Are Videogames Art? 242
Game Politics, as always, has some meaty thoughts on offer. Today they're revisiting the perpetual question, 'Can videogames be considered art?'. They touch on the words of Roger Ebert, and discuss a recent piece on the subject in the Sydney Herald. From the article: "Brendan McNamara, game director for Team Bondi, makers of the upcoming film noir PS3 game L.A. Noire, has no doubt his team is creating art. With a project plan that includes 170 pages describing cinematic moments, and 1,200 pages detailing interactive events, the game has a Hollywood-like budget of more than $30 million. 'We control the delivery of the information ... We give players a setting and a framework, we control what they see and do. So how are we not authors?' McNamara wonders if video games are stigmatized because they are a mostly commercial venture. At the same time, he believes that being driven by sales is a good thing." What is the Slashdot opinion? Are games too different from other form of expression to be considered art? Is Shadow of the Colossus comparable to Leaves of Grass or Citizen Kane?
Little boys (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember, just on the radio, how a professional personal ad writer said that an example of an unworthy person is "living in his mom's basement, playing Nintendo". Sorry, but that's the public's view.
Re:Little boys (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Little boys (Score:2)
From a user review on IMDB: "A 60s all-girl rock band decides to get in the van and head to Los Angeles to try to make it big. And they find it is super easy, and they make connections fast, but fame and fortune comes at an expense.... Yes, this is the movie that is infamous for being written by Roger Ebert. Yes, this is a bad movie with appalling editing. Yes, this is tasteless schlock. But, it is tasteless schlock at its best. Even though the lead cast is comprised of (very lovely) Playboy pin-ups and models that look stoned half the time, they do a great job at portraying immediately corrupted innocents. I actually really enjoy the 60s soul garage music
The quotes are hilarious:
Ronnie (Z-Man) Barzell: This is my happening and it freaks me out!
*
Ronnie (Z-Man) Barzell: You will drink the black sperm of my vengence.
*
Petronella Danforth: C'mon, Casey. The principal's supposed to hit me with a coupla caps of acid.
*
Susan Lake: I guess liquor's considered pretty square.
Petronella Danforth: Same as grass. Depends on how you use it.
*
[Kelly and Z-Man have walked into a bathroom to find a couple having sex in Z-Man's bathroom]
Ronnie (Z-Man) Barzell: Glad to see my audience in such happy dalliance. Pray, let them joust in peace!
*
Porter Hall: She was living in a single room with three other individuals. One of them was a male, and the other two, well the other two were females. God only knows what they were up to in there... and furthermore, Susan, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that all four of them habitually smoked marijuana cigarettes... reefers.
Re:Little boys (Score:5, Funny)
Ever seen MySpace? That's what kids end up doing if they're calling the shots. Fuckin' little losers.
Mark my words: you see a kid, you beat the crap out of the fucker until his nose bleeds for a week. Serves him right. And it doesn't matter if you don't know why you had to beat him, he sure as hell knows.
Re:Little boys (Score:2)
And at the time, Shakespeare's works were essentially the dime store novels and sitcoms of the day...
There's no such thing as art (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the deeper message that we can draw out here is that there is no such thing as art. In other words, there is no unbreachable division between what is art and what is not, and there is no magical quintessence that makes something automatically artistic. Art, I propose, is just a label applied by self-appointed judges regarding their own arbitary tastes. The proper response is not to endlessly try to justify electronic entertainment as 'art' in the eyes of pretentious old men, but to note that their opinion does not actually matter. The next generation, no doubt, will have their own idea of art, and their own view of what will be culturally significant, and the scorn of today's judges have no meaning in this respect.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:5, Insightful)
So your definition, as cynically as you offered it, is pretty much right on. Art requires artist and audience (these roles may overlap, or, as in much music, be separated further by tradition). That is all.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh and John Cage's music 4'33" in my opinion is completely neutral, offering nothing or bad. If you could put every theoretical piece of music on a multi-dimensional tree, then the 4'33 would certainly occupy an important place in that tree. However, it lacks any of the enjoyment that can be gained from good music. I think it's a gimmick in that sense, and the any enjoyment people derive from it comes from another source (the silence may inspire them to a pleasant memory etc.).
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:4, Informative)
Did YOU ever study cage? Because you entirely missed the point.
Cage believed that there are elements of a musical performance that are entirely out of the composer's control, things that are random and spontaneous that nevertheless inflect what's going on on the stage. Every sneeze by the audience, every cough, every whispered conversation, every squeaking chair as an audience member gets up and leaves in disgust, ALL of it is in some way a part of the music you're listening to.
What Cage did was, to bring this passed-over element of musical performance to light, he wrote a piece of music that entirely accentuated the random sub-elements of performance by eliminating the music entirely, thereby making people more conscious of their immediate surroundings. THAT'S why 4'33" is important; it has nothing to do with this bullshit 'what is art?' argument.
Triv
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:5, Insightful)
This is called reflexivity - the art work interrogating itself or its medium or its exhibition, precisely to ask the question "why is this art?" You can't answer that question without first answering the question "what is art?"
Are these coughs art? Are the conversations art? If so, why? Where does the art stop and everything else begin?
Personally I don't think that's good art. I find it pretentious. It doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't require any technical skill. It asks obvious questions. But anything that is interpreted as a piece of art work can be considered art even if it isn't good art.
