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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Yes, but is it art?

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14:24 / 17.06.05

Just on the subject of code and art, are you aware of Generative Art, images and sound that are entirely generated through code? Here's an article on Autopilot an exhibition of such.

14:52 / 17.06.05

coming to the thread 60 odd posts in so i may have missed something or be reiterating other peoples points...

By pretty much any definition I know (i.e. the ones I just looked up in dictionary.com) games are art, there is science and maths and engineering in their crafting but I believe the product considered as a whole is art.

The whether coding is like painting debate is kind of a red herring I think, after all painting can produce the mona lisa or a nice white wall in your sitting room, I don't think methods of production qualify something as art or not.

Back to dictionary.com...
Art = "Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature." games are all those things. I think the question of whether games are art is only asked because they're a relatively new form and because many aspects of games seem antithetical to what is generally thought of as art i.e. art happens in quiet galleries and is enjoyed by people with grey hair and spectacles, games are loud and brash and enjoyed by people young men with poor personal hygene.

Some games can be like sport (esp. online first person shooters, beat'em ups, football games), you have good matches and bad matches within the parameters determined by the game, but the game itself can be judged more or less independently of these, though if you repeadedly have bad matches the game artifact may be flawed in some respect, a poor piece of art.

15:39 / 03.02.06

*bump*

rather than starting a new thread I thought it would be more appropriate to post in an existing thread. Does anyone have a copy of the Edge article mentioned up-thread, I really need a copy of it and would REALLY appreciate a scan of it or something.

20:10 / 11.02.06

Wasn't film originally subject to similar "But is it really art?" debate at its genesis? I can't remember exact sources as to this but people argued that apart from the inherent wonder and scientific spectacle of seeing life reproduced film could never be of artistic value. This yet again happened with photography. Films, photography and games are, of course, widely disimilar but it strikes me as somewhat analogous to the debate going on here. If they aren't considered as art right now when/as the medium progresses they eventually will be. And as pointed out earlier the medium is still relatively young.

21:10 / 11.02.06

c0ncept - I have it in print, but don't have a scanner. Might be able to borrow the one at work, one night this week. Will see what I can do.

18:36 / 30.09.06

I had a thought while I was soaking in the tub last night. Was asked why I play videogames. Why. Answer had to be more than "cause I like them, innit".

Realised that I like using my fingers. I like pulling off a ridiculous combo in a beat 'em up. I like hammering the fire button two thousand times a second in a shmup. I like typing on a keyboard. I like playing musical instruments.

And that's it. Forget all this shit about games = films, games = paintings, games = books.

Games = music.

Developers and designers = composers. Control pad = instrument. You = player.

I mean, shit, it's there already! Look - it's like that was the intention all along and nobody ever noticed. The langauge is already perfect. You don't even need to begin stretching anything to make it fit the point. Play. What do you do with a musical instrument? What do you do with a videogame?

You use the controller to reinterpret the composition in your own style. The only difference is that games include the visual component that's missing from music.

That's why I can sit back and watch a video of somebody like Saurian - or other scene people - tearing it up in Devil May Cry 3, PN03, God Hand. It's - and, again, the language fits already - a performance.

semioticrobotic

21:54 / 30.09.06

On that note (har), Randy, I present you with the "score" for Super Mario Bros.

I definitely need to zip you a copy of my MA thesis when it's all wrapped up; I'm interrogating videogames' aesthetic capacities as part of my work. I like the way you are using the language of performance to "get at" what makes playing videogames so aesthetically pleasing.

I say "playing videogames" because the phrase invovles a making and a doing. That is, to say that playing videogames is a performance is also to say that it is performative. When I play, something happens -- to me, to the game, and to the relationship between me and the game (ie., my gameplay experience). Something happens when we play videogames, like something happens when I play clarinet.

And it's an embodied activity, of course. Playing videogames requires a practical knowledge (the Greeks called it techne -- and it's the root word for both "technique" and "technology"). This kind of "knowing" is the result of an embodied sensibility, not any sort of "mental" knowledge (for the Greeks, episteme).

