates a series of forward-looking strategies for existing and new cultural organizations interested in Art and Advanced Technology (AxAT) and the role of the latter in supporting sustainable democratic societies, Hunter explains. To learn more about Future Art Ecosystems, Artist Worlds and the Serpentine Arts Technologies program, read our full interview below.
Artist Worlds 2023: Third World: The Bottom Dimension, image courtesy of Gabriel Massan, 2022.
INTERVIEW WITH CURATOR Eva Jager ABOUT The Worlds of Artists
designboom (DB): What is the purpose of Artist Worlds commissions?
Eva Jaeger (EJ): Artist Worlds is an ongoing series of commissions and live events that support artistic practices that engage with simulated realities, immersive storytelling and virtual world building. The projects invite audiences into new virtual worlds built by artists to explore and discover their practices, processes and ideas. Since 2013, through our commissioning program we have been working with artists (including Ian Cheng, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Trust and Jakob Kudsk Steensen) who use CGI and simulation technologies as game engines to develop expansive, interactive and complex projects and we have seen this acceptance and experimentation grow during this time, especially since the pandemic and the growth of the video game player base in different demographics of society. Artist Worlds is committed to supporting artistic experimentation in this field while supporting open collaboration with our audience and hopefully eventually reaching the point of co-creation.
Gabriel Massan’s Consciousness-Raising Game “Third World”
DB: How did the collaboration with Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan begin?
EG: Gabriel was asking many of the same questions we were about the possibilities of decentralization and interdependence. As a multidisciplinary digital artist, they see their practice as a process of creating decentralized life forms and ecosystems designed to subvert the spatial, social and socio-economic stratifications of colonialism and its reflections. We had many studio visits during the commissioning process, but in the end it was clear that it had to be Gabriel. Their commission Artist Worlds, a video game called Third World, arose out of frustration with the centralization of power, knowledge and resources in contemporary Brazil, with inequality, difficulties of access and navigation particularly concentrated for black and indigenous peoples. The collaboration began with a period of research and development to develop the game proposal, which allowed for exploration of game design, critical theory such as Saidiya Hartmaan’s practice of ‘Critical Fabulation’, and consulting sessions with practitioners such as narrative designer Meghna Jayanth, as through all the while refining the project’s core questions and intent. Leveraged by Tezos, Third World’s Web3 strategy will expand the game’s reach into online player communities by building an active and ongoing archive of gameplay.
Third World preview, courtesy of Gabriel Massan
DB: Massan describes The Third World as a “consciousness-raising game” — could you explain what the game is about and how it focuses on raising players’ awareness?
EG: As a player in the Third World, you must navigate through a disorienting environment; where night turns to day in the blink of an eye and there is no map to be found. As you explore the world, you find collectible lore artifacts that fill your memory as you play. As these artifacts are collected, they unlock parts of the game’s evolving narrative and discourse, which unfolds through in-game movies. The artifacts themselves were designed together with some of the artists featured in the games and bring insights and knowledge from their own practices related to the principles and issues of transmutation, healing (cura), interspecies spirituality and origins (Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro), pollution, resource extraction and environmental mismanagement (Novisimo Edgar).
From the beginning, Gabriel wanted to find a way to reveal and share stories of lived experience without reproducing the same images or distinguishing systems in the process. This desire has led not only to a decentralized and more abstract approach to performance, but also to an exploration of how games themselves can change power relations, bringing to the surface knowledge and possibilities distant from colonial design and intent, and how they can generate real-world value for players.
One of the game’s key features is the built-in photo/video capture mode, which activates custom distortion filters as the player navigates the environment, and which ties into the game’s accompanying Web3 strategy. When the capture mode is activated, the game view switches to a first-person view, which allows the player to access two different types of cameras, a super sensitive one with skewed axis angles (45 degrees skewed) that allows free movement around the player and selfie cam (gopro style camera on top of characters head). It prompts the player to save game moments as cut memories; seen as personal symbols of understanding and intention made possible by going through the game. The project plays the role of memory, embracing the creation and preservation of experience as a form of empowerment to aid navigation; an integral part of how the player learns an awareness of the wider world that supports (rather than destroys) development, growth and evolution.
Gabriel Massan’s Third World: The Bottom Dimension will launch in February 2023 online via Steam and on-site at the Serpentine, furthering Serpentine’s commitment to gaming projects.
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