Two Plus Two Older Archives  

Go Back   Two Plus Two Older Archives > 2+2 Communities > Other Other Topics

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 12-13-2005, 05:02 AM
Blarg Blarg is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

There has been argument and pontificating going on about whether video games can be art or aspire to that level, and how one would judge, prompted by something said by Roger Ebert. Various links regarding same, with some reader commentary, are up at his website, which can be directed through www.rogerebert.com.

Here's what one Canadian thinks:

[ QUOTE ]
Just to chime in late on the gaming/art debate, I should point out that gaming might actually be compared to some forms of contemporary poetry. The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, for instance, denied that it was necessary for the author to control the semantic exchange that is ostensibly inherent to literature, and developed increasingly challenging ways of undermining the communicability and emotive value of language and literature. In a lot of contemporary poetry, then, it is not a representation of beauty or feeling that is meant to motivate reading, but rather the realization that a reading and a mis-reading are equally possible and equally valid.

Contrary to Roger Ebert's suggestion that real art is predicated on "authorial control" (which can never be complete, and always leaves room for resistance), several of fiction and poetry's most stirring and provocative recent works have denied the possibility of such control altogether (with varying degrees of success, of course). The inability of any medium and any communicator to ever have true authorial control and prevent his/her audience from playing with their meanings as if their art were a video game is, in fact, one of the most basic conclusions that follows from Derrida and deconstruction.

I would also hasten to add that, in a rather humorous inversion of the suggestion that video games need to take inspiration from the art forms of literature or film, several excellent poets write poetry that draws from or is based on video games -- Charles Bernstein, Christian Bok, and Darren Wershler-Henry come to mind immediately.

Neil Shyminsky
Toronto, Ontario

[/ QUOTE ]

Video games as art letters #2

The discussions get very very muddled in the multiple links you can find on his site and, I'm sure, elsewhere.

Here's a contribution by a non-Canadian, I would guess:

[ QUOTE ]
I hold a Ph.D. I am a professor of philosophy. I have also played videogames since Pong, and have played most of them on most of the systems over the last 30 years. I still adore them and spend too much time playing them. I am about to play one now. But to call them art along the lines of literature, architecture, dance, theater, movies, sculpture, photography, or any other generally accepted art form is risible.

The level of writing and number of solecisms in the letters of the defenders of videogames (VGs) should serve to as a prima facie vindication of Mr Ebert's view. Moreover, the defenders of VGs doth protest too much, methinks. But we can say more.

Videogames may be difficult to make, requiring great thought, skill, planning, and care, but so is an armoire made of okra. That doesn't make either one art. VGs may be entertaining, escapist, enjoyable, and absorbing, but so is masturbation, and that doesn't make either one art. What art does that VGs do not, and probably never will, is edify and ennoble (even in the form of subversion). Moreover, and as a result, art endures. We are reading Cervantes and Goethe, performing Shakespeare and Moliere, and listening to Mozart and Beethoven hundreds of years after their works were created, with no end in sight. We aren't playing NES games 20 years after their creation. Indeed, they weren't being played 5 years after their creation. My garage is full of old videogame systems that will never be turned on again simply because new and better systems have come along. By contrast, when you buy a Chagall painting, you don't throw away your Van Gogh.

Videogames, as the name vaguely suggests, are GAMES. Games are not art, unless tennis, chess, bridge, and Monopoly are art as well. So why don't we just enjoy the great games out there and not try to make them into something they're not just to assuage the guilt we feel for letting them take up so much of our time, or to aggrandize ourselves for engaging in such a putatively lofty pursuit?

Best regards,

Dr Barton Odom
Adjunct Professor of Philosophy
Tarleton State University
Stephenville, TX

[/ QUOTE ]

I find it considerably more persuasive, plus less laughable and less Canadian in general.

But I think much of the words people are slinging here are missing the mark.

What's your opinion? Please use plain L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E rather than Canadian by way of Derrida masturbaspeak.

Here's another link from Ebert on the subject that starts what the above link continued:

First link re: can video games be art
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old 12-13-2005, 05:21 AM
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default Re: Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

Art is art in the sense that it is interpreted by the subject in a way that deems it so.

Art is not art by how people catagorize the object in their language system. For example, for me to say "that table is not art, it is just a table", is completely incorrect. "Table" in itself is just a general term for a specific table that is unique.

