Opening Friday: ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo @ Des Lee Gallery

This Friday, the 1st, at Des Lee Gallery in St. Louis, MO is the opening of a new art exhibition titled ad hoc, ad loc and quid pro quo. The show features work by Dan Solberg, Gina Grafos, and several other recent graduates of the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts. An opening reception will be held this Friday from 6-9pm. For full details on the exhibition, view the official press release.

Interview at Other People's Pixels

The good folks over at Other People's Pixels (the web-hosting/template service for artists that I use for dansolberg.com) recently did an interview with me for their blog.  They asked me questions about my practice and the ideas behind some of my more recent pieces, and I, well, answered them.  New work out of my recently established Brooklyn studio is soon to follow, so check back soon!

Link to the interview: http://blog.otherpeoplespixels.com/otherpeoplespixels-interviews-dan-solberg

Recap: Soundplay Game Jam

Last night at the New Museum, Pitchfork and Kill Screen teamed up to offer an evening of free drinks, video games, and music.  The main impetus for the get together was an extension of the Soundplay project that commissions indie game talent to craft interactive experiences based on songs from indie musicians.  Yes, the whole thing was pretty "indie," but that's not a bad thing.  This particular event was structured around a game jam that happened over the two days prior.  Four teams had 48 hours to produce games based off of music from the band Passion Pit's new album Gossamer.  The night of the party was a chance for attendees to play all of the Soundplay titles, including the ones made during the jam, while also taking in a live performance by Chromatics and a DJ set by Oneohtrix Point Never.  Since you're the sort of person who would read a blog entry like this, that billing should all sound pretty great.

Neon sign at the entrance was a nice touch.

 I sat down to play all of the game jam titles, and though all four mostly matched the upbeat, candy-colored vibe of the band, each took markedly different gameplay approaches to the source material.  In the first one I played, you control some Katamari-looking dudes and press the spacebar to juggle approaching objects.  Higher scores are awarded for the more objects you keep off the ground until certain checkpoints in the song.  The next game had a flowery, psychedelic setting with a figure on a tightrope that walks towards you as you toggle the "left" and "right" keys for balance.  If you fall off, the song stops and you must start over.  Beside that game was one that told the story of a sad bunny that you cover with candy to make happy again.  Shelves of sweets are on both sides of the stationary rabbit, and you drag and drop them into place.  The candy blocks have physics programmed into them, so making a perfect stack that doesn't tip over was quite the challenge.  Music played in the background, but at climax points of the song, a quake strikes and probably undoes all your hard work.  Lastly, the fourth game was a forced-scrolling don't-hit-the-walls navigation exercise that seemed like it was supposed to be incorporating video from the computer's webcam in the background, but it wasn't working when I played it.

Attendees getting their hands on the Jam games, plus previous Soundplay entries.

While tonally these games kept in line with the vibe of Passion Pit music, they seemed more inclined to simply take inspiration from the music than to really incorporate it as a part of the mechanics.  The notion of games as promotional material for music in the vein of music videos is a concept in its early stages.  Should these games be "music games" as we understand them?  They could take inspiration from the likes of Guitar Hero and Rock Band and challenge players to replicate the songs they hear.  They could draw from Dance Dance Revolution and Dance Central and co-opt body movements that correspond to beats.  Recently, Soundshapes has further evolved concepts born out of games like Rez where playing a more traditional genre game, such as a platformer or shooter, generates music just by going about as usual.  But we're talking about game jam games here, and design docs that can be written and delivered quickly and completely are paramount.  I did really like it when the music triggered screen-shake in the rabbit game though.

Chromatics performing live

Nothing against the games, but I got the feeling from the crowd that the Chromatics performance was probably the main draw for most.  I can't really ague with that sentiment either since Johnny Jewel et al put on a moody, energetic show.  Readers of this blog can look forward to me gushing about Kill For Love come year-end list time as it's definitely one of the best albums of 2012.  I didn't stay for too much of Oneohtrix Point Never's set up on the gorgeous 7th floor sky view terrace, but stuck around long enough to hear "Ghost City" mixed into some hardcore Goa trance, which was pretty amazing.  The only thing that would have made the event better would have been the New Museum opening access to its Ghosts in the Machine exhibition, which would have been a nice pairing with all the games and electronic music happenings.

