Video games are a key medium in contemporary culture. With a market exceeding that of the film industry, they create infrastructures and communities that inhabit new and often problematic systems of technological production and consumption, and swiftly react to social and cultural changes. Working within constantly reconfigured realities, big studios and indie developers create spaces of simulation, mediated presence, and detachment, while gamers rewrite the rules of games to adapt them to new communication needs or to explore their worlds. Working with these rich and contradictory environments has become part of contemporary artists’ practice, both in the form of artworks and as a source of technology, narrative mechanics, imagery, and themes.

The articles published here will range from essays to reading lists and examine phenomena at the intersection of video games and contemporary art practices. A “speedrun” is a play-through of a video game with the intention of completing it as fast as possible using bugs and secret pathways: it breaks the logic of the game and uses its rules to complete a different task. Game design and its interaction with art is a living process that involves more exceptions and surprises than rules and regulations. Without attempting to present an exhaustive digest on the subject, in this growing collection of articles Garage Digital will discuss the basic elements of a new and developing visual language.

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