otm. As with most art, it isn't the song, it's the singer.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 18:20 (ten years ago) link
what do you guys think of demo scene stuff? those dudes seem to have gotten lost in the conversation.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 18:24 (ten years ago) link
I think of that stuff as programming art.
― polyphonic, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 18:29 (ten years ago) link
like their code is really clean? a lot of those dudes went on to games and gaming hardware.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 18:32 (ten years ago) link
Not just that it's clean, but it's creative. They're like Joey Pants in The Matrix, to use the most hackneyed example possible.
― polyphonic, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 18:41 (ten years ago) link
But also it's very much in the tradition of abstract animation, going back to Oskar Fischinger or whatev
― polyphonic, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 18:49 (ten years ago) link
i feel the same way, they're sort of related to this, but essentially little pieces or code sculptures
― Nhex, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 19:01 (ten years ago) link
what's the barrier to accepting them as the standard bearers for video game art rather than footnotes? as for influences, i really see them being more aligned with graffiti than avant animation.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 19:15 (ten years ago) link
what's the barrier to accepting them as the standard bearers for video game art rather than footnotes?
They can be, and maybe they are. But these demoscene videos aren't games, in the same way that cutscenes aren't games. In the same way that the matte painting isn't a game, but if you put it in the background and let Mario run across it then it's part of a game's art assets. And it offers programmers the sort of challenges that make them great candidates to work in the game industry, as you said.
as for influences, i really see them being more aligned with graffiti than avant animation.
why?
― polyphonic, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 19:23 (ten years ago) link
re: graffiti, they're grouped in crews, it's full of boasting and shoutouts, associated with vaguely illegal activity, etc... The effects are deployed and received, and when you read reactions from their peers to their execution, it's a lot like someone landing a particularly difficult skateboard trick.i agree they aren't games in the traditional sense, but they are certainly not videos -- they are intended to be "played" on what you could call a specific set of instruments, and it's up to the audience to meet those demands, in the same way it's up to a game player to gather some arbitrary set of achievements to advance the game.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 19:39 (ten years ago) link
So are the demoscenes different every time, based on some sort of user input?
re: graffiti, they're grouped in crews, it's full of boasting and shoutouts, associated with vaguely illegal activity, etc...
You could say the same thing about abstract expressionism. Also there are plenty of graffiti artists who don't fit that description.
― polyphonic, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 19:43 (ten years ago) link
"So are the demoscenes different every time, based on some sort of user input?"kind of. they depend on what kind of hardware you put together etc... what modes you choose.
that would be an interesting game, pick which name is the abstract expressionist, graffiti crew, or demo group.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 19:57 (ten years ago) link
they depend on what kind of hardware you put together etc... what modes you choose.
Like a synthesizer?
― polyphonic, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 20:00 (ten years ago) link
some demos were optimized for gravis sound board if that's what you mean. there's very much a performative aspect to it, since what's impressive about them is the ability to do so much with so little. to flatten them to videos destroys the ritual.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 20:02 (ten years ago) link
some demos were optimized for gravis sound board if that's what you mean.
What I mean is: the visuals are different depending on how you adjust the knobs or levers or etc., whether they're tangible or virtual. A live performance.
― polyphonic, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 20:11 (ten years ago) link
some demos did, though the kind of explicit visual control you're looking for was pretty rare. one simple way to vary the graphics in a more oblique way would be to use your keystrokes as a seed number for whatever procedural graphic routines might run.
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 20:14 (ten years ago) link
Found object art, too. Duchamp signing a toilet, cracking groups signing a pirated game.
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 21:52 (ten years ago) link
but was duchamp l33t?
― Philip Nunez, Tuesday, 11 June 2013 22:16 (ten years ago) link
He DDOS'd the Mona Lisa
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Tuesday, 11 June 2013 22:32 (ten years ago) link
So often when someone wants to challenge the idea of what a game is, the solution is: meandering around in some landscape, no points or score or levels. Virtual reality, Second Life, Proteus ... it's a very TED conference mode of game abstraction. But to me the real essence of video gaming is in rule sets, and the nuances of gameplay.
i agree that it isn't v inventive. in general i don't think 'simulations' of any kind are; i think what's distinctive & interesting/exciting about computer games is the ability to interact w/ an enormously complicated system, tracking all those variables, almost infinite permutations, being able to play around w/ that stuff. dwarf fortress is the best example i can think of a game that impresses me in that sense, it feels pure to me.
― ogmor, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 00:07 (ten years ago) link
video games aren't art.
that's not a knock. they just belong to a different category. i don't think they even engage the same parts of your brain as art, at all.
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 02:12 (ten years ago) link
I agree w you if we're going to say art stopped in the 50's, but if you look at performance art, conceptual art, Fluxus, sensationalism, post-modern art, video art, environmental art, appropriation, etc. etc. everything that has happened since abstract expressionism and before that even then it almost seems like more of a disservice towards art to say that video games are one thing that it can never be.
Though I think I understand where you are coming from. Playing a game at the top of your skill - usually a game you have played many times before, in your past - is very much like throwing a pitch in baseball, or bowling a strike. It engages that part of the brain where you are in THE ZONE, where you sense things before your brain should physically detect them, where you and the game are one. Not much art that you find in galleries (if any?) does this. Then again you can probably find people that say baseball is art.