Someone might ask me: "Do you know many worlds does Super Mario Bros. have?" And I'd say "eight." That's episteme. Someone might ask: "Do you know how to play Super Mario Bros.?" And I'd say: "Yes." To say I "know" how to play the game means that I have some practical, embodied knowledge of the playing (the making, the doing). That's techne.

Someone might also ask me: "Do you know what this painting is?" And I identify it. But if asked: "Do you know how to paint?" I'd answer with a resounding "no." Painting requires a certain techne I just don't embody, and doubt I ever will.

That said, however, I might challenge your use of "=" here. You say:

Games = music

But is that really the case? I don't think so, and perhaps you don't really either, when you write:

The only difference is that games include the visual component that's missing from music.

So we see difference, and that's good. Videogames deserve status as aesthetic objects in their own right; I get tired of having to justify my affinity for them in others' terms ("Well, you see, it's like music ..."). But you've drawn some wonderful parallels here. What do you put in the water when you bathe? I need some of that inspiration juice during term paper season.

semioticrobotic

01:31 / 01.10.06

So I decided to post that before having dinner, and now that I'm back and settled I realize it 1) sounds a bit pompous and 2) is a occasionally unclear. Sorry for both. I might try to clarify a few things here, in a way that doesn't make me sound like a dick.

I think Randy hits the meat of the aesthetics issue at the very end of his post: the language of performance is very well suited to discussions about playing videogames. Like playing a musical instrument, playing a videogame has a productive (performative) dimension best described as an embodied, practical tendency.

There's a certain poesis at work when the player picks up that controller and performs a particular game. Something is made; some arises in the space between player and videogame that wasn't there before. Just as a musician can pick up a score and play it "literally," a videogame player can pick up Super Mario Bros. and play it just as literally (see those time trial videos on YouTube, and the "score" I linked in my previous post). But this is tough to do, because every-body intersects with the piece differently, nuancing it, changing it, making something out of it.

And when playing the game, the player is rarely cognizant of the act of the playing. Just like the soccer player just "knows" the right way to comport hirself on the field, or the musician "knows" when ze's nailed a piece, the videogame player is "in" it -- in the flow. It's exhiliarating -- pounding those DDR steps at the perfect time or, like Randy says, popping that combo brilliantly. Only after the performance can you really sit back and re-cognize what you've done.

I'm a little reluctant to admit "Games=Music" or even "Playing Games=Playing Music" because I don't know if the nature of each type of performance makes them identical. We could take the performance of monologue and say:

Developers and Designers=Playwrights
Control Pad=Script
You=Player

Or, when considering the less traditional interpretation of "performance," in the performance of soccer:

Developers and Designers: Rulemakers (embodied onfield by refs)
Control Pad=Ball
You=Player

When embodied players and enworlded objects connect, we might argue for a performative encounter. This is the kind of encounter I believe Randy is describing.

14:12 / 01.10.06

I'm off home to try Street Fighter 3 on 2 player mode with the volume off and dueling banjos blaring.

15:24 / 01.10.06

Bryan: I'm a little reluctant to admit "Games=Music" or even "Playing Games=Playing Music" because I don't know if the nature of each type of performance makes them identical.

I'm not trying to draw a direct comparison there. It's shorthand. I just remembered that we'd spent some time earlier on in this thread discussing what - if anything - makes the nature of the audience's involvement in and appreciation of a videgame different than when you're talking about how the audience reacts to/interacts with a film or a painting, and the music thing suddenly made me realise that we'd been trying to compare games with the wrong media all along.

Ulitmately, games are art because the two main pruposes of art are that:

1) it appeals to you on an aesthetic level
2) it teaches you something about the world around you

(and games do fulfil the second criterion there, because they'll at least teach you something about the minds and culture that spawned them)

but if you feel the need to link games to another medium in order to explain the nature of audience participation, then music would be the one to go for.

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