Backseats - Leonardo Sang
Backseats is a photographic project by Sao Palo-based artist Leonardo Sang. These images of glowing black and white landscapes, blurring slightly from the speed, dissolving into out-of-focus grey in the distance, are all shot from the passenger seat of some of the world’s most beloved cars… Or, at a closer inspection, are the passenger seat of the finest digital simulations of these exotic machines that the bleeding edge of realistic video games can provide. Even more curiously, the camera is no more real than the cars and landscape. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the long history of cars and photography, these driving simulation games (such as Forza) used by Sang are the host for some of the most sophisticated virtual cameras ever implemented, leading the industry in implementing full DSLR replica controls and film stock emulators. But aside from serving as a report from deep in the uncanny valley, the most critical turn in the Backseats project is Sang’s abdication of driving to the video game’s AI so he can focus all of his attention on making photographs. This move fundamentally challenges and reorients our preconceptions about what players are supposed to be doing in a videogame, collapsing the 3D models used to prototype and manufacture cars, the history of using composited CG automobiles in film and advertising, and ultimately asking the question of what it means to loiter in the digitally simulated sublime rather than grasp at traditions of competitive “gameplay.”
Creator: Leonardo Sang
Link: https://leosang.com/backseats-in-videogames
Connections:
Richard Estes - Car Reflection
Robert Frank - The Americans
E.F. Kitchen - Suburban Knights