As soon as you say something is art it becomes art. The question is then "why do we say that this is art?" since there is no objective definition of "art."
The art crowd has fooled us into thinking that there is something that is objectively art or objectively "good" art. That is absurd. Art is based entirely on how its interpreted and perceived - how can it be anything before it touches your eyes or mouth? There are no concepts communicated by the art piece as an object *in itself*, just like there is nothing communicated by regular objects just in virtue of themselves. Everything we say it communicates is actually an imposition of our minds. Things outside of us have no semantic meaning by themselves, without observers.
When it encounters an audience - be it the artist him/herself or people in a crowd - it becomes art. This is radically subjective definition of art, that some people find offensive. I don't. I think it is everything art is supposed to be - human. It depends on the humans participating in the viewing and the making of it.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
Some concept similar to indeterminacy/aleatoricness (I don't know a good noun for aleatoric... hm...) ties nicely into the discussion of the nature of games as an artistic medium. The actions of the player (simultaneously a performer and primary audience) are left open by the game's creators. The game of chess, one of the most successful games in history, is somewhat interesting in itself but the way people play it is what really makes it so fascinating.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong... I have no problem with artists doing weird things to get attention. Good for them. I just don't like that I am expected to blindy believe any explaination an artist gives for their work at face value. I mean, yeah, I understand what John Cage, or one of his enablers, were saying the artwork was trying to do... but I think deep down, he just thought it would be funny to play a trick on a "sophisticated" audience and see if they called him on it.
Re:I disagree with your definitions. (Score:2)
What I'm saying about music is that you can have a musical composition and a musical performance. When you record it and pump it into a store, there will very rarely be a connection with the listener that is musical. I agree that when the listener in the store stops and listens for a second, he chooses to be an audience and makes a musical connection. Maybe he has feelings communicated to him, maybe he has something other than feelings communicated to him. I also agree with your use of the word "choose": many people at concerts choose not to be audiences, and there really isn't music going on for those people at all. What I'm saying is that you can't misuse music because there is no music until the audience makes the connection. This might just be a matter of semantics; I once played for a conductor that told a story where he was directing an orchestra in a country he wasn't familiar with. He told the orchestra to take out their music and the group got very confused. After a while one of the trumpeters blew a note, then swatted at the air as if trying to pick it up. I guess the conductor was just using the wrong translation of "music"; in English we tend to use "music" to mean just about everything to do with music; I generally try to specify whether I'm talking about a composition, a performance, some sounds, or the Whole Enchilada.
Some people argue that music cannot happen through recordings. I'm not sure about that; I think that very often playback of recorded audio doesn't result in music but that it can. OTOH the performer-audience connection is completely and strictly one-way... and there are some other arguments that I don't remember. For the sake of not straw-manning them I won't go into it.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, that's incorrect. The piece is NOT named "4 minutes and 33 seconds" as everyone likes to point out, the name of the piece, as Cage titled it, is "Silence". But the naming of the piece, for the program's sake, is to be the intended duration of the particular performance. I've read his performance notes for the piece, 4'33" is never included anywhere in them. It just so happens that the first performance, which was done in 3 movements by a pianist, btw, happened to be 4 minutes and 33 seconds long, and appeared as 4'33" on the program, and many people missed the point. It has been, since, performed in many different durations (all in 3 movements).
Cage loved to explore bounderies. All his music was extremely structured, even if it's result was indeterminate, one of his prerequisites for this piece, and why he requires that the title reflect the duration, is that the length be decided BEFORE hand. He approached the piece as if it was (and it is) a very serious performance work, and didn't want it to be trashed by amatures going for a cheap laugh. One of his definitions of art, even in his most post-modern efforts, is that any work follows conscious bounderies, even if these boundaries is "has no bounderies at all", but in the case of "Silence", one of those bounderies is "must have pre-defined duration".
I believe it to be one of the most "important" (notice I do not say "best") works of the 20th century, as it has spurned more controversy and more debate on the its relivance as a piece of art, than probably any other musical work. Is it an aesthetic work? Interestingly, it is intended to be. In his notes, Cage describes the audience being made to listen to themselves, their conglomerate breathing, their heart-beat, the sounds of airducts in the wings, the work is meant, partially as an aesthetic look into the "sounds of the full concert hall", and is meant to be interpreted as much. There are many different layers of interpretation of the piece, with "silence" refering to a complete vacuum, or an actual quited space.
That said, the deffinitiong of "audience" is not very set in stone. I will challange that any piece of art needs an audience, but I'm not sure if that audience need be conciously attentive. I just finished writing the music for my the local six-o'clock news, it's intended as a diversion, something to accentuate an intro annimation and punctuate the importance of the newscast. Is it art? I don't know, I think is both art and not art at the same time. It has a purpose besides it's pure musical aesthetics, but MANY forms of art have outside reasoning. MOST music is narrative, and tells a story (even a good 50% of classical music), some of it is political, philosophical, or in otherways, intended to try to sway some kind of position out of the audience. How is that different from trying to sway consumers into buying merchandise (I've done music for advertisements as well, btw)? I usually try to only tackle writing music for merchandising that I actually put some stock in. I like doing music for PSAs, because I usually believe that they're a good cause to support. But other times, I just like doing music to a commercial I think it's aesthetically interesting, and artistic in it's own right. I'm in an interesting position where I can decide what spots to write for and what not to.
