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

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

we can vague out and say that sculptures require dusting and therefore observing ANY DUSTED SCULPTURE is like playing a video game, but i don't think it's getting us any closer to understanding here

I kinda want to go back to "is architecture art"

its not like the audience has a set of rules to make the performer do specific things ("frown to make the guitarist play a solo")

is Parappa The Rapper art?

is 'draw something' art

its not like the audience has a set of rules to make the performer do specific things ("frown to make the guitarist play a solo")

hi dere, John Zorn:

http://www.4-33.com/scores/cobra/cobra-notes.html

and i ABSOLUTELY agree that any art requires active observation on the part of the audience. but i don't think that it's the same thing as the active participation of playing a video game. i think it engages a totally different part of your brain to listen to a bach fugue, say, than to play mario kart.

there is very little feedback involved in experiencing most art—when i listen to this bach fugue on my stereo, nothing about my reaction to it is going to change the way it sounds. whereas when i play mario kart, the very ESSENCE of the activity is me giving feedback to a computer program that changes based on my reactions.

also, i think that no matter how much you argue about bona fides etc, there is no way to "fail" or "die" at listening to a bach fugue unless you actually die while listening to it

hi dere, John Zorn:

http://www.4-33.com/scores/cobra/cobra-notes.html

― they are either militarists (ugh) or kangaroos (?) (DJP), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 4:32 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

these are all cool but come on, they're exceptions, and there's a reason that interactivity like that is always going to be a curious novelty

i'd agree with mario kart being this responsive apparatus, but super mario bros as a game is a lie.

come on, you steer mario over to the mushroom, mario gets bigger. you jump on a thing and it dies.

I'm running way behind here, but 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?

YES OF COURSE YOU CAN. (btw, I am best)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_piece_%28music%29

I don't think these things need to be mainstream in order to be relevant.

address the "exceptions" that make up the lion's share of the last 50 years of contemporary art pls

fuck no

the lion's share of the last 50 years of contemporary art are interactive pieces that change based on the viewer's input??

The die/fail aspect of gaming (which is not a universal function of gaming fwiw) is analogous once again to performing a piece of music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_piece_%28music%29

I don't think these things need to be mainstream in order to be relevant.

― they are either militarists (ugh) or kangaroos (?) (DJP), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 4:37 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

nothing mentioned there about the audiences of those pieces getting in on the fun!

The die/fail aspect of gaming (which is not a universal function of gaming fwiw) is analogous once again to performing a piece of music.

― polyphonic, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 4:39 PM (26 seconds ago) Bookmark

i
am
not
talking
about
performers

if your playing guitar hero or rock band sure

what you do with mario is kind of inconsequential in the same way what you do with phoenix wright is inconsequential. the paths to win-state are pretty much set. the only way to get any agency back into mario is to subvert the game somehow. jump around aimlessly or something.

and again, I brought up "it needs to be dusted" because I think the necessity of non-interactivity is a dumb criterion here, not because I think the guy dusting a sculpture is a performer.

there's that big walk-in vagina at YYZ that is definitely a piece of interactive sculpture and you don't need to do anything but "walk into it" but I'd argue you don't really need to do fuck-all in MGS4 to interact with it except walk from one side of a virtual environment to another

OK

s1ocki

you're not talking about performers

what about readers of books

the lion's share of the last 50 years of contemporary art are interactive pieces that change based on the viewer's input??

Yes. See examples noted above

there's that big walk-in vagina at YYZ that is definitely a piece of interactive sculpture and you don't need to do anything but "walk into it" but I'd argue you don't really need to do fuck-all in MGS4 to interact with it except walk from one side of a virtual environment to another

― flamboyant goon tie included, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 4:41 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark

interesting that you mention this, cuz i consider MSG4 part of a class of games that fails because it's trying too hard to be a different kind of experience, like a dog dressed up sitting at the dinner table

not
talking
about
performers

I am not only talking to you! I'm unpacking my thoughts on this issue as we go.