[-empyre-] games as art or art as game

[Melanie Swalwell]

I enjoyed reading your reflections, Julian, on how your own
perceptions of game art and what types of work selectparks should host
have changed over time.

But I have to say, I am suspicious of taxonomies.  Whenever one is
proposed as needed, I want to ask why?  What's at stake and what's it
going to be used for?  (I see a link here back to archiving, in that
both archiving and taxonomising are politically charged endeavours.)

I note that you are specific in saying that this would be useful:
>  at least to aid
>  the great swathe of literature and exhibitions on the topic in refining
>  their curatorial and editorial ambitions.

but I'm still suspicious of taxonomies, especially the work that they
are asked to do/presumed to be able to do.  I'm reminded of the Borges
quote that Foucault opens The Order of Things with (which includes
animals a. belonging to the Emporer, and.... m. who've just broken the
water pitcher), and how highly contingent this is.

Making definitions of game art/artistic games/whatever on the basis of
what kind of tools are used also seems limited, like saying that
certain items/works can be discussed together because they are both
made from the same thing (eg. canvas and paint). To what extent does
the medium determine what is important about any art?  While works
certainly can be classified together in this way, what this enables us
to discover about the art of the thing is something else.  Does it
really help us get at questions that matter?  So parts of a mooted
taxonomy project feel to me like going back to some early and quite
limited notions about what is art.  Even distinctions between
commercial and non-commercial, I don't find all that urgent -- we live
in a post-Warhol age, after all.

Isn't the anxiety around classifications and taxonomies really about
something else?

I also want to make a link to the preservation discussion here, around
*the archive* and what it is/might be, as regards game art/artistic
games/whatever.  Because I'm concerned at what provision is being made
for the collection and preservation of game art (along with games that
are not primarily considered art).  Old notions of the archive as
'containing everything' are I think clearly outdated.  To be
realistic, no cultural institution that is aware of what is involved
is going to step up to the plate on any kind of software
collecting/preservation/conservation endeavour if collecting and
preserving 'everything' is the expectation/requirement (and yet I
suspect this is one of the things holding back some institutions).
Won't institutions' collection acquisition and management for games
and game art be along the lines of those they employ regarding other
types of art/collections?  Ie. they'll collect what is considered
'significant' in terms of their own criteria: whether this is a
connection to the local, or whatever.  Highly contingent, but at least
there will be some collections.

Melanie