Aaron Oldenburg
"My work comes from a mix of autobiographical experience and theoretical experimentation. Exploring technical constraints and limitations helps me give shape to concepts and subjects that are not inherently technical.
My mediums tend to be videogames, interactive and non-interactive procedural software, and video, with the latter often using the former as material. I create work using game engines, various coding languages, 2D and 3D digital art creation software, and audio sampling.
Simulations of instability, the overwhelming power of nature, post-human worlds and dissociation are themes I lean toward. They all come from a similar place, even if they produce different results. All of them can be seen as a form of rupture with our assumed control over our world and reality. There is a spiritual element of letting go or riding the discomfort.
Exploring technical constraints and limitations helps me give shape to concepts and subjects that are not inherently technical. Recently, I have created procedural software work where, although I might have started with some interaction or game mechanics, I eventually reduced interaction to almost nothing. These works generally have some form of generative landscape and occasionally also artificially-intelligent non-playable characters whose behaviors one can observe.
Aaron Oldenburg is a Baltimore-based game, interactive and video artist. His work has exhibited in festivals and galleries in New York, Johannesburg, London, Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Los Angeles, including SIGGRAPH, A MAZE. International Games and Playful Media Festival, the LeftField Collection at EGX Rezzed, Slamdance DIG, and FILE Electronic Language International Festival. His games have been written about in Kill Screen, Baltimore City Paper, BmoreArt, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun. He teaches game design as a professor in The University of Baltimore's Simulation and Game Design program and has an MFA from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "
Website:
Social media:
https://pixelfed.social/aaronoldenburg
A Stabilizing Loop, 16:9, software, 2023
"Layers of hand-drawn images taken from my own past photography of anonymized friends and family and images of extinct animal and plant species are given chance combinations via autonomous real-time software. The environments created in these vignettes are unpredictable and often chaotic. The figures are both overwhelmed by this and participate in it.
The elements that make up the collage were chosen as they aligned with a sense of uncertainty and loss. There is a feeling for me, in the collision of the semi-random images, of the chaos of earth in a period of late humankind. It is the momentum of natural disasters birthed from our energy usage. It's a constant state of rupture interspersed with moments of new equilibriums.
My mediums tend to be videogames, interactive and non-interactive procedural software, and video, with the latter often using the former as material. Simulations of instability, the overwhelming power of nature, post-human worlds and dissociation are themes I lean toward. They all come from a similar place, even if they produce different results. All of them can be seen as a form of rupture with our assumed control over our world and reality. There’s a spiritual element of letting go or riding the discomfort."
Night Walks, 9:16, software, 2023
"This is an autonomously-walking death meditation. In it, the player is wandering lost in a semi-wilderness, on the edge of a once-inhabited environment. They go from area to area, trees, marsh, empty roads, in each place experiencing the world through their senses as well as their thoughts. They also sometimes encounter bodies on the ground. Sometimes they bury these bodies. Occasionally they encounter mounds where someone or thing has been buried. They are wandering at night and at the break of dawn they lie down to sleep, dream, and then die. The position where they died is uploaded to a server to potentially be found and buried by another instance/repetition of the software, another ‘player’.
The server provides the memory of each play session, a life that transcends the death of each individual 'player'. The individual dies and becomes a piece of shared data or an invisible web of relationships. A similar process happens in physical death as our bodies continue to be used by the environment without our agency."
Returning... as…, variable, virtual reality software, 2023
"Returning… as… is an experimental VR project created to explore feelings of isolation, loss, and environmental instability. Players interact with a dynamic virtual balcony in silhouette, surrounded by a shifting and consuming landscape and a swarm of glowing pixels that transform into ambiguous figures with varied behaviors. These figures are partially subject to the player’s agency but ultimately exist independently within an ever-changing environment shaped by waves of enveloping blackness.
The project leverages open-source tools and minimalist aesthetics to create a fluid, immersive space where 2D and 3D elements merge. Interactivity emphasizes unpredictability, reflecting themes of connection and disconnection as players navigate ambiguity and shifting boundaries.
The work draws from personal and collective experiences of uncertainty, particularly during the current climate crisis, exploring in the dark, ambiguous space of the silhouette, the constantly-shifting boundaries of our knowledge. Through unstable visuals and emergent gameplay, Returning… as… invites reflection on agency, anxiety, and the impact of the uncontrollable."