[-empyre-] Game Art & Archival...

[Cynthia Beth Rubin]

Patrick raises interesting issues on archiving and the new media discourse - which apply to games, dance, in fact any performance.  

The question:
	- Do we want future generations to experience what we experience?
or
	- Do we want future generations to know what we experienced?

These are not at all the same.  Think about Shakespeare -- do we want to see performances in Elizabethan English (which is not a native language for any of us) or do we want to see performances in a modern language that is our native language?  This is a debate that the purists have won - and I am not sure that I agree with them - since I personally never appreciated Shakespeare until I saw a wonderful performance of Hamlet at the 1988 Festival of Avignon - in french that was easier for me - a native English speaker- to understand than Elizabethan English.

Gamers of the future will never be able to appreciate "preserved" games if they see them in a completely preserved state, including the current platform.  Our computers will seem absurdly slow to them, the 2D screen will be so quaint - in fact soon any screen at all will be quaint, to say nothing of the resolution.  

Furthermore, gamers of the future will never get the cultural context without significant cultural study (and that probably will not happen).  Maybe there will be no war in the future - at least no hand-to-hand combat.  Then what will the games be documenting - the fact that we used flat screens or the fact that some people in 2010 loved to imagine battles?

While I agree with Patrick's statement: "My wish is not so much for a stable archive, but one stable enough so that grandchildren can understand Pong" - ultimately, we need to have it all - not one or the other.  The purists have won out on Shakespeare, and made his theatre inaccessible to many, but because parts of it are preserved his undeniable influence continues, albeit filtered through those who are willing to dig - (think West Side Story as a remake of Romeo and Juliet). 

As I was writing this Daniel's post came in about "art" and the value placed on it by the marketplace.  The business of how museums play into a marketplace intent on building a capitalist enterprise from the visual output of creative thinkers should not minimize the value of the works.  Picasso's paintings do have value outside of the Museum and outside of blockbuster shows, but of course the many people who have invested in his works profit from each new public stamp of approval.  It would be naive to say that Picasso was not aware of this in his lifetime, but still, like many other artists, I suspect that he learned to separate his actual time in the studio from the "networking" and selling that contributed to his stardom.  

As an artist, I suggest that the solution to the big business of art is not to run screaming from it, but to join those of us who are working for collective artist projects, open calls for exhibitions, and other inroads into a system that frequently benefits people who spend time networking rather than thinking and producing.  It is a good time to be an artist - and the documentation of the future may very show that the more interesting work of our time comes from those who share ideas, approaches, and even dare to collaborate across disciplines.

apologies for tuning in and out of this discussion - some one else may have raised all of these points 

Cynthia B Rubin
http://CBRubin.net