2006 Rockefeller New Media Foundation Proposal

The Endless Forest is a combination of a multiplayer computer game, a virtual performance environment and a location for in-situ artworks. Players are represented in the forest as deer. There are activities and a forest to explore

2003 Rockefeller New Media Foundation Proposal

"8" is an experimental computer game. It uses computer game technology in an effort to bring the artistic experience of non-linear storytelling closer to the public. Its combination of traditional dramatic methods and innovative design concepts is an attempt to contribute to the conceptual maturity of new media

Over games

Presented at Art History of Games Symposium, February 6, 2010 in the High Museum of Art’s Rich Auditorium on the campus of the Woodruff Arts Center, in midtown Atlanta.Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn began their collaboration as Entropy8Zuper.org in 1999. They gained notoriety by creating Web sites and Internet artworks. In 2002, they founded the independent game development studio Tale of Tales in Gent, Belgium, where they still live and work. Harvey and Samyn have devoted their lives to the creation of elegant and emotionally rich interactive entertainment. Early Internet artworks blended topics of love, religion, politics and sex along with ambitious web-based performance. Since their shift to games, Tale of Tales have given players and critics much to talk about. Projects like The Endless Forest, a multiplayer screensaver in which everyone plays a deer. And smaller projects such as The Graveyard, about an elderly lady who visits a cemetery. And Fatale, which explores the legend of Salome. 2009 saw the release of their most ambitious game yet, The Path, a short horror game inspired by Little Red Riding Hood. In 2000, their work was awarded with the San Francisco MOMA Prize for Excellence in Online Art. Both The Path and The Graveyard were finalists in the Independent Games Festival and Indiecade. Their projects have been featured at media art festivals and exhibitions all over the world. But the focus remains on digital distribution, making art directly for and with their audience. Quiet and odd or deeply unsettling, what sets Tale of Tale’s work apart from the rest is Harvey and Samyn’s controversial stance on what games can be.Runtime: 35:41 minutesVideogames have stopped evolving. They have found their comfort zone: fun activities that nurture our inner child. While our inner grown-up is starving! We need a new medium that can help us cope with the complexity of our post-historic universe. The interactive, non-linear and generative capacity of computer technology offers such a medium. But videogames have taken computer technology hostage. It is time to liberate the medium and start feeding our starving hearts and minds. We have the technology. We have the desire. So let’s get to work

Panel Discussion: Nathalie Pozzi, Eric Zimmerman, Tale of tales ; Jason Rohrer, Brenda Brathwaite ; Moderator John Sharp