My point is, I think art is much more expansive than most people like to make out to believe... usually their just superimposing their own aethetic sense on what they think is good and bad. Good and Bad are not part of the defenition of art, as in, there is such a thing as "good art" and "bad art" (from the audience's perspective), but their both art. Kenny G is bad art, mall crap is bad art, IMO of course.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
Yes, that is mostly correct -- except that the suit wasn't just planned, it actually took place. Mike Batt put a track called "A minute's silence" on an album called "Classical Graffiti". In July 2002 Cage's publisher, Peters, sued; in September Batt settled by making a donation to the John Cage Trust.
Put like that, it sounds monstrous. Well, it wasn't quite that simple: the catch is that on the album, the track was credited to "Batt/Cage". So there were actually some, slight, grounds for suing.
Batt claimed the settlement as a victory (he described it as a "gentlemanly dispute" and that he had persuaded Peters that they didn't have a case), but then again so did Peters.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
That is bullshit. Simply the audience's involvement in an artistic discourse does NOT exclude it from being art. Interactive art forms have been around for more than a century, and to a greater or lesser degree ALL art is interactive. The artistic community accepted this long ago, there is not even really much debate in it anymore.
And how do you figure that a game has no meaning, no purpose, and no goal behind it's perception? Well, for one, "perception" is inherently relative, I think you mean "presentation". And yes it does. In fact, as interactive pieces go, games tend to have a fairly static presentation, leading the audience where the designers feel the work leads them. Many have commented that the Japenese RPG is little more than an interactive movie. From an artistic standpoint, this is probably fairly accurate (I'm a BIG RPG gamer, btw, so this isn't a bad thing). Basically the audience determines the relative speed of progression, which is no different than chosing to read a novel at different speeds, or pause a movie in the middle to take a pee break. The angle of viewing is indeterminate... as is the angle of viewing of a sculpture or painting. The relative involvement in the story is determined by how much the character decides to ingage in dialog with non-playable characters, which is little removed from the audiences decision to ignore or "space out" during certain sections of a film (the question of whether they are "supposed to" or not, is irrelivant, btw). Yet, the aesthetics, the narrative, and all the identity of the game is no less the game designer's than that of a film crew. The RPGs proximity to the cinematic genre makes it an easy case study, yet with a little further explanation, even the simplest of games like Pacman or Chess, can be broken down similarly.
The fundimentals between art and video games are all there, people will always nitpick specifics, but there will always be many artistic examples where share those same characteristics. If you want this in mathmatical proof form, it can be done.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
Internet or BBS-based MUSH/MUX/MU*s (not MUDs, mind you) are often even better, as they involve the creative and often quite skilled collaboration of a bunch of writers together. I've read a few MU* logs that could be polished up and sold as a decent novel.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
Of course video games can be art. Movies can be art too, but many aren't. Both of these forms of media are so often filtered through corporate guidelines and commitees that any personal meanings are leeched out. If video games were dirt, instead of a richy earthy top soil you end up with red clay.
Which isn't to say that red clay doesn't have its uses in the world. There have been some very beautiful pieces of art made out of red clay.
Or rather everything is art... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the deeper message that we can draw out here is that there is no such thing as art. In other words, there is no unbreachable division between what is art and what is not, and there is no magical quintessence that makes something automatically artistic.
Maybe "everything is art" is closer to what you are getting at?
Wikipedia, as usual, as a good writeup on Defining art [wikipedia.org] ( Why the editors don't routinely include WP links on core concepts, is beyond me ).
My personal definition of art is anything that inspires without obvious utility.
*sigh* (Score:2)
Inspiring, useFUL, YET clearly art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallingwater [wikipedia.org]
Please try again. Your definition of art needs revision. Everybody thinks they can do better than philosophers who've been debating this since the dawn of civilization (and, likely, before).
Re:Or rather everything is art... (Score:2)
What about the Chrysler Building? Or houses by Frank Lloyd Wright? Or the Apple G5 [billnoll.com]?
I think it's pretty clear. (Score:2)
When a game designer says "I want to make the most intense RPG game ever", then it's a just a good game (potentially).
Sometimes a game gets created for fun (and no particular purpose) but in retrospect could be considered art. An example of this might be kkrieger (I'm probably not the first person to claim that), or perhaps the original Asteroids.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:2)
What you say would have been controversial 100 years ago. This was explored by the Dada movement. (Is a urinal with writing on it art? How about a defaced postcard of the Mona Lisa?)
What's happened in the intervening time is that fine art has been distinguished from commercial art. Most of the people who can draw and paint "realistically" (i.e. those who are able to faithfully draw what they see; there are notable exceptions) are not part of the fine art community. They're doing advertising, architectural rendering, illustrations, video games, visual effects and stuff like that. They're using their skills to make a living. It's mostly those who can't or don't want to learn who are now "fine artists".
Naturally, this leads to controversy as to where to draw the lines. Some in the art community call anything which is too realistic "illustration" as opposed to art. By this measure, pretty much all of the great artists between the time of the Renaissance and the turn of the 20th century were not actually doing "art".
