[-empyre-] Game Art & The End Of The Gallery

[Daphne Dragona]

hello

interesting topics have been raised - i am sorry that these days i can
not devote sufficient time to write something "proper"

but briefly cause i would like to join in,

for me the main question is always around
- what role is game art asked to play?

Juxtaposition / co-existence of commercial and art games within the
same exhibition space
can be interesting and inspiring.

However, the main reason behind this, would be to create a dialogue ,
a critique, new motives for different audiences.

Anne Marie Schleiner had characterised the game art scene back in the
late 90 s a parasitic one, because it was dependent on the commercial
game platforms but at the same time it could infiltrate game culture
and contribute to the formation of new configurations of game
characters, gamespace and game play (Schleiner 1999).

Almost a decade later, is the scene still parasitic or it has gained
an autonomous role?

Can we - the ones working on this field - encourage critical thinking?
In the web 2.0 era this is what seems the most crucial element for me.
There are millions of gamers around the world but are they conscious
about the new dimensions of play ?
Does the game art scene play a role in this direction?
It does but voices are still not so much heard.

Vaneigem, referring to Dada, wrote that it was from art that play broke free .
How free is play today? what can art do about it?


d.




On 08/03/2008, melinda R <melindr at gmail.com> wrote:
> Eddo's Flame Wars looks magnificent:
>
>  http://www.eddostern.com/flamewar.html
>
>  to one of your questions--
>  "- How does a space - with contemporary art such as Eddo Stern's, an
>  independent game such as Warning Forever, and commercial game products
>  such as Mario Kart - work? What is it called?"
>
>  Many media festivals dont make a distinction along commercial lines..
>  Ars Electronia for example works this  way as a festival - in digital
>  effects section it may put Dreamworks up against someone working on an
>  tiny animation on their old PC in their bedroom in north africia -the
>  qualification is inspirational content and imagination - inequalities
>  of resources dont seem to figure. commerce culture and art
>  historically coexist .. you don't get to build the amazingly multi
>  modal and immersive environment like a cathdral, or paint the
>  transporting graphics of a sistine chapel dome as an independent
>  developer.
>
>  competitive smartness and cultural integration seem to be
>  required..the question of level playing fields depends on what u mean
>  by level////
>
>  M
>  _______________
>  Two iterations of the B
>  arbican's Game On show tell very different
>  stories about the situation of games in galleries. In London, games
>  and art co-exist, perhaps uneasily, but certainly co-habit. In
>  Melbourne, a very different iteration of the show strips back art's
>  presence but casually, almost without context, places it at the
>  literal end of the gallery space.
>
>  After a section on Australian-made games and cultural differences made
>  playable, the visitor enters a walled -off booth that is strangely
>  designed to not appear at all. The ominous stone-cold lighting of
>  ACMI's screen  gallery space has led to some amazing tricks of light
>  in past shows, but the collection of works being shown in the
>  screening box of this show are basically hidden.
>
>  Remembrance and the Design of Place, Frances Downing:  "A secret place
>  always has aspects of a 'removed' existence, being a place that,
>  physically or mentally, it is  created for retreat, intimacy,
>  enclosure, screening, and protection.  These often are places of power
>  and control  that cannot be known or invaded by 'outside' forces"
>  (quote found in this article on gendered space:
>  http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue11/issue11_fullerton_morie_pearce.html)
>
>  There is so much yet to be said about the institutional and contextual
>  tensions visible in both shows, but  before even opening that
>  particular issue, just seeing how a gallery space reacts to
>  interactive objects is very interesting, but arcade game machines,
>  computers in cabinets, art design objects especially.
>
>  At the secret level at the end of the ACMI iteration, the warp zone, I
>  was taken by how very different the shows were. Then, I very literally
>  stumbled over an invisible line into a cinema where I see Eddo Stern's
>  new work,  "Best...Flame War... Ever" (2007)
>
>  http://www.eddostern.com/flamewar.htm
>
>  I can't detach my experience of Game On by how impressed I was with
>  this piece, which in the sober light of day outside of the warp zone
>  speaks to a history of net.art that is still articulating what is
>  expressible and what is not. The pageantry of this work (crowns and
>  all) demands an answer. At the literal end of the gallery clustering
>  together game technology, culture (and yes, commerce), arranged to
>  tell a history, game art is positioned as the literal future of games.
>
>  So, some questions:
>
>  - What does this responsibility (or burden) do for art practice?
>
>  - What does the border between Game Art and New Media Art look like?
>  (I choose 'border' specifically.)
>
>  - How does a space - with contemporary art such as Eddo Stern's, an
>  independent game such as Warning Forever, and commercial game products
>  such as Mario Kart - work? What is it called?
>
>
>  Obviously a million questions are visible and invisible here. It would
>  be good to hear from anybody for whom game art is apolitical,
>  ahistorical, destructive. Those discussions need to be opened up.
>
>  -Christian
>  _______________________________________________
>  empyre forum
>  empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>  http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



-- 
Daphne Dragona
cultural [net]worker & new media arts intermediator
t: +302103610470 m: +306974040109
skype name: dapdra