Presented at Art History of Games Symposium, February 6, 2010 at 12:15 pm in the High Museum of Art’s Rich Auditorium on the campus of the Woodruff Arts Center, in midtown Atlanta.Nathalie Pozzi is an architect whose projects cross the boundaries of art installation, architecture and landscape. Trained in Venice, Stockholm and Helsinki, Ms. Pozzi explores the classical design of space and light and the elegant use of materials, while also incorporating social and ethnographic elements into her work. Her projects expand the possibilities of architecture from building beautiful structures into a global and cultural act. Ms. Pozzi’s work includes contributions to the conceptual architectural studio Casagrande&Rintala, in projects like "Bird Cage" at Yokohama Triennale of Art and "Installation 2001" at the Florence International Bienniale of Contemporary Art. Recent projects range from the short film "Home", presented at the 4th International Festival for Architecture in Video in Florence, to design and production consulting for internationally renowned artists including Mariko Mori and theater director Robert Wilson.Eric Zimmerman is a game designer, entrepreneur, author, and academic who has been working in the game industry for 15 years. His diverse activities have made him one of the New York Observer’s “Power Punks,” one of Interview magazine’s “30 To Watch,” one of International Design magazine’s “ID 40” influential designers and one of The Hollywood Reporter’s “Digital 50,” along with Stephen Spielberg and Will Wright. Zimmerman recently was honored with a VIP Award by the International Game Developers Association for his years of work in the game creation community. He is an internationally recognized creative force, design scholar, and gadfly pundit on game design and game culture. For nine years, Zimmerman was the co-founder of Gamelab, a game development company based in New York City. Gamelab has won awards from the Independent Games Festival, Games for Change, ID Magazine, Art Directors Club and ARS Electronica. Zimmerman lectures and publishes extensively on games and has taught courses in MIT’s comparative media studies program, New York University’s interactive telecommunications program, Parsons School of Design’s M.F.A. program in digital technologies program, and the School of Visual Arts’ Design as Author M.F.A. Program. He has exhibited game artworks at museums and galleries in the U.S. and abroad.Tale of Tales: Auriea Harvey and Michael Samyn began their collaboration as Entropy8Zuper.org in 1999. They gained notoriety by creating Web sites and Internet artworks. In 2002, they founded the independent game development studio Tale of Tales in Gent, Belgium, where they still live and work. Harvey and Samyn have devoted their lives to the creation of elegant and emotionally rich interactive entertainment. Early Internet artworks blended topics of love, religion, politics and sex along with ambitious web-based performance. Since their shift to games, Tale of Tales have given players and critics much to talk about. Projects like The Endless Forest, a multiplayer screensaver in which everyone plays a deer. And smaller projects such as The Graveyard, about an elderly lady who visits a cemetery. And Fatale, which explores the legend of Salome. 2009 saw the release of their most ambitious game yet, The Path, a short horror game inspired by Little Red Riding Hood. In 2000, their work was awarded with the San Francisco MOMA Prize for Excellence in Online Art. Both The Path and The Graveyard were finalists in the Independent Games Festival and Indiecade. Their projects have been featured at media art festivals and exhibitions all over the world. But the focus remains on digital distribution, making art directly for and with their audience. Quiet and odd or deeply unsettling, what sets Tale of Tale’s work apart from the rest is Harvey and Samyn’s controversial stance on what games can be.Jason Rohrer is an independent game artist, programmer, and critic. With game designs that explore complex and subtle aspects of the human condition, his work has bolstered the acceptance of games as a serious art form. Rohrer’s games have been shown at festivals and art exhibitions in Park City, Toronto, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Seattle and Lleida, Spain. His 2007 release, Passage, received widespread critical acclaim. Wired magazine’s Clive Thompson wrote: “More than any game I’ve ever played, it illustrates how a game can be a fantastically expressive, artistic vehicle for exploring the human condition.” Rohrer’s 2008 release, Gravitation, won the Jury Prize at IndieCade and Between won the Innovation Award at the 2009 Independent Games Festival. Rohrer was featured in Esquire’s December 2008 "Genius Issue" along with 27 other innovators.Brenda Brathwaite is a game designer and artist who began working in the video game industry with Sir-tech Software in 1982, with the seminal Wizardry series of role-playing games. She also contributed to the Jagged Alliance, Realms of Arkania, Def Jam and the Dungeons and Dragons series and has designed games for Atari, Infogrames, Electronic Arts and a wide variety of private clients. Working completely in analog, she has crafted a series of six prototypes known collectively as The Mechanic is the Message, three of which have been completed and published. The three, Train, S√≠och√°n Leat and The New World, explore the Holocaust, the Cromwellian invasion of Ireland and the Middle Passage, respectively. The pieces, particularly Train, have received significant critical praise. Brathwaite serves on the board of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), was chair of the IGDA’s Education SIG Ad hoc Committee and the co-founder and chair of the IGDA’s Savannah chapter. In 2008, she was named one of the top 20 most influential women in the game industry by Gamasutra.com. She is currently the chair of the interactive design and game development department at SCAD and has been working on games for social media platforms.John Sharp is an accomplished game designer, art historian and educator with over 20 years experience. His design work is focused on Twitter and social platform games, art games and non-digital games. His current research is focused on game design curricula for after-school programs, the history of play and the early history of computer and video games. Dr. Sharp is a professor in the interactive design and game development and art history departments at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He also is a member of Local No. 12, a social network game collaboration; a member of The Leisure Society, an artgame collective; and a partner in Supercosm, a digital media consultancy.Runtime: 42:31 minute