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

s1ocks, all those are arguments that were levied at film for the first thirty or so years too

films arent art either

but slock dogg otm

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), 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)

I agree that pure games are anti-art in that they facilitate expression instead of expressing things themselves
But this is also why I think demos get short shrift in the videogames as art conversation, because they are almost purely expressive

arent demos just video clips? are they interactive?

honestly the more interactive a thing gets, the less like art it is to me

they typically aren't very interactive but you do have a role to play as the audience that goes beyond watching a video clip

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"

i've never seen those before but i might argue that they're not games!

oh come on dude

yeah, "interactive things are not art!" "those interactive art things are not games!", this is like some kind of logical whack-a-mole.

there's artistic STUFF in video games, but that doesn't make them an art form

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.

i'm moved when i watch a sunset but i wouldnt call it art

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 art
They 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.

thats definitely part of what im saying

take cut-scenes... like basically, these aren't part of the game at all. they're mini-movies in between playing the actual game. i find that kind of tension irritating. i hate any moment i'm playing a game that i'm not in control of the player/avatar/whatever

i'm moved when i watch a sunset but i wouldnt call it art

a) it was a combination of things, not just the sunset; ii) would you call a painting of a sunset art?

I think as games get more complex - and as they learn to combine the artistic and interactive elements more successfully - these experiences get more common (and deliberate). As opposed to flamboyant goon tie I think the ludic elements are the least amenable to being called art, perhaps with the exception of self-referential meta-games like rom check fail. With all their graphical and musical complexity it's easy to dismiss modern games as just artistically piggybacking on other media, but the immersion and interaction they present is a new and unique form of experience.

i don't disagree! i just wouldn't call it art. i would call it gaming!

it's a bold new world out there! but that doesn't mean we need to keep pretending that games aren't something that they're not, just because "art" sounds better!

wait so are we also arguing that interactive art is not art?

"art" DOES sound better than "gaming", as describing that kind of experience, while gaming is already more closely associated with competition and gambling

interactive art is an uncomfortable, unwieldy phrase though

so are "graphic novels" but...

wait so are we also arguing that interactive art is not art?

― ed ASMR (Stevie D(eux)), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:02 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

some of it! and some of it is art.

(and most of it sucks, because interactivity and art don't work together)

Why are you reluctant to call it art? What definition of art are you going by that seems to exclude these things? Yeah yeah can o' worms; but I get from games the kind of didactic/empathetic/aesthetic experiences I get from other media and that I woollily think of as 'art'.

What about Nam June Paik's experiments with video and tape and stuff in the 70's?

Why are you reluctant to call it art? What definition of art are you going by that seems to exclude these things? Yeah yeah can o' worms; but I get from games the kind of didactic/empathetic/aesthetic experiences I get from other media and that I woollily think of as 'art'.

― nagl dude dude dude (ledge), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:18 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

well why WOULD you call it art? i get none of the same aesthetic experiences from a game than i do from basically any other kind of media or experience. video games can be really compelling but they occupy just a completely different space. all the "artful" stuff in video games is just decoration as far as im concerned.

and most of it sucks, because interactivity and art don't work together

omgggg

they don't! they're totally incompatible.

and—let me emphasize—i'm not saying video games are less intelligent, less creative, made with any less care than "art"

i don't think food is art either, even the most incredibly prepared food

actually, food is probably more like art than video games, because you just consume it, you don't really interact with it otherwise

i get none of the same aesthetic experiences from a game than i do from basically any other kind of media or experience.

slock when's the last time you went to a museum or gallery that exhibited contemporary art?

art and interaction mix idg how you think they don't, i mean you've been to museums

i agree that video games can be 'artistic' w/o actually being 'art', and i think the central difference btw games and art is how we xp them, but it's not really their 'interactivity' that governs this its the relationship btw creater/consumer and developer/player that does i think. the game exists in the space in which its played, its meaning is created by the player the context by the developer, art is kinda the opposite. games are better than art in a lot of ways for everyone but the people that make art

when i'm playing a game, i'm "on"—i'm trying to accomplish some task in exchange for a reward. i'm "leveling up," grabbing ammo, jumping on mushrooms... the pleasure that this gives me has nothing to do with the pleasure i derive from a film, a story, etc, in which i have no "job" to do.