The problem with video games is that they are so much more complex then classical Fine Art and even conceptual PoMo Art. Here are some of the dimensions you could possibly discuss with just about any given game, just coming up with these off the top of my head:
- in-game character & environmental depiction/animation techniques- title & ending screens/cutscenes/attract modes- gamer control & interaction/instances of 'Friction' as Tim Rogers likes to say- appropriation/recontextualization/references to other art forms- programming prowess/console pushing/code efficiency- box art/promotional ads/tv commercials- international approaches towards censorship- public reception/historical context- legacy/add-ons/mods/hacks
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 02:45 (ten years ago) link
-glitches
― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 02:47 (ten years ago) link
-foley/sound effects/music composition
there's artistic STUFF in video games, but that doesn't make them an art form
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 02:54 (ten years ago) link
i mean, there's nice wallpaper in a train compartment, that doesnt make rail travel an art
i don't say that to denigrate video games or shut them out of a pantheon, i just think that art is not the right way to think about them, and that doing so actually precludes interesting investigation of what they actually are
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 02:55 (ten years ago) link
How many decades do you think it'll take not for games to be considered art, but for us to have evolved language and understanding to actually describe what games do?
― Hockey Drunk (kingfish), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 03:20 (ten years ago) link
s1ocks, all those are arguments that were levied at film for the first thirty or so years too
― i didn't even give much of a fuck that you were mod (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 03:40 (ten years ago) link
Is Scrabble art? Pinochle? Charades? The Super Bowl?
― Panaïs Pnin (The Yellow Kid), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 03:50 (ten years ago) link
scrabble is an inert rule set that allows for puzzle play. Pinochle is the same but less puzzle play and more probability wagers. Charades, if done right, can be artistic as it incorporates acting/dance/mime. Athletic displays (done well) are always artistic; it's one of the main reasons i watch sports.
― i didn't even give much of a fuck that you were mod (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 03:57 (ten years ago) link
or more to the point, some games come closer to art than others depending on the skill, intent and execution of both the gamer and the gamemaker.
― i didn't even give much of a fuck that you were mod (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 03:58 (ten years ago) link
Hideo Kojima argues iirc that video games can never be inherently artistic because of the necessity of functionality and playability.
Dude has obviously never mixed a record, served a meal, framed a painting, produced a work of theatre, etc.
― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 04:16 (ten years ago) link
explains the fucking cutscenes
― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 04:20 (ten years ago) link
I disagree w you s1ocki though, my opinion is that the games that are the most "artistic" are the ones that don't take their artistic elements from film (Journey) or books (RPGs) or music (Rez) or choreography (shmups) but the ones that are computational exercises like Tetris and Galaga and Pac-Man. You might call them gamey
― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 04:22 (ten years ago) link
interactive art is hardly an original idea? walking through a serra or a smithson is the prescribed way to appreciate it.
― i didn't even give much of a fuck that you were mod (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 04:44 (ten years ago) link
saints row > a blue man group show
― Nhex, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 04:46 (ten years ago) link
films arent art either
but slock dogg otm
― Lamp, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 05:20 (ten years ago) link
― i didn't even give much of a fuck that you were mod (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, June 11, 2013 11:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark
examples?
i'm not arguing that games are a "low" or "debased" form, like saying "that comic book trash isn't art!" i'm saying that the way we experience them has nothing to do with the way we experience art except maybe tangentially (like when you take a second to admire a background during a load screen or wtv)
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 05:27 (ten years ago) link
I agree that pure games are anti-art in that they facilitate expression instead of expressing things themselvesBut this is also why I think demos get short shrift in the videogames as art conversation, because they are almost purely expressive
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 05:42 (ten years ago) link
arent demos just video clips? are they interactive?
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 05:50 (ten years ago) link
honestly the more interactive a thing gets, the less like art it is to me
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 05:51 (ten years ago) link
they typically aren't very interactive but you do have a role to play as the audience that goes beyond watching a video clip
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 05:59 (ten years ago) link
It seems v silly to look at things like LSD and ROM Check Fail and say straight-up "video games cannot be art at all, ever"
― ed ASMR (Stevie D(eux)), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 14:05 (ten years ago) link
i've never seen those before but i might argue that they're not games!
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 14:38 (ten years ago) link
oh come on dude
― ed ASMR (Stevie D(eux)), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 14:48 (ten years ago) link
yeah, "interactive things are not art!" "those interactive art things are not games!", this is like some kind of logical whack-a-mole.
There are artistic EXPERIENCES in videogames that might borrow the stuff of other media, but wouldn't be the same without the interactive element. Like flying a plane into a huge rosy dawn sun after successfully completing a GTA mission, and Crockett's Theme coming on the radio. That's one of my favourite memories! And I wouldn't have been half as moved if I'd just been watching it on a cinema screen.
― nagl dude dude dude (ledge), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 15:22 (ten years ago) link
i'm moved when i watch a sunset but i wouldnt call it art
― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 15:41 (ten years ago) link
and i like i said, i dont doubt that there are occasional art-like experiences/moments when playing video games but they're outliers, accidental
it's not interaction but the degree of control and expression you lease to a player that makes a game more of a game and less of an artThey are almost contradictory goals so it's not surprising that trying to meet in the middle will always be harder than going to the ends.
― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, 12 June 2013 15:43 (ten years ago) link