Tycho and Gabe seem a tad peevish that Roger Ebert has dissed video games as art — he says video games can never be art, which may be a bit excessive. Still, I read Ebert’s explanation, Penny Arcade’s cranky dismissal, and a
I think video games can contain pieces of art — artists participate in their creation, after all — but art isn’t the intent, the performance is. A basketball game is not art, no matter how well somebody plays; it’s as physical as a dance performance, and the participants are just as skilled and often just as amazing, but dance can be art while the game is simply sport. Not to dismiss it entirely, which is not what Ebert does at all, but to point out that they are different things.
Art is a kind of distillation and representation of human experience, filtered through the minds of its creators. A great painting or poem is something that represents an idea or emotion, communicated through the skill of an artist, to make you see through his or her eyes for a moment. Computer games just don’t do that. No team sits down to script out a video game with the intent of creating a tone poem in interactive visual displays that will make the player appreciate the play of sunlight on a lake, for instance. It’s all about balance and game play and keeping the action going and providing a means to win or lose, and most of all, it’s about giving the player control in the game environment. No one wants to play a game that’s on rails and simply leads you to the conclusion the author wants. In that sense, a good game hands the player a toolbox to work within the game environment — it is to art as providing a studio and a set of pigments and a collection of brushes.
Video games will become art when replaying the performance becomes something we find interesting, when the execution of those tools generates something splendid and lasting. It just doesn’t now, though. If you want to see something really boring, watch someone else playing a video game. Then imagine recording that game, and wanting to go back and watch the replay again sometime. That’s where games fail as art, which is not to say they can’t succeed as something comparable to a sport — we may want to explore the rules of a game at length, and repeatedly, and we may enjoy getting better at it. But no matter how well or how long you play a game, it’s never going to be something you can display in your home as a representation of an experience.
Wheelbrain #495
You raise some good points. Points that will unfortunately be ignored. This is an aporia we’re facing here plain and simple.
I’m just going with the flow here.
I mentioned Halo, met with a chorus of people telling me that no, it doesn’t count, it’s not art. OK, then…art is a measure of quality, by their definitions. If I accept that, though, I have to say that video games aren’t art. Even the ones people keep mentioning…no. Just because they’re better than the 95% of video games that are crap, doesn’t make them art.
There’s a risk of unrealistic expectations here. Now I’m told that “Shadow of the Colossus” is the game to look for…I don’t know. Maybe it’s wonderful. But I’ve been told for about 30 years now that this next brand new game is great art, and I’ve been disappointed every time. The problem is that the fans keep measuring them against other video games, where the hurdle is set very, very low. Maybe Shadow is a thousand times better than the best game I’ve ever played. It’s still not going to be as good as the best novels I’ve read.
Brownian, I wasn’t making a circular argument. I was conceding that if that was true, that there is a hierarchy that determines what is art, then there are cheesy books and movies and paintings that are not rescued from their low estate by being on a bookshelf or in a theater or museum.
aratina cage (@450):
Yes, and yes; why do you ask? I mean, I’ve been defending interactive media as “real” art all along; if a genre or form is art to begin with, introducing a degree of audience interactivity to it doesn’t (IMHO) make it not art.
BTW, I’m pretty sure there have already been movies where the crowd in the theater vote at strategic points on what happens next (I have a vague memory of an attraction like this at Disneyland, which my family visiting when I was 7). It may seem pretty gimmicky… but I suspect there are people who think that about other forms of interactive art that are nevertheless universally accepted as art.
I think we may be working with different senses of the word game: By “[t]he game element,” you seem to be (and correct me if I’ve misunderstood you) referring to a degree of manipulation. But all art (including “art-house movies”) is manipulative (please note that I’m well aware it does not follow from this that all manipulation is art). That’s not the distinction I mean to be drawing. Instead, I’m drawing a distinction based on intended effect: Art, I think, intends to evoke certain kinds of thoughts and feelings in those who experience it; a game (in the generic sense) wants to present a functional challenge to those experiencing it, with success measured (more or less) objectively, in terms of criteria such as milestones achieve, points scored, time elapsed, etc. The point I’ve been trying to advance here is that a video game can conceiveably occupy either end of that spectrum, or any point in between.
If you tell me a story¹ that you mean to create a response in me, that’s art… regardless of medium or technique, and regardless of the degree to which I participate with you in telling of the story; if you set me a task, measure my performance, and compare my performance to some standard (including, potentially, some other player’s performance), that’s a game, regardless of how beautifully and evocatively the task is framed and presented. But… there’s nothing saying a game can’t also be art, and vice versa.
IMHO, of course.
¹ BTW, I certainly don’t mean to be reducing all art to narrative. It’s just that narrative seems the most appropriate sort of art to refer to in comparison to video games.
PZ, I’m sorry to say that your completely off your kilter in this argument here. A lot of what you said is “it isn’t art if it’s boring,” and it isn’t art if it is “interactive,” or if you don’t like watching other people play. And that’s the thing, video games are completely dependent on art from a variety of contexts, in terms of fiction (compelling story/characters), landscaping, light effects, music, you name it. It is a multi-billion dollar industry that hires thousands of the most talented and competitive artists in any one of these specialties.
PZ, seriously, stick with the science because it’s what you are good at, and stop debating the world on whether something is art. K?
You’re missing the point. Games aren’t about “Watching”. You’re not supposed to watch someone play a game. The “Performance” is experienced when you PLAY the game. And with a good game, I’ll replay that “Performance” over and over.
Your argument is like saying that paintings aren’t art because it’s not fun to watch someone else look at a painting. Of course it isn’t, because you’re not experiencing the painting yourself. It’s the same way with games: It’s not usually fun to watch someone else play a game, because you’re not experiencing that game for yourself.
I say “Usually” because it actually is fun to watch other people play some games. That’s not really relevant, though.
tl;dr By the definitions you put forth, games are in fact art.
PZ @ #502
I have compared video games to other fiction @ post #485
First of all, let’s clarify something. We can talk about art in the sense that all movies are art, or we can talk about art in the sense that only the “best” movies are art. Almost everyone here is just saying that games clearly qualify as art in the first sense.
What you and Ebert seem to be saying is that games cannot be art unless the best games are at least as good as the best art in other media. That is to say, the “strategy” you’re accusing others of unwisely employing is exactly your argument: that games aren’t art because the best examples just aren’t good enough.
