Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn facts for kids

Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn are talented artists. They work together to create unique video games. These games are often called "art games" because they focus on feelings and stories, not just winning. From 2018 to 2024, Auriea Harvey also taught about games at a university in Germany called Kunsthochschule Kassel.

Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn at a game conference in 2014

Early Life

Auriea Harvey (far left) at a game panel in 2014

Auriea Harvey is an American artist. She was born in Indianapolis in 1971. When she was in high school, she loved to sketch and paint. At Parsons School of Design University, she used computer programs like Photoshop to make art. She also tried working with many different materials. Auriea first wanted to study painting. But she ended up studying sculpture. She earned a degree in sculpture from Parsons School of Design.

Michaël Samyn is a Belgian artist and computer programmer. He was born in 1968 in Poperinge, Belgium.

Their Work

In 1995, Auriea Harvey started a website called Entropy8. This site was an experiment with interactive art on the internet. In 1999, she combined her site with Zuper. This was a site by Michaël Samyn, who she later married. Together, they created Entropy8Zuper! During this time, they made projects like The Godlove Museum. This website told stories by mixing old tales with their own lives. Harvey also designed websites for big companies like Virgin Records America and PBS.

In the early 2000s, Harvey and Samyn decided to stop making internet art. They felt the internet was becoming too much like a shopping mall. In 2002, they started their own game company. It was called Tale of Tales. Their goal was to make games that had deeper feelings and richer stories. They wanted to make games different from what was popular for teenage boys at the time.

For a while, Auriea lived in New York and Michaël lived in Belgium. During this time, they created Wirefire. This was a special computer program. It helped them talk to each other in a more creative way than regular chat or video calls.

Harvey and Samyn work as a team. Auriea is an expert in computer graphics and 3D modeling. Michaël is skilled in programming and sound. Together, they have made eight art video games. Some of these include Fatale, The Graveyard, The Path, and The Endless Forest. They are known for their unique visual style. They also have unusual ways of telling stories and designing gameplay.

After their game Sunset was released, it didn't sell as well as they hoped. So, they decided to focus on other art projects. Their first project after games was called Cathedral-in-the-Clouds.

In 2016, Auriea Harvey became interested in 3D printing. She loved making 3D models for video games. She was able to combine this passion with virtual reality art.

Their Games

The Graveyard is a simple video game. In it, you play as an old woman. She walks around a graveyard and then leaves. In the full version, there's a small chance the old woman might die before she leaves.

The Path was inspired by the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. Players choose one of six sisters to play as. They must try to reach their grandmother's house. If they wander off the path, they might meet the Wolf. What happens after you reach the grandmother's house changes a lot if you meet the Wolf. Once all six sisters have met the Wolf, a seventh character can be played. This is a mysterious little girl in a white dress. For this game, Harvey created and experimented with 3D shapes using a game engine.

The Endless Forest is a special online game. Many players can play together at the same time. But it has no set goals. All players appear as deer in a quiet forest. Players are shown by icons of their deer. They cannot talk using words or voice. Instead, they use the deer's body language to communicate. A cool thing about this game is that it can be played as a screensaver. This happens when you are not actively using your computer.

Harvey and Samyn's game, Sunset (2015), takes place in a made-up South American city. The city is in the middle of a revolution. In many games, you play as a hero or a fighter. But in Sunset, you play as a housekeeper. This helps players focus on the difficult lives of regular people during a war. The main character is Angela Burnes. She is an African-American engineer. She moved from the United States to the fictional city of San Bavón. She hoped for a good life. Instead, she ended up cleaning a rich man's fancy apartment in a war zone. The game happens in the 1970s. The art style is very simple. As a housekeeper, you stay inside the apartment. You can do small things that don't seem to change much. For example, you can write notes or change the radio station to a secret channel. The team got some money for this game through a Kickstarter campaign. Tale of Tales later said that Sunset was not a big commercial success.

Exhibitions

Auriea Harvey's first public art show was in 1999. She was part of Gallery 9. This was an online gallery by the Walker Art Center.

In 2000, she showed her work in "The Last Real Net Art Museum". This was an online show focused on internet art.

Since then, she and Michaël Samyn have shown their art in many places. These include the Absolut L.A. International Biennial, 010101 (SFMOMA), and the ALT+CTRL Festival. Their work has also been in shows like Tardis, Edge Conditions (San Jose Museum of Art), WoW (Laguna Art Museum), Art History of Games (High Museum of Art), and the Neoludica Biennial in Venice, Italy.

A solo show called "Year Zero" ran from March 6 to April 24, 2021. It was held at Bitforms Gallery.

At Art SG 2023, from January 10 to 20, 2023, Auriea Harvey showed her works from 2021. These included sculptures that were both digital and physical. Her art uses symbols like a skull, a face, a rose, and a braid. These symbols remind us about life and death. By using self-portraits, Harvey is adding an African-American woman to art history. This is an important update to the story of art.

Awards

The team has won several awards. These include the Emerging Grant (1999) and the SFMOMA Prize for Excellence in Online Art (2000). They also received the European Innovative Games Award (2008). Other awards are the Creative Capital Emerging Fields Award (2006) and the Advanced Prize in Innovative Game Design (2010).

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See Also

• Tale of Tales (company)