Recent posts by magic585 on Kongregate

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

matt-

Then what is your definition of art?

Why wouldn’t an interactive storybook like coil be art?

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

For all of you critics out there, Coil and Walls are now the second and third best games of the week on kong, and they are both works of art.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

Another example of video game art which was recently released is The Walls – Part Three! I know, it’s shameless self promotion, but at the same time I think it’s relevant to a discussion about video game art. You should check it out:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/magic585/the-walls-part-three

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

I think that GOOD art requires both, but purely technical art is still art. Leonardo daVinci, being both an artist and a scientist, used to do all sorts of technical experimentations involving light and shadow on a wrinkled cloth, and they were definitely works of art.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

Phoenix – I’m not sure that the difference between copying texts and copying visual art is very large. They will both portray the same ideas, as long as the copy is perfect. It kind of makes you wonder about digital technology. Screens are nothing but a combination of differently lit pixels. And the possible combinations which can be made are surprisingly limited. I mean, I’m sure the number of possible combination is nearly infinite, but if you were to program the computer to randomize each pixel 100 times every millisecond, you might a coherent image within a couple of years.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

So far I have found paintings by chimps, cats, elephants, humans, and pigs! Go to this link and scroll down to the picture of the elephant, I swear to God that thing is a better artist than 70% of the painters in the world today!

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/animals/are_animals_conscious.htm

…it makes me wonder if my first definition was better…

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

Try this one: Art is any instance of an element or a combination of elements which were created, captured, or in some way assembled or modified by a human being, and can be observed, listened to, touched, smelled, perceived, pondered, or interacted with as to convey some kind of significance which is significantly non-essential to human survival.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

My personal view is that art is any instance of an element or a combination of elements which were created, captured, or in some way assembled or modified by an animal, and can be observed, listened to, touched, smelled, perceived, thought about, or interacted with as to convey some kind of significance which is significantly non-essential to human survival. I consider both the purely aesthetic and the purely symbolic to be forms of art, and I think that functional items can still be works of art. Its a very general definition, and I find myself constantly having to revise it, but I think some of the most interesting art comes from the exploration of new mediums, and it would be a shame to leave anything out. I say “animal” and not human because I recently read an article on cats which could supposedly represent paint flower bouquets using their paws and finger paint. It made me rethink what the word “art” meant in a way that has only ever been surpassed by the time I heard about an artist which put a urinal on display in a museum.

Games can be art simply because they fit this criteria just as well as any medium I have encountered. Video games are especially great because they can combine a vast array of artistic elements and make their significance extremely relatable to their viewer through the power of interactivity. Throughout history, great artists have tried to create pieces which capture their audience, and what has been more successful at this than video games?

I almost think that if you can ask the question “is _______ art?” seriously, and with a straight face, then it most probably is.

I don’t like spelling out what my games are about, partially because they aren’t about one thing in particular, partially because the series isn’t done, and partially because it just ruins the fun of playing them to understand exactly what you are seeing. There is some art simply in the visuals, sounds, and atmospheres I tried to create, but the main artistic element is in what the images symbolize, which I do not want to divulge quite yet. As I said, interactivity serves as a device to make the experience more relatable, which would be difficult to accomplish in any other medium as it is so abstract. A good example of this is the light which follows the mouse. I think that this acts as a sort of metaphorical bridge between the person holding the mouse and the world which they are exploring on their computer screen.

Overall, I agree strongly with the revolutionary pop-artist Andy Warhol: “Art is what you can get away with”.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

Greg – In your comparison you left out the difference between football as a sport and the individual football matches. It goes like this: there are games, then there are sub-categories of games (sports/video games), then there are additional sub categories (football/point and click games), and then there are the individual instances of these (the super bowl/99 rooms). But when you made this comparison, you didn’t give credit to the numerous, usually independently made games which have been placing a de-emphasis on traditional gameplay and exploring the medium as an art form.

If all of the football teams met and decided they would still play the game, but would put an emphasis on acting and making it look interesting then winning, then surely it could be counted as an art form. This obviously doesn’t happen very often with sports, but its not because video games can’t be art, but because football players are generally more interested in winning sports than enjoying playing them sports are a competitive and uncreative job for athletes, whereas video games are more creative and loose for more easygoing gamers who consider video games to be far more recreational, some of which have begun to consider it an an artistic medium over a game anyway.