I'm told the game jam games will be available to play online hopefully by the end of the month along with a short documentary about their development process.  I'll be writing an in-depth piece on the existing Soundplay games in the near future.

:images 1 & 2 taken by me; Chromatics pic by Eriz Avissar for Pitchfork:

Opening Saturday: Solberg / Tonski @ ROYGBIV

This Saturday the 7th at ROYGBIV in Columbus, Ohio is the opening of a new exhibition titled Dan Solberg / Jacob Tonski. The show contains a new suite of artworks from Dan Solberg, inspired by the line "the silence and smoothness of luxury." There will be an artist talk on the final day of the exhibition on April 28.

Behold! The Art of Video Games

This past weekend the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) opened The Art of Video Games: a history-spanning account of the life of the medium.  It's a big coming out party for games-as-art champions who get to see the games they love stand in the limelight on a national stage.  The show was put together with great care and respect by guest curator Chris Melissinos, but perhaps the most significant thing about The Art of Video Games is that it exists at all.

The title of the exhibition is so purely descriptive it seems like it should be the subtitle to something written in leetspeak.  I imagine the reasons for such a bland header are multifold.  There's a wide audience of museum goers who know nothing about games and the straightforward title lets them know what they're in for.  It plays it safe, which could be used as a descriptor of the entire show.  It isn't surprising that SAAM would want to avoid controversy, especially in the wake of the hot water their housemate, the National Portrait Gallery, found themselves in with their Hide/Seek exhibition.  Also, the Smithsonian can be a stuffy place, and The Art of Video Games is a sign of goodwill on the part of games advocates who are willing to keep the crazy in the box in exchange for a solid dose of recognition.

3-channel video showing gamers' faces as they play

The exhibition consists of three rooms: a "visual art of games" display, a hands-on arcade space, and an archival console timeline.  Aside from the hilarious video footage of gamers' faces as they play, the initial room seems geared towards showing the visual appeal and traditional craft of game aesthetics.  Concept art and storyboards are installed salon-style, and a 5-channel display shows the graphical leaps in video games hardware over the past few decades.  I imagine the first room gives non-gamers something to latch onto that's a bit more familiar for an art museum.

Moving forward, visitors enter a wide open space with a handful of large projected games to play, each contained within a giant half-cylinder "arcade cabinet."  The whole room is aglow in purple, blue, and black stenciled lights, offering an aesthetic that's very roller rink/lazer tag arena.  During the opening weekend there were lines for the multi-generationally recognizable Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros.  People were playing Myst and The Secret of Monkey Island too, but the nature of those adventure titles made them more suitable for a less crowded setting.  Along with Flower, these are the only playable games in the exhibition.

A giant playable version of the original Pac-Man

The third space, the console timeline, seems like the centerpiece of the show.  In this room, again bathed in purple, vertical structures display video game consoles individually behind glass and pair them with four games each.  The games are divided evenly into Action, Target, Adventure, and Tactics categories, offering a better glance at genre evolutions than necessarily the best or most important games on a particular system.  Each tower has a button per game that plays a video with voiceover describing why the game is of significance and additional contextual details.  Unfortunately, some of the game selections feel like an unnecessary stretch to prove their worth.  The video for TRON: Maze-Atron even admits that the game wasn't very good, yet, here it is.  It may have been a noble effort to democratize the selection process, but it's difficult to see that as a plus given some of the resulting picks; I'm looking at you Worms Armageddon.

It's frustrating to see an exhibition of video games both spread itself too thin and miss essential pieces at the same time, but The Art of Video Games does just that.  Everyone could have their list of impossible-to-satisfy omissions, but I find it hard to stand behind the absence of all fighting games and, by extension, arcades.  On the other end of the spectrum, the broad survey of games is rooted in understanding chronological history more than communicating a clear argument for why we should view games as artworks.  Perhaps "games are art" is the inherent assumption, given the context of the exhibition in an art museum, but I was hoping for a little more intellectual rumination on the subject.