You’re also saying that since you, personally, don’t get very much out of video games, they’re not art.
Neither of those is a valid argument.
I don’t really like fiction. I pretty much never read any literature that isn’t non-fiction. I simply don’t enjoy it, I don’t connect to it. On the other hand, I can connect very deeply with many varieties of music — everything from Aphex Twin to Gram Parson.
The fact that literature doesn’t do it for me does not compel me to make statements like “literature is not and can never be art.” And that’s all you’re doing in the above paragraph.
OK, well, let’s bring in comix in general as well. Are comix art? Do you think there are any comics whose quality compares to those of Kurosawa films? Is Watchmen of comparable quality to Ran? Worse or better? Or is it subjective?
If you agree that no example of graphic narrative comes close to Kurosawa, then your criticism of games undercuts comix as art every bit as decisively.
Of course, there’s another line of argument here: many people think James Joyce was the greatest novelist of all times. Many people disagree. I don’t really like literature as I’ve already said, but to the extent that I HAVE enjoyed it, Joyce certainly isn’t at the top of the list. So this list you’re making is perhaps not entirely subjective — presumably, one can defend one’s enumeration based on properties of the works in question — but certainly not objective in the first place.
You don’t stop there, you imply that you don’t think that any game could EVER approach Kurosawa-quality, without providing any reason beyond the fact that you, personally, don’t get much out of video games. Which I’ve addressed above.
Excuse me? It was the cranky old geezers who started this one, just like it was the cranky old geezers who insisted comix, rock and roll, jazz, film, and photography couldn’t be art. The cranky old geezers who insisted non-representational graphic art couldn’t be art, the same ones who said that literature (as opposed to poetry and drama) couldn’t be art.
And that’s your preference. But it doesn’t have any bearing on the potential of computer games as an artistic medium.
I agree; it’s a science.
I think wheelbrain’s comparison of the gamer to the actor in a play is excellent. Because, according to some of the criteria PZ laid out for art (non-interactivity, ability to frame it and put it on a wall) renders plays and musical compositions as art, but not the actual performances of the play or music.
I mentioned Halo, met with a chorus of people telling me that no, it doesn’t count, it’s not art
Where did anyone say Halo isn’t art? I read most of these comments, and all I saw was essentially “Halo 2 is a really bad example. Why are you presenting your argument in such a lopsided way by using such a shitty example instead of using a more artsy game?”
Ha, I’m not a gamer at all, but this discussion is so hilariously intense. Can’t wait to see PZ’s response.
I’m not being mean and saying games are all bad. I’m saying that when you try this ploy of calling them art and demanding that everyone must appreciate their potential as such or they’re just cranky old geezers who don’t appreciate this modern stuff, you’re putting yourself in some stiff competition. Competition that games aren’t ready for, and by their nature, may never be ready.
*Sigh* you’re asking a 20 year old medium which has had some huge barriers to entry to compete with the sophistication of a >100 year old medium (and ignoring the stirrings of the more philosophical games like Bioshock and Portal which do precisely that).
The first 20 years of film produced *some* art but it took a long time for people to really understand and stretch the medium. To make films that were more than just plays on screen.
It also took a long time for film audiences to evolve, for them to understand cinematic shorthand and be able to cope with the speed of storyline moves.
The same is true of comics, you need a very extensive comic storytelling history to reach a virtuoso like Alan Moore. Not many people would claim action comics #1 as art but Watchmen indisputably is, and not only that it’s art that takes full advantage of its medium.
Coincidentally every criticism you have leveled at games was also aimed at comic books until books like Maus and Watchmen started drifting into public awareness (and still is, there are still news sources who run with the tired old “comics they aren’t just for kids anymore” headline over and over again).
Videogames are just now moving towards having that body of previous effort and that understanding of just what the medium is capable of.
@Cerberus: Thanks for reminding me about Shadow of the colossus and Ico. Makes me want to go out and buy a console.
One more thing towards PZ:
The fact that big art galleries are already displaying interactive pieces, should tell you that even artists disagree here.
I’ve been to an exposition recently, where a screen was projected on the wall, and you manipulated what was shown on the screen by moving in front of it. A bit like a very simple version of natal really.
Definitely not what most people think of as a game, but not one of your examples of art either.
PZ noob ,games are art, end of discussion.
Uh, Fallout 3.
That is all.
Complete and utter pretentious bullshit. I’m an english major, with a focus on literature. I’ve read a ridiculous amount of books. And I’ve played Shadow of the Colossus. You, PZ, are a fool. You’re acting like the worst of the worst of close minded idiots.
That statement alone is enough for me to bow out of here. You’re dead damn wrong, and you’re too pompous to see it. Now, I’m going to go listen to ACDC and play Elder Scrolls IV. Enjoy this facade of a debate people, you won’t convince this moron that games are art. He’s a fool, just leave him be to his diminished, gameless world.
I can see how that would be annoying. I’ve found that when people talk about which films are art, and which aren’t, they keep comparing them to other films, where the hurdle is set very, very low.
I mean, where’s the film that’s the equivalent of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3?
I was conceding that if that was true, that there is a hierarchy that determines what is art, then there are cheesy books and movies and paintings that are not rescued from their low estate by being on a bookshelf or in a theater or museum.
this assumes calling something “art” defacto does provide redemption from quality analysis.
do you really want to make that argument?
this is exactly why you have to look at what the intent of the presentation IS, IMO, to define whether or not it is art.
frankly, in all the instances I have worked to produce video games myself, there indeed was a legitimate attempt to present the final product as what most would in fact define as “art”.
functional, interactive, art.
…and most of us, upon completion of game, would get the same feeling one gets from having used various media on canvas to produce a painting, say.
yes, this also becomes an argument for programmers who can claim that a piece of programming is art.
so?
and most of us, upon completion of game
that’s completion of production, btw, not completion of playing.
The entire idea of attempting to draw a line and determine what is or is not art is a fool’s endeavor. No one has provided the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be called ‘art’. Or even ‘game’, for that matter.
“Video games will become art when replaying the performance becomes something we find interesting, when the execution of those tools generates something splendid and lasting.”
I’m on my third time through Dragons Age. It’s stunningly beautiful, and I love how every trip through brings out different elements that I hadn’t seen yet. I also love how they let the light play off the water in some of the locals. It’s quite peaceful to just sit and enjoy the moment. Of course the kill scenes are gorgeous too.
