Heterotopias
Helmed by Gareth Damian Martin, Heterotopias is a sharply assembled digital magazine that utilizes critical essays, art, and psychogeographic tactics to pry at the experience of architecture, environments, and landscape in video games. Of special note is the magazine’s extensive deployment of virtual and screenshot photography in its inquiries. To use the first issue as an example, contributions address, amongst many other things: the way Japanese videogame creators in the 80s used [often darkly] futurist and sci-fi tropes from the USSR to express their anxiety; an examination of the historical roots of the conspiracy theory-laden locations of the original Tomb Raider; and an intriguing series of 35mm analog black and white screenshot photographs of a virtual past-Shanghai from a game called Kane & Lynch 2. Paired with an interview of the art director for Kane and Lynch 2, Rasmus Poulsen, the duo highlights the dynamic tension between the personal art making practice and mass media industry intentions. Each subsequent issue, alongside their studies series, has only grown richer in explorative art, theory, and criticism about our relationships with digital spaces.
Creator: Gareth Damian Martin
Link: http://www.heterotopiaszine.com
Disclosure Note: Heterotopias has featured some of Eron’s projects.