Video Games and Art (Video Games AS Art) (and so on)

"if you wanna argue that as a video game player, you are an artist, i'm all ears!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daigo_Umehara

have you ever reacted to art like that??

Yes one of my earliest memories of being an artist was creating a collage out of construction paper and then getting frustrated with it and immediately destroying it. And plenty of artists have a love/hate relationship w their work.

Also you could ask the audience that nearly rioted during the premiere of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring".

Playing a modern game is both an active and passive experience. Performing music is active, and listening to it is passive ... although if you're performing in a group you're performing and listening simultaneously. Theater is probably a better analog for video games than film, in that sense.

which brings another topic: you can objectively say that one player is "better" than another at a game. can you say that about the viewer/reader/listener of a work of art? doesn't that fact alone mean we're talking about two very different things?

My mom was definitely better at playing Bach than I was. On the other hand she would suck at Trials HD.

you can objectively say that one player is "better" than another at a game. can you say that about the viewer/reader/listener of a work of art?

ha isn't this the entire enterprise of ILX?

xp I stand by my architectural analogy but don't disagree w/you

Art History buffs can look at a piece of minimalism and understand it in the appropriate context, whereas your average person may look at it without that specialized knowledge and completely fail at interpreting it. You can be objectively better at interpreting art, and you can be objectively better at interpreting the patterns of the eagles in Ninja Gaiden.

you really think you could OBJECTIVELY measure how much better someone is at, say, watching an episode of degrassi than someone else?

s1ocki I feel that the keystone of your "not art" argument is the requirement that the viewer be entirely passive. A situation where the viewer is entirely passive. That situation is limited to film and television. Every other form of art requires that the audience-- the entire audience, at least some of the audience, or a performing body-- take an active role.

Some people are better readers than others, too, "fourth grade reading level", "eighth grade piano", "twelve level sorcerer"

Theater is probably a better analog for video games than film, in that sense.

― polyphonic, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 3:33 PM

i was going to suggest comic books because video games seem to get the same "if its art, its a low form of it not worth taking seriously" and also occupying a middle ground between visual and textual. the analogy fails when you bring in the competitive/sportslike nature of it i guess

s1ocki I feel that the keystone of your "not art" argument is the requirement that the viewer be entirely passive. A situation where the viewer is entirely passive. That situation is limited to film and television. Every other form of art requires that the audience-- the entire audience, at least some of the audience, or a performing body-- take an active role.

― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 3:38 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

what?? how do sculpture, music, dance and theater require an active role?

i'm not talking about the performer here (for the millionth time)

you really can't include the performer unless you are arguing that you, the player, are creating a work of art when you play call of duty

(btw i dont know about you guys but i think this is a great discussion and it is making my afternoon very enjoyable)

Is Blue Man Group art?

Part of it is that a thing can be more than one thing at once. Is an improv troupe art? Is the audience an active participant or a passive observer? A modern game has a game in it, but also other things. So there's the larger category of "games," but they contain both art and a game.

Along those lines: Is a whodunit mystery story simply a narrative, or does it also contain a game?

You have to buy the tickets. You have to sit there. You have to stare straight ahead for the duration of the piece. You have to get dressed for the event appropriately. You have to observe unwritten laws of etiquette. You have to be quiet while the performance is going on. At the end of the work you need to stand and applaud. If it's something that may have an encore, then you are performing with the rest of the audience members, taking into account their enthusiasm, the quality of the performance, etc. I could go on.

You have to buy the tickets. You have to sit there. You have to stare straight ahead for the duration of the piece. You have to get dressed for the event appropriately. You have to observe unwritten laws of etiquette. You have to be quiet while the performance is going on. At the end of the work you need to stand and applaud. If it's something that may have an encore, then you are performing with the rest of the audience members, taking into account their enthusiasm, the quality of the performance, etc. I could go on.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 3:43 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

come on, that's not interacting with art.

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), Tuesday, June 11, 2013 10:12 PM

^^ this. i probably wouldn't even bother with video games if this wasn't true

that is all passive, save for maybe the applause. there's no analog between sitting in a concert hall and listening to music and playing super mario.

What about a person who is sitting in the room while you play Super Mario?

yeah, are they art?

alvin lucier

Is Blue Man Group art?

― they are either militarists (ugh) or kangaroos (?) (DJP), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 3:43 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

They're not just "performance artists," they make kick-ass music.