Just like all art, some games are just entertainment, others seek inspire, and the best make people think. I think anyone who doesn’t think they are art has never spent any time enjoying them.
I get the feeling that PZ’s experience stems from his preconceptions. If you can play Braid all the way through and say it’s comparable to a Uwe Boll film, you just aren’t getting it. You probably logged in to kill some time and get some points and maybe hang out with your kid. If you don’t buy into the experience, you’re not going to get it. I’m sure I read a bunch of great books in high school that I hated and skimmed through; I am probably not in a position to judge those books. Someone who just likes pretty pictures probably shouldn’t be comparing the artistic merits of surrealist, expressionist, and impressionist painters.
Also, I can’t believe that PZ would be so dismissive of the multiple accounts of games in which story and content was presented in a specific context that requires player interaction to evoke an emotional response. At this point I figure he’s just doing it to piss us off or he doesn’t want to admit that he is dead wrong. I would hope that it’s not the latter, or I would lose a lot of respect for him.
Ah, interesting, so PZ played Flower and found it boring. That may be the key to this whole discussion.
A form of art might touch some, and bore others. I for one am completely impenetrable to dance as a form of art. It just doesn’t touch me, I find it boring.
Do I say it’s not art? That would be supremely arrogant.
Maybe PZ, and Ebert, are just not sensitive to what touches our souls profoundly in some games. That would be fine, but the arrogant “games are not art because they don’t touch me” is not.
Art and science employ different gates for inclusion and evaluate that which is so included differently as well. Virtually anything can be art, as long as it is made or is so ascribed. Once something is considered art it can’t be excluded from that realm. The definition of art is very broad. Unless some agreed upon metric is used it can’t be evaluated other than subjectively.
In order for something to be science it has to follow a certain methodology, it has to reflect and further clarify what is perceived as reality. It is possible for something that once was considered cutting-edge science, such as geocentrism, to be banished from the realm of science because it fails to represent what exists. The best minds used to believe in divine creation; that has been relegated to the realm of myth because it utterly fails to explain what we now know about life.
Don’t conflate what is art with what you like.
PZ @502
You asked us to come down to your level by the assumption that all games suck.
That was what you asked us to do.
Games are an artistic medium. By the broadest definition of art met by every other artistic medium, they are an artistic medium. Just like music, visual art, poetry, literature, and yes, film. They are all art in that sense.
What you have been arguing is by the narrower definition of art, the “Ran” argument, if you will. And when we have pointed out that no, Halo is not Ran, Halo is Terminator 2, you’ve suddenly switched to an oddly out-of-place bad-faith argument and argued that we’re suddenly “betraying our cause” and that we’re being art snobs.
No, we’re trying to meet your arguments.
You want to argue about the Ran of video games, about games that aren’t merely great games filled with great elements of art, but art games, works that very deliberately make an artistic statement and would be worthy of an interactive art installation?
We are fully willing to meet you there and we have pointed out the works that meet that far narrower artistic standard.
And now you’re mad at us and think we’re the ones who have abandoned our arguments or are being snobs.
We haven’t. You have.
You wanted to play this debating game, we have acquiesced and now you are angry that we have accommodated your standards.
I have a small background being taught by visual arts professors and into the artistic frame of mind when I was pursuing a minor in the arts (literature specifically). I know my shit a little bit, not as much as biology, but a little bit.
Shadow of the Colossus employs moving impressionism a whole new style of creating visual art which is literally stunning, a postmodern deconstruction of the player and the goal-oriented nature of most video games, and employs atmospheric and gameplay elements in truly artistic ways to self contain an artistic statement.
The works by Team Ico are widely considered to be not fully games, but pieces of raw art you interact with as a game and was created by a traditional visual artist turned game developer who places artistic direction first.
This isn’t an argument of “hey, this sucks less than usual.” This is arguments from the standpoint of how art installations work and the nature of art from art critical dissertations.
On narrative, there are other examples for artistic, Ran level work.
Halo is not anywhere approaching Ran, which was the standards you brought into this discussion. It’s a fun game. It’s got some beautiful art in it. It’s immensely popular. So’s Terminator 2.
If you narrow the window and we follow to argue from your standpoint, you haven’t won and you don’t get to argue that this movement means you win into infinity and get to claim all games are not art by the broadest definitions and that all games also suck by any objective standard of art.
There are games that would be considered art by the narrowest definitions of art. Ran barriers of what is art if you will.
I’m on my third time through Dragons Age.
Most comprehensive voice acting I’ve ever seen in a game, I think. I can’t imagine how much money they spent on that alone.
Yes, most assuredly the developer’s intent there was to inspire and get players to be creative.
In fact, I’m quite sure the Bioware team, if asked, would indeed wish to define their efforts as a form of art.
Maybe Shadow is a thousand times better than the best game I’ve ever played. It’s still not going to be as good as the best novels I’ve read.
But this is just your opinion. Many of us find this particular game to be beautiful, evocative, thought-provoking and inspiring. For me, it was a more memorable experience than any book I’ve read.
Videogames still have a stigma unfortunately, but this will change over time. My wife thinks I’m wasting my time playing games. When I ask her if she’d feel the same way if I was reading a book, she says no. But she can’t give me a good explanation as to why. It’s just prejudice stemming from ignorance and unfamiliarity. Not the kind of thing I expected from PZ, to be honest.
Well, isn’t that true? Because that’s what many of us are arguing here; that there is no set of criteria that makes film, paintings, and literature art but which also excludes video games.
Yet, by claiming that movies are art and video games aren’t, that’s exactly the case you and Ebert are trying to make. And so far, unsuccessfully.
Yeah, whether PZ chooses to acknowledge it (and open up a whole new door of video game appreciation) or not, I think we can pretty much conclude that he is flat out wrong. He has yet to make a compelling argument, and has managed to make himself sound like a total goon in the process. Going through each one sentence by sentence would be possible, but pointless. He just doesn’t get it and that’s perfectly obvious to anyone who has spent a significant amount of time appreciating the medium.
And PZ, it might seem mean and dismissive to say that, but frankly none of us care.
Then maybe the medium isn’t the problem. It’s been mentioned a few times, you ‘not getting it’ doesn’t define something as ‘not art’.
Like the guy standing there, staring at a Picasso trying to figure out what the fuss is about, and all he sees is squares on canvas.
Every new medium, every one, has been decried as ‘not art’. Photography, Film, novels. You name it.
