PC GAMES [a-z by author]

Isabel Belisa/Thomas Cheysson,1999, Fr

An irritating mother, a hypocritical girlfriend, a sadistic brother-in-law, brutal guards, a cop father-in-law: these are some of the people who live in the village of Crison. You really want to kick their asses, even if your girlfriend is Isabelle. But you have to save the village from More who rules the place with his disgusting thugs. You can be both George, who is blind, or his younger brother Raymond, the little brat. If you are smart enough, you will use Raymond∂s ways and subvert the village to fight against More.

Thomas Cheysson is a filmmaker, and a scriptwriter for both traditional and interactive films who is trying to reconcile feature film drama intensity with new media fictional interactivity. In addition to his creative work, he has been developing movie-productions management software and is engaged in some of the most innovative fields of new media – 3D realtime, actor-oriented broadcast. Isabel is one of the best examples of a narrative fiction using a behaviour engine and a complete 3D interface independently produced in France.

Escape from Woomera Escape from Woomera, 2004, Aus

With a first person, 3D adventure game players are invited to assume the character, and ‘live’ through the experiences, of a modern day refugee. The effective media lock-out from immigration detention centres has meant that the whole truth about what goes on behind the razor-wire at Woomera, Baxter, Port Hedland, Maribyrnong and Villawood remains largely a mystery to the public. The game challenges this by offering an interactive, immersive experience of life within the most secretive and controversial places on the Australian political and geographical landscape.

Escape From Woomera is a team of game developers, digital artists and media professionals, committed to the videogame medium – not merely as a vehicle for conceptual new media art or profit-driven entertainment – but as a free, independent art form in its own right. The creation of Escape From Woomera is part of a larger goal: the rise of a counter-culture of developers and gamers who create and engage with game art outside the mainstream corporate industry.

Borderland Julien Alma/Laurent Hart, 1998, Fr

A multilingual game featuring the cultural and ethnic diversity of people  living in Paris∂ urban border-edge districts that are, at least to the Parisians, all well too familiar. Based on popular video game duels such as

∏Tekken∑ or ∏Mortal Kombat∑, whereas superheroes or pop icons such as the Shaolin are usually the combatants, the work∂s heroes are ordinary people: old ladies, tramps, workmen, teenagers, run-off the mill characters who square up to fight each other in the desolate no-man∂s land of Paris∂s outer suburbs. Lovingly and empathetically produced with much details and awareness of its subject matter, Borderlands presents a picture of society in which everyone fights everyone else – being even little pigtail girls fighting businessmen with briefcases. 55 characters. 280 settings

Julien Alma and Laurent Hart are filmmakers who have directed many video clips. This is their first game.

Ty the Tasmanian Tiger Krome Studios, 2002, Aus

Go deep into the Australian Outback as TY the Tasmanian Tiger. It’s up to you to collect magical talismans that’ll release your fellow Tasmanian Tigers from Dreamworld. Armed with your boomerangs and a nasty bite, you must outfight and outsmart Boss Cass, a big bad bird with a big bad attitude. Sharpen your boomerang, mate, and get ready for an amazing Australian adventure.

Krome Studios Pty is a games studio with a history reaching back to 1984 and staff who have collectively worked on over 50 titles, developing videogames for PC, Sony PlayStation 2, and Nintendo GameCube. Krome Studios have received the Premier of Queensland Export Awards for Arts and Entertainment.

Bush Mechanics – The Game Warlpiri Media, 2002, Aus

Are you ready to take on the Tanami Track? It∂s hot and dusty place out there. Your mission is to get the Bush Mechnics band from Yuendumu to Alice Springs for a gig. Along the way there are a few puzzles and some questions that any good Bush Mechanic should be able to answer. A great Aussie experience set in the remote Tanami Desert of the Northern Teritory, where Bush Mechanics skills will get you out of trouble no matter where you are on the road.

Warlpiri Media Association was incorporated in 1985, when it began broadcasting programs on a low transmitter at Yuendumu in the Northern Teritory. Satellite transmission began in 1986. Since then a deliberate effort has been made to represent Warlpiri society for audiences in Yuendumu and other Warlpiri speaking communities. In 1998 Warlpiri Media produced a documentary about yapa fixing cars the yapa way, titled Bush Mechanics.The public∂s reaction was so amazing that the team decided to produce an interactive game where people could text their own yapa skills.

