Studio DEMO x Rhizome: Origins of the Artist Game

Artists have long treated play as a serious, expansive practice. Working outside commercial gaming, they’ve developed a distinct field: visually rich, critically alive, and economically viable on its own terms. Studio DEMO x Rhizome sessions offer a glimpse of past and future forms of the “artist-made game”.

Long before indie gaming entered the mainstream, artists were making experimental games, modifying cartridges as artwork, and using game engines to challenge the AAA industry’s emphasis on profitable action-adventure and shooter genres. In this micro-lecture, Mitchell Chan draws on his personal experience as an artist and game maker, as well as ongoing research with collaborators, to map the history of artist-made games and highlight contemporary works that extend our understanding of games as an artistic medium.

Studio DEMO is a live broadcast hub at the New Museum, open to drop into throughout the day and available via livestream. Featuring NEW INC's wider creative community, broadcasts take the form of talks, demonstrations, couch conversations, panel discussions, DJ sets, and more. This year, NEW INC partners with peer organizations to build thematic programming for Studio DEMO. Partners include Geidai Project, Onassis Foundation, Rhizome, Serpentine, YoungArts.