History shows us what happens. The medium is accepted, and a new one opens up. Cycle begins again, with everyone pointedly forgetting the previous cycle.
Not every work of art speaks to every person.
Invalidating an entire medium because you’re not picking up on the message is a little shallow.
Sorry, PZ; I will have to disagree with both you and Roger on this one. Not only can games be art, they sometimes are. Some games are simply sport, but there are others where the play of the game is the performance. In other words, there are some games that are effectively interactive art.
I can even think of some examples of this: Rez, Okami, Orbient, etc.
I do make these distinctions when I review a game, as do most other game critics. Hence, while I disagree with the tone and thrust of the Penny Arcade rant, I also do agree with its motivation. I can understand people calling games like the Halo series mere sport (and that is their intent), but I don’t think the same can be said for every game ever made.
Shadow of the Colossus came out 5 years ago.
And, indeed, if any game should be considered art, it’s this one. The sense of foreboding and loneliness as you trek across a nearly empty landscape to the next Lovecraftian foe is almost oppressive, and the simple but powerful motivation of the main character is reminiscent of the Greek tale of Orpheus.
Oh yeah, classic literature buffs, I went there.
The controls are actually fairly bad; the main character can barely swing a sword, and struggles to climb up even short ledges (which you do a lot). Does absolutely nothing to make the game less enjoyable. So much for only focusing on gameplay, eh?
Yes, storytelling. Games are a new medium for storytelling, just as novels, cartoons, and movies once were. How does that make those media storytelling-art, but games not storytelling-art?
Ok, ok, just scanned through and found PZ’s comments (Only two of them, so sorry if I missed more in this giant monstrosity of a thread).
The problem seems to be that PZ is viewing the person playing the game as the artist. They’re not. The person who MADE the game is the artist. The act of PLAYING the game is no more art than looking at a painting is art. But that’s ok, because it’s not supposed to be.
The game ITSELF, the thing that the gamer PLAYS, that is art. The programmers, designers, concept artists, sound composers, writers… These are the artists. The thing they create is art. The gamer can then experience that art by playing it, just like you can experience music by listening to it, or experience a novel by reading it, or experience a painting by looking at it.
Games require a different type of action to be experienced. That does not make them not art.
What is funny to me in this argument is that of everyone here I probably play the fewest games. Although this thread is making me reconsider.
I hold the position that I do on video games because of my stance on art as an artist :/
A lot of the problem I’m seeing is in who’s definition of art people are using to make their arguments. Let’s look at Wikipedia:
or Merriam-Webster:
Most video games fall under both of these definitions, while sports do not. Notably, those games that appear to not fall under these definitions would be the sports-genre games.
While you might argue that you’ve never played a game that was as good for you as reading a novel, that’s subjective. I’ve played many games that were much more impactful to me than any novel I’ve read. I’m not saying your experience with them would be the same, just pointing out how subjective it is.
Bill DAuphin, #503
I think you actually managedto do something you didn’t do. You’ve made a false dichotomy.
That is to say, the ‘functional challenge’ is sometimes WHERE the emotion is intended to come from. Or maybe I’m just playing too many roguelikes, both NA and JP, and my thinking is distorted in these terms, but, what I mean is this: The way the challenge is presented can add to the feel. In Silent Hill, or Resident Evil, or hell, Nethack, the number of safe points is very, very few. You are generally under threat. Tying into this, there are very few healing items (Unless it’s a very very, very lucky run of nethack). You very well may die if you let yourself take hits. Now, this is usually a way to create challenge, like in IWBTG or Mega Man 9. Those are meant to generate rage. HOwever, the fear of death is meant to be evoked in a survival horror game. You’re not supposed to throw a controller at the wall, when you die. You’re supposed to have trouble holding it from fear.
For that matter, the difficulty of X-Com is very much part of why the game manages to evoke paranoia and fear. If it were easy (And there are rare moments where it is genuinely easy for me, and I emphasize the rarity there, so I know the difference), it WOULDN’T manage to sustain that paranoia. I can’t panic about every footstep and door if I know the aliens literally can not hurt my guys. But because they very much can kill my squaddies, even if they’re isolated and alone, I remain scared at all times, once on the battlespace.
So that’s a very specific example, along with two more general ones, of how gameplay enhances the music and atmosphere. Yes, through my fear (And paranoia!) I’m trying to consider how to keep my people alive, and then kill aliens. But if it’s about emotion, the GAMEPLAY also can be part of it, even just challenge-wise.
I read the post, thought “Myst” – but I can see I’m not the first one to do that. So out of sheer contrariness, I will mention Nethack – the way the game is put together is an absolute work of art, just not visual.
Invalidating an entire medium because you’re not picking up on the message is a little shallow.
Prediction: we get a list of things that PZ doesn’t like but still considers art, as if that somehow validates his argument.
Exactly. Even if they aren’t moved, they have clearly witnessed that a lot of people have profound emotional responses to video games and that these people consider it art.
I don’t understand why he and Ebert feel such a strong need to invalidate those experiences.
This is from the article that Redshift linked to a couple times. I think it sums up PZ’s take on the issue rather neatly:
QFT.
now, to attempt to be productive and suggest a possible definition of “art”:
art is a subspecies of communication, wherein the creator(s) (“artists”) attempt to communicate some form of emotion or emotionally laden experience, possibly (usually?) but not necessarily related to some insight into what life in this human condition is like, or can be like.
benefits of this, admittedly vague and very broad-brush, definition: it takes in a lot of those human artifacts which people would generally want to have called “art”. music, painting, sculpture, literature, all tend to have this element of emotionally laden communication.
shortcomings: it leaves out some things that have sold, under the heading of “art”, in art galleries, for shitloads of money. planks leaned up against walls don’t communicate much, nor trigger very many emotional responses. also, it might include a thing or two we wouldn’t normally call “art”, or wouldn’t even want to consider artistic. take a snapshot of a murder scene, and it can communicate emotively. most of us wouldn’t want to be communicated to that way, however.
shortcoming that will cause P.Z. Myers to reject this proposed definition: it includes an awful lot of video games.
Wow. PZ, this may be one of the fastest filling threads you’ve yet achieved. (And yet, it seems to have one of the lowest percentage of profanity, no thanks to me. Man, I am so low-rent.)
@ Ichthyic #525
Again, probably because other than a few high-profile actors from ST:Voyager and elsewhere, they shopped local and raided the local acting scene.
