Alan Butler led a tour of the game environment of Grand Theft Auto V, focusing on topics of representation and simulation as well as the role of the in-game photographer. Viewers were able to follow the artist in his critical analysis of the game logics, and their social, political, and economic implications.
Screen Walk with Alan Butler
Live streamed performance recording
Alan Butler, Witness to a Changing West
Screen Walks is a new series of live-streamed artist/researcher-led explorations of online spaces and artistic strategies designed to illuminate a thriving – often overlooked – digital cultural scene. A new online collaboration between The Photographers’ Gallery, UK and Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland.
Biography
Alan Butler is a visual artist and lecturer, focusing on the material and philosophical implications that digital environments and new media technologies pose to the evolution of visual culture, politics, ecologies and social structures. Since 2005, part of this practice has involved an exploration of video game worlds, and their potential to act as 'real' spaces of creativity beyond traditional game-play. Significant works in this series include: 'Down and Out in Los Santos', a quasi-documentary photography series about homelessness and poverty in the video game Grand Theft Auto V; 'Virtual Cyanotype Botany', a series that uses the 19th century photo-chemical process to document plant-life from video games of the last 45 years; and 'On Exactitude in Science' a two-screen feature film comprising Godfrey Reggio's 'Koyaanisqatsi' and Butler's shot-for-shot remake 'KoyanisGTAV', which was produced entirely in Grand Theft Auto V. Since 2017, his works have been featured in galleries and museums across the globe, including: The Akron Museum, USA; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, England; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, Poland; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; C/O Berlin, Germany; ZKM, Karlsruhe Germany; Les Rencontres d’Arles 2017, France; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; Transfer Gallery, New York City, USA; FACT, Liverpool, England; Kasteel Wijlre, The Netherlands; Lismore Castle, Ireland and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and the Perth International Film Festival 2019, Australia; Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography, Switzerland; Espace Multimédia Gantner, France.
