STILL NOT GAME

EXPERIENCING A GAME ENGINE AS AN ARTISTIC STUDIO SPACE

Abstract

Still Not Game reflects on the use of Unreal Engine as a visual artist’s studio space. The artist presents her personal journey of learning and making with the software, never having played a computer game. Determined to create abstract work unrelated to games or simulation, she built a virtual realm more concerned with non-worldly experience. The world formed into a sublime landscape, a timeless space that might transport visitors to altered states. Years later, after many software updates, the artist still feels like a beginner, using only fragments of its vast potential. Through experimentation and accretion, that world became an overwhelming space, full of strange objects, overgrown like a crazy garden. A revelation, a shift to an artist’s mindset, suddenly turned it into an artist studio: a site where iteration, what-if scenarios and serendipitous insights give rise to an endless flow of new works, exploring luminosity and transcendent spaces afforded by the software.