Even after the success of Baldur’s Gate, when they were recruiting writers, developers, and programmers, their website featured a section describing what you can expect if you move to Edmonton to work for them.
(How they managed to get anyone to move here is, well, nothing short of miraculous.)
From Merriam-Webster
Main Entry: 2art
2 a : a branch of learning: (1) : one of the humanities (2) plural : liberal arts b archaic : learning, scholarship
4 a : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced b (1) : fine arts (2) : one of the fine arts (3) : a graphic art
Pronunciation: ˈärt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin art-, ars — more at arm
Date: 13th century
1 : skill acquired by experience, study, or observation
3 : an occupation requiring knowledge or skill
5 a archaic : a skillful plan b : the quality or state of being artful
6 : decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter
I’d argue that according to the dictionary definition, video games and/or the playing of can meet almost all of these criteria.
For 1 and 3 you have the art of playing video games, which is both an acquired skill that some hone into an art, and a profession (professional gamers make thousands of dollars at video game competitions.)
As a branch of learning, #2, there are videos/faqs/instructables on how to play games, and of course college certification in making them.
It may not be “high class,” but neither was Kabuki theater back in the day. Neither was Commedia dell’arte. Originally these modern day forms of “art” were opiates for the masses, low-class entertainment, bread and circus for the hoi-polloi.
As for 4 and 6, well “the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced” says it pretty clearly, as does “decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter.”
You can make a pseudo-argument that “decorative elements” on a screen are somehow merit less artistic value than something on a page or a canvas, but I think that kind of differentiation ties in to the Western idea that art should have permanence.
I would point out to you the Japanese concepts of Wabi-sabi and Mono no aware, which together basically explain a viewpoint of being mindful, aware of experiences as impermanent art, and learning to find beauty in the transience of all things.
The cherry blossoms are beautiful because they are only around for a few weeks each year, and being able to appreciate their living, changing, and dying is art in itself. A.E. Housman says it well in his poem “Loveliest of Trees.”
My point being- in many cultures experience is art. Video games are another kind of experience, and like movies, books, paintings, and sculpture can leave a lasting impression and change your view of things. Video games can enrich your life as much as any other work of art, or as others have pointed out, they may enrich your life more because of the ability to navigate and exert some form of control over the game.
When I look at this piece of modern art, I see it through the lens of my own personal experience. It is up to my interpretation, and while I see plates stacked in disarray, others may see planets or atoms or gears or what-have-you. The fact that we each interact with this piece of art and may each have a different experience doesn’t lessen its status as “art,” and the same form of interaction in art applies to movies and video games.
By the way, I played Myst well over a decade ago, and the feelings it evoked within me, the beauty, the fear, and the curiosity have remained with me to this day. I think it is one of the best examples of video-game-as-art.
QFT.
now, to attempt to be productive and suggest a possible definition of “art”:
art is a subspecies of communication, wherein the creator(s) (“artists”) attempt to communicate some form of emotion or emotionally laden experience, possibly (usually?) but not necessarily related to some insight into what life in this human condition is like, or can be like.
benefits of this, admittedly vague and very broad-brush, definition: it takes in a lot of those human artifacts which people would generally want to have called “art”. music, painting, sculpture, literature, all tend to have this element of emotionally laden communication.
shortcomings: it leaves out some things that have sold, under the heading of “art”, in art galleries, for shitloads of money. planks leaned up against walls don’t communicate much, nor trigger very many emotional responses. also, it might include a thing or two we wouldn’t normally call “art”, or wouldn’t even want to consider artistic. take a snapshot of a murder scene, and it can communicate emotively. most of us wouldn’t want to be communicated to that way, however.
shortcoming that will cause P.Z. Myers to reject this proposed definition: it includes an awful lot of video games.
#535
And there we go. /thread
Metal Gear Solid has cropped up. MGS creator Hideo Kojima has weighed in on the “Is it art?” debate, and actually has expressed a position pretty close to that of PZ & Ebert: he thinks few to no existing games qualify. I disagree with this assessment myself, and think it’s entirely possible that Kojima was just messing with people’s heads, but it’s interesting that someone like Kojima would assert that games are unlikely to achieve the status of art.
Probably, the question of whether games are art could only be resolved by an internet poll.
There is no hierarchy that defines what is art! Get over this point. It either is or is not art, based on the definition of art. Hierarchies are applied a posteriori to evaluate “quality” of art, based on some agreed-upon schema. “Quality” by its very nature is relative whereas art is absolute.
If archeologists unearthed a 15th chess set, do you think it would end up in an art museum?
Of course it would.
Also: Old people are old.
You should have quoted the Dude: “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”
Then your comment would be art. Or, have a component of art. Or something. Just as long as you didn’t mash a button somewhere along the line.
Great. Now you’re just beggin the phylogenists to join the fray.
Cerberus:
Your contributions in this thread confirm my recent Molly vote, and ensure it will be repeated (if it’s even needed) on the next ballot! That said, I think you and Mr T are talking around a position I disagree with:
At the risk of repeating an earlier point (that could never happen, eh?), y’all seem to be saying that there’s some threshold of quality that determines whether something is art or not. I disagree. I think whatever is made with the intentions of art (which I take to be evoking a certain range of emotional and intellectual responses) is art. How well it meets those intentions determines its quality — whether it’s good art or bad art — but has nothing to do with whether it qualifies for the name.
At least to this extent, I think I’m agreeing with PZ (@502):
Right. If you take a kind of thing that isn’t art, no example of that kind of thing can be art, no matter how surpassingly wonderful an example it might be. (But things are not always of a single kind: We’re talking about philosophical categories here, and they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive.)
I don’t, however, agree with this:
First, I think it’s questionable to compare across forms like that: How can you separate out your preference for a given form to come up with a meaningful comparison of absolute quality? Suppose somebody said to you that even the best novel you could show them is still not going to be as good as the best rap songs they’ve heard? How could you respond, except with a shrug of the shoulders?
But I also think it’s moot relative to the conversation we’re having: Suppose you could determine that, on some hypothetical absolute cross-form scale of goodness, that Shadow really is inferior to the best novels you’ve read? How would that answer the question of whether Shadow is art? I’m quite certain there are cubic miles of objects that are of inferior quality to your favorite novel, and that are nevertheless unambiguously works of art (i.e., think of all the mediocre paintings you’ve seen hanging in museums and galleries).