Prior to the 20th century, art was almost all paid for by patronage and commission. (Not all art was made for commission of course, but that's what let the artist eat while they made what they really wanted to make.) So in a sense, all artists were commercial, even if not all art was. Artists had to learn their craft well because they had to compete or starve.
Modern fine artists either can't do this (hence it's probably jealousy) or don't want to do this (so it's effected snobbery). To be an "artist" today, you merely need to be called an artist by another artist. Those who shun the art system tend to be those who have the luxury to do so because they've already been called artists.
There is no requirement for technical skill whatsoever. That's why we end up in the ridiculous situation where a famous art photographer like Andre Serrano not only doesn't develop, print or even crop his own photographs, he doesn't know what half the controls on his camera does. Being a geek, I tend to find this more repulsive than prudish people find his photographs.
So in summary, there kind of is a working definition of "art" today, but it's a circular and non-useful one.
Re:Little boys (Score:2)
There is also the undeniable statement that video games contain art. Any graphics widget contains some art. Level design and the sequencing of events could be considered art. Game concepting is an art. Even certain elements of the software design could be considered art by certain people. The concept of the game can be considered art. A question to then ask is, 'Under what circumstances does that which contains art become itself art?' A box of paintings in a museum storage room is a stretch to be considered a work of art, but the skillful arrangement of a gallery is certainly art.
Re:Little boys (Score:2)
from dictionary.com:
The fine arts are those which have primarily to do with
imagination and taste, and are applied to the production
of what is beautiful. They include poetry, music,
painting, engraving, sculpture, and architecture; but the
term is often confined to painting, sculpture, and
architecture.
ie. The public perception of what is art has nothing to do with imagination or talent... Art is anything which serves no practical purpose and is loved by women and fags.
Video games and Porn will never be "art".
Re:Little boys (Score:2)
Why do you mention boys in particularly?
Re:Not the point (Score:2)
Stigmatized, yes (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stigmatized, yes (Score:2)
They never ask if something is as/more worthy of art status than, say, Battlefield Earth? The reply may be that it's not a good movie, that it is in fact crap. That then only shows that there is nothing inherently magical in films as a medium that automatically elevates them to art.
Any creative endeavor can be art. Asking the question on every new medium does not make the question any more original.
Re:Stigmatized, yes (Score:2)
Keeping genres tied together helps a little. There has never been a video game number one - one game that all gamers absolutely praise above all others...
Re:Stigmatized, yes (Score:2)
It's following still astounds me today, as I figured years ago that it's popularity would have waned with the new games/systems.
Re:I would agree with that last sentiment... (Score:2)
Re:I would agree with that last sentiment... (Score:2)
Lol, that's funny. In a very similar way, I would suggest that FF8 and FF9 are FAR better... and I would suggest that "The Third Man" is, without a doubt, Orsen Wells' best film. It's all aesthetics. All these titles are fairly succure as the pinical of their respective genre... and by genre I don't just mean video games and film, I'm talking Japanese RPG and Wellian film (I know Third Man falls under Neo-Noir, but what the fuck genre is Citizen Cane?). Similarly, Citizen Cane is FAR FAR more wellknown than The Third Man or Touch of Evil.
I know a lot of people who only dig action movies and Kung Foo that would say Citizen Cane is a disgrace, and that various Bruce Lee and early Jackie Chan films are the pinicle of film making. And similarly, that all Final Fantasies are a disgrace and that GranTurismo 3 is the greatest game of all time. These are all legitimate perspectives, btw.
Art vs commerce (Score:5, Insightful)
Because movies, of course, are made for no more reason than pure artistic expression...
Re:Art vs commerce (Score:2)
Games as Literature (Score:2)
http://www.thegamechair.com/2006/02/03/games-as-l
Of course they are (Score:2)
"Good art" is another question entirely.
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi_sabi [wikipedia.org]
Most video games are good at adding more, as in higher resolution graphics, faster, more explosions, more team play, etc. But how many video games try to reach less and the still point at the center of our being as described by T.S. Eliot in Burnt Norton?
"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance."
http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/norton.htm
Perhaps there is such a game I haven't seen that has these qualities, perhaps Spore will be it, but if such a game exists I haven't seen it.
You can write me off as a pretentious old dude who "doesn't get it," but I still say video games could be art but aren't yet. Where is the Ingmar Bergman, the Picasso, the Public Enemey? Sorry I just don't see it yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingmar_Bergman [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Enemy [wikipedia.org]
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
I think the problem is contextual, right now we can't see them as art, because we live in a time when art is defined by a limited scope of possible mediums. Just like movies back at their advent, they were something to waste time, offer shallow entertainment, but in retrospect we can call some of them art. Granted recognition will only be granted to >1% of the titles out there now, but I can see it happening. How this judgement looks when it comes is a mystery though. Will they be art-as-engineering (the Golden Gate bridge, Chrystler building), art as in movies, or books? A weird combo of the three?
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
That's true for all forms of art.
You can write me off as a pretentious old dude who "doesn't get it," but I still say video games could be art but aren't yet. Where is the Ingmar Bergman, the Picasso, the Public Enemey? Sorry I just don't see it yet.
You hold the keys to open your eyes and unlock your mind. Nobody else can do that for you. Prejudice towards an entire artistic medium is not pretention, it's decrepitude.
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
grim fandango?
katamari damaci?
drowned god?
