Last year, I began to teach at la Sorbonne a course dedicated to Creation and networks for the Master Digital Creation, under the direction of Françoise Parfait. The idea behind this course is to show the evolution of creation through the evolution of technics and the web. As technic isn’t neutral, it comes with its aesthetics, messages, possibilities and constraints. We begin with a course about net.art and html, we then focus on online creation with Flash animations and interactive fictions and how the web becomes a space. Then, we talk about collaborative artworks and open artistic concepts and we end with machinimas.

This year, I asked the students to mix the machinima creation with collaborative organization. They had to create their machinima and to document their collaboration, knowing that the process was as much important as the machinima in itself.

Two projects really kept my attention. The first one “Les temps modernes” a machinima directed by Cléo Le Tutour, Justine Peneau, Laura Pouppeville, Chloé Rotrou is dealing with advertising and positive thinking vs reality, featuring possible researchs done on Google and a come back on what actually happend in 2013 in France.


What really interested me is that this machinima was done by women who never played games before and from what I saw in their video diary documenting their collaboration, I had the sensation that it became a true experience for them. They had to find games, a place to be able to play games, etc… They knew pretty well eachother, so the subject of their machinima was easy to find and to agree on. Then they really shared the work equally. I really enjoyed the result, especially because I know that it wasn’t an easy task for them to discover game culture and to play videogames.

The other project that kept my attention is “Liquidation” a machinima directed by Juliana Riska, Loriane Stary, Kim Boldt, and Dorian Reunkrilerk. It is an abstract film showing a never ending changing wallpaper on a wall. I am sorry for those who don’t speak in french, because, if the machinima is interesting in itself, the google document they shared to succeed to create remotely this machinima is amazing. They first began to share the games they like, then the ideas they were interested in, then what they could do together with a system of vote, quite democratic. Then, they shared more and more ideas, references, they went really far and then synthetized their ideas and got back to vote again. They also shared the artwork direction and realization. This document is full of references and really shows the process of thinking and how their project reflects collective thinking and respect of each other ideas.