Not to sound all Forrest Gump or anything, but the more I read of this conversation, the more I think art is as art does. As for whether any given art does what it does well… that is, I fear, “like a box of chocolates….”
If I paint a landscape and subsequently say paintings aren’t art, does that mean anyone who considers paintings art is wrong? I do not intend to imply that you agree with the sentiment, since you are explicit you do not — but why is it relevant to the discussion in the first place? It has been mentioned already, incidentally.
Yes, but he is A TROLL. This is why I adore him, however.
Dr. Matt @546-
The paucity of the English language. That’s why.
We use the same word for the medium, the form of expression, and containing artistic merit as we do for “high art” or the narrowest definition of the exceptional and transcendent.
The question of how few works merit the “high art” standard gets muddled because people automatically in their head compare it to a broader standard.
I.e. they look at visual art, say, and ignore that 95% of it are advertising materials, amateur doodles, copycatting crap, etc…
Sturgeon’s Law: 95% of everything is crap.
Yeah, few games qualify by the narrowest standards. Few movies qualify,few books qualify, few plays qualify, especially by the vastness of the mediums.
Of the millions of works that were made since the invention of the written language, how few were the books we considered transcendent enough to bother reprinting? Even from the point of the printing press or the oldest surviving library? How many works met the narrowest definitions of art?
I would not expect many games to transcend like that, by the narrowest definitions. But games that have, that have made a contribution worthy of inclusion by the narrowest standards of art have been made.
Hence, few.
What Ebert and PZ are arguing is more that games even fail by broad standards and that video games are all shit as art or storytelling medium and are a mere diversion incapable of any moments of transcendence much less a fully-contained transcendent experience of the narrowest definition of art.
Hideo Kojima being a strong post-modern artist would naturally use the term like that.
I said art couldn’t be interactive? Where?
No, guys, it’s Kojima. This guy loves fucking with everyone. He’s trolling you. Don’t fall for it.
You learn the mind of the man when you play his games. That’s art :D
You and I are in agreement here, but I do believe that there is an accepted cannon of high art, or has been for a very long time.
It all depends on whose culture you privilege and whose legacy matters.
Even at that, there is an area of art that deals specifically with art, or rather the concept of art, challenging the parameters in an attempt to open the discussion of what *our* art should be *now* and, you see… there’s that possessive. Because it still depends on who *we* are anyway.
Okay since no one responded to my post(#485)(a big blow to my ego) :( I will continue to blow my horn(and be ignored).
Most people here mention triple A games which are mostly iterations of forms and rules which were shown to be successful about a decade or two ago(FPSs,RTSs,RPGs,survival-horror). But the best display of video game potential comes from the thousands of minigames floating around the internet.
Take the browser game minotaur in a china shop(the link goes to the game itself. I urge you to play it. It’s free and only takes 10 minutes for one play through)
At first it looks like a trivial game where you play a minotaur who retrieves pieces of china for customers. But it has a twist, you get paid insurance for the pieces of china you break.
It quickly becomes clear that its pointless to serve your customers and the best way to make money is to break as much of your merchandice and collect insuraance. And I finally realized what it was… a critisizm of our current capitalist system and the preverse incentives it generates. And it does this by letting you ineract with its rules. It makes you try to maximize wealth in its system and shows you how preverse incentives arise from the rules.
Compare this to the prverse incenives available to corporate CEOs with stock options, especialy during mergers. Do you think an essay or a blog post could convey the same message more effectivly?
“But as a whole, would anyone in their right mind buy Halo because of that wonderfully creepy moment when you’re walking through a dark alien ship, or for the awesome site of the ring arcing up into the clouds?”
YES. Those are absolutely reasons why people buy many of the games they buy. Halo is an imperfect example because so much of it’s quality is related to it’s shooter mechanics, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is EXACTLY those ‘wonderfully creepy moments’ and ‘awesome sights’ that videogames convey succesfully to their users.
Do you even realize how wrong you were when you said
“A great painting or poem is something that represents an idea or emotion, communicated through the skill of an artist, to make you see through his or her eyes for a moment. Computer games just don’t do that. No team sits down to script out a video game with the intent of creating a tone poem in interactive visual displays that will make the player appreciate the play of sunlight on a lake, for instance.”
Because that is EXACTLY what developers do. Someone mentioned the Half-Life 2 development diary, which is a good start. Watch programs like Gametrailers TV or any of its other programs, such as the Bonus Round (most may be irrelevant blabber to you). They had a thing on storytelling though, a couple of weeks ago. Or watch interviews with Greg Mazuka from Bioware or Hideo Kojima. They will explain very frankly the ideas they wanted to convey and how they wanted to play on gamers’ emotions in the games they developed. Or for that matter, if you have the time to sift through the inevitable muck, go read any upstanding forum dedicated to a certain game. Fans of certain franchises can debate for ages on the interpretation or philosophical meaning of characters or events, or the morality of certain decisions made in videogames, and how these might relate to the the creators personally or how they relate to real life situations.
So, let’s just try to recap some basic facts about videogames:
– videogames are made through an extensive creative process, using many different kinds of artists (actors, modellers, writers)
– videogames have the ability to have profound emotional effects on players: sadness, wonder etc., which literally millions will attest to
– videogames convey these feelings by using techniques established in other mediums, generally recognized as art: storytelling and character development as in books and cinema, visually through choreography as in movies and creating scenic images and ambience as in cinema/paintings/photography, supported through audio as in music/movies, while drawing the player into it interactively (which is arguably also not new).
But it isn’t art because… ?
What, because it just ‘consists of elements from other artistic mediums’? That’s like saying cinema is not an artistic medium because they just consist of music and pictures.
The lack of distinction between “art” as art form and “art” as masterpiece is why I give up. At first I thought the argument was that videogames are not an art form, now it seems to be that no video game is or will ever be good enough to be a masterpiece by some objective measure.
Bill Dauphin,
I gathered that you were agreeing with PZ before, but #503 seems to disagree with PZ almost completely given that most video games are created with the intention of provoking a response in another human, at the very least they aim to grasp human attention, which is imperative because art that gets no reaction fails miserably. Once the idea leaves the artist’s mind and becomes a work of art for private or public consumption, who knows how people will react to it; painters, authors, filmmakers, and video game developers all hope for the best. At any rate, making art about the intention to get a response puts video games squarely in the “art” category.
