“Group Hug” is a new art exhibition featuring three video games by Theo Triantafyllidis, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, and Tale of Tales studio.

The exhibition involves a partnership between New York-based media accelerator Onassis ONX, Arts Technologies (a project of London’s Serpentine Galleries), and Rhizome (New York’s “home for born-digital art and culture”). The exhibits range from cozy to hectic, raising questions regarding the relationship between video games and society.

“Three billion people play video games globally,” Onassis ONX’s director of programming, Jazia Hammoudi, stated to ArtNet. “The gaming industry is a behemoth that shapes the tech economy. It’s vital that we pay attention to the visual culture of video games, as well as the modes of interaction that they model.”

“Group Hug” is located at Water Street Projects, an exhibition space in New York’s Financial District. To the left of the entryway is a thicket of ferns and trees foregrounds on three screens.

This area hosts Tale of Tales’ free game The Endless Forest (2005), which also appears in Harvey’s current show at the Museum of the Moving Image. The game, which involves simply frolicking as a deer without objectives or dialogue, provides a contrast to the idea that video games exacerbate violence.

“The Endless Forest started as a reaction to artists who were modding existing games,” Harvey stated. “We always looked at those and thought the original games were way more interesting than anything you could mod, so why not make the original yourself? I’m very happy to see that a lot of artists are now taking that idea and using game engines in their work, way more than used to be commonly acceptable.”

Around the corner from this exhibit is Triantafyllidis’s Feral Metaverse, equipped with a massive catapult featuring eight seats, screens, and controllers. This game, which takes place in a dystopian desert, involves each organically arising group determining their objective and then completing it. This style challenges the common association between games and competition.

“I’m focused on enhancing the spontaneity and absurdity that can arise when people collaborate,” Triantafyllidis stated. “It’s about the shared experience and the joy of working together in a wild, untamed space.”

Finally, the exhibition features Brathwaite-Shirley’s The Lack: I Knew Your Voice Before You Spoke. After passing through a red veil, players enter a dark, fragrant space, and The Lack casts a glow over the room, draped in banners featuring phrases like “I’ve turned my back on them to protect myself.”

Instead of controllers, The Lack involves two hanging microphones, a floor-based keyboard, and four mini-games. The goal is to collect angels by fulfilling objectives, such as whispering secrets into one of the microphones. There’s no winning or losing, adding once again to the exhibition’s theme that games don’t always involve direct competition.

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