In a long-ago thread, I explained my notion that art is that which is created or arranged for the purpose of evoking a particular emotional response from an audience. I have not modified that fundamental view since, though I may have scribbled around the edges a bit. There were elaborations on good, bad, failed, and great art, but for my current purpose, my base definition is sufficient.
What I find intriguing about the MoMA game display is that it focuses specifically on interaction. I regard it as an exploration of process as art. The art is not in the graphics, or the music, or the physical composition of the machines themselves, but in the process of interacting with the game. In the case of Tetris, that process at its most successful has been shown to induce a mindful, meditative state in its audience, the player. In this context, it is a deliberate, and commonly successful, evocation of a particular emotional state. As such, I would argue that the Tetris display is art.
Some of the other game displays are more problematic, despite the games themselves being more technically advanced. The more involved games are presented only as recorded sequences of someone else playing the game. It is still the process on display, but at one remove from the audience. The intent remains, so I would still classify it as art, but I think these are much less likely to be successful art with most audiences than the interactive displays.
I’m a videogame designer who works pretty far out in “game as art” space.
One of the challenges of presenting games as art is that they’re made to be played. Putting a game in a gallery so that you can look at it is like reading about dance, or listening to a recording of someone tapping a sculpture with a hammer. The modality of the experience is all wrong, so a lot of what makes the work function as a work are missing.
To their credit, MoMA seems to realize this and they’re trying to make the games available as play experiences, not just taxidermy (a major failing of the game show at the National Portrait Gallery last year). That said, the 14 games they picked are a schizophrenic mix, with some that are clearly there because they’re visually arresting, and others (Dwarf Fortress) because of the complexity of their systems. I can’t discern a coherent thread running between them (and maybe that was the point?)
They’re certainly not the works I would have picked for a collection like this. Most of them are pretty shallow, falling squarely in the ghettoized category of “interesting product design”. And the few that are more complex are very game-y – very sterile and systems driven. *Portal *is about the only game I think really deserves to be there.
If I were curating their collection, I’d have a very different list:
Portal
Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
Flower
Journey
The Unfinished Swan
Limbo
Dear Esther
Papa y Yo
30 Flights of Loving
All of these titles do an amazing job of merging sound, visuals, and gameplay into a coherent experience that is both emotionally engaging and intellectually deep. They’re real touchstones for mapping the trajectory of games as an expressive medium.
Well put. Installation art pieces at museums are generally met by the public in three stages: 1) that’s not something I recognize at art; 2) but it is interesting; 3) hey, what do you know? That really does register. This is a more aggressive form of that, and your argument is well stated.
Having read your link, would you consider nouvelle cuisine to be art? The idea of putting a few pieces of food carefully arranged on plate for maximum visual effect, plus the notion that diners actually only taste the first bite or two of food would seem to fit your definition.
Tetris was undoubtedly included because it’s simply the best known arcade game. It is anybody’s guess why they picked the ones they did, beyond an obviously striving for variety.
I would say that it can be, as with my chef example in the link. It probably often is, but I honestly don’t have enough experience with it and with the chefs who prepare it to say. It comes back to intent, which is the really fuzzy part of my definition. It depends on what the arrangement is supposed to do. Is the purpose simply to introduce new combinations of flavor and texture, or is it designed in some way to have a specific emotional resonance? An arrangement full of bold colors, sharply delineated edges, and unusual combinations of spices might be intended to evoke an “adventurous” feeling, for example–that, I would call “art”. If, on the other hand, the colors were intended simply to make different elements of the plate easy to distinguish, the sharp divides are to prevent unintended flavor mixing, and the flavor is the primary point, that might not be art.
One thing I strive to do is to refrain from conflating my interest in or liking for something with my view of it as art (or not). I don’t always succeed, but I try. As a result, my take on what is art tends to be fairly inclusive. Just because a piece of art fails with me–that is, it does not evoke the intended response–doesn’t mean that it’s not art.
Where can I find the 14 games? And I’d argue with Tetris being the best known arcarde game. It’s barely an arcade game to begin with (most people’s familiarity with it are on home devices.) I would say something like Pac-Man is the most well-known arcade game.
I think there’s a bit of 8-bit fetishism at work. There’s a sense that game = pixels and beeps, even though that hasn’t been true for decades (except for works that are intentionally retro). So on one level they’re grooving on the minimalism of it. It’s very telling that their two newest works (*Passage *and Canabalt), are contemporary riff on the old 8-bit aesthetic. They fit within what a game is “supposed” to look like, much more than Journey, even though *Journey *is a far deeper and more interesting experience than either.
On the broader question you’re asking, my position is that art is anything that structures an experience that is an end unto itself.
For example, if I read the owner’s manual to my car, the owner’s manual certainly structures an experience, but I’m not reading it for its own sake. I’m doing it because I want to know where the fuse box is located.
But if I read The Princess Bride, I’m reading it because I want the experience of reading The Princess Bride. I may come away from it having learned something, but the experience was an end unto itself.
Right, it’s the journey, not the destination that matters. Which is true of just about anything that matters in life. Applying that as a definition of the nature of art works a lot better than many things I’ve heard.
See, to me, it never felt like an “arcade” game, but more like a puzzle-type game to be enjoyed at home like, say, Bejeweled or Angry Birds or something of that ilk.
As I understand it, the idea is to present a meal that maximizes the diner’s experience of all the senses. So, then, “art”.
Good on you! This took me years to do as an appraiser; there are artists whose work I still heartily dislike, and others I would never have looked at if the career didn’t call for it. I’ve learned an amazing amount with this perspective.
I knew some other Doper would be able to elucidate what I was fumbling to say. This is what I was talking about in re the Cribbins Bea Arthur nude. Cribbin’s craft was the process of applying paint to canvas to create the specific image he had in mind; the art comes from his playing with the audience’s expectations and conceptions of sexuality, age, and celebrity.
I think of art as something that takes place in the brain: a provocative piece of art takes a perhaps familiar image and presents it in such a way as to force the audience to see it, to really engage it.
So in terms of the OP, I guess I would say that the object is craft; the art is the idea.
I’ve played about half of those–will have to get copies of the other half now.
Any love for Braid? It’s the first time I began to think of a video game as a work of art. The writing (as in the actual words you read at points) falls a little flat sometimes, but other than that it seems really effective. And what I really like about it is the way it succeeds in doing something movies have sometimes claimed to do but have never seemed to me to succeed in doing–implicating the consumer of the work in the events portrayed. Of course that’s easier in a game, because the consumer must actively cooperate with the character in order for the game to move forward.
Actually, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve never played Braid. I probably should.
The art game I’m actually most intrigued by right now isn’t even a videogame. It’s a board game called Train.
Here’s what I said about Train on Facebook: * “I’ve played Train (or rather played Train by refusing to play Train) and it was chilling experience. It’s one of the few games that I’ve ever had a strong emotional response to, and the only board game that I can say that of. It’s a game about complicity and the power of rules to normalize the unthinkable. In fact, it lies so far outside what we normally mean by “game” that it seems odd to describe it as such. It’s a system of rules that structures an experience – an experience that extends far beyond normal considerations of winning, losing, or fun.”*
I was fortunate enough to attend art class one year as a child.
I basically came away with the idea that ANYTHING that made you feel something was Art.
Whether it was Big A Art or just art, the distinction was not made in my 10 year old brain.
And probably not now, either.
As mentioned by others, this is a perfectly defensible and natural approach. If the feeling you get is in keeping with what the artist intended, so much the better. There’s a near-cliche that in France they do not ask if something is art, they just ask if something is done well.
