Our Patreon for VRAL is a space specifically designed for enthusiasts, critics, artists and scholars interested in avant-garde machinima and game-based video art, offering hundreds of curated posts that dive deep into this art form. For a modest monthly contribution starting at just $3.5, patrons unlock access to a rich repository of exclusive content that include insightful articles, thought-provoking essays,... Read more →
01/05/2025
01/03/2025
EVENT: ANDY HUGHES (JANUARY 3-16 2025, ONLINE)
Shimmer digital video, color, sound, 11’, 2024, United Kingdom created by Andy Hughes Shimmer creatively combines photographic assemblage, archival footage, and video game imagery, to interrogate the vitality and agency of materials, positioning pollution and climate change as pivotal concerns while destabilizing the dichotomy between animate and ostensibly inert matter such as “plastics”. Andy Hughes is a British artist whose... Read more →
12/31/2024
CHART: 2024_MY FAVORITE CINEMATIC EXPERIENCES (RANKED)
Disclaimer I have still not seen as of Dec 31 2024 (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa): All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia) The Brutalist (Brady Corbet) Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke) Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) The End (Joshua Oppenheimer) Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes) Hard Truths (Mike Leigh) Kneecap (Rich Peppiat) Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola) Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)... Read more →
CHART: 2024_MY FAVORITE SHORTS (RANKED)
Highlights Best Secret Place (Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel): Video games are not interactive movies. Video games are lucid dreams. Poggi & Vinel explore gaming culture's fascination with death and violence, guns and destruction with irony, gore, and gusto. Fallout 4 references, Easter eggs, power ups, and glitches. There's also full machinima, around 30 minutes in, as well as shorter gameplay... Read more →
MENTAL NOTE: HALLUCINATION OR PREMEDIATION?
Every January, I make it a point to read the State of the World conversation between Jon Lebkowsky and Bruce Sterling on The Well. While some people turn to astrology for insight, others put their trust in Sterling. I’m firmly in the latter camp. Another part of my tradition is revisiting the previous year’s predictions, prognostications, and prognoses to see... Read more →