Many people (gamers, mostly), including Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, Shamus Young, a game designer named Kellee Santiago, and an author named Robert Brockway have taken him to task.
My take on it:
Can images be art?
Yes, images can be art.
Can music be art?
Yes, music can be art.
Can story be art?
Yes, story can be art.
Can acting be art?
Yes, acting can be art.
Can sculpture be art?
Yes, sculpture can be art.
Can the combination of all of these be art?
Yes, the combination of all of these can be art.
So then, on what grounds can one state that the combination of all of these, with the inclusion of interactivity is not and can never be art?
Basically, if A is art and B is art and C is art and D is art and E is art and the combination A + B + C + D + E is art, how can A + B + C + D + E + F not ever be art?
Also, what do you mean by "art"?
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Since it seems to be popular these days, a brief list of games I think are art:
1) Grim Fandango
2) Braid
3) Half-Life 2
Why do I think these are art? To answer Roger Ebert, all three caused me to be "more complex, thoughtful, insightful, witty, empathetic, intelligent, or philosophical."
Can any art be interactive?
ReplyDeleteIs the movie "Up" art? (It is beautiful and it provides catharsis, but it happens to be computer animation)
Non-electronic art does not require "reinventing physics," yet in Salvador Dali's art and M.C. Escher's art, physics and perspective are purposefully violated.
While I haven't played it "little big world" is definately on the art side of games.
Is the computer game Myst art?
If you made a game composed of art, is it art? (Music, paintings/Images, ballet, sculpture, video, photography, etc.)
If the video game "rock band" had a new version called "Philharmonic" would participating through the lesser electronic medium reduce a symphany to not able to be art?
Is something only art if it is unmodified from its created state?
Along the lines of TheBlueFox's last comment, if you edit The Phantom Menace to remove Jar Jar Binks and Anakin's ridiculous dialog, has art not been improved?
ReplyDeleteThe first examples I thought of were Half-life 2 and Portal. Joe's right to mention Grim Fandango, which is my favorite video game of all time, and if a video game can ever be art, Grim Fandango certainly already qualifies. So does Polynomial.
I think Joe discovered the crux of Ebert's position, that interactivity somehow disqualifies games from being art. Although Ebert can't even bring himself to state this absolutely (he says they may be someday, but not in our lifetime), which makes it harder to understand his reasons. Curiously, his apparent line of reasoning (as exposed by Joe) would seem to allow watching someone play an entire game to qualify as art. It's just a movie, right? Like Machinima. Would Ebert hold the position that Machinima is not art? Much of Machinima is simply video games minus interactivity (much of it is considerably more than that).
Myst could be considered a self-guided tour through computer-rendered, but human-generated, artworks. Is that not art?
Although he doesn't admit it, I think Ebert uses the same definition of art that everyone else uses: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it," and Ebert doesn't see art in video games. But I think he's missing something.
Roger Ebert is just an film critic, right? I.e. he's a nobody when it comes to creation of something unique. He's not even worthy of elaborate response. I rely on friend's recommendations to choose movies, and so do all my friends - film critics are being obsoleted and it shows - they don't even have to display rudiment of intelligence any more.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway. "Computer games" is a far more diverse category than film. A game like barebone tetris consists of little more than rules - here I would agree that its questionable whenever tetris rules are 'art' or something else.
A game like Rezz is on totally opposite side of the spectrum - it is not even very interactive.
The Polynomial consists of 3-dimensional artworks, and is designed as to look pretty and psychedelic when it is being played - the gameplay is here to engage viewer more, to put the viewer right into the art, to make it more than a picture on the screen. It doesn't even matter what are the rules.
It can go without this - gameplay videos on youtube, built in screensaver mode, and such - but then, just like film, it is a picture on the screen, you're no longer in there.
Music gives a good analogy. Is music any less art when you, the audience, dance to it, when you're in? I don't think so! And if one want to make an argument that dance music is not art - this would only show one's lack of education - a lot of classical music was made for dancing.
If A+B+C etc is a logical "and", and is true, and then if you logical "and" it with an F which is assigned a value of false, the whole expression is false...
ReplyDeleteDad
Yes, but if the + is a logical "OR" (as it is in fault tree analysis and boolean algebra), then for the statement A+B+C+D+E+F to be true, only one of the individual statements must be true.
ReplyDelete