Alma

Alma is an Italian-language machinima project with English subtitles create with the videogame Red Dead Redemption 2 and is based on meditations about the cycle of "life and death" in videogames avatar's being and the paradoxes related to it.

  • Luca Miranda
    Director
  • Luca Miranda
    Writer
  • Luca Miranda
    Producer
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Web / New Media, Other
  • Runtime:
    5 minutes 34 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    November 30, 2018
  • Country of Origin:
    Italy
  • Country of Filming:
    Italy
  • Language:
    Italian
  • Shooting Format:
    1080p Recording
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • Milan Machinima Festival
    Milan
    Italy
    March 15, 2019
Director Biography - Luca Miranda

Luca Miranda’s practice is focus on the relationship and conjunctures between reality and simulation. He's particularly interested in the notion of the avatar as an aesthetic entity and its representation features. In his work there's a critical investigation of game mechanics and concepts such as immersion, identification, and interpassivity. His work deals with the image of the avatar in contemporary culture. Miranda received a B.A. in Media and Art from the University of Bologna and an M.A. in TV, Cinema and New Media at IULM University in Milan. In 2018, he co-founded Eremo, an artistic collective based in Milan and is one of the curator of VRAL, site focused on Game art, machinima and ludic sperimentation.

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Director Statement

The short film, presented in form of dramatic narration, talk about a videogame character that, mangled for the partner’s loss, try to kill itself in all possible ways, discovering to not be able to do that. This is a machinima create with in-game shootings of the videogame Red Dead Redemption 2 by Rockstar Games and the voice over is my recitation, an accompaniment subsequent at my long relation with the avatar that I used. The work generates from a reflection upon the aspects and characteristics that governate life and death conceptions linked to the avatar figures (as Non-player character as well as simulacrums). These are connected and interacts reciprocally in new modes with the “first spectator” that is intended to be watcher of their performance: the human being – as a user as well as the reader of a medial text. The work want to highlight the significant conjunction between simulation and its interruption and the meaning of “life cycle” associable to a virtual identity. The work is also inspired by the videoludic concept of permadeath, that represent an uniquely form of paradox: the avatar have to die definitely but yet returns, even if a little different than before. The short movie want to dive in this type of reflection, assuming the prospective of an entity that, ontologically speaking, is not considered a creature of a “real world”: the avatar of an universe presented through the videogame medium.