To sum it up in a sentence: A more accurate version of your analogy to the sports world might be that these games are to video games as the staged antics of WWE Smackdown are to sports.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

Damijin – You assume that anything which is limited to a set of rules can’t be art. Unfortunately, lots of art is limited by rules. Just like games are limited by rules, architecture (a universally accepted art form) is limited to being designed in a way which allows it to stand up. The term “art” differs in meaning from person to person, so it is inevitable that there will be some confusion. Allow me to give the official dictionary definition of the word:

Art
-noun
1. The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

Faced with this definition, all arguments that claim video games can’t be art crumble. Without a doubt, a video game can be a “production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance”. I challenge you or anybody who is reading this to find me a video game which does not fall in this category.

As for the term “high art”, the official definition is far more general than I assumed it would be, based on the controversy which surrounds it:

(e) Very abstract; difficult to comprehend or surmount; grand; noble.

(g) Arrogant; lofty; boastful; proud; ostentatious; — used in a bad sense.

3. Possessing a characteristic quality in a supreme or superior degree;

I understand that not every specific video game can be considered “high art”. However, I also think that everybody can agree that not all paintings, drawings, or sculptures fall under these definitions either. If a preschooler makes an asymmetric blob shape out of a tiny bit of play-doh, does it automatically become high art? Of course not. Yet sculpture is still considered to be a category of “high art”. This is because the term “high art” is more oriented towards describing pieces in relation to their medium and context.

Individual video games CAN fall under the category of “high art”, as they have the potential to be “very abstract”, “difficult to comprehend or surmount”, “grand” “noble”, “Arrogant”, “lofty”, “boastful”, “proud”, “ostentatious”, or “Possessing a characteristic quality in a supreme or superior degree”. If you do not believe me, go play “Feed the head”, “99 rooms”, “blue suburbia”, or “flow”. Its true that these types of games are not mainstream, but whether or not they are common enough that the term “high art” should be extended to all video games is not actually important to me: after all is said and done, its just a term. What IS important is that dismisses video games as being no more than shallow, cheap entertainment. “High art” or not, video games have proven themselves capable of expressing nearly anything that other artistic mediums can express, maybe even more.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

Ridiculous – Interactivity is not a framework which limits artistic development, but rather a new artistic element which independent artists are only just starting to delve into. I have never felt myself limited by the need to make a game “playable”, as I have always tried to make the gameplay as loose and simplistic as possible. In fact, a number of the people criticized my games for not being gameplay oriented in a typical fashion. The key is to pursue your own unique, interactive artistic vision, and not worry about conforming to a particular type of gameplay. Perhaps if an artist pursues a specific form of game, such as an RPG or an shooting game, they will feel limited, but as soon as you can stop worrying about fitting a specific video game formula and find a way to express yourself like you would through any other medium, the possibilities for video games as an art form are infinite.

Topic: Serious Discussion / Video Games as Art?

As the creator of The Walls series (which I consider to be more artistic experimentation rather than actual games), I can say with much confidence that I believe video games/interactive web content can be an art form. You must keep in mind the versatility of the term “Art”. It may have once been limited to the classics (music, writing, theater, painting, sculpture), but recently this term has been extending rapidly to new mediums, such as film/animation, sound-based art pieces, installation art, fashion as art, kinetic sculpture, even light projections. To quote Andy Warhol, “Art is what you can get away with”. In this context, I would even go so far as to say that ALL video games are a form of visual art (granted some are more so than others). As to the issue video games might even count as “high art”… I don’t think anybody knows for sure what this term means. However, I can’t imagine anything that could be expressed in “high art” but not in video game art, so I don’t understand why it matters if some rich, scholarly, academic art professor decides to arbitrarily categorize video games as “high art” or not. In fact, the idea of video games/interactive web content as art is not as new as some of you might realize. Just go to www.jayisgames.com and play “feed the head”, “99 rooms”, “blue suburbia”, “hotel”, or “flow”.