[-empyre-] art games pre computers

[Jason Nelson]

this might have already been covered in this conversation, and I am sure
  there are ample materials already available, but it might be useful to discuss
  art games created prior to computer based games. 
   
  my reasoning: I'm curious if the majority of 'art games' or whatever you want
  to call them, were created post computing era. certainly there are examples
  of pre computing era "games created by artists as artworks", and there are
  many created now without any code involved.  but is there a connection between
  the increase in "games created by artists" and the wide spread use of computers?
  if so, why might this be the case?
   
  is it a distribution issue?  meaning did many artists adjust board games in the 40s,
  but then not have the capital to reproduce them?  and the net has simply opened
  the availability?   or is there something in computer games that has sparked artists?
  what is that?
   
  if this is common knowledge to everyone else or already covered here....then simple
  references would help....
   
  cheers, Jason

Jim Andrews <jim at vispo.com> wrote:
  Here's a book of essays edited by Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell called
Videogames and Art:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/226001.ctl

Among other essays, this includes "Videogames as Literary Devices" by me.
Which looks at

The Intruder, Natalie Bookchin
Viewing Axolotls, Regina Celia Pinto
Pac Mondrian, Neil Hennessey & friends
Arteroids, Jim Andrews

The essay looks at the various degrees of subordination of game to art in
these four pieces.

Here are links to these online games:

Arteroids: http://vispo.com/arteroids
Pac Mondrian: http://pbfb.ca/pac-mondrian
Viewing Axolotls: http://arteonline.arq.br/viewing_axolotls
The Intruder: http://bookchin.net/intruder

Jason Nelson raises the issue of "games as art or art as game". The Intruder
and Viewing Axolotls strongly subordinate game to art, whereas Pac Mondrian
and Arteroids don't subordinate game to art that way. Yet all four pieces
are most interesting not as computer games but in their artistic dimensions.

A 'literary device' is a little engine of literary perception. Metaphors,
figure of speech, similes, plot reversals, and so on, are what are
traditionally associated with the term 'literary device'. In digital
literary art, games also can be 'literary devices'.

William Carlos Williams, in the late fifties or early sixties, said "A poem
is a machine made out of words." The energy and meaning goes around and
around through literary devices of one sort or another. Poems are playful,
at least in that sense.

ja
http://vispo.com


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