Art and Videogames

Oct 14, 2013 by

Art and Videogames

Ask a person on the street about art and the answers you’ll get will probably be along the lines of the Mona Lisa, Greek sculptures,, and maybe Monet. Ask this person to define art and the words you get would probably be something along the lines of beautiful, classical, extraordinary, and something that can be displayed in a museum. However, if we we only to define art by these criteria, videogames wouldn’t even be worth considering. On the other hand though, no one would dispute that Warhol’s soup cans are art, ordinary and odd as the focus of the painting is. Then wouldn’t this mean that art is something more than the definition given before? The modern definition has expanded to encompass works that are thought provoking and open to interpretation and not necessarily...

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Artgames and Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw...

Oct 14, 2013 by

Artgames and Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw

Christian Shaw: 1696. The 11 year old girl was supposedly possessed by witches. She would shake uncontrollably, her body contorting to impossible angles. Her body was covered in bruises, supposedly inflicted upon he by an invisible witch. She pulled bones, straw, hair, coal, and other weird shit out of her mouth, supposedly put there by, again, an invisible witch. Also supposedly reported: she appeared deaf, blind, or dead for periods of time, her eyes sunk into her head, she could fly. Got it. In Ian Bogost’s “How to Do Things with Videogames,” he claims that the gaming world  needs to further develop a genre he calls “procedural rhetoric” in order to be considered “art.” According to Bogost, procedural rhetoric is a way of expression through a medium which adheres to a set of rules,...

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Video Games: Can They Be Considereed Art?...

Oct 14, 2013 by

There have been many debates with regards to if video games can be considered art.  Many people strongly stand on the side of “no” as they do not act as a proper medium to provoke “depth” or “emotion” such as what is traditionally considered art.  Whether it’s a painting or sculpture, video games are not considered to be a part of art to a vast majority.  Robert Erbert says “no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers.”  In my opinion I can understand where he is coming from.  Video games are still very, very early in their lifetime and while the evolution of technology is extremely rapid, not many have attempted to make video games...

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Can video games be art?

Oct 14, 2013 by

Even before playing one of the assigned games, the question of whether video games could be considered art seemed to have an obvious answer to me: of course they could! Humble’s game The Marriage is an example of a game that definitely has artistic qualities. The game starts off by showing two squares, one pink and one blue, floating around on a coloured backdrop. The squares would interact with colourful small circles and change size or transparency and the game was over when one or both of the squares disappeared. Visually, this game actually reminded me of some of the paintings I saw at a modern art museum in France. Personally I don’t like or understand modern art whether the squares are fixed on a canvas or floating around a computer screen; however, both forms have...

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Art and the Pixels of Life and Death...

Oct 14, 2013 by

Art and the Pixels of Life and Death

Whether or not Video Games can be art is a just a minor question that begets the provocative centuries old debate on what should and should not be considered Art. Roger Ebert maintains that video games cannot be art due to the fact that “the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art.” He even goes on to say that “no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers.” However, many critics have pointed out that the medium on which videos games are built upon is still at its infancy; todays video games are the cave drawings from prehistoric times. In my eyes, I consider art as anything...

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