Due to all objects being unique, and the classifications of them being due to our language necessitating it for the purposes of simplification and consideration, we are no more entitled to say one thing is not art than another. However, as a result of this, we can use that to claim anything is art because we believe it to be so. Because art is an abstract concept, rather than a concrete thing, there is no problem in doing this. X is art as long as I predicate it to be.
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 12-13-2005, 05:27 AM
pryor15 pryor15 is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: possum lodge
Posts: 624
Default Re: Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

from an ebert "answer man" column:

"In countless e-mails and on a dozen message boards, I've found that most of the professionals involved in video games are intelligent and thoughtful people like yourself. A large number of the video game players, alas, tell me "you suck" or inform me that I am too old. At 63, I prefer such synonyms as "wise" and "experienced.""

FWIW, i tend to agree w/ Ebert. I think games contain art (i.e. the images, gameplay, etc), but the games themselves are probably not art. then again, this is from a guy who pretty much plays Mario Kart.
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 12-13-2005, 05:41 AM
Blarg Blarg is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

I think the guy in the second quote I copied over above was right on. Art goes beyond craftsmanship and tends to have at least a chance of expanding the boundaries and consciousness of the person experiencing it. And because of that it can also last, sometimes almost indefinitely. Very few games are challenging anyone's perceptions of themselves or anything else even in the slightest, or broadening them intellectually or emotionally, nor is that often a goal. And once you're done, you may have fond memories of a game, or not, but you're done.

When you're talking video games, I think with only the rarest exception, much more son than in the case of movies, you're talking about something made for commercial considerations. There may be a Citizen Kane of gaming one day, but it doesn't look like anyone's really working on it or planning to. We've got more of a Vin Diesel thing going.

The potential is out there, though.

I think part of the whole discussion is that many people consider virtually anything that actually functions without breaking, or that they like, art, when the most it could really aspire to is good craftsmanship.

I have plenty of junk tastes myself, but I'm happy to enjoy it for what it is without calling it art.
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 12-13-2005, 05:42 AM
Blarg Blarg is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

[ QUOTE ]
Art is art in the sense that it is interpreted by the subject in a way that deems it so.

Art is not art by how people catagorize the object in their language system. For example, for me to say "that table is not art, it is just a table", is completely incorrect. "Table" in itself is just a general term for a specific table that is unique.

Due to all objects being unique, and the classifications of them being due to our language necessitating it for the purposes of simplification and consideration, we are no more entitled to say one thing is not art than another. However, as a result of this, we can use that to claim anything is art because we believe it to be so. Because art is an abstract concept, rather than a concrete thing, there is no problem in doing this. X is art as long as I predicate it to be.

[/ QUOTE ]

Too easy.
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 12-13-2005, 05:55 AM
henrikrh henrikrh is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 312
Default Re: Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Art is art in the sense that it is interpreted by the subject in a way that deems it so.

Art is not art by how people catagorize the object in their language system. For example, for me to say "that table is not art, it is just a table", is completely incorrect. "Table" in itself is just a general term for a specific table that is unique.

Due to all objects being unique, and the classifications of them being due to our language necessitating it for the purposes of simplification and consideration, we are no more entitled to say one thing is not art than another. However, as a result of this, we can use that to claim anything is art because we believe it to be so. Because art is an abstract concept, rather than a concrete thing, there is no problem in doing this. X is art as long as I predicate it to be.

[/ QUOTE ]

Too easy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your post has communicated nothing because I preicate the words you have chosen to all mean "GOD DAM RIVER CARD", so all you ahve done is said that to me over and over again. I also deem my wang art, no reason, I just decided.
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Old 12-13-2005, 05:56 AM
Blarg Blarg is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

LOL nh
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Old 12-13-2005, 03:26 PM
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default Re: Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

It is very easy. But our language is a system of symbols for both concrete things and abstract ideas. Attributing and arguing over definitional truths for abstract ideas is in itself silly, because the "correct answer" is the answer that the powerful individual/group holds - not by virtue of their answer, but by virtue that they instill rightness in it.
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Old 12-13-2005, 06:44 PM
Blarg Blarg is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 1,519
Default Re: Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

This thread got way too Canadian almost immediately.
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Old 12-13-2005, 07:02 PM
Claunchy Claunchy is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 283
Default Re: Are computer games art, even to Canadians?

C'mon Blarg. You posted two viewpoints -- a more classical aesthetic philosophy and a postmodern one. You (and I too FWIW) tend to lean toward the classical view, but I'm assuming you posted this to invite discussion.

Bright has done a pretty good job arguing for a postmodern theory of art and you've yet to make any intelligent responses for or against anything he's said. This was a good OP; stop effing it up.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:18 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.