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
They aren't. Neither is anything else. "Art" isn't a property of an entity; no object has the power to touch us on the subconscious or any other level, it is us who reach out to touch it. "Art" is in the eye of the beholder. It is possible to find deep and fundamental meaning from a circle of stones sitting on sand, from a comic book, from a painting, or from clouds in the sky.
That's why the question "Are videogames art" is meaningless. "Art", for me, is whatever I choose to interpret as art; this may or may not coincide with someone else's choice.
Of course this is all completely separate from the technical skill of whoever made the drawing, composition, or 3D model in question. A stickman is a stickman. But that isn't really relevant to this debate.
Chrono Trigger / Cross ? Final Fantasy 7 ? Maybe even Harvest Moon or Princess Maker 2 ? All of those can bring about melancholy, if you let them. It is possible to look at anything and feel nothing; it is possible to look at anything and be moved to tears. Again, it's all in how you choose to look at it.
1900s 3 D stereoscope post cards come to mind (Score:2)
Note lasting value does NOT equal boring, I predict that the Sex Pistols, Radiohead, Spike Lee movies, Public Enemy and the art of David Hockney will also have lasting value and these are all radical non boring artists. By lasting value I mean that we will listen to or watch and admire the works of these artists 50 years from now. The trick of course of identifying which works have lasting value in the present which is a very tricky proposition. Perhaps there are video games that will have lasting value, the original Sim City and Myst seem to point in that direction but even these high quality games don't move me very deeply, sorry. Again perhaps there are games capable of moving people in non trivial, non melodramatic, or visceral ways, but I haven't seem them yet.
I think the fundamental problem with video games now is that they are an ephemeral medium very tied to having the latest video card and processor, and may not even viewable at all in 50 years except in crude emulations. This is not does not mean that this isn't capable of change, but it does mean it's hard to make a work of lasting art on a moving platform. Perhaps this is the reason that 3-D post cards from the turn of the century left us nothing of lasting value. Again video games MAY transcend being a novelty item in historical terms but to me they haven't proven that proposition yet.
http://www.sandiegohistory.org/collections/stereo
Another problem is that artistic masterworks are identified strongly with the personality of their creators, where as video games don't have that same strong personality and are identified more with their publishing houses than their authors. Again not that these things can't in theory be overcome but to not even acknowledge them as hurdles and to go for easy relativism would be very naive.
Re:1900s 3 D stereoscope post cards come to mind (Score:2)
Look at this whole discussion. Everyone is offering their opinion about whether games are art or not. Seems to me that they are all referring to their personal understanding of what art is, and that those understandings do not neccessarily meet. In other words, this very discussion seems to point towards art being relative.
It isn't particularly surprising that several people find artistic value from the same subject; they are, after all, all humans and have their brains wired in basically same way. That does not invalidate my point: that "art" is not a quality of the object being examined but rather something that is created in the brains of the watcher.
I also repeat my point about watching clouds and finding shapes - and maybe even deep insights - there.
A management simulation rarely moves people to tears :).
I named a few. And "melodrama" simply means that the emphasis is on the plot; so unless you are saying that only character driven stories can be art, I'm a bit confused about what you're trying to say.
Both Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross can be played in perfect emulators (ZSnes and Epsxe, respectively), where "perfect emulator" is one which reproduces original graphics, sound and program flow exactly as it was in the original hardware (both emulators are also capable of filtering graphics to improve them), so I'm a bit uncertain what you mean by "crude".
Since there are emulators that play nearly every game of such obsolete systems as NES, SNES and Playstation already, and since they seem to be quite popular, I'd say that it has been proven.
Video games are usually produced by a group of people instead of a single person, and are identified with that group; usually the group forms some kind of development house company for legal reasons. Different development houses tend to produce very different games.
Well, until someone can come up with a definition of art that actually defines anything (as opposed to making vague references about "touching people on the subconscious level" or something else that can't possibly be verified) and is not completely arbitrary ("t
Re:1900s 3 D stereoscope post cards come to mind (Score:2)
Re:1900s 3 D stereoscope post cards come to mind (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Mon
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_
I think you will grant me that these texts are more important and insightful than the latest J random "dummies" guide to writing AJAX or whatever the latest programming fad is. WHY are they more important? Because they offer deep insights into the very nature of coding that transcends any particular coding language or time or place. They are books that give you many ah-ha type insights. Well art works the same way, the way artists train themselves is by looking at works that contain deep insights into the human experience like Guernica:
http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/guernica/g
If the artist has a VERY RARE combination of creative insight, and skill, they may produce another work as insightful as Guernica but it's about as likely as J Random programmer being as insightful about coding as Turing or Knuth.
Back to the original subject I believe it will be obvious when video games produce their Guernica because it will produce a powerful reaction and will be discussed everywhere even by ordinary people on the street like Guernica and Citizen Kane were as soon as they were released.
http://www.filmsite.org/citi.html [filmsite.org]
These are works of genius which in themselves have the power to move people unlike subjective interpretations of clouds. Again this is not to say that video games aren't capable of producing good art with this level of insight but I sincerely suspect it hasn't happened YET or I would have heard about it, in fact everyone will hear about it, it will rock the world in the same way the Beatles, Bob Dylan, or Jimi Hendrix, or Patti Smith, or Public Enemy did by bringing true artistic insight into the pop culture of rock and roll.
