The Milan Machinima Festival is proud to unveil the official poster for its highly anticipated 8th edition, taking place from March 17–23, 2025, in Los Angeles, California, and online.
This year’s striking visual identity has been created by 2girls1comp, a modding duo composed of Marco De Mutiis (Italy, 1983) and Alexandra Pfammatter (Switzerland, 1993). Known for their ludic interventions and performances as a form of creative counter-play, 2girls1comp investigate the social, economic, and ideological frameworks that shape digital play and labor. Their work moves fluidly between the gaming and modding communities and contemporary cultural and artistic spaces, critically exploring themes of digital infrastructures, free labor, and algorithmic influence.
The 2025 Milan Machinima Festival poster embodies the theme REBOOT/RESTART/RESET, capturing the festival’s commitment to exploring the evolving boundaries of machinima and digital art. Developed through an innovative process, the artwork is generated from a dataset of in-game texture files, trained on a custom AI model. This computational approach references the act of returning to a game’s source files to reimagine its foundational structures. Simultaneously, it functions as an algorithmic portrait of humanity, suggesting a seamless merging of human identity and digital software. The poster’s eerie aesthetic – featuring a distorted, deconstructed human face set against a muted, flesh-toned background – challenges conventional notions of representation and underscores the festival’s engagement with machinima’s critical potential.
“We created a dataset out of game texture files and trained a custom AI model to generate the poster’s visuals”, explain 2girls1comp. “We were interested in how the act of resetting, rebooting, or restarting extends beyond its function in games, suggesting broader implications for digital identities. By using AI tools, we aimed to highlight how algorithms not only mediate virtual experiences but also influence how human subjects are constructed and perceived within software-driven environments”.
The Milan Machinima Festival MMXXV will feature two special screening events on March 20 and March 21, 2025, from 2–5 PM at Vidiots (4884 Eagle Rock Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90041). The full festival program, including screenings, talks, and workshops, will be announced shortly.
To purchase your tickets, please visit Eventbrite
For updates and more information, visit milanmachinimafestival.org
Learn more about 2girls1comp
