This Mo-Cap Mini Course is a 3-day in-person workshop introducing artists and makers to DIY motion capture techniques, virtual world-building, and livestreaming technology. In three weekly classes, participants will have the opportunity to use cutting edge mo-cap technology to craft their own creative mixed reality sketches. This workshop will culminate in a video showcase of cohort work at VGA Project Lab and online.
These incredibly talented and dedicated students will be playtesting their game GET OFF MY CHANNEL live at The Annoyance Theatre on Sunday, April 21st at 5pm. There are guaranteed to be surprises. You won't want to miss it.
Game Dev and Comedy Arts Students UNITE FORCES to make the weirdest video game possible…in less than 60 hours. For the entire weekend of April 12th-14th, teams will have to write, produce, model, and code an original game, with the exclusive help of some of Chicago’s finest in comedy writing and game development. Those who finish will have the chance to see their creations playtested at The Annoyance Theatre on April 21st!
VGA Gallery is excited to announce that Football Practice, an ongoing project by Kristen McWharter with Alm Chung, will be on display on the building facade of Hyde Park Art Center from November 21st through December 4th.
Football Practice is an experiment in visualizing the archetypes, stereotypes, and desires that are enmeshed in the narratives of professional sports. The software runs in real-time with AI athletes driven by the motivations of how workshop participants reimagined players for a speculative sport. This exhibition marks the close of a two-year development process and is an opportunity to witness what new narratives this virtual team embodies as they play.
VGA Gallery welcomes Sam Bond (a.k.a. Dr. Games Bond) for a new episode of VGA Fireside! Sam Bond is a biomedical game developer and excitable collaborator, designing, programming, and producing work for biomedical educational games.
To celebrate the recent release of VGA Reader Issue 4, VGA Fireside will be LIVE on June 22 @ 5pm with special guest stars Uchechi Anomnachi, Tiffany Funk, and Chris Reeves for VGA Fireside Reader Edition!
VGA Gallery welcomes Fern Goldfarb-Ramallo (@ferntastic) for our next episode of VGA FIRESIDE! Goldfarb-Ramallo is a creative coder, designer and visual artist based in Brooklyn and Berlin. They work across numerous platforms developing playful creative tools for digital artmaking.
VGA Gallery welcomes Amanda Hudgins (@BarelyConcealed) to a new episode of VGA FIRESIDE! Hudgins is a writer and game designer based out of Lexington, KY. Their work, which has been shown internationally, pushes the boundaries of what a video game controller can consist of. They are a columnist for the digital magazine Unwinnable.
VGA Gallery has invited Xalavier Nelson Jr. (@writnelson) for our last VGA FIRESIDE of 2021! Nelson is a BAFTA-nominated, award-winning narrative director, writer, ex-PC Gamer columnist, IntroComp organizer, and MCV Rising Star. He is best known for his work on games such as Reigns: Beyond, Hypnospace Outlaw, Can Androids Pray, SkateBIRD, and An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs.
VGA Gallery is excited to announce Kristin McWharter and Alm Chung’s workshop series for their project FOOTBALL PRACTICE. A limited number of workshop dates are available, and we encourage you to sign up and help contribute to McWharter and Chung’s data pool of ideas about America’s most popular sport.
VGA Gallery welcomes Alm Chung and Kristin McWharter for a special episode of VGA FIRESIDE! Chung is a researcher and publisher of zines and games, while McWharter is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores the entangled relationship between competition and intimacy.
VGA Gallery welcomes Tanya DePass for a new episode of VGA FIRESIDE! Tanya founded I Need Diverse Games, a not-for-profit foundation based in Chicago dedicated to better diversification of all aspects of gaming. She is also a writer, Twitch streamer, and diversity consultant on games such as Far Cry: New Dawn and Wandersong.
VGA Gallery welcomes Kara Stone for a special episode of VGA FIRESIDE! Kara is an artist and scholar interested in the affective and gendered experiences of psychosocial disability, debility, and healing as it relates to art production, particularly video games. Kara’s 2018 game the earth is a better person than me was featured in VGA’s exhibition Polymorphism: Queer Encounters of Intimacy in Games.
