Two exhibitions that explore the world of games and gaming at KHOJ International Artists' Association, S-17, Khirkee Extension > 11am-7pm on 19th to 29th September 2013

Time : 11:00 am - 7:00 pm (Saturdays closed)

Entry : Free

Place : KHOJ International Artists' Association, S-17, Khirkee Extension, New Delhi - 110017

Venue Info : khojworkshop.org | Nearest Metro Station - 'Malviya Nagar(Yellow Line)'

Area : Saket

Event Description : Khoj International Artists’ Association presents two exhibitions that explore the world of games and gaming.

The first exhibition is titled “Of Games: Frameworks In Question” which will juxtapose art with games and gaming technologies including the old board games of India like Ganjifas, Parallel by Harun Farocki and video games Like Osmos and Otomata. The selected works will capture image making process explored in both, games and art, and highlight the audience engagement while gaming. An interrogation of cross pollination between games and arts is the underlying theme of the exhibition.

The games that will showed at the exhibition include computer games like Façade by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern, Osmos by Hemisphere Games, Otomata by Batuhan Bozkurt and traditional games like Ganjifa cards and Pallankuzhi from the collection of Crafts Museum, Delhi. There will also be a video work titled Parallel by Harun Farocki (supported by Max Mueller Bhawan/Goethe Institute, Delhi).

Through the artworks, the exhibition poses questions of aesthetics of gaming images, game design and development as artistic intervention and gaming references of digital art. The exhibition is broadly exploring two ideas: imagery of art when borrowed from games, and the hybridity of game-world narratives.

As simulating images and situations, games can raise political questions based on social behaviour, as seen in Serious Games I - IV (Harun Farocki) and Twentyfivefold Manifestation (Brody Condor), or simply expand on the development of image making process in games, as seen in Parallel (Harun Farocki). As games process images, they contain in them the evolution of image making that is constantly developing as well as regenerating. The questions of reality are put forth when complex processes are manufactured and processed through gaming technologies. 

Apart from the above exhibition, Khoj is also bringing for works done in a month long residency in a parallel exhibition titled “Of Games: Theatre in Code”, that will also be on view till September 19, 2013. 11. am to 7 p.m. Akshay Rathod, Centaur, Gayatri Kodikal, Oleomingus, Pramod Kumar and Vishal Dar are the six practitioners/groups who have been developing projects exploring the game-world and its experience from different perspectives. They will present a game prototype in the opening.

 Khoj wants to develop this gaming residency towards an intersection of artistic expression and technological enquiry. This residency is an exciting opportunity to articulate the contribution of games towards visual culture. Khoj offers its 16 years of archive as an inspiration to produce new games contributing to the creative and cultural importance of computer games.

Games are as common-place today as cinema as a narrative medium. Some games offer contexts for immersion into gameplay while others offer contexts as models of complexity. In either case, we have an immediate way of breaking out of ourselves and being immersed in gameplay that offers us a system more logically consistent than the one our consciousness is loaded into.

In the residency, participants aim to look beyond the interpretation of rendering gameplay as an artistic activity. The residency explores kinds of gameplay and platform-bending paradigms that inter-disciplinary teams of developers, story-tellers and pixel-crafters forge together. Participants took part in various public engagement programs structured by Khoj. Workshop on data management, visual programming  tools like Stencyl and other game prototyping frameworks, have provided the knowledge, skills and techniques that the participants have implemented in their games. On the other hand talks on gamification and game design can provide the necessary theoretical frameworks to the participants to base their game on.

Related Events : Exhibitions