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

[Christina]

Thanks Gabriel + all writers  - a great substantive discussion so far !

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 20, 2010, at 5:16 AM, Gabriel Menotti  
<gabriel.menotti at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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