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

[Christian McCrea]

Who does this particular type of archive benefit? I would love to see
something like this built up; certainly something international and
less connected to a existing body would be desirable; one with
flexible and workable legal use provisions. A suggested name since I'm
reading book on iron age myth: Arcady. But then I think broad always
means flat, though. What will more indexicality do for and TO the
practice of makers, artists, gamers?

I would love to work on something like this.. but I don't know that
I'd then use it over an artist's own documentation process. In some
ways, the dialogic and irruptive relationship of the curator in tour
mode is more appropriate than the white cube. I would be more inclined
to approach something like this if it had the resources to do
supershort 2-min original videos and make sense of things first before
I disagree. This is a totally different scope, but a sense of call and
response is needed, and returning search queries may not cut it. Even
if those videos were featuring footage from elsewhere and elsewhen,
something that offers a place of energy is more attuned to my play
brain. Building nightclubs into museum lobbies. All the tags and
things could all still be there to make the work accessible.. but
without a grain of sand in there to rub around - an aesthetic arc - it
would be strange. Daphne, I think you're quite right in that a pure
archive just adds another coat of white paint to the walls. Video work
of lets say, Brody Condon's Lawful Evil of 2007
(http://www.tmpspace.com/lawfulevil.html).. instantaneousness is great
for some projects, and being able to reproduce that moment is better -
but specifically some game-based art, and specifically in an archive -
you are freezing the d20 in time, in a way. Which is precisely what
we're talking about inevitably, but its possible to do this and retain
playfulness, the sense of capricious circumstance. That would be my
first priority.

Just some thoughts,

-Christian McCrea