IAM. Let's play

Date

Place

Garage LAB

DESCRIPTION

One of the key themes of the IAM exhibition is a special genre of video games rethinking the aim and mechanics of the game, rejecting linear logic and becoming something bigger then just an entertainment.

During the day in the Screening / Let’s play zone visitors have the chance to play games by Tale of Tales, thatgamecompany and David O’Reilly. Let’s play or watch others playing! Evening sessions will be commented on by a range of specialists, including streamers, visual anthropologists, and art historians.

HOW TO TAKE PART

Free admission with exhibition ticket

Schedule

Video game program

Journey

2012. thatgamecompany

Journey is a poetic and atmospheric allegory of the path of life. An anonymous player in the form of a faceless little figure wrapped in a cloak wanders through a desert toward the shining peak of a sacred mountain. He glides over steep sand dunes and soars into the air, leaping on the ruins of mysterious ancient buildings and meeting other players who are just as anonymous and silent as he is, but capable of exchanging non-verbal signals with each other. In Journey, as in classical games, there is a basic goal, a scenario, obstacles, and even dangers. The notions of excitement, intensity, and victory or defeat are hardly appropriate to the peaceful, mysterious atmosphere of the game.


FlOw

2006. thatgamecompany

The FlOw simulator involves playing one of several creatures living deep in an imaginary ocean. As it achieves higher levels, the creature evolves from a little worm to a so called “perfect organism,” acquiring new capabilities and plunging to even greater depths. Players can swim, dive, and hunt other organisms, and can also control the complexity of the play, thus allowing them to enjoy the game at their own pace.


Flower

2009. thatgamecompany

Extremely simple in terms of plot and operation, this is an exceptionally poetic, meditative game in the recognizable style of thatgamecompany. The player’s only task is to manipulate the wind that blows flower petals through the air. As you collect all the flowers in the current location, you proceed into the next one, which provides new possibilities of movement and intensifies the visual effects. In this easy and unobtrusive manner, the designer of the game poses an ecological question, contrasting the gentle and natural beauty of nature with technogenic landscapes and focusing our attention on the fact that every act and movement in nature has consequences.


Path

2009. Tale of Tales

This is a reinterpretation and retelling of the old story of Little Red Riding Hood: six young sisters, each with her own history, live in a modern apartment in the suburbs. Their mother asks them to take a basket of bread and wine to their ailing grandmother and warns them against leaving the charted path. But as the girls move through the dense forest, each one is tempted to seek her own path, discover objects that will shed light on the sisters’ history, and meet the wolf, which will not always look like a beast. The game has no winning strategy: whether you stay on the path or wander off into the woods, the result will be the same. Here, achieving levels and progress toward a goal are less important than the journey itself and the reflections to which it leads.


Endless Forest

2005. Tale of Tales

Endless Forest is an online game in which players immerse themselves in the idealistic space and friendly, peaceful atmosphere of an enchanted virtual forest. There is no mission or goal, no competition or rules, struggle or cruelty. The only task of the player, whose avatar assumes the form of a deer, is to wander and investigate, alone or in the company of friends. On the way they can take part in enjoyable activities, find ancient artefacts, or happen upon unbelievably powerful forest deities.


Sunset

2015. Tale of Tales

A first-person narrative game. The events unfold in a penthouse in a fictional Latin American megapolis in the early 1970s. It is played from the first-person perspective of an immigrant maid working in the home of a wealthy bachelor. The plot follows the story of a romance set against the backdrop of a military dictatorship.


Bientôt l’été

2012. Tale of Tales

Bientôt l’été (Summer is Coming) is a futuristic, romantic, and thoughtful interactive game in which you are invited to stroll along a deserted virtual beach from the deck of your distant space station and wander into an isolated café. As you sit at a table with a glass of wine and listen to old French songs, you can play chess with an anonymous player who has happened to connect to the net: as conceived by the authors, this might be your true love, somewhere far away.


The Graveyard

2008. Tale of Tales

An existential, contemplative game in which you become an old woman who spends her days at a cemetery, where life and death are closer to each other than they are anywhere else. Tired, she sits on a bench, contemplating the measured movement of the sun, the drifting clouds, the whisper of the trees, and the songs of the birds, which reconcile her with life’s cycle, even the part of it that means the end of her own life.


Everything

David O'Reilly, 2017

This simulation game has no definite plot and no clear goal: the actions, tasks, and level of difficulty depend entirely on the player, who is invited to roam an endless universe in the role of anyone or anything that exists within it, from cows and bears to grains of sand and atoms. The player is free to do whatever they want. One can even stop playing: unless it is switched off, the game will continue to play itself. The gameplay, design, texts, and soundtrack convey the artist’s philosophy, which is both simple and complex, light and deep. You can play to try and understand this philosophy or give up and enjoy the game as a kind of meditation.


Mountain

David O’Reilly, 2014

The game is a simulation of a mountain, floating smoothly among the clouds. The seasons and times of the day change and various objects suddenly fall on the mountain’s surface. After many hours, the game comes to it’s logical conclusion: the mountain crashes into a giant star and ceases to exist. Meanwhile, the player is only offered the option to rotate and zoom, passively observing without an ability to make an impact on the state and fate of the mountain.

Date
June 11–17, June 25 — July 1
Time
11:00–22:00
Place
Garage LAB