Dizzy Spell

One night exhibition Art Video Game arcade

May 26th, 2018

at Buntport Theater

717 Lipan St, Denver, CO 80204

6pm-11pm

$10 or pay what you can. No one turned away.

facebook event page is here

The games in Dizzy Spell drop the player into a space of quandary. They test, vex, and set your moral compass spinning. Covering a array of subject matter and settings the games in the collection question what is acceptable in how we treat what and who is around us.

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animated gif showing scene from the game "The Best Amendment"

Artist: Molleindustria

Title: The Best Amendment

Statement: An unofficial NRA game about gun control, tactical shooting, and 4th dimensional thinking. Be the good guy with a gun! Stop the bad guys with guns! But will that make you a bad guy in the eyes of somebody else? Explore the complexities of the conservative way of thinking in this unique Massively Single Player Game.

Origin: USA

Year: 2013

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Artist’s: Kurosh ValaNejad and Peter Brinson

Title: The Cat and the Coup

Statement: The Cat and the Coup is a documentary videogame in which you play the cat of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran. During the summer of 1953, the CIA engineered a coup to bring about his downfall. As a player, you coax Mossadegh back through significant events of his life by knocking objects off of shelves, scattering his papers, jumping on his lap and scratching him.

Origin: USA

Year: 2011

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Artists: James Earl Cox III, featuring music by Alex Underwood

Title: Don’t Kill the Cow

Statement: There is only one way to win the game: don’t kill the cow. But is winning worth it? How much do simple phrases like ‘you win’ and ‘you lose’ mean to us?

Origin: USA

Year: 2012

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Artist: Nathalie Lawhead

Title: Everything is going to be OK

Statement: Everything Is Going To Be OK is a collection of life experiences. It is an interactive zine exploring alternative views of power from a survivor’s standpoint, and is a commentary on struggle. The focus is largely on bringing humor into “dark times”. It offers different perspectives on what it means to live with things like PTSD.

Origin: USA

Year: 2017

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Artist: Bearwarp – Justin Ankenbauer, Clay Brooks, and David Fraile

Title: geobio

Statement: geobio is an interactive sculpture comprised of commonplace appliances that double as controllers. Each button, switch, and knob on these appliances produce an affect on the landscape surrounding you. With these controls the viewer has the ability to transform the natural world into noisy electronics, quicken the speed of the sun, or change the weather in the environment. In response to the participant’s interaction, a generative soundscape and landscape forms as each button produces a unique object and sound. If the player chooses not to interact with the appliances and remain idle, the landscape will regenerate.

Origin: USA

Year: 2018

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Artists: Jane Friedhoff and Ramsey Nasser

Title: Handväska! 

Statement: Some fascists rolled into your town. Let’s help them roll out! Handväska! is an over-the-top, super-fast, physics-based FPS (First Purse-on Shooter). You have 15 seconds to smash as many fascists with your purse as possible. Line up your swings, knock baddies into each other like bowling pins, and thwack your way to a 100% victory.

Handväska! was made by Ramsey Nasser and Jane Friedhoff in 48 hours for the 2017 Global Game Jam. They were inspired by Hans Runesson’s 1985 photo of Danuta Danielsson beating the shit out of a neo-nazi with her purse.

Origin: USA

Year: 2017

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Artists: Auriea Harvey & Michael Samyn, Tale of Tales

Title: Luxuria Superbia

Statement: A simple game of touch, pleasure and joy made for fingers on touchscreens and joysticks on computers. Luxuria Superbia is a musical journey from the sensuous to the spiritual. Exciting designs explode from your gestures as you glide through tunnels, beautiful as flowers. It’s all about the experience and the interaction.

Luxuria Superbia was born out of a reasearch project, we called “Cncntrc” (http://cncntrc.net) where we explored the intersections of spirituality, sex, and videogames.

Origin: Belgium

Year: 2013 

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Artist: SWEAT collaborative, Rafael Fajardo, Director

Title: Seeds of Solitude

Statement: The game is set in a fictionalized Colombia where the player’s character, Juan, is forced into a postition of choosing between growing coffee and growing poppies. Structures exist in the game to support either decision and to resist the other. And then “madness ensues”.

In the fragment called Seeds of Solitude Juan has decided to attempt to eradicate the poppies. Armed with his machete, he sets forth to chop them all down. He is accompanied in this scenario by butterflies who do nature’s work.

Origin: USA, Colombia, and Vietnam

Year: 2004

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Artist: Robert Yang, music by The Lonesome Billies

Title: Tea Room

Statement: The Tearoom is a historical public bathroom simulator about anxiety, police surveillance, and sucking off another dude’s gun: in 1962, the Mansfield, Ohio police department setup a hidden surveillance camera behind a two-way mirror, and secretly filmed dudes having sex with dudes in a public bathroom. The police used the film footage to imprison each person for a year or more under Ohio’s sodomy laws. Today in 2017, police still target men who have sex with men — and in video game land, I still have to deal with Twitch banning my gay games by secret trial as if they’re the fucking game police. So to appease this oppressive conservative gamer-surveillance complex, I have swapped out any pesky penises in my game for the only thing that the game industry will never moderate nor ban — guns. Now, there’s nothing wrong with guys appreciating other guys’ guns, right?

Origin: USA

Year: 2017

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Artists: With design, art, and writing by Elizabeth LaPensée, programming by Adrian Cheater and Aubrey Jane Scott, and music and sound effects by NÀHGĄ a.k.a. Casey Koyczan.

Title: Thunderbird Strike

Statement: In the 2D sidescroller Thunderbird Strike, fly from the Tar Sands to the Great Lakes as a thunderbird protecting Turtle Island with searing lightning against the snake that threatens to swallow the lands and waters whole.

Origin: USA

Year: 2017

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Artist: Dietrich Squinkifer

Title: you used to be someone

Statement: You have no idea how long it’s been since you last set foot outside your cramped little apartment. You don’t really talk to anyone. You can’t focus on work. You barely have any appetite to speak of, literally and figuratively. Even casually reading Twitter makes you anxious.

Somehow, you thought moving to a new city would help you meet people you actually like. That you’d find fun activities to do and better opportunities all around. You used to be pretty good at faking your way around being a social butterfly. People actually seemed to like you, and the stuff you made and performed. But now? You can’t even remember being that person.

Maybe you should go outside. Maybe it will help.

CONTENT WARNING:  This is a game based on my experience having a major depressive episode. Please do whatever you need to do to be able to engage safely with this subject matter.

Origin: Canada

Year: 2017

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Artist: Lindsay Grace

Title: Wait

Statement: Wait, a simple game where the player is encouraged to refrain from acting on the world. As the player moves the world disappears, but when the player waits, the world becomes more interesting. The majesty is found in the slow, controlled effort. Players are awarded points when the little things in life reveal themselves.

The intention in wait is to return the game experience to a central theme in some artistic practices: the reward of stopping to smell the flowers. The game begins with a fade from white and a fairly empty virtual field with blowing grass and the sounds of nature. If the player does not move, elements of the world are heard and faded into view. When these items are fully in view and physically close to the player the player is rewarded points. Points accrued are expressed by a single modulated tone every few seconds. As time progresses the world begins to fade away. The player must respond by moving to another space in the world. If they do not move by the time the world completely fades away, then the game will end. A score is displayed. The score will, in true game fashion, be compared to the past performance of other players.  Play can continue indefinitely if the player moves and waits appropriately.

Origin: USA

Year: 2009

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