[-empyre-] baggage and utilitarian tools

[Rafael Trindade]

*objectifiable, sorry

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 12:07 PM, Rafael Trindade <trirrafael at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>
>
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