Game Art Festival features experimental video games, art, components

Clarification: The original photo caption was misleading. The subject of the photograph is Game Lab director and professor Eddo Stern.

The Game Lab is a single room in the Broad Art Center littered with half-finished game components, lined with computer monitors and occupied by a select handful of dedicated game developers at any one time. A lot of magic happens in this room.

In the past weeks leading up to the Game Art Festival, which is opening tonight at the Hammer Museum and running again Thursday night at the Experimental Digital Arts space in the Broad Art Center, a lot of that magic has been focused on preparation. Half-finished game components include arcade cabinets that will be on display. Computer monitors are aglow with games that will soon be playable, and the dedicated occupants are the ones making sure that everything goes smoothly.

One of those people is Game Lab manager David Elliott, co-producer of the festival, who has been helping with nearly every aspect of the upcoming event. Elliott said that the Game Art Festival will feature live demonstrations and performances of games, playable games in an arcade format, game art, live music, food and drinks.

“The atmosphere is kind of like a party. It’s a mix between a conference and an art show,” Elliott said.

One of the works that will be on display is “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth,” a game that utilizes the Xbox 360’s Kinect camera, which typically uses infrared to put players in the game, and allows players to build terrain in the game using real world objects. Another game that will be shown is “Nevermind,” a psychological horror game that uses biofeedback devices to teach players how to handle stress.

Other, non-video-game specific projects include the Flatland ARG!!! , which is an Augmented Reality Game that uses cameras and computers to track players’ movements through the game. Also on display will be Caine’s Arcade, the DIY cardboard arcade put together entirely by 9-year-old Los Angeles native Caine Monroy. A short film chronicling his endeavors has recently gone viral and now both students and attendees can see it in person.

Eddo Stern, the director of the Game Lab, was responsible for curating the event. He said that when looking for games and art to feature, his main priority was to find work that hasn’t been shown before. Stern also said that he looked at work not just from the UCLA campus, but from many campuses around Southern California and even other countries such as Germany and Sweden.

Stern also said that he wanted to present games that fit and complement the environment of the festival.

“The venue really is the main experience. … Hopefully you’re playing (the games) in a way that you couldn’t on your laptop on a small screen,” Stern said.

Among the students presenting work of their own is Mark Essen, a Design | Media Arts graduate student. Essen’s project is titled “Tickleplane,” and the Game Art Festival website describes it simply as “A game about world domination.” Essen was a bit more eloquent on the subject, though.

“My game is this tournament-style airplane dogfighting game. Six players each have their own keyboard and sort of bash on the keyboard in the direction they want to fly their plane but at certain points they’ll have to type in specific words to repair it or to get power ups,” Essen said. “It’s sort of like a game mash-up, and it has this really odd control scheme.”

Essen’s game will be just one of many on display at the festival tonight and Thursday night. The games themselves, though, are only a portion of what will be available for attendees to see, interact with and experience.

“I think (we’ll have) hopefully a more energized space, more of a carnival feel. Not like a dead space. I think it’s sort of like going to some kind of video game rock show. That’s the energy we’re going for,” Stern said.