Where is video games Knuth, Turing, Picasso, Hendrix? Hint it's not going to be obscure when it happens, it will likely start an entire movement in video games when it happens just like surrealism was a movement in the arts, and the hippies, punk, and hip hop were movements in music and the entire culture. Has ANY video game transformed the culture in this way? I don't think so.
p.s. not just genre snobbery (Score:2)
http://www.ithaca.edu/news/release.php?id=394 [ithaca.edu]
There are such a thing as standards, until video games grow up and get some standards and move beyond sophomoric relativism they can be guaranteed to never produce a work of greatness. Why, because guess what like all great things good art is hard work and relativism encourages laziness. Why bother to strive to produce great and moving art if everything is just the same and no different than clouds drifting by in the sky in it's level of attainment?
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
True, but what constitutes "art" is, itself, subjective. I used the 'narrative' example as an easy one (I thought) no one would argue with.
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
Not really.
Art is anything that conveys emotion from the artist to the audience.
-The artist can also serve as the audience. (a diary)
-If there is no emotion, it's not art. (a police log)
-If the emotion does not penetrate the audience, it's not art. (elevator music)
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
You missed the bit about about art being a conveyance of emotion. An open grave may trigger an emotional reaction in a person, but that's not art, it's a hole in the ground. A photo of an open grave that can convey the photographer's emotions to an audience is art.
Art must instill emotion, not simply incite.
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
Almost, but not quite...
"Good art must instill emotion, not simply incite."
There you go. Perfect.
Just being 'art' doesn't make it 'good'. There's plenty of terrible art - but it's still art. If a piece of music doesn't instill emotion in you, is it then not music? If an open grave instills emotion in you, it it then art?
Re:Of course they are (Score:2)
That said, what defines "art" is subjective. Is art 'art' regardless of popular belief? Is something 'art' because a person believes it to be art, or is art 'art' regardless? Must are evoke emotion, or is that simply a by-product of some art? If something is 'art' is it art to everyone, or just those that believe it's art? Is something 'art' only while
Well, you get the idea.
Well... (Score:2)
Of course video games are art (Score:2)
Re:Of course video games are art (Score:2)
Number of pages? Budget? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pong != Art, therefore Video Game = Art (Score:2, Insightful)
The definition of art, for example, does not quite cover things like the gameplay design, the AI, and the game mechanics. Can anyone here actually consider the game Pong as art?
The word 'art' is all about aesthetic properties of the object or thing in question. Pong proves its possible to have a solid game with essentially nothing in it that is aesthetically pleasing. The sound effects suck, the graphics suck, and there is no narrative what so ever. It is still very much a game, but it is not art.
It is possible to create a game that has very compelling art that utterly fails as a game due to ill conceived controls, or having other short comings that basically make the game unplayable.
Art can make a game much better, but that does not mean video games in general are art. So to paraphrase the C++ inheritence concepts from Effective C++:
Games possess a 'has a' relation ship to art, not an 'is a' relationship.
END COMMUNICATION
Re:Pong != Art, therefore Video Game = Art (Score:2)
Feel free to replace the word 'art' with paintings, movies, statues, sculptures, etc.
Art is subjective. This whole question is pointless.
Re:Pong != Art, therefore Video Game = Art (Score:2)
Just because a movie can be art, doesn't mean that moving pictures => art. Is an infomercial art? Is a self-help book literature? What about a cooking book or a chemical catalogue?
And yet we could create art in the shape of infomercials, and literature in the guise of recipe books.
The definition of art does not quite cover film development, typography or grammar for that matter. But we accept art for the product it is more than by the specific techniques used.
On the same vein, it is true most games are not art, but rather use art for their own purpose. That doesn't mean you cannot create art in the form of a computer game, and I think the industry has done so (accidentally or not) in ocassion.
But you do have a great point in that Art and Gameplay are independent. The (great game, lousy art) and (lousy game, great art) tuples are actually quite common. What I think is more open to question is whether these two elements are orthogonal, or actually interfere with each other.
Is a good interactive game by definition not-art? Or is good interactive art by definition a lousy game?
Ebert and co have an interesting point in that games are, by definition, a surrender of the authorial control that is central to art. But that is not an entirely new concept in art; audience participation has been around for a long time, with admittedly mixed results.
Personally, I think there are games that also fit in the concept of interactive art, I'm just not sure they are the best games (or the best art) by nature. Maybe they cannot be. Fortunately, good art in other mediums tends to have interesting influences in entertainment in general, regardless of how entertaining the original piece was.
I completely disagree. (Score:3, Interesting)
It is that achieves a satisfactory experience through the user's experience that is much more than one would expect when looking at all the pieces individually (sound, graphics, interface).
You could have a massively hyped game with great individual assets (think Daikatana), yet the composition and feedback loop with the user is decidedly lacking. Some character models could be very artistic, but the whole combined product is forced; dead.
Pong is the opposite and it succeeds with the sparse resources allocated to it. That is what I believe makes it a work of art. It is the precisely the unity of design, mechanics
Re:Pong != Art, therefore Video Game = Art (Score:2, Insightful)
I consider games to be art because the design goals of them are to entertain, not to be useful. Pong is for having fun, not for demonstrating how balls bounce off surfaces.
