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

Sat Mar 22 02:42:27 EST 2008

..on or around Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 04:35:56PM +0200, Daphne Dragona said:
> hello
> should we try  instead to go ahead for a more abstract solution of a
> game like "archive"/ environment where one would wander around and
> view projects at his/her own pace?
> No categorizations, no parameters, no further data...
> Maybe it sounds too neo-situationist- but i do have a doubt about
> this categorization/ classification discussion .

hmm, to me that doesn't sound very useful and perhaps also puts work in
danger of being lost. i can't even imagine, other than a randomly
generated database retrieval mechanism, how this wandering would work.
are you imagining an alphabetical listing by author or even a
spatially distributed model using a 3d interface of some sort?

for the record, right now i imagine a system that starts with a skeleton
term framework, as loose as:

    machinima
    screen and input device based games
    alternate reality games
    augmented reality games
    political games
    sound-based games
    non-visual games
    tactile games
    multiuser games
    performance art in videogames
    [...]

this wouldn't mean that a political game couldn't also be an alternate
reality game just as there could be a non-visual, tactile,
alternate-reality, multiuser game(!). by selecting these categories the
search can then be refined on the basis of overt (categorically useful)
differences.

therein, using mutable tags, artists and audience can work to refine the
categories by offering tags that they would like to see their work
under. if they want a new base term to host their work, they can create
it. 

most of the contempt people have for terms is on the basis that they are
read-only. it doesn't have to be this way..

archive.org is quite a traditional, hierachical, structure-immutable
archive yet i am reminded how well it works. click on 'Moving Images'
and you're taken to what they call a 'Sub Collection' with around 15
categories, 'Video Games' being one of them.  therein there are about 5
more categories which are relatively clearly distinguisheable from each
other. after this point it's just between you and your adjectives (or
your del.icio.us account) to describe the alphabetically listed content.

if it was a flat-archive, with no hierachical organisation, it would be
pretty tricky to quickly find all movies, added before 2007, documenting
speed-runs of the videogame Descent in the Divx format ;) 

even with a keyword only interface, a researcher investigating early
modding practices would have a pretty hard time getting work done. for
example:

    http://www.archive.org/browse.php?field=subject&mediatype=movies&collection=gamevideos

> 
> Are we sure we want to institutionalize  play more  and more in order
> to make it adaptable to archives and collections?
> Shall we treat play like contemporary art? Do definitions still need
> to be our issue?
> Does this make play and us working on the field "safer"?
> maybe because of its character  it should remain little bit more intact

i dunno. i don't think a few basic (and flexible) terms institutionalise
game-based art at all. if we're to take this road then perhaps we should
lose the term game-based art altogether, deferring back to 'art'. 

as much as i struggle with terms, they serve only as a temporary
container, long enough for us to have this very useful conversation and
researchers/students to find stuff quickly and easily. these things can
only be good for this field i think.

bear in mind also that it's often the artists that are first to nominate
terms, not archivists. archivists almost always turn up too late..

cheers!

julian

> 
> On 21/03/2008, Julian Oliver <julian at selectparks.net> wrote:
> > ..on or around Fri, Mar 21, 2008 at 03:51:59PM +1100, Melanie Swalwell said:
> >  > Hey Julian,
> >  >
> >  > >  to speak practically however, what shape would an termless, typeless
> >  > >  archive take? how does one search a flat-file-system without meta-data?
> >  >
> >  > Yes, you're right about taxonomies and archives.  Clearly, I'm no archivist ;)
> >  >
> >  > Though I still reckon that articulating what's interesting about
> >  > specific works of game art isn't helped all that much by taxonomies.
> >
> >
> > perhaps, but regardless, it helps you actually 'reach' them. it also
> >  creates a starting point for discussion and curation. as i said in my
> >  previous post, they are merely temporary, mutable indicators not binding
> >  types.
> >
> >
> >  >
> >  > But seeing as this came out of your post about an agreed set of
> >  > categories/taxonomy being useful prior to overhauling the selectparks
> >  > website, and people writing to ask you for more information on types
> >  > of game art/specific works, and further to the discussion we had last
> >  > year about selectparks' "link archive" function, and the problems with
> >  > websites going down, etc...  I've been thinking since then about the
> >  > idea of an online collection of game art video documentation: a
> >  > collection to which artists could directly upload video documentation
> >  > of their work, with the Internet Archive as a possible host.  Rather
> >  > than ad hoc videos on google or youtube etc.
> >  >
> >  > Obviously viewing video is not the same as playing an interactive
> >  > work...but that wouldn't be the point.
> >  >
> >  > As a researcher in this area, I think it would be a useful collection.
> >  >
> >  > What do others think?  Would such a collection be of value?
> >
> >
> > yes, this would be great, i would like to have a video archive of works
> >  very much, we encourage artists to send us videos but they don't arrive
> >  as often as we'd like..
> >
> >  to start with there are a few videogame artists that have written back
> >  saying they oppose video documentation of a particular work, saying that
> >  too much is mis-represented.
> >
> >  games made for handhelds and phones sometimes need to be captured just
> >  by filming the screen which often produces results that people are
> >  reluctant to publish. then there are screen-free games
> >  (positional/multichannel audio-only games), games that prioritise
> >  tactile feedback alongwith games like /////Furminator that make filming
> >  game-play very tricky.
> >
> >  there are compromising solutions for all these cases of course (video
> >  documentation is always a compromise).. but it's up to the artist as to
> >  whether or not they think it's satisfactory.
> >
> >  then there is the unexpected difficulty of simply capturing video from a
> >  screen-based game. believe it or not, it's trickier than you think,
> >  requiring a computer with a TVout/SVideo port and a DV Camera (not a
> >  luxury all have). the other option is the use of desktop screen video
> >  capture. this software cannot currently capture video (and in many cases
> >  sound at all) at over 20 frames-per-second, at or over 640x480, on
> >  anything but the fastest computers. i think these issues comprise why
> >  there are so few videos of artistic videogames. this, however, is
> >  changing of course as computers become faster and more machines ship
> >  with SVideo out ports..
> >
> >  a high-res video-upload option hosted on the our server, at least, would
> >  work well if we can find cheap access to a few hundred gigabytes of fast
> >  web-space.  i also feel pretty reluctant to host it all on youtube or even
> >  vimeo as either of these sites may change their delivery model and or
> >  corporate alliances. it does have to be fast and independent from the
> >  main site; the 'Pirate Baby's Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006' video we
> >  hosted had several hundred thousand downloads and took out the whole
> >  webserver on several occassions. this would otherwise be fine if it
> >  weren't for the fact 130 other people are hosted on the same server ;)
> >
> >  you're right, archive.org is a very interesting third-party option,
> >  coming with a built-in licensing interface, too.
> >
> >
> >  cheers!
> >
> >  --
> >  julian oliver
> >  http://julianoliver.com
> >  http://selectparks.net
> >  messages containing HTML will not be read.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >  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
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

-- 
julian oliver
http://julianoliver.com
http://selectparks.net
messages containing HTML will not be read.