VGA Gallery welcomes game designer duo Melos Han-Tani and Marina Kittaka of Analgesic Productions for a special episode of VGA FIRESIDE! Melos and Marina are the minds behind games such as the ANODYNE series and EVEN THE OCEAN. On their own, Melos is the creator of ALL OUR ASIAS, and Marina coded DIY blogging platform Zonelets.net.
VGA Gallery welcomes Chicago-based video game developer Kevin Zuhn as a speaker for VGA Fireside! Zuhn is the Creative Director at Young Horses, where they’ve worked on such hits as Octodad and Bugsnax. They also participate in game jams and makes experimental games in their spare time.
VGA Gallery welcomes Catt Small as a speaker for VGA Fireside! Small is a designer and video game developer who has been coding since she was 10 years old. When she’s not designing UX and speaking publicly about her work in tech, she makes games to help people better understand the world around them.
VGA Gallery welcomes Akash Thakkar as a speaker for VGA Fireside! Thakkar is a composer and sound designer for video games, film, and animation. He has worked on such titles as HYPER LIGHT DRIFTER, CONCRETE GENIE, and BRASS TACTICS, and he works to educate and mentor fellow game designers and composers.
VGA Gallery welcomes Karina Popp as our February guest for VGA Fireside! Popp is an instructor at NYU who makes games about banality and bodies and labor. Her work has been selected at festivals such as the IGF, Come Out and Play, Now Play This, and Fantastic Arcade.
VGA Gallery welcomes TJ Hughes (aka Terrifying Jellyfish) as our inaugural speaker for VGA Fireside. Hughes is a game designer and digital artist based in St. Louis, Missouri. Hughes works across different media and is currently working on NOUR, a colorful video game about playing with food, which will be released on Playstation 5, PC and Mac.
As a part of Artists Run Chicago 2.0 at Hyde Park Art Center, VGA Gallery presents Personal Action, Public Display: A Balcony of Video Game Art. For this exhibition, VGA will program the entire projection façade of the HPAC that viewers can see from either inside or outside of the building depending on the time of day. The projections offer a mix of machinima (or animation made with video game engines) and two interactive pieces that visitors can play through their own mobile device. As a group of artworks they offer an introduction to video game art as a discipline leveraging private, personal devices into collective acts of digital expression.
The different projects showcased in this exhibition offer different answers to the question “What happens when you let the player of games into your story?”
Rock a costume inspired by your favorite game character and enjoy an evening of art, games, music, hors d’oeuvres, and drinks while supporting exhibitions and programs in VGA Gallery's 2019-2020 season.
Play games about artmaking and actually learn how to make your own game at this exciting, family-friendly day of activities.
Based out of Chala, India, Studio Oleomingus is a two-person game studio known for their visually stunning and narrative-driven games and about the history of India, post-colonialism, and a generative approach toward blending fact and fiction.
The exhibition Chicago New Media 1973–1992 was first held at University of Illinois at Chicago’s Gallery 400 in fall of 2018 and it illuminated the largely untold story of Chicago's role in the history of new media. The project will now travel as a touring exhibition to the 2019 Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. Celebrating its 40th anniversary, the Ars Electronica Festival is a gathering of artists, scientists and technologists, that attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year since 1979.
With its distinctive urban landscape and rich cultural legacies, Hong Kong has always been a great source of creative inspiration for video games. Hong Kong is one of the most frequently depicted locations in video games, alongside New York City and Tokyo. As both a physical place and a cultural icon, Hong Kong unquestionably occupies a unique position in the video game imaginary.
This exhibition explores the burgeoning field of interactive queer art, which gamifies the mechanics of intimate relationships and reinterprets traditional game concepts as a means to experience affection, desire, and love. While queer desire has been marginalized and pathologized in the mainstream, within LGBTQIA+ culture, a more inclusive acceptance of kink and diverse relationship structures is being articulated.
Chicago New Media 1973–1992 seeks to illuminate the largely untold story of Chicago's role in the history of new media. Consisting of an exhibition, public program, and scholarly catalog, the project yields a new art historical understanding of the artists and organizations that contributed to digital art and technology in the latter half of the twentieth century.
VGA Gallery invites GREGORIOS KYTHREOTIS to speak at the first VGA FIRESIDE of 2022! Gregorios is half of the two-person game development studio Shedworks, where he’s worked as Creative Director on many cross-disciplinary projects, from websites and apps to exhibitions and music videos. Their most recent endeavor is the desert exploration game Sable, available now on Steam.