Penny Arcade (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Penny Arcade (Score:2)
Re:Penny Arcade (Score:2)
Almost always not art. (Score:2)
Re:Almost always not art. (Score:2)
Art is about expression of the self, about sharing an emotional experience with someone else. Movies, music, paintings and poems express a broad range of emotions and often in a profound manner.
Considering that games usually always contain "movies", music, "paintings" (ie hand-drawn or modeled artwork), and sometimes even poetry, it's hard to understand your objection. Not only do I think that video games fit your own definition of art, but also that your definition of art is too limited to really define what art is.
Re:Almost always not art. (Score:2)
That is true of every single artistic medium. With movies, music, painting, poems, etc., you are simply cherry-picking the ageless masterpieces and forgetting the massive flood of raw sewage they float on.
Half Life 2 (Score:2)
What is Art? (Score:2)
Re:What is Art? (Score:2)
Sounds like Jean Baudrillard's take to:
From this article [egs.edu] from Baudrillard. Granted I'm not sure how much I agree, but I think the art as "funtionless" arguement is wholly a new idea springing only from the early part of the 20th century. We still recognize great arcitechture as art, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, the Chrystler building, Notre Dame, and part of the beauty of these lies in their functionality. Granted I also see some industrial design as art, such as the style of the iPod and the OS X interface, as packaging simplicity into a complicated form.
I think art is a pinched definition. If we claim art is "functionless" can't we claim that art's purpose or function then is to be "functionless", defeating its own definition. Art is purpose driven, it exists to do something. In the end it may just be "art is what our culture collectivly calls art"
Art is obviously subjective (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, there is an aspect of timelessness to art. Quoting Ebert (and his main argument)
The video game age is very young, and this perception will inevitably change as it matures. I'll encourage my kids to play Final Fantasy and listen to Nobuo Uematsu.
Can be but aren't. (Score:2)
That's the problem: Games could be art. And games that would be art, would likely be good games (unless you screw up the gameplay/interface part). But unfortunately: 170 pages describing cinematic moments, and 1,200 pages detailing interactive events - this is not art. This is craft, and a low craft. Industry. Production. Manufacturing.
Yeah, the "entertainment industry" is just that. Industry. Recent discussion about Episode 1 commentary [slashdot.org] was just about that - good plot well blending with the gameplay and the gameplay not breaking immersion into the plotline. Most of game plots are crafted, not created, projected, not inspired. It's bad, boring writing, broken even worse for making some "fun" gameplay elements possible. "The player may feel tired with combat by now so we introduce a physics puzzle arena here" and the player feels "oh god, another puzzle arena" instead of getting interested with how it influences or is influenced by the world events. Who, why built this nonsensical contraption, what for? The answer is one: developers, to keep the player occupied. The rebels wouldn't have time, condition and need to build this - it would take them a week to make, and you can't spend two minutes without being shot at. It's not their security device, it's a physics puzzle. Immersion broken. Or the player is to follow Mankar Camoran to the Paradise. So despite the fact that according to the game he's supposed to be your worst enemy, and should be killed at all cost, if using all your creativity you managed to smuggle your super-poison, super-dagger and all kinds of useful spells into the shrine, then you manage to stab him with the poisoned dagger before he makes it to his portal, he falls to the floor, you get a message saying he's unconscious (a quest character - cannot be killed) then he stands up and departs through the portal. The game simply cheats on you because the plotline dictates you're not supposed to kill him there. Horrible, horrible breaking of immersion. Craft, not art.
Is $THING art? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've often considered that the thing which is most functional for its purpose is the best art. Think "chair." Four legs, seat, back. A perfect representation of "that upon which people sit," and you can actually sit on it.
So let's think about videogames. Are they art? Is Monopoly (the board game) art? Is chess? Is a paper airplane? Is masturbation? All these things entertain us, in one form or another.
Fact is, whether or not $THING is art is wholly subjective, depending on the person making the determination. Beyond that, there's whether or not $THING (which may or may not be art) is good art or bad art.
That's a whole other discussion.
Re: $THING = art based on its cost (Score:2)
Courts typically determine if something is "art" based on its cost. If $thing costs more than its utilitarian value, then its art. For instance, if $thing = Wal-mart chair, and if someone will pay me substantially more for the Wal-mart chair then it sells for at Wal-mart, $thing is art and I'm an artist.
The best real-world example I have found is a woman in NYC who has sex with men on videotape for money. She charges > $20,000 for this and her tapes are displayed at respected art studios. Various legal minds think she could not be convicted of prostitution, because she charges 5x the market rate for her performances, so they must be art. AFAIK, she has never been arrested despite being well known.
Re: $THING = art based on its cost (Score:2)
I can see that as being a legal definition of "art." Following that, the question "Is $THING art?" is unanswerable, being that no context is stated. "Is $THING legally art?" is a question that can be far more easily debated, as would be "Is $THING relatively art?" (example: a sculpture is art, because there are a wide variety of similar historical examples which are almost universally considered "art").
So, when asking "Are videogames art?" one must provide a context. "If a movie with multiple endings, where the ending is chosen based on the input of the viewer is art, then are videogames art?" To that I would say yes.
You make my friends list simply for knowing that. Got a reference?
