"SHIFT-CTRL: Computers, Games and Art"
0000-00-00 until 2004-11-24
Beall Center for Art and Technology - University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA, USA United States of America

In October 2000, the Beall Center for Art and Technology's inaugural exhibition, SHIFT-CTRL: Computers, Games and Art, recognized computer games as a richly expressive medium. As an indie carry-forward, ALT+CTRL is a newly initiated biennial festival celebrating experimentally minded game artists and showcasing some of the most innovative new concepts in game genres, designs, methodologies, and game play. Over 20 works will be shown, including modded games, hot-rodded game machines, net-based games, and installations. A special screening of machinima films will also be included; these films, made "on location" in various games, highlight the sheer inventiveness with which game artists are expanding their field.

Festival Content: Game Mods The availability of commercial game engines that allow users to create their own game "mods," or modifications, has allowed independent designers, artists and small teams to produce innovative new games, genres and aesthetics using traditional game production tools.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:

Alexander Galloway, Auriea Harvey and Michaâl Samyn , Brody Condon, C-Level, collapsicon, delire and pix, Eddo Stern, gameLab, Geoffrey Thomas, Indie Game Jam, Maia Engeli and Nina Czegledy, Molleindustria, Nick Montfort, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Olaf Val Mignon, Pappy Boyington, Rebecca Cannon, THE JAB, Yumi-Co

CREDITS:

The festival co-organizers are Robert Nideffer, Antoinette LaFarge, and Celia Pearce. Nideffer and LaFarge are both UC Irvine Associate Professors of Digital Media and were the co-curators of the extremely successful 2000 exhibition SHIFT+CTRL that brought together a selection of contemporary game art for the first time in a U.S. exhibition. Pearce was responsible for Entertainment in the Interactive Age, a 2001 conference on game design and culture at USC.

ALT + CTRL was juried by Nideffer, LaFarge, Pearce, and an outside panel of jurors from the independent game scene, including Rebecca Cannon, Drew Davidson, Erkki Huhtamo, Paul Marino (who led the jurying for the machinima works), Jeannie Novak, Warren Spector, and Eric Zimmerman.

ALT + CTRL is a joint project of the Game Culture & Technology Lab, The Beall Center for Art and Technology, and Cal-(IT)2, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, University of California, Irvine.

In addition to our corporate sponsors, ALT+CTRL has also received generous support in the form of public relations assistance from the Entertainment Software Association (formerly the IDSA), producers of E3, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Department of Studio Art, UC Irvine.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of California

Other Important Exhibitions in California