[-empyre-] baggage and utilitarian tools

[Rafael Trindade]

Hey people,

I happen to wait for my friends to pick me up yet, so I had time to read
your reply. I totally agree with you, but this is just not the case. It's
not saying that there is art - a world of complexity and context-based
realities - and the rest of the reality, plain-vanilla abjectifiable. Your
example of cars is perfect. Fetishisation, industrial production of desires,
connoiseurship, historical significance, social apparatuses; but nothing we
would say could deny the fact that cars are product of engineering; science
applied to mass production. Cars are not simpler just because you state
this.

*Ergo*, you can talk about the engines on games without being a simpleton
just because of that. In fact, most game art that I know (aside the ones
which merely cites gaming culture) relate to the artistic possibilities of
those very engines (has anybody here talked about super mario clouds?).

Now and again, what seems a disagreement, to me, is more like a
misunderstanding. You are talking about different things. And they are
non-exclusive.


My best,
rafael

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 9:37 AM, Mathias Fuchs <
mathias.fuchs at creativegames.org.uk> wrote:

> I completely agree with Micha.
> To consider games as "utilitarian tools" and to forget about the historical
> context is as shallow a view as can be.
> The historical and cultural dimension of software and hardware is most
> important when the tools are announced to us as being utilitarian,
> value-neutral, non-historic... That is when ideology slips in big time.
>
> Nobody would consider a car as a mere tool to go from A to B and everybody
> acknowledges the difference of a Ferrari and a Volkswagen in regard to going
> from A to B. It is not only the speed and the sound, it is the social
> connotations, historical framing aso. The same is of course true for games.
> The question that Adorno asked in regard to music is interesting for games
> as well. Why do I prefer to listen to certain musical styles? Why do I
> prefer to play certain games?
> An interesting inverstigation on that is by Garry Crawford and Victoria
> Gosling: "Who plays?" But even in Huizinga and Caillois one can find a lot
> of hints on the aspects of games beyond rules and efficiency. If one sees
> "game designers fundamentally as engineers" one does not see how games are
> received by the players. One does also not see that game designers who
> consider themselves as mere engineers carry consiousl or unconsciously a
> huge bag of historical and social framing and that they drop elements of
> that into the products they create.
>
> Mathias Fuchs
>  European Masters in Ludic Interfaces
>  http://ludicinterfaces.com
>  Programme Leader MA Creative Technology and MSc Creative Games
>  Salford University, School of Art&  Design, Manchester M3 6EQ
>  http://creativegames.org.uk/
>  mobile: +44 7949 60 9893
>
> residential address: Ratiborstrasse 18
>  10999 Berlin, Germany
>  phone: +49 3092109654
>  mobile: +49 17677287011
>
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
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