On your distinction between what a game is as opposed to what art is, “a functional challenge to those experiencing it, with success measured (more or less) objectively, in terms of criteria such as milestones achieve, points scored, time elapsed, etc“, I think it is a fine description but misses how games are supposed to be fun and draw you in and engage you, just like art.
But you have given me another thought on how to resolve this difficulty Ebert seems to be having in accepting video games as art. Not considering the interactive element of video games, how do the critiques of cinema and the critiques of video games differ and how are they the same? And, how does adding interactivity remove something from the realm of art?
There have been quite a few definitions of art offered. I pushed some quotes by Frank Zappa up in #313, but I’ll paraphrase one of them:
“Anything can be art, but it doesn’t become art until someone wills it to be art, and people decide to perceive it as art. Most people can’t deal with that abstraction — or don’t want to.”
With that definition,”medium X isn’t art” is a claim that can only express personal taste.
I also like Zappa’s definition of composition: “Composition is a process of organization, very much like architecture. As long as you can conceptualize what that organizational process is, you can be a ‘composer’ — in any medium you want. You can be a ‘video composer,’ a ‘film composer,’ a ‘choreography composer,’ a ‘social engineering composer’ — whatever.”
If anything can be art, anything can also be a game. I saw the original presentation of this talk by game-designer Brian Moriarty at the Game Developer’s Conference, about how the best game he ever played was “Who Buried Paul,” a memorable game I’m old enough to have played one Summer long ago.
http://ludix.com/moriarty/paul.html
Actually, it very well might not. Inclusion in a museum depends on a number of issues including perceived quality, rarity, the focus of the museum itself, etc. Just because something is old doesn’t automatically mean it’s going to be viewed as valuable or instructive. There are a lot of coproliths out there that aren’t going to be included in museums. After all, they’re shit. The same can be said for art; there’s a lot out there but a lot of it is… well, you know what I mean.
And as for “Old people are old.”
1) Duh
2) Your point is…
3) Unless you die young, beware you don’t become that which you now gainsay. Many “young” people have no idea the hypocrisies they will inflict on themselves on their way to becoming what you so cavalierly refer to as old.
He could be the inventor of Pong and every game after that; he’d still have to come up with some criteria for what is art and what isn’t.
I didn’t notice the previous mention– sorry. To go with your analogy, if van Gogh were on record as saying paintings don’t qualify as art, it shouldn’t be the end of the discussion, but I think his arguments would likely be fairly interesting. Again, I’m not convinced at all by Kojima’s musings, but he’s pretty much the equivalent, for the young artistic medium of games, of van Gogh saying paintings aren’t art.
A few personal anecdotes on the matter –
My wife watched me play through Bioshock and Bioshock 2. This isn’t something she’s normally interested in doing, most games I play she calls “boring”. But with those games, she not only watched me play but kept asking me to play so she can see what happens next.
There are games I have been so captivated in that it hits me in the same way that movies and books can. A simple RPG like Terranigma on the SNES is one in which the whole journey felt like watching an epic movie. Games like System Shock 2 pumped me with more fear than any horror movie. The Elder Scrolls 4 had incredibly impressive visuals that made me at times just look around at how awe-inspiring it was.
Then there are games like Max Payne where the story is integral to the experience. Everything from the style of the game to the comic book storytelling. It even had things like televisions playing a soap opera on them (much like Twin Peaks).
The long and short of it, I don’t actually think by virtue of it being a game it is artistic. But to deny that games can be art is tagging the entire medium without looking at specific details. If some guy splashing paint on canvas counts as art, then why shouldn’t some rich 3D agent or landscape count just because one might be walking through it using a controller?
Are you ever going to actually respond to the posts that point out your initial post is factually incorrect in many places?
Counterexamples have been given, unless you’re being strictly literal and you mean only one such display per game.
Examples have been given where at best, “balance and game play” were an after thought. The game was still played for the artistic merits.
Congratulations, you’ve just described the massively-successful, longest running RPG series, Final Fantasy. As well as almost every book and movie known to man, but somehow linearity isn’t seen as an issue in those media.
Most games aren’t sandboxes. Yet even some that are could be considered art in the same way as interactive art, which has been mentioned several times in this thread.
Video games reached that point two decades ago.
Not everyone shares your opinion here. There are youtube channels devoted to people playing video games.
Seriously, your argument boils down to “I don’t find video games as compelling an art form as movies or paintings, therefore they’re not art”. Perhaps if you made another post that wasn’t riddled with factual inaccuracies, which actually defines art so that things you consider art (movies, paintings, etc) are art and video games are not, we could actually advance the discussion. right now it does just appear to be a “rock and roll isn’t music, get off my lawn” argument.
”
Maybe PZ, and Ebert, are just not sensitive to what touches our souls profoundly in some games. That would be fine, but the arrogant “games are not art because they don’t touch me” is not.”
—-
“Exactly. Even if they aren’t moved, they have clearly witnessed that a lot of people have profound emotional responses to video games and that these people consider it art.
I don’t understand why he and Ebert feel such a strong need to invalidate those experiences.”
Once again the speed of thread makes my points before me.
PZ’s comments seem to boil down to, “games mean nothing to ME, because they have user controls and rewards happen, therefore they are just games and mean nothing to me.” He approaches a book, a painting, a piece of music, expecting art and meaning, thus finds it. He approaches a game expecting it to be meaningless motions, and that’s all he finds. Therefore those of us who have been moved to tears by a game, who have found solace or inspiration from games, who are still affected to this day by game experiences many years ago, and who can discuss with each other the deeper meanings of games, somehow our experiences are aberrations because of the format in which they occurred. I’m reminded of students who dismiss all books as boring nonsense, until they find or are given a book that relates to their lives enough to be accessible.
If game creators intend their works to have meaning, and the players of their games experience that meaning, then what else can they be except art?
Bill, not to derail but this is a big reason that I, logically, have to support video games as art because they are a media through which artistic experience *could* happen.
You see, when some one who is anything but a white male goes to the standard historically inclined museum you are seeing the legacy of who is allowed and who is not allowed to make art. Women’s work falls under craft unless you are talking about one of the few lauded portrait or flower painters. Even then, they are not considered true artists and were not allowed in their time access to the same types of education or even methods of expression. Yes, there were individuals who broke that rule… like a handful of them from the Greeks to the 20th century.
You will not see Eastern art as a part of the western cannon until the era of art nouveau, which was decidedly considered “not art” for a while at the time.
You will not see meso-american art.