Video game history on display in chronological order

I love video games, but I realize this show is only partially meant for me.  I don't go into an art exhibition expecting to adore every piece, but I do need to find resonance in the core conceits of the artists and curators who bring everything together.  This is a sentiment that The Art of Video Games ultimately achieves.   Melissinos has painted a history of games that may not be a mirror reflection of actual events, but it is a narrative that makes sense, and is actually digestible.  The show is a foot in the door for the medium that will hopefully lead to increasingly daring efforts in the future.

The opening of The Art of Video Games was supplemented by talks and panel discussions as part of Gamefest, covered here previously.

Opening Today: For Rent

Taken from press release:

The Transients present their first group exhibition:

For Rent

Opening Friday, January 27^th, from 8 p.m.-1 a.m.

Open hours Saturday from 4 - 6 p.m.

3224 Indiana Ave, 2nd Floor
St. Louis, MO

For the exhibition For Rent, Travis Howser and Gina Grafos have transformed their soon-to-be former apartment into a temporary gallery space.

There is a time when domestic and commercial spaces sit vacant in anticipation of their future occupants. Spatial vacancy is an ephemeral period of time potentially ranging from hours to days to years. This exhibition is a result of planned choices manifesting an opportunity to consciously inhabit this space during a time of vacancy.

For Rent will include works by Jessi Cerutti, Jake Cruzen, Bryan Eaton, Dani Kantrowitz, Kelda Martensen, Dan Solberg, B.j. Vogt, and letters to Mick Jagger (collected by Travis Howser). 

In addition, J. Taylor Wallace will host a “Tea Parody” and Sarah Palin will be cooking up more phallacies.

To gain access to 3224 Indiana Ave 2nd Floor, please follow the posted 'for rent' signs through gate to the rear of the building.

For more information about this and other events organized by The Transients please visit: http://thetransience.blogspot.com/

Please also visit the Facebook event page for updates and to RSVP: http://www.facebook.com/events/327372650617049/

The Transients are a collaborative team, currently consisting of Gina Grafos, Travis Howser, and B.j. Vogt.

Opening Today: 002 @ Favorite Goods

This Saturday the 12th at Favorite Goods in Los Angeles, CA is the opening of 002, the gallery's second exhibition. The show contains a collaborative work from Dan Solberg and Jake Cruzen. along with solo works from Cruzen, Matthew Strauss, and Dashiell Manley. Check out the official Favorite Goods site for more details.

Opening Today: (e)merge Art Fair

This Thursday the 22nd at Capitol Skyline Hotel in Washington, DC is the opening of the inaugural (e)merge Art Fair. The show contains new work from Dan Solberg and many other local and international contemporary artists. The reception will be held from 7-11PM, and the exhibition will be on view through Sunday the 25th. Check out the official (e)merge site for more details.

Opening Saturday: Tiny Content @ Snowflake

This Saturday the 9th at Snowflake/City Stock in St. Louis is the opening of a new exhibition titled Tiny Content. The show contains new and recent work from Dan Solberg as well as John Early. The reception will be held from 7-10PM, and the exhibition will be on view through December 5. Hope to see you there.

Opening Friday: Solberg / Grafos @ Low Road

This Friday the 10th the Low Road Gallery in Greencastle, Indiana is hosting its season opening exhibition Scenes, containing new work by Dan Solberg and Gina Grafos. The reception begins at 7PM and will include an artist talk at 7:30PM. For more information on the gallery and the show, visit the Low Road's website. Hope to see you there.

Opening Saturday: Solberg / Cruzen @ CEM

Craig Elmer Modern announces its first exhibition opening this Saturday, February 20th, in the form of new works by artists Dan Solberg and Jake Cruzen. CEM is located at 3194 South Grand Avenue in St. Louis, MO. The opening reception is scheduled to take place from 7-11PM.

UPDATE: Thanks to all who came to the opening or otherwise showed your support. It was a great reception and Jake and I are very thankful. To see pics from the night, go here. Official images of the artwork will be up on my site this week.