[-empyre-] week 4: ethics, aesthetics and culture proper

[Gabriel Menotti]

Dear all,

The discussion about videogame preservation reinforced the systemic
quality of gaming and the fundamental cultural dimension of its
seemingly internal mechanics. As Jerome said, a game cannot subsist
without representation information to take place of ancillary
structures such as file specifications, media standards, platforms,
etc (and players, I wonder?). From the cases presented by Rafael, we
have seen situations where a “static” document – e.g. a videogame ROM
image – becomes a proxy for gaming, revealing forgotten potentials,
subverting canons and fostering new game modes. Davin Heckman
suggested an analogy with the preservation of oral lectures in their
published notes – a documentation that effectively takes the place of
the lectures and becomes reference to numberless philosophy thesis.

All in all, last week’s discussion opened up a more general frame,
starting with the ontological dichotomy evoked in Daniel’s post
(signal vs system). Daniel also poked into the artistic qualities of
videogames, in the same way that Micha Cárdenas, recovering some past
threads, brought into question their potential political and economic
implications. It seems to me that, more than the mater of constructing
videogames as historical objects, we face the problem of constructing
them as objects in the first place – not only as objects for
research/analysis, but even as commodities. What is the right way to
market a game and make profit out of it? Is a game a product or a
service?

But: is it fruitful to pin this down? Does it make any sense to ask
these questions? Instead of thinking of games as objects, shouldn’t we
be appropriating them as tools and means to explore the contexts in
which they are inserted, just like David Griffith says Naked on Pluto
does with Facebook privacy politics?

And how can a game be critical of its own platform, if not by taping
into even lower underpinnings and conventions – ethics, aesthetics,
legality? Ideologies? Culture itself?

This final round of debate means to contextualize gaming subcultures
within these universal parameters and criteria. Certainly, this means
rephrasing yet again the question of “what is a game?” Hopefully, it
will also imply in using games to rephrase questions such as “what is
art?” and “what is politics?”

Our guests are:

* Greg Costikyan
Greg Costikyan has designed more than 30 commercially published board,
roleplaying, computer, online, social, and mobile games, including
five Origins Awards winners (ludography at
www.costik.com/ludograf.html); is an inductee into the Adventure
Gaming Hall of Fame; and the recipient of the Maverick Award for his
tireless promotion of independent games. At present, he is a freelance
game designer, and also runs Play This Thing!, a review site for indie
games. He is also the author of four published science fiction novels
(www.costik.com, playthisthing.com).

* Domenico Quaranta
Domenico Quaranta (http://domenicoquaranta.com) is an art critic and
curator. He focused his research on the impact of the current
techno-social developments on the arts. As an art critic, he regularly
writes for Flash Art. He edited (with M. Bittanti) the book
GameScenes. Art in the Age of Videogames (October 2006). As a curator,
he organized various shows, including Holy Fire. Art of the Digital
Age (iMAL, Bruxelles 2008, with Y. Bernard) and Playlist (LABoral,
Gijon 2009 and iMAL, Bruxelles 2010). For the ARCO Art Fair (Madrid)
he curated the Expanded Box in 2009 and 2010.

* Paolo Ruffino
Paolo Ruffino was born in Rome, Italy, and currently lives in London,
UK. He has been studying Media and Communications, digital media and
semiotics in Rome, Copenhagen and Bologna. His interests include video
game theory and culture, digital media, fakes and 'new media' art. He
is a PhD student and Visiting Tutor at the Media and Communications
department at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research project
is a cultural analysis of video game consumers. It involves a study of
the concept of consumer/producer, the history of the video game medium
and phenomena such as 'modding', independent gaming, open engines and
game art. He is also a member of the artistic group IOCOSE. Among
their works, they invented a spam campaign for the Italian Democratic
Party, designed a religious hi-tech product based on electric shock,
crafted an IKEA guillottine, experimented a drug made out of floppy
discs, killed pop star Madonna and organized an international contest
for the most valueless video on YouTube.

Best!
Menotti