Where you will see these things, they will be lumped together. The work of different people over a thousand years will all be collected together as “African” as if that means anything.
There was an artist actually whose entire work consisted of rearranging museum collections to challenge viewers about the read of art and history that they get passively by walking though the museum. Really brilliant work.
Now, even in a contemporary art museum or gallery, you may see art that is interactive, but this age old qualification of art as being valued by how much it fits into the historic cannon I think is one that needs tossing.
Art is whatever results from peoples aesthetic creativity, and just as those ceremonial masks may have been important to the culture from which they were taken, and Rembrant may be important to some (I can’t stand him), video games may be a valid method of cultural sharing and communication for a group of people.
Now, that is actually, to me not a fuck-it-all stance. It’s fine to try and rank it, but rank is just a matter of power and status. It is what it is. That, to me, is separate from the intrinsic value of art.
How much prestige do I gain from viewing this, from owning it? If I gain a lot it is *good* art and if I gain little it is *bad* art.
Then separately how much to I feel rewarded by my experience with this?
Two separate questions.
@Kel:
Just had the same experience with Metal Gear Solid 4. My better half, who generally is not a game player, got sucked into watching the cutscreens as if it were an episodic serial. She actually got vested in the characters and their motivations.
As for Kojima and “it ain’t art”: For someone who created a game with multiple 20 minute plus minute cinematic cutscreens, methinks Kojima protests too much. And he’s screwing with your head.
Bill Dauphin, OM:
I’m not sure how you interpreted me that way, but that’s not at all what I meant.
Art is stuff people make.
People tend to make stuff they would enjoy, or is enjoyable to making.
Not all art is enjoyable.
This is not some absurd, post-modern idea of art which renders the word meaningless. It’s an idea as old as the word “art” itself. What is truly absurd is suggesting that stuff people make (and perhaps even enjoy) is not art.
As Cerberus says:
I’ll have to raise the stakes. Everything is Terrible!
Here:
You seem to be arguing that it is the interactivity that makes games incapable of being art.
Of course, your arguments have been so muddled this whole time, it’s tough to tell exactly what you mean at any one point. As several people have pointed out, video games satisfy any reasonable definition for an artistic medium — so your objection can’t be along the broad conception of art. But then you object when your respondents try to engage you to find a narrower definition.
I’d also like to call attention to post 539, where ashleyfmiller very clearly expressed my biggest objection to PZ’s line of argument:
Hideo Kojima’s definition of ‘art’ is even weirder:
So, he takes a scenester’s definition of art? “Man, I totally liked that band before they ever had any albums, gigs, learned to play instruments, or were even born. Now that they exist and are actually playing, they’re total sellouts, man.”
Bill @550
Actually I’m not.
I’m arguing that there are the broad definitions of art, which are ones actual artists use and tend to be closer to a (if there can be such a thing at all) “true definition of art”. This is the “evokes an emotion deliberately” stuff or things like artistic medium and how “found art” can be art at all. Which is also what most people on the thread are arguing and is generally a safe place to discuss art, because it is so subjective.
I’m also following Ebert and PZ towards the narrowest forms of art. These are standards born of a much stricter, often less-defined list of “artistic merit” and often are cultural signifiers (this separation is how we separate Monet from Little Billy’s doodle or even an expert painting almost fully borrowing from someone else’s style).
It’s ill-defined, but it’s a linguistic aspect we often fall into. It is often regarded as a “quality” marker, but it’s not even really reliably used as a quality marker. There are plenty of well-made and expertly crafted and even highly original examples of a medium that don’t meet the narrowest of standards of “what is art”.
It often comes in the depth of intent, the innovations of artistic tradition, and a lot of more subtle markers that can often vary depending on medium or expert.
This is why I’ve tried to talk about the range of definitions, because you have the broad category which is the solidest (games are an art medium, the end) and the narrowest categories which are far more slippery and subjective (Citizen Cane was a true masterpiece, no it was a hackneyed pile of shit, you philistine, etc…).
However, of these narrowest categories there are works that meet the standards of a wide range of critically trained appreciators as being more often than not meeting even this narrowest of standards (call it the quick, name 10 X that would be considered the most worthy of the medium of being considered art pinnacle standard). The things you would show a person if they didn’t believe the medium as a whole was art (by the broad category) or shitty art.
My attempted points were to try and say that yes, broad category, of course, but even if we were to follow Ebert and PZ to those higher pinnacles, there are works that are “installation-worthy”, i.e. doing enough things, and with themes, characterization, and storytelling unique enough, complex enough, and innovative enough to be considered worthy ambassadors for the medium as an artistic form of expression.
“Ran” level art if you will.
But yes, games are an artistic medium. The productions of that is going to vary in quality and complexity and raw artistic statement and purpose and even interact with the user in truly novel and important ways. There are going to be Rans and Transformer movies. Just like every other medium. Sturgeon’s Law.
PZ @ 502;
*takes deep breath* I am going to have to disagree with you, oh tentacled overlord of Pharyngula, and hope that Cthulu does not devour me on the spot for my insolence (*too self* It will be okay, just don’t stare at the Master’s tentacles. And make no sudden moves.)
Does this argument not run the risk of comparing apples and pears? How can you objectively compare one medium to another, radically different medium. ‘Is Hamlet better than Bach?’ is a question that makes no real sense, and cannot be answered in any way that is not simply an expression of the personal preference of the individual in question.
Computer entertainment is by definition an interactive medium in a way no book (and no currently existing movie) could ever be. Inevitably, the gaming medium uses different devices for storytelling and characterisation to these other media. There is no reason why a person cannot enjoy both reading and gaming without feeling any need to quixotically attempt to compare one to the other.
Also, as has been pointed out by other commentators, computer entertaiment is truly a medium in its infancy, having only existed for roughly 40 years, and existed in a form capable of supporting more sophiosticated story telling for only half that time. Seeking to directly compare that to forms that have existed for roughly 100 years in the case of film and several thousand years years in the case of the performing arts and literature seems to be indicative of a failure to appreciate the potential for artistic expresion inherent in the medium. It is likely that no one here would be able to guess what form that medium that we today call gaming will have adopted in 50 years time.
And for my final point…Please do not eat me! I am more useful to you alive!
Out of curiosity are any of you actually trained in art? Was it your major; did you study it in grad school? Is it central to your life? Just curious.
“Anything can be art, but it doesn’t become art until someone wills it to be art, and people