Tom Richardson Report

Links

two men with pigeon

The Author

The King is Dead

Enduring Freedom

(presentation removed as it only contained images from his new project that he asked not be shared online)

Still from 'Two Men with Pigeon'

Presentation Summary:

Richardson went to Emily Carr University in Vancouver where he received a BFA in Film, Video, and Integrated Media. He now lives and works in Vancouver. In general, he uses different mediums for his works, depending on what he thinks would fit best, but this focuses on his work using video games. He thought of games as primarily political material and sort of ran with that, though he has said that not all of his work is political and sometimes is just experimental or narrative. One of the reasons he uses games is because he doesn't like telling people (actors) what to do. With games, he can set everything up and let it go. With games as political material, he also became interested in their underlying politics (like the fact that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive started becoming hugely popular around the time of the start of War on Terror). Video games offer an opportunity to do what cannot be done in real life. Most of his work has fairly subtle meanings, though obviously some are more overt. In this work involving games and their engines, I would consider him a sort of game artist (though he does other work, and he calls himself interdisciplinary). Work like this is important because it gives people a way to show their ideas that they might not have an opportunity to show otherwise. Related, he uses Machinima often and he sees it as a an important democratic tool as a medium.

Questions and Answers from the Artist:

1) Was there any moment in particular that led you to start using video games in your work?

I remember seeing old Halo machinimas circa mid 2000’s and being interested in the potential to create art using a game engine. Initially I was disappointed with the abundance of fan art that failed to go further than gamer rhetoric and inside-jokes. For me machinima seemed like it could be an emancipatory medium, much like the early video art and guerilla TV movements that encompassed many female artists and marginalized groups. This potential was realized fairly quickly as exemplified by works such as Peggy Ahwesh’s She Puppet (2001) or Jacqueline Goss’ Stranger Come To Town(2007). Both these works explore identity in different ways. They use a détournement by highjacking each of their respective videogames (Tomb Raider and World of Warcraft) that reveals a truth about the original source, but more importantly use this moment to illustrate a larger narrative.

But for me the most significant use of machinima of all time goes to Harun Farocki’s Serious Games I-IV (2009-10). This four-channel installation reveals how videogames are used in both the pre-combat training and post-traumatic stress treatment by the US military. Through his vast experience as an avant-garde filmmaker, Farocki works with both in-game and live action footage of the soldiers in a way that blurs between reality and simulation. It is a fantastic example of Baudrillard’s simulacrum; the game no longer simulates violence – at its core the two are inseparable.

But to more specifically answer you question, I finally came to working with video games in 2013. I made a work titled 3301 that was made by constructing 3D environments out of 2D images, and animating the camera through these 2.5 dimensional planes (https://vimeo.com/82168876). This work drew from research enacted into Cicada 3301, a series of annual puzzles set out to the world’s top cryptographers under the guise of some form of recruitment process. For the same exhibition I decided to create a work using a videogame, which is titled Adagio (https://vimeo.com/87508037). The goal of this artwork was to setup a system that would both exploit and explore the simple AI programming coded into inanimate objects in a videogame environment. In the work two large wooden bowls are shown interlocked and rotating under the force of them trying to separate themselves, eventually this force causes one of the bowls to explode under the pressure. The work also instigates ideas of viewership and gaze through the staging and implementation of lighting.

After this rather simplistic exploration of form and AI I became more interested with the inherent symbolism videogames carry, much like how a postmodern sculptor may be concerned with the politics certain materials pertain to. Simply put videogames are alluring because they both offer us an idealized image of the world and are realms of infinite possibility. I found myself questioning why I was attracted to this as a material, and what ideologies these games inherently carry. I became especially fascinated with how many games especially FPS represent the theatre of war devoid of global politics, this is manifested in recent works such as The Day After Bataclan , and Enduring Freedom, (both works 2015) (https://vimeo.com/148448904 &https://vimeo.com/123501676)

2) Has your use of political themes in video games affected or changed how you work or your work itself?

This is a tricky question to answer. I long been interested in politics in my practice, but not all of my artistic production is political, I often explore ideas of narrative, mythology, technology etc. I think I saw in videogames a sort of readymade material that is inherently political, and this could be harnessed as symbolism to create politicized messages that are legible to a viewer with some knowledge of the medium.

I realized recently that I have been experimenting with different forms of animation for nearly 10 years, ranging from simple hand drawn animations, to machinima works and more sophisticated 3D animations. Currently I am working on a short film that I envision to be presented with sculpture as an installation that harnesses a game engine for the animation component but I am also working with software such as Maya to lend more precision to the piece. The final work will be cinematic in scale and rendered at 4K resolution. This work continues in a more political direction of research and is titled Rehearsals for a Synthetic Theatre, I will paste a short artist statement I previously wrote about this work in progress and also include a couple of prototype images that you can show the class. I trust that you understand that at this stage this work is still in progress so I would ask that you don’t share the images over the internet but I am happy with you showing the class if it works for you presentation.

Here is a little statement about what I am making:

“Tom Richardson employs various animation and digital production protocols in his artistic practice in an attempt to understand the world. Unpacking discourses around simulation and photopolitics, Richardson proposes that contemporary existence is one of alienation and the oversaturation of data. This research is often explored via figurative motifs that don narrative potentials found within cinematic and videogame conventions. Richardson’s work has taken on the mediums of video, installation, sound, and sculpture. 

Rehearsals for a Synthetic Theatre follows the spirit of this trajectory. Animated in Unreal Engine a game engine recently acquired by the US military for training and AI development, the narrative follows a profane yet fragile protagonist as he solipsistically traverses a desert. As he trudges through implied eternity, the roster of allegorical imagery that is found along his journey goes beyond the announcements of the seemingly omniscient narrator. Experimenting with cinematic continuity, the work situates narrative motion through speech, camera movement and the story’s subjects in a video loop divided into multiple acts. Alongside this, Richardson is producing a film score that investigates strategies of suspense in compositional music.”

3) What do you think is the role of machinima in the future of art?

Being an interdisciplinary artist I try not to think in medium specific terms. I don’t know if it’s realistic to think of machnima becoming the next video art or cinema. Especially as the technologies keep becoming more sophisticated. Rather I see machinima increasingly becoming a tool that is used alongside other animation practices or even being used for its AI potentials.

Late last year SoarTech, a major US military contract partnered with Epic Games, giving them rights and access to use Unreal Engine for the training of troops and in AI research/development. This alone shows that videogame technology is expanding vastly out of its original field. As intimidating this information is I find it inspiring given the previous nature of more crude works of mine such as Enduring Freedom. This is also one of the main reasons I have turned to using Unreal Engine for the production of Rehearsals for a Synthetic Theatre.