even at a base level you have to walk into a gallery to see your modigliani and the way it is mounted and the way you walk toward it constitute interactivity

on a less didactic level you are suggesting that approx. 25% of all conceptual art is "not art". i've seen about 40-50 big pieces of yes it is art in the past ten years that required interactivity: yoko ono, wim delvoye, christian marclay, tino sehgal, janet cardiff immediately spring to mind

all the "artful" stuff in video games is just decoration as far as im concerned.

what if this stuff (cut scenes, graphics, etc) isn't the artful stuff? what if the real artfulness of a game is in intentionally-designed systems coming together to create an emotional response?

xp

art and interaction mix idg how you think they don't, i mean you've been to museums

it's possible for them to mix but i can barely think of a handful of examples that i found meaningful or that worked for me at all. what are the great works of interactive art? in this age of total interactivity with everything, don't you find it a bit suspicious that there is no "canon" of interactive art? that barely anyone you know who isn't an art nerd could even name one work?

i don't count experiencing the artwork (walking around a gallery, sitting in a movie theater) as interactivity, if you call that interactivity the word is pretty much too vague to be meaningful

what if this stuff (cut scenes, graphics, etc) isn't the artful stuff? what if the real artfulness of a game is in intentionally-designed systems coming together to create an emotional response?

xp

― precious bonsai children of new york (Jordan), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:36 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

games don't create emotional responses in me

i guess that's the heart of it?

i'm enjoying this convo btw!

as a kid, i got thrown out of the red grooms exhibit for jumping around the subway car. sort of my first griefing session

i hope yall realize i am trying to unpack something that really interests me here and not trying to be a dick or anything

yeah, i dig s1ocks, not trying to fight
i have had emotional responses with games, i'm embarrassed to admit. journey got me. the end of limbo got me. walking dead occasionally gets me. i don't know if that's the barrier to entry for art tho.

i guess i would define interactivity as going beyond just you taking it in, but you reacting back and provoking a discrete response from the piece

i have had emotional responses with games, i'm embarrassed to admit. journey got me. the end of limbo got me. walking dead occasionally gets me. i don't know if that's the barrier to entry for art tho.

― i didn't even give much of a fuck that you were mod (forksclovetofu), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:40 PM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark

i'm gonna walk back and say i don't EVER get those responses, but to me they are outliers, incidental, and never the "point" of the session

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7k-WY8MHLis/T27ywf2EPKI/AAAAAAAABwk/IThYXHJkOdU/s800/randomaccess.jpg

"In this tape installation [...] the visitor can use the sound head, which has been detached from the tape recorder, to interactively run through the tapes glued to the wall, and constantly vary the sound sequence according to location and speed. This random access to the musical raw material enabled visitors to produce compositions of their own."

dude this is not "not art"

but to me they are outliers, incidental, and never the "point" of the session

If I can summarize my thoughts at the risk of repeating what other people have already said:

My problem with the "games as art" debate is that a lot of the dialogue revolves around pre-existing notions of "how art should be" and you've got people pointing out cutscenes or character development or sweet design choices as indications that games can contain some intrinsic artistic worth. I think it's bullshit, and I can see where Hideo Kojima and s1ocki are coming from, respectively. Nothing I've read in a game has been better than a book, and nothing I've seen in a game has been better than a movie, and nothing I've heard in a game has been better than an album, blah blah blah

But there is art in video games, there is already that sense of "connecting to the infinite" that you feel when you view the works of The Great Masters. In my experience it has been the experience of decoding the code, unpacking it into a level of playability-- the same way that your ears have been trained to decipher "this is the sound of a piano" "this is a major scale" "this is sonata-allegro form" "this is Mozart" "he was drunk when he wrote this".

In my experience these beautiful experiences of unpacking have been mostly found in text adventure games, interactive fiction and rogue-likes. Galaga and Tetris are the best examples, because they play the same every time, and it's about deciphering mathematical probabilities and revising your muscular response. You're not communicating with a friend via a set of rules, as you are with chess. You are interacting with a work of art, as designed by the "auteur" programmer, and deciphering it, as you would any work of art.

Re: "name a piece of IF", I challenge you to get any non-nerd to name any work by Bach