Ned Kelly Wicked Witch, 2002, Aus

The Australian legend of Ned Kelly and the famous tale of it’s end, the last stand at GlenRowan, has been re-created on this CD-ROM. The town, people and historical events of GlenRowan have been re-built as a virtual environment. A story mode movie plays with narration depicting the key events during the last stand. The program is real-time and interactive, which means players can change the camera angle while the story plays a change of close ups, action from afar, allowing players to see through the eyes of the police or even through the eyes of Ned himself! There is also an explore mode which allows players to control Ned Kelly, tour the town as it was, and talk to the town folk as if it was 1880 again!

Wicked Witch Software is a Melbourne-based games studio. Founded in 1999, it has successfully created its own development pipelines and environment using the latest PC and game console technology. A strong passion for games inspires a strong work ethic and positive mindset within the company.

ONLINE and Net.INTERACTIVES [a-z by author]

Seeker Cmeliewski/ Starrs, 2004, Aus Online game art

∏It is estimated that currently there are 35 million men, women and children who have been forced to leave their homelands and take to the road in exile to search for safety.” www.msf.org.au  Médecins Sans Frontières website

Seeker uses a series of screen-based games to explore issues of migration, border protection and asylum. The game also acts as a portal for participants to map their own personal family migration history, which then leads to an engaging visualisation of previous players∂ accumulated data. The project addresses issues of asylum and migration, diaspora, boundaries and border protection. Each game is a variation on a territory acquisition and defence strategy game. The graphic style is one of simple 2D geometric shapes, each tribe has it∂s own graphic style which affects the look of the game.

Josephine Starrs is an artist whose video and new media works have been shown extensively in Australia and overseas. Starrs is currently a lecturer at University of Sydney, Sydney College of the Arts Faculty, Electronic and Temporal Arts. She was a member of the Australian cyberfeminist collective VNS Metrix who used irony and humor to reveal the gender biases hardwired into computer culture. In 1997 she was an artist in residence at the Kunsthaus Bethanien, Berlin and in 1998 awarded Australia Council for the Arts, New Media Arts Board Fellowship. For the past six years she has collaborated with Leon Cmielewski on a range of new media projects and games.

GAME ON [2 projects] Both games were developed through the Game On initiative was commissioned under the Film Victoria Digital Media Fund in partnership with ABC New Media & Digital Services. It provided the ABC with engaging and entertaining content that offered new ways of interactive online story-telling, while Film Victoria provided funding to further develop the Victorian animation and games industries.

Og Og

Nathan project

Hématome, Emmanuel Kodjo, 2002, interactive video clip

Hématome is an interactive music clip inviting players to take up the role of a composer constructing one∂s listening experience through an interaction with the visual environment. The greater the engagement with the graphic objects, the more detailed and rewarding the experience of the musical composition and visual environment will be. The gameplay scenario is written in the style of a libretto with an introduction, verse and chorus.

Romain Déflache is a young and passionate graphic design artist who grew up near Lyon before moving to Paris in 2000 to study multimedia engineering. In the same year, in the same school, he meets Emmanuel Kodjo, a cinema and music artist who passed the most of his life in Abidjan (Ivory Coast). A year later they established Lunographe for the production of interactive video and media-rich web sites. Hématome has been exhibited at Villette Numerique Festival, and FIFI festival, Lion. http://www.lunographe.com/

Nike Le Ciel Est Bleu, 2002, Fr

A silly game for the lazy bum!

Le Ciel Est Bleu, (Frédéric Durieu: founder, director, art concept/development, Kristine Malden art concept/production, Jean-Jacques Birgé, interactive music and sound play, and Nicolas Clauss) is one of the

most highly acclaimed interactive media team in France. Its awards include: Prix des Nouvelles Ecritures, FiFiFestival 2003, Honorary Mention, Net Vision/Net Excellence, Ars Electronica 2003, Nominee, Webby Award, Net Art category, and Narrowcast Awards for Content, among others.

Nike was produced as an interactive online advertisement for the sports company of the same name.

Audiogame Marc Em, 2003, Fr Ionline audio game

A sound-toy for web interfaces, that gives music a presence on the Internet other then MP3 downloads.

