A Summer of Video Game Art: Introducing the LAN Party Summer School

Despite being historically undermined by the art world as a medium, video games have always been a rich means through which artists have explored themes of power, politics, identity, romance/longing, and ecology, amongst others. Video games are uniquely positioned as a medium, involving interactivity and affect, gameplay mechanics, immersion, and often (though not always) a rewards system that make artworks made in game engines personal, emotionally resonant and even addictive.

This summer, Benoit (Palop) and I are hosting our very first LAN Party Summer School, a webinar series that focuses on artists and practitioners that integrate video games in their practices. We have invited Alice Bucknell, Side Quest, Chia Amisola and Janne Schimmel to each lead a webinar on a topic of their choosing. We’re interested in providing little spotlights or vignettes onto the works and approaches of these individuals, with the hopes that their experiences can inform and inspire others and shed a light on this very specific digital art form.

The Summer School series covers a range of topics, such as a brief history of video game art, modding and custom hardware, ecology, romance, subjectivity, and performance, and involve of four weekly online sessions via Zoom that consist of 1 hour of lecture/performance, followed by 30 minutes of open discussion.

We hope the programme leads to shared documentation, cross-disciplinary connections, and practical takeaways for artists and researchers. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, we’d love to have you join us!

More information about the programme and the registration link can be found here.

Hope to see you there!

V x