Define: art (Score:4, Interesting)
Art: The products of human creativity. (Source [princeton.edu])
Art: The expression of creativity or imagination, or both. (Source [wikipedia.org])
Art: The formal expression of a conceived image or imagined conception in terms of a given medium. (Source [k12.ca.us])
With these definitions, I consider video games to be art. I always have considered them art. They are simply an expression of human creativity. Being on an interactive medium only adds to the art.
Re:Define: art (Score:4, Insightful)
Mankind has been try to define art for thousands of years, and, you know, I'm not sure you quite solved it with three links and a few sentences.
More Sport than Art (Score:2)
Zappa's View (Score:2)
Art is anything that somebody intentionally makes and then points at and says, "that's art."
That's it.
Are movies art? (Score:2)
Now how about 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'?
Interaction vs Art (Score:2)
So how does this apply to other outlets of human creation... like patents or copyrights?
Re:Interaction vs Art (Score:2)
Even the so-called "static" arts are dependent on the interaction of the viewer. Much of what has been done in the arts in the last century has been to get people actively involved at looking at the work, examining it, not just passively staring at it.
Re:Interaction vs Art (Score:2)
Even the so-called "static" arts are dependent on the interaction of the viewer. Much of what has been done in the arts in the last century has been to get people actively involved at looking at the work, examining it, not just passively staring at it.
Which brings us back to the original issue... how can something so broadly defined as "art" possibly exclude video games without forcing otherwise "legitimate" art forms to be excluded as well? Just about any arguement that can be made to justify the exclusion of video games would also apply several other widely accepted forms of artistic expression, such as the exhibit you describe.
The fact is, there is no way to legitimately define video games in manner that makes them unqualified to be considered as "art". It's an entirely political movement designed to limit video games from enjoying the same protections afforded other art forms, under the pretense of protecting children. Of course, in making such an argument, it does open the doors to giving things like child pornography similar protections. (Interesting thought... is possession or creation of non-photographic items that depict sex acts with children enough to convict someone as a sexual predator?)
Re:Interaction vs Art (Score:2, Insightful)
Physical and mental interaction is true of all art forms. I know that when I write a story, I'm not writing with complete control. The reader will give meaning to my words and create a text different than I had intended and possibly a better one. The reader is creating an experience from the tools I've provided. Such reading is an integral part of the art of writing. Otherwise, they're just meaningless symbols. And if I make a game out of the same story, the story evolves into a more interactive form with more room to explore and more potential for meaning attachment. The story doesn't cease to exist and neither does the fact that it's art. Games simply give more ''authorial control'' to their users than other works of art. In doing so, games are more postmodern than the arts of the past and many of those that are emerging.
Also, video games themselves are syntheses of other art forms. One might be able to argue about how well they are assembled, but even if a work art is produced through undeveloped skills, it doesn't cease to be art. And the parts of games some may claim are non-art (AI, game play) are just as much art as others, since they are representations, alterations, and extensions of reality (human intelligence, movement and physical intaction with objects), which is what art does.
We'd need to know what the heck "art" is first. (Score:2)
Cheers.
being driven by sales (Score:2)
While I believe the creating process of a video games to be very close to what we'd call "art", and game design usually probably needs or involves a lot of creative thinking and production, I won't ever call any production process being driven by sales goals "art". It's just that, a production process, like factories do. Like parfume companies do, like cloth companies do. They produce products that are likely to be paid for by the masses in order to gain profit. Nothing else. Artists [well, in my onw little world] create things driven by their imagination, inner creative forces, a need to express themselves in a special way. Of course I'm also living in this world and I know everybody has financial needs. Still, I refuse to think of artists like commercial product fabricators. This whole issue is always taken up by some people who would like to be taken as artists, and they always take two approaches: either try to raise themselves to the level of real artists, or try to make an image of the artists that would seemingly bring them down to their level. Here they say we are artists and being creative with sales goals is an extra feature. Well, famous painters also painted painting for orders for money. But fame usually didn't came from those works. Working driven by sales goals will create works that are fashionable, that can be sold [hey, this is your goal, right] in masses - art is very often not about that.
Stupid Distinction (Score:2)
I don't mean to recommend that we lower our standards -- certainly some works are more worthy of note than others -- but a work's worthiness does not depend on where it falls on the "art" continuum. It depends on many orthogonal factors which are different for every medium, and are only apparent to those with deep knowledge of the field. It's worth mentioning here that art experts, by and large, are not video game experts. They are in no position to make any sort of judgement about video games, whether that judgement is (artp video-games) or something entirely different.
citizen kane (Score:2)
Games as art (Score:2)
Re:What is art? (Score:2)
Re:No different then movies (Score:2)
That could be said for a lot of art that's being called 'art'. It's not so clearly defined, unfortunately. I am, however, inclined to call something that expresses a view of the world (like GTA or even V for Vendetta) art.
Re:No (Score:2)
Oh please. Go play classics such as Loom, Monkey Island, Ico, Ultima 7, and tell me there is no self-expression or critical thinking skills there.
Art is anything that creates an response , either emotionaly or intellectually, over it.
Since games _contain_ art (audio, video, etc) that makes them art. QED.
--
Game Design is about the unholy trinity: Abstraction, Logicalness/Consistency, Convenience
Unfortunately, far too mamy players are argueing about the wrong thing, usually the red herring of realism. If you favor realism over abstraction, you have a simulator.