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

Thu Dec 23 23:33:37 EST 2010

Hi dears,

thank you very much for your feedback. It took some time to go through  
all the emails, but I did it.

I know that any discussion on what's art and what's not usually enters  
a dead end. I also know that the contemporary art world often works in  
a way that makes many people get away from there. One example that I  
know quite well comes from the video game collective Tale of Tales.  
Tale of Tales (http://tale-of-tales.com/) was founded some years ago  
by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn as an indie game studio, and also  
as a way to escape the art world and confront themselves with a  
different audience. Both Michael and Auriea worked as artists and  
designers along the Nineties, playing different identites and rules.  
It would be easy to say that they stopped making art because they  
started making videogames, or because they started selling their works  
on Steam instead of on the art market. But it won't be true.

Gabriel wrote:

 > Or its particular meaning and value arises from the fact that it is  
framed as art – and therefore deserves a critical consideration that  
these other  performances don’t (it is reviewed in certain websites,  
etc)?

I don't like the expression "framed as art". I know it's difficult to  
say what art is, but I'm sure it doesn't depend on a frame. I don't  
think that the batman piece will become art if we frame it as art. The  
batman piece talks just one language: the language of online  
interaction and entertainment. No fun adds a new layer to that - it  
appropriates an online genre, but it mixes the online jargon with  
another jargon - the language of contemporary art. It doesn't want to  
entertain an audience, it wants to provide a veritable portrait of a  
community. It turns the double screen interface of chatroulette into a  
powerful image. It makes us think about us, about death, about fun and  
online relationships. This meta-level is something absent in the other  
pieces. It's, of course, full of references to art history (yes,  
velasquez!) and to video art and performance art history (Bruce  
Nauman, Chris Burden). And of course, it's made by people who consider  
themselves artists and it is "framed" as an art piece.
These things (ALL TOGETHER) made me think about this piece of online  
video as art. These things (ALL TOGETHER) made me consider Paul Davis'  
nintendo hacking as art, and other game hackings as something  
different. Only on this basis we can say that Tale of Tales' games are  
art in the sense a work of art is art, or that they are art in the  
sense a videogame is art.
The following step is social agreement: other people  talking the  
language of art have to accept it as an art work. And the last step is  
certification and attribution of economic value. Daniel wrote:

 > And this strikes me as a major difference between games and much of  
what goes as art.  Games work.  They are utilitarian tools.  You can  
have a functioning game or a broken game and it is not merely a matter  
of taste or education or external validation.  Games either create the  
internal value structure in the player or they do not.  They are  
exactingly engineered to drive a particular emotion and we can sample  
a large enough population to determine if they are success or not in  
their stated functional purpose.  A functioning game has inherent  
value.  It does not need to be certified or discovered or framed.

I don't agree with this. Art works as well, and has an inherent value  
as well. It does not need to be certified or discovered or framed. But  
it does need it in order to survive in time, because this process,  
like it or not, is a premise to the process of preservation of a work  
of art. It is the way the contemporary art world keeps the meme alive  
in time. To buy an art piece is like to buy a videogame: the  
difference is that a videogame can rely on a stable industry and be  
distributed in thousands of copies, while a work of art relies on a  
little niche and is sold at an high price to one or a limited number  
of persons.

A last thought about something Paolo wrote (talking about alex  
galloway):

 > He critiques the lack of interactivity in game art, and argues that  
interactivity is the essential quality that makes video games  
different from any other experience.

I'd just like to add to Paolo's criticism that game art might not be  
interactive, but it is the result of the best form of interaction at  
our disposal: the one that doesn't follow the rules for interaction of  
a given system, but invents new rules to interact with it.

Bests,
d

---

Domenico Quaranta

web. http://domenicoquaranta.com/
email. info at domenicoquaranta.com
mob. +39 340 2392478
skype. dom_40

Il giorno 23/dic/10, alle ore 03:34, micha cárdenas ha scritto:

> 2010/12/22 Daniel Cook <danc at spryfox.com>:
>> strongly driven by economic processes.  What is the economic  
>> function of art
>> institutes in the creation of games and do we need them?   
>> Historically, it
>> seems that the modern art world acts as a certification process to  
>> ensure
>> quality combined with a marketing / distribution network for  
>> promoting and
>> selling certified works.  In emerging markets like social and  
>> mobile games,
>> where I primarily focus, these functions appear to be extraneous.    
>> The
>> distribution is weak compared to the digitally facilitated word of  
>> mouth
>> that drives social networks.  The certification is not meaningful  
>> to the
>> target audience.
>
> Hi Daniel,
>
> I think this is an astute observation about the commercialization of
> art, but I think there's a more complex process involved here. Would
> you agree that both art institutions and artists and game makers all
> rely on reputation building? Some of the strength of art institutions
> is just in the sheer capital they have to reach people through
> conventional advertising. It's just a myth, IMHO, that anyone can post
> a video on youtube and get it seen by millions of people without some
> minstream media coverage, except for in a few very rare cases which I
> would guess are about the odds of winning the lottery. So, even if you
> made a really great game, how many people are going to see it and how?
>
>
>  micha
>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> micha cárdenas
> Associate Director of Art and Technology
> Culture, Art and Technology Program, Sixth College, UCSD
>
> Co-Author, Trans Desire / Affective Cyborgs, Atropos Press, http://is.gd/daO00
> Artist/Researcher, UCSD School of Medicine
> Artist/Theorist, bang.lab, http://bang.calit2.net
>
> blog: http://transreal.org
>
> gpg: http://is.gd/ebWx9
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