“The Art of Video Game Photography”, published on YouTubbe on 8 Sept 2020 by eurothug4000
Cindy Poremba
International workshop: Screen-Images (Bildschirmbilder) – In-Game Photography and Screenshots as Photographical Praxis
July 6-7, 2017 in Brandenburg Center for Media Studies (ZeM), Potsdam (Germany)
Starting from the phenomenon of In-Game Photography this workshop investigates the status of the screenshot as a photographical genre which includes but is not limited to computer games. Both, Screen-Photography and In-Game Photography belong to a number of everyday photographical practices that are performed within the digitally produced realities as well as the digitized realities we inhabit and which are largely mediated via screens and screen-like surfaces. Amongst those practices are the so-called “screenshotting” in computer games (e.g. in order to document unusual in-game events and to share those), photorealistic captures of digital 3D models (as they often occur in architecture or design contexts) or, much simpler, the screenshot as a form of camera-less photography. In addition there exist hybrid cases such as photography in augmented realities (which most recently became popular through the smartphone game Pokémon Go (2016)), screen captures with real cameras in artistic contexts, and the creation of screenshots of digital photographs in the computer. Eventually, in the history of “real-world” photography exists a significant amount of photographs which show 1) tv or computer screens, 2) billboards showing photographs of real physical screens and 3) photographs of photographs which are held in hands.
Such practices and phenomena have hitherto rarely been subjected to scientific investigation. There is a considerable lack of aesthetical, cultural, technical and historical analyses as well as a lack of theories and theory production in relevant disciplines. The goal of the workshop is hence to describe screenshot-like practices and phenomena and to ask questions regarding the status, the ontology, the aesthetics, as well as the cultural and artistic significance of such phenomena and practices. The workshop thereby intends to investigate the potential of a new subject area for future research from the perspective of media studies, media aesthetics, and media history, as well as image studies, photography theory and game studies.
Program
Thursday, July 6, 2017
10:00 Winfried Gerling and Sebastian Möring: Welcome und Introduction of ZeM and DIGAREC
10:30 – 11:15 Stephan Günzel: From Screen to Screen – A Dislimitation of the Photographic Image
11:15 – 12:00 Birgit Schneider: Framing the frame – media mimicry from a historical perspective
12:00 – 13:30 Lunch break
13:30 – 14:15 Sebastian Möring: Artistic In-Game Photography and the Conditional Image of the Computer Game
14:15 – 15:00 Cindy Poremba: Constructing through Creating: In-Game Photography
15:00 – 15:30 Coffee break
15:30 – 16:15 Margarete Pratschke: The Materiality of Screenshots. Historical Screenshots as Photo-Objects and their Role within Visual Culture
16:15 – 17:00 Marco de Mutiis: Photo Modes – sketches for a post-photographic apparatus
17:00 – 17:30 Hans Kannewitz: How to Frame Screenshots of Operating Systems – On the Arrangement of a Collection
17:00 – 17:30 Hans Kannewitz: How to Frame Screenshots of Operating Systems – On the Arrangement of a Collection
Friday, July 7, 2017
10:30 – 11:15 Jan Distelmeyer: Using Depresentation. Observations on/by Desktop Movies
11:15 – 12:00 Winfried Gerling: The Schirmbild – The Long and Short History of Screenphotography
12:00-13:30 Lunch break
13:30 – 14:15 Matteo Bittanti: tba
14:15 – 15:00 Markus Rautzenberg: Ways of Vanishing. Ludic Mediality in Computer Games and Photography
15:00 – 15:30 Coffee break
15:30 Final Discussion/Outlook
Organizers
This workshop is a collaboration between Brandenburg Center for Media Studies (ZeM, http://zem-brandenburg.de), Digital Games Research Center (DIGAREC, http://digarec.de), European Media Studies (EMW, http://emw.eu), University of Applied Sciences Potsdam (FHP) and University of Potsdam (UP). The workshop is supported by Potsdam Graduate School (PoGS).
The workshop is organized by Winfried Gerling and Sebastian Möring.
Venue
The workshop takes place at Brandenburg Center for Media Studies (ZeM):
ZeM – Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften
Friedrich-Ebert-Straße 4
14467 Potsdam
Approach/Site plan:
Cindy Poremba – Point and Shoot, Remediating Photography in Gamespace
“Point and Shoot, Remediating Photography in Gamespace” is a 2007 essay by Cindy Poremba. Here the author looks at the phenomenon of screenshots photograph of digital games and their relationship with photography. The virtualisation of photography, she claims, remediates many aspects of traditional photography.
Considering the time of the essay and its scope and content, this can be seen as a defining and pioneering writing for the discourse of in-game photography.
If the process and ritual behind this image making is similar, the players themselves are validating the reality of their subjects simply by creating a document of these experiences. In this sense, players are taking real photos, just in virtual spaces.
Although game photos remain a representation (through remediation) of the technique of representation, photography nonetheless carves out a space for itself within play, bringing new practice to the digital game.
originally published in: Games and Culture, Volume 2 Number 1, January 2007 49-58 © 2007 Sage Publications 10.1177/1555412006295397
Seth Giddings, Drawing Without Light
In an essay part of Martin Lister’s The Photographic Image in Digital Culture (2nd ed., 2014), Seth Giddings looks at Videogame photography and argues that while light is absent from this kind of photography, yet other aspects persist.
Images taken in them may not be written with light, but in their conventions, their uses, effects and affects, they function, and are understood as, photographs of the virtual.
In-game photography, he states, is not a completely new medium but also not just an unqualified remediation of photography.
If we pay attention to what the residues of photography and photographic practices facilitate in the new milieu of the virtual gameworld and the digital network, we might see new quite different media technocultural individuals emerging. Not remediated, not rupture per se, but an evolution, a mutation – as it ever was.
A draft of the paper is available on line here: http://badnewthings.co.uk/papers/drawing%20without%20light.pdf
in-game photography 