Invited lecture at Fotoludica: Joseph DeLappe/Laura Leuzzi "Head Shot! Artefacts of interventionist play: Joseph DeLappe’s extended screenshots"
2024 - 2024
| Description | Fotoludica is the first Italian conference dedicated to examining the burgeoning artistic practice of in-game photography and machinima. Across two days of talks, presentations and discussions, creators, researchers and theorists explore the complex intersection of video games, photography, copyright law, activism and visual culture. A keystone of the event is discussing in-game photography as an emergent art form, looking at how players leverage tools ranging from photo modes to hacking screenshots to produce dynamic images. Presentations analyze works by artists like Boris Camaca, Leonardo Magrelli, Simone Santilli and Adonis Archontides, uncovering conceptual depth within gaming spaces. Legal questions also take center stage regarding whether player-created screenshots can be considered proprietary artwork or remain protected as game developer assets. Additional topics trace photography’s usage as architectural visualization rendered through speculative Minecraft builds. Presentations also cover documenting in-game performance art and interventions as contemporary extensions of war photography traditions. Throughout the event, speakers highlight how rendering gaming environments through a photographic lens reveals underlying themes related to violence, labor exploitation and colonial ideologies. Featured speakers apply lenses — no pun intended — spanning art history, visual culture, game development, software studies and internet law. Keynotes include Marco De Mutiis discussing “Playable Imaging” and the uneasy combination of image-creation and play. Artist Joseph DeLappe joins scholar Laura Leuzzi in conversation around artifacts created through his daring in-game interventions. Additional highlights involve a series of panel discussions moderated by Matteo Bittanti and Marco De Mutiis focused on questioning boundaries of creativity, authorship and ethics tied to photographic practices using proprietary game engines and assets. By gathering voices from game studies, art, law and beyond, Fotoludica seeks to cement in-game photography as a serious art form while unpacking vital questions through multidisciplinary dialogue. The event also solidifies IULM University’s pivotal role in advancing photography focused game studies research. Ultimately the conference provides vital scholarly infrastructure legitimizing artistic interrogation of games using techniques from photography to machinima. Joseph DeLappe, Laura Leuzzi, Head Shot! Artefacts of interventionist play: Joseph DeLappe’s extended screenshots In this joint talk, Laura Leuzzi and Joseph DeLappe will discuss DeLappe’s pioneering performance art within game spaces and how the visual documentation of these works problematizes representations of violence. They will explore several of DeLappe’s projects including dead-in-iraq, Quake/Friends and others, analyzing both the creation of the performances themselves as well as the critical role played by the production of screenshots, 3D captures and physical artifacts. The talk will trace how DeLappe’s practice sits in relation to traditions of war photography and photojournalism, arguing that the images fill an important gap while also taking on activist meaning. Leuzzi and DeLappe will also examine how such game-derived images, slipping fluidly between the real and the virtual, take on a distinct potency in relation to the original events. |
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| URL | https://milanmachinimafestival.org/fotoludica-program |