[-empyre-] Game Art as an art subculture?

[Domenico Quaranta]

Dear Adam,

thank you very much for your reply!

> I do not know whether the Mattes were aware that they created a
> collection of fictitious enactments of the media-created dangerous
> video games fiction.

Actually, I didn't know about the angry german kid meme, but I'm  
pretty sure the Mattes did. Talking about their work, this just adds  
an extra layer to their work and makes it more interesting - at least  
to me. Talking about my post, this changes little as well. The fact  
that most of these videos are probably staged (and of course they are:  
even if they portray actual anger, turning on the camera lacks the  
spontaneity that anger usually implies) doesn't mean that we don't  
occasionally get angry with our computers, and that we didn't started  
considering it as part of our own body

> Increasingly, we see the art world attempt to colonize the Internet
> and gaming, imposing aesthetics and structure from the outside,
> looking for potential stars. I would compare my own (with Jessica
> Westbrook) curation of Youtube videos in 2007 for "Famous on the
> Internet" at Chicago's Hyde Park Art Center
> [http://www.atrowbri.com/swf/FamousInternet.swf] to the Guggenheim
> Museum's recent "YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video"
> [http://www.youtube.com/play]. While we were attempting to take
> samples from an emerging culture to share in another context,
> highlighting the new phenomena of becoming famous on the Internet, the
> Guggenheim offered Youtube video producers the opportunity to submit
> to art world judges (Laurie Anderson, the band Animal Collective,
> filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, and
> artists Douglas Gordon and Takashi Murakami) so that they could pick
> the winners. Predictably, the jury's selection became a set of
> animations and "experimental" films that would be acceptable in any
> city cinema festival. The genius of Youtube -- strange amateur
> creations, joyful meme one-upmanship and bizarre real life documents
> -- failed to make the art world's art list.

I completely agree with you. Actually, I just published a short  
article (unfortunately, Italian only) on Youtube Play, saying  
basically the same things: that the show completely missed the chance  
to portray online culture and its impact on art. I didn't know about  
your show, but I made a reference to IOCOSE's project "Notube  
Contest" (http://notubecontest.com/) as a far better take on the  
subject. Maybe Paolo can add some interesting thoughts here.
>
> In a similar way, I question the concept of an art game culture that
> does not begin by recognizing that video games were art before the
> traditional art world began to sample various elements of video games.
> I question why the modifier "art" is necessary in the phrase "art
> games, art mods, art machinima. The most popular and well known
> machinama, "Red vs. Blue" [http://redvsblue.com/] does not require any
> "art" modifier, it exists as biting parody as well as a
> gaming-focused, populist "Waiting for Godot."

I don't agree with you on this point. I know that words such as "art  
games", "art mods" etc. may seem ambiguous, but they aren't if we  
digested the never ending debate about what is art and what's not.  
Photography is art. Cinema is art. Cooking is art. And videogames are  
art of course. But they are art according to their inner rules, that  
don't necessarily make them "works of art" for the so called  
contemporary art world.
On the other side, contemporary art is inherently multidisciplinar,  
and can be done with every medium, including cinema, photography,  
cooking and videogames. It has its own rules, however, and if you want  
your work to be accepted as "contemporary art" you have to follow  
these rules. That's why Henry Cartier-Bresson is a photographer (an  
"artist" according to the inner rules of his own medium) and Thomas  
Demand is an "artist" (a "photographer" who uses photography according  
to the rules of the contemporary art world). It's not a question of  
level (hi vs low), but of frameworks.
"Red vs. Blue" may be an interesting cultural artifact; it's "art"  
according to the system of values shared in its very specific art  
world (machinima, online video or whatever you'd like to call it); and  
it might even be recognized as art in other art worlds (ie, in the  
world of tv series); but it's not art in the sense shared in the  
contemporary art world, and, as you say below, it doesn't even want to  
be art in that sense.

You mentioned before the case of "internet semiotics" becoming a meme.  
This is very interesting: the video actually became a meme because it  
worked as a good representation of the "hipster culture" online  
communities are fighting against. 4channers completely identified  
"contemporary art" and "hipster culture". I don't, but I got their  
point. Personally, I think that the memefication of internet semiotics  
is much more interesting than the actual work, a bad incarnation of  
the idea of art shared in the contemporary art world. But this process  
of memefication isn't itself art according to that idea, and it  
doesn't want to be.

> The multiple coding of communication and action that take place in
> "Angry German Kid" and the meme-related videos that followed, as well
> as in Encyclopedia Dramatica, 4Chan and Anonymous, are intended to
> confuse or ward off outsiders and act as booby traps for those who
> would attempt to make them the subject of journalist or academic
> study. There are many online communities making art who have no need
> to be defined as artists, who in fact may reject the idea that their
> serial productions like Advice Dog
> [http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Advice_Dog] are art in any way.
> Whether we consider ourselves artists or not, those of my generation,
> most of all the brilliant children, are moving towards irrational
> interaction based on anonymous collaboration and action in order to
> escape from the overproduction of media, marketing, messages,
> branding, surveillance, study, investigation, knowledge and, most of
> all, information.
>
>> Are games - and nee media in general - really turning visual arts  
>> into something radically different from what it has been in the  
>> twentieth
>> century?
>
> The really new media, as featured in games and on Youtube and endless
> dark corners of the Internet, highlights how self-involved and
> tiresome the visual art world can be when it chooses to remain stuck
> in (or worse, attempts to colonize really new media for) Twentieth
> century theory and practice. Radical, exciting culture is happening
> far outside the existing art world, as it always has. Hopefully we can
> find inspiration in these new emergences as examples of really new
> media art and interesting art cultures (or cultures engaging in
> activity we can recognize as similar to art) rather than attempting to
> select the most art-like elements to drag back into or onto white
> boxes.

mmmh, I prefer to think that both strategies are interesting. And I  
also think that the first can serve the latter someway. You can't  
change an art world in a day. If you want to change the idea of art an  
art world is based on, mediation and a careful process of translation  
are required. Using your words, dragging back into white boxes the  
most art-like elements can turn into a trojan horse to expose the art  
world to those "really new media art and interesting art cultures".

My bests,
domenico

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Domenico Quaranta

web. http://domenicoquaranta.com/
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