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

[Gabriel Menotti]

Hey!

“Games have repeatedly shied away from tying their dominant value to
external systems.” [Daniel Cook]

Value is a dubious measure for us to use. On the one hand, it is way
too relative and personal; on the other, it seems to me that the art
system is more and more aiming towards pure value as its essential
specificity  (perhaps the only way to subsist as an enterprise).

So, why not compare artworks and games according to another parameter?
Indeed, artworks may be created by reputation alone. Conversely, in
terms of functionality alone, they seem much less dependent of
external systems than videogames.  To a large extent, a Picasso
picture has an intrinsic existence: it is there, it can be hung on a
wall. Wherever the viewer is aware of History of Art or not, she can
still grasp a Picasso’s general characteristics, since the painting
resorts to innate psychophysical mechanisms perception and the shared
cultural legacy of western societies. So, it works in a very bare
level.

It is not the same with a videogame. In order to work on this bare
level, it must comply with a lot of things – from genre conventions to
technical specifications – the “representation information,” as summed
up by Jerome McDonough. Even thought it doesn’t need any validation
from a critic or curator, it needs a platform to run – which entail
other forms of authorization.

(One might say that my comparison here is dishonest; that, to be more
rigorous, I should be putting a Picasso side-by-side with a
non-electronic game such as Scrabble. I concede. However, I rest my
case: a Scrabble board and pieces aren’t self-explanatory – they don’t
work *as Scrabble* if you don’t know the rules of the game, an
algorithm that circulates printed in the game manual or through the
player community - i.e. subject to other authorities.)

Is mere consumption truly the driving force of the market? Let’s say
there is this amazing game, beautifully crafted, incredibly fun.
People would certainly love it to addiction. However, if it is meant
for the iPhone and it doesn’t conform to Apple’s specifications, it
simply cannot be – and it doesn’t seem to matter how much pressure the
consumers put on the company (I cannot remember an example of a game
in this situation, but that has recently occurred to Grooveshark, a
music streaming platform).

Of course, the consumers can always hack their devices and look for
alternative platforms. As Rafael Trindade has put it, retrogame
emulation has been going around before videogame companies created
official virtual console services. For iPhone, there is a very well
structure platform for the distribution of applications in Cydia.[1]

At the same time, the videogame developers can always learn a
different programming language and look for a different platform and
userbase. In what is that different from what the artworld has been
doing, at least since the modernist avant-gardes?


“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.”
[Domenico Quaranta]

When I said that No Fun exists framed “as art,” I do so in opposition
to its framing “as reality,” in the original situation within
chatroulette. Did the chatroulette people know they were in front of a
performance? Did the piece communicate it? Would it operate
differently if it did?

(Answer: depends. On what? On the context – i.e. a frame. I think the
Mattes kind of address this point directly in the “Freedom” piece).[2]

I will again compare it to a machinima, which only exists “as movie”
because before it existed “as game.” The presumed “mode of production”
of a piece such as Red vs Blue [3], mentioned by Adam, contributes
substantially to the meaning and value we attribute to it (its
all-togetherness). The repetitive, bland animation of the series is
below the conventional standards of 3D movies nowadays. If there were
a universal parameter of criticism for animation technique as the one
Daniel is asking for, the series would be doomed.

However, RvB particular animation is not only excused because of its
“tools of production” – it is also praised because of the way it
engages with the videogame system and appropriates it for something it
wasn’t originally meant to. In that sense, what would be a crappy
animation becomes formally relevant, revealing the blandness of the
game Halo itself.

It seems to me that No Fun uses a strategy not dissimilar. In that
case, it is no more an online performance than the making of Red vs
Blue is a proper Halo Match. It is all staged, recorded and edited –
even the supposed authentic, outraged reactions.

Of course, one might argue that the piece is a network of different
relations that include all these assumptions as well. In that case, I
believe that it is even more important that we take into account the
different framings (both technological and cultural) the it might go
through in its making. Different disbelieves have to be suspended, as
I said before – maybe one of those is that art has an all-togetherness
in the first place. Maybe art is as systemic as videogames, but its
platforms are of a different, subtler nature. Maybe a painting is
“running” on an even lower-level, black-boxed framework (mechanisms of
desire, ideology, etc). I’ll try and expand on that by commenting to
Paolo:


“In this picture there is a perfect synthesis of a dominant narrative
in the relation between players and video game software. A supposedly
closed system is physically opened and modified.” [Paolo Ruffino]

Indeed, as a technical artefact or commodity, the broken cartridge
seems to reveal something about itself (let’s say, the material
underpinnings that sustain virtual simulations). But what it reveals
about its condition of artwork? As you pointed out, the narrative
around it remains closed and well-defined. A broken computer, open in
half, is still inscrutable as a sculpture.

>From this perspective, the cartridge is the opposite of what you say:
it is a physically closed system that is supposedly opened and
modified. But it is only “open” to a certain extent – to the exact
measure that gives formal coherence to its procedural nature. While
the modification of the game is real, its “opening” is purely
rhetorical, or at least it becomes so when rationalized through the
artist’s discourse.

It seems to me that there is a performance of authenticity here, which
eludes the spectator into thinking that he is witnessing the processes
that result in the piece, whereas some fundamental processes behind
the *artwork* are still (and perhaps will forever be) blackboxed. I’m
not saying that there is any perverse ideology behind this, or there
is someone to blame (artist, critic or curator). What I’d like to
point out is that the art system is still very much driven by a logic
of representation – or narrativization, as Paolo says.  Therefore, can
it honestly take videogames into account, and become more than a
“comment on the video game culture” (or on chatroulette, for that
matter)?

Should it?

Best (and merry Christmas =))!
Menotti

[1] http://cydia.saurik.com/
[2] http://vimeo.com/16864989
[3] http://redvsblue.com/