Clearly procrastinating
Complete nonsense: Why is intensity irrelevant in artificial smell? Grape shouldn’t smell as “loud” as banana, should it? Do grapes even smell? (note to self: smell grapes)
Inability to pick my battles: It’s spelt Arcangel. Both times. For heaven’s sake, game art researchers, if you haven’t researched the artist…
Waffling that shouldn’t keep me up at night: Representation in videogames: foolishly undervalued, or rightfully undervalued?
Seeing games through other things
Putting film aside for a second, isn’t what we really want to ask is whether videogames are like competitive ice dance?
OK, I recognize comparing videogames to other cultural touchstones (film, literature, theatre and non-digital games being the most common examples: art [in the broad sense], sports, and music being my more preferred ones) isn’t exactly a groundbreaking approach. But part of the attraction is of course that it offers an opportunity to test the implications of assumptions we’d make about videogames that may or may not hold in other, very similar structures– ones we’re maybe not as close to, and don’t have a vested interest in preserving/expanding/innovating etc.
Now, I am by no means an expert in ice skating or dance. I’ll be perfectly honest in saying I don’t actually *get* dance– I’m not sure what to look for in a performance, and it really doesn’t reach me emotionally or empathetically. The dance I do get is popular dance– the get-your-butts-out-and-dance dance of clubs or, recently, summer island picniks. It’s arepresentational; pure action. The only way dance makes sense to me is in an arepresentational sense. As soon as dance gets too “representational,” well, it gets kinda funny, doesn’t it?
I think it’s fair to say that certain (but not all) videogames only work as arepresentational forms. I’m increasingly interested, though, in how arepresentational forms still work as art. Music, for example, is easy to understand as an arepresentational form– although it is usually (usually) not interactive. Dance, however, is action. Taken together with music (how interdisciplinary), it’s surely interactive.
Is it fair to say you only get dance if you dance? Can dance provide a cautionary tale against artistic representation through action?
A thousand apologies to dance researchers/practitioners: note this is not about dance at all really, but about thinking through particular aspects of games.
March 13, 2008
As part of a minor project documenting game art in Canada…
There’s no date on this, but I’m assuming 2006? Prince George’s Two Rivers Gallery put on this exhibition of (digital) games’ influence on art.
The program description is by and large dreadful, with the exception of the following blurb which describes the works shown. Games might not be “evolving” into immersive virtual realities, games may be nowhere close to overtaking the cultural impact of film (what is this, a fight? and why is this important for art?), and, as a card-carrying member of “GenX,” I’d say my generation spent more time playing PacMan than we want to readily admit. You’re probably looking for younger, less accessibly branded generations ;-) OK, here’ s the blurb:
Tim van Wijk’s Landscape Generator is a large sculptural work. At one end there is a hand crank that moves a series of wooden cogs. At the opposite end there is a viewing frame. As the handle turns a series of landscape elements corresponding to fore-ground, middle and back-ground, turn independently creating an ever changing landscape. Made up of a limited set of elements that are constantly recycled, the generator evokes the repetitive landscapes from early video games. Demian Petryshyn’s work also addresses the landscape using an image culled from a video game that is projected onto the wall. This type of landscape, more familiar to some than the real thing, explores virtual experience. Similarly, video work by the same artist looks at the nature of the relationship in multi-player games that evolves and manifests itself on the game monitor. Eddo Stern draws from video games to create short films that blur the distinction between video game and film and Jon Haddock makes digital images of iconic movie moments and world events as if they were screen shots from a game.
March 12, 2008
The battle to suppress game art
Chicago-based artist (and Art Institute of Chicago faculty member) Wafaa Bilal’s latest game art work “Virtual Jihadi” has now been censored, not once, but twice, in Troy, NY. What is perhaps even more disturbing is the method.
The work, a hack of “Night of Bush Capturing,” in which Bilal addresses his intensely personal struggle with the American occupation of Iraqi by inserting himself into the game as a suicide bomber, was “suspended” from exhibition at RPI. The exhibit was then moved to the Sanctuary for Independent Media, where city code enforcement officials, in conjunction with Republican politician and public works commissioner Robert Mirch, proceeded to shut down the venue for, suddenly rather urgent, code violations.
You can’t make this shit up. How terrifying is the United States right now?
Here is an excellent interview with Bilal, discussing this and previous works, as well as the censorship controversy. I hope the same voices that went to the mat for (the somewhat suspect) SCMRPG! are as strong and vocal in response to this as well.