Marc Em is an engineer, sound designer and musician. After many records and tours, he began to compose for the theatre, the film industry and later for multimedia. http://www.audiogame.net/

Nations States Max Barry, 2003, Aus Net.art

In this online simulation game, players create their own country on the net, fashioned after their own political ideals. Players can either care for the people in their nation state, or deliberately oppress them, constantly

monitoring their economic and cultural health. The game enables players to experience governance and consider different methods of control.

Max Barry is a Melbourne based game artist and writer of the acclaimed novels Syrup and Jennifer Government. NationStates, co-developed with Geoff Wong from Zikzak, is based on the latter book. A film adaptation is currently being developed by Steven Soderbergh’s production company.

Radio Days, [Selection] Nicolas Clauss, 2002, Fr collaborative online game

Launched on 24.04.2001 this website is an interactive work in progress, used as a place for experimentation and collaboration. Visitors to the site are encouraged to play with, and appropriate, the published works, thus create their own interpretations. Over 50 online interactive pieces have been realized, some in collaborationwith musicians Jean-Jacques Birgé, François Baxas, Denis Colin, Patricia Dallio, Pascale Labbé, Thomas Le Saulnier, Jean Morières, and Hervé Zénouda.

Nicolas Clauss is a self-taught media artist who stopped painting in 2000 to do Web and multimedia projects, only to find out that he continues to treat digital light as if translucent paint to be manipulated, layered and mixed with painterly gesture through curse/ mouse click. Clauss has a Master Degree in Social Psychology and a Bachelor Degree in Arts.

Society Panoplie.prod commissioned by Villette Numérique, Paris, 2002, Fr multi-users game developed entirely in Flash

Society offers playful pleasures that lead players to take delight in cyber organic, anti-gravitational reproduction. Each player is represented by a tiny avatar, a pink quadruped looking like a jellyfish in search for the end of the universe. Roaming the soft pink matrix of the game, players can enjoy intergalactic encounters with others and seduce them for a chat. Over time, in order to survive creatures must catch and swallow other ones, and soon chat-mates become each other∂s predators. Four different worlds lead the player through amazing graphical environments, sound design and joyful adventures.

Bruno Samper is a multimedia designer. In 1998, he designed the organic publication www.panoplie.org that experiments with the fluid qualities of the Web through a combination with e-zines, videogames, design, interactive series and on-line utopia. In 2001, with Siegfried Rouanet, he co-founded the production studio panoplie.prod, which develops on and off-line multimedia projects, interactive fiction, documentaries and games. http://www.villette-numerique.com/game/index.html

Rolitoland Rolito, 2003, Fr Flash interactive fiction

As a Flash-games web site, Rolitoland is packed with interactive online animations, vibrant colours, nonsense original ideas, entertaining environments and very bizarre creatures.

Rolito is an online, interactive media artist/designer who was part of TEAMcHmAn, a design studio specialising in interactive communications, online games, e-zines, and cyberart entertainment. The team was awarded with a Golden Nica, Net Vision Category, Prix Ars Elecronica, Austria 2001 for their projects Banja. Recently, Rolito established Semperultimo that produces online communal adventures. www.rolitoland.com/

Zaïoli Sophie Estival, 2003, Fr four 1-minute black and white, minimalist, Flash animations for the Internet

Zaioli is a child like all others, full of imagination and mischief. He reminds us that children∂s play of lies, jealousy and deception are a reflection of those of adults.

Sophie Estival is  an online graphic and web designer, with interests in online interactive animations. She formed Bechamel.com with Guillaume Joire in 1999 – an Alice-in-Wonderland playground of flash surprises and animated whimsy, usually involving innocent animals and strange foods, and spiraling journey through snippets of moving collages. http://www.bechamel.com

INSTALLATIONS

Throw Mari Velonaki, 2002, Aus Interactive media/game installation

Playing with nostalgic experiences of the Travelling Fun Fair, where sooting at cardboard cut-outs of curious characters was once a favourite pass time, Throw displays hand-crafted digital animations that interact with the audienceSˇ at the throw of a ball!

Mari Velonaki has worked in the field of interactive installation art for over eight years. She is an artist/researcher at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, a centre of excellence in autonomous systems, Sydney. Velonaki has become known for her curious female characters, who come to life or die, depending on how we speak, move, eat and even breathe in their presence! This fascinating interplay between the audience and the artwork is controlled by complex sensor-triggered interfaces

play>>

FEATURE FILMS special screening program in association with ACMI

Tomb Rider and Final Fantasy (based on the popular videogames Lara Croft and

Final Fantasy).