I am not saying a performer is the artist. A performer is a part of the execution of a piece of art, which may also require a theatre, a gallery, a venue, an audience, an artist, some instruments, a game system, a Kinect controller, or nothing at all.

sculpture, music, dance and theater require an active role?

Curation and presentation with all of them. Sculpture can publicly exhibited and has to be travelled to and sat beneath. It requires upkeep and storage. Music requires performers. Dance requires dancers and can also require musicians and the audience might be able to participate also. Theater requires the most number of paid participants of all these examples. Audience members may be asked for input, or not.

If you're going to argue that "none of these are the same thing as this movie that I watch and requires nothing of me" then you are under-bus-throwing "The Well-Tempered Clavier" and countless works of Mozart's, the entire oeuvre of Chopin, stuff which was entirely designed for educational purposes, private usage, not public performance, not to mention the discipline of literature

Come on, "it requires upkeep and storage"? So does everything on earth! So does a car. Or a baby.

is getting the warp whistle in level 1-3 of smb3 art?

no, but using a second warp whistle in the warp whistle stage select screen to get to the end of the game is art.

Is Lamp art?

i wished i could remember anything about boulez for a snappy post about Le marteau sans maître but i had to google it just to spell it

maybe only terrible games are art, like ET: The Extra-Terrestrial and Custer's Revenge

burying 1000s of cartridges in the desert does sound suspiciously like a burning man piece.

hundreds of copies of ET Atari cartridges buried in the earth is def art xp shit!

feck I take an hour to cohere and type my thoughts and then it's this, well OK

i'm talking about listening not playing. like i said, if you wanna argue that as a video game player, you are an artist, i'm all ears! but i'm dubious.

― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 7:30 PM (28 minutes ago)

whoa whoa hold up, so you are saying that by listening to bach i am not interacting with it?! that seems crazy to me. i wasnt even going all in on the video game player as artist, i just assumed that would be what you were referring to and was responding to that. i know that reader response criticism is out of vogue, but totally throwing out the idea or text/observer interaction is super bizarre to me.

Is this post art

http://pad2.whstatic.com/images/thumb/2/29/Make-Melted-Crayon-Art-Step-6.jpg/550px-Make-Melted-Crayon-Art-Step-6.jpg

What about this one? It's interactive, you have to click on it

http://pad2.whstatic.com/images/thumb/2/29/Make-Melted-Crayon-Art-Step-6.jpg/550px-Make-Melted-Crayon-Art-Step-6.jpg

I had to click on the first one!

Also I think slocki's thesis of listening as being non-interactive is presuming a different definition of "interactive" than what I am using unless you take it as a given that listening to something isn't an activity.

whoa whoa hold up, so you are saying that by listening to bach i am not interacting with it?!

Interaction means it goes both ways, right? So yes, I would say you're not having any effect on the bach piece, although it may be affecting you.

xpost - it's an activity, but again I would say not "interactive"

this was fun but I got nothing done this afternoon
anybody who wants to gaze into the infinite can come over for some sugar pie and/or a game of Tetris

xp you're reacting TO it, not interacting WITH it

I've been playing final fantasy vi again and I can definitively say that video games are not art

i dont think i passively experience boulez, but there's nothing in boulez that's like the wind temple, i am not approaching boulez like it's the wind temple, both these things are ok i think. mostly i just hate that really awesome things like video games want to be 'art' in the first place, i understand why, but art can be so crabby and prescriptive, how much art is better than well-played game of tennis? but not even like the nadal-federer wimbledon finals were 'art'. everything in qn marks

i still think rules and the way the operate, the system for organizing the world, distinguishes games from art and how we xp the two.

the time i spent interacting with this thread was a total waste

I've been playing final fantasy vi again and I can definitively say that video games are not art

did you unlock the cursed shield/ring?

how can something with multiple sequels be "final" anyway

or is that just art

come on, that's not interacting with art.

In what way? Being a spectator is totally interacting with art. Without an audience a theatrical piece would just be a bunch of people standing around in a room acting at each other. Without an audience a musical performance would be some guys playing music REALLY LOUD for themselves. Putting on a play in front of a small audience of 20 of your closest friends will result in a completely different performance from putting it on in front of 20 strangers, and an even more different performance than putting it on in front of 200, or 2,000, or 20,000, etc. Simply through the act of being there and having eyes fixed at the stage, the audience is affecting the performance. Then the performers tweak what they are doing. This is interactive, is it not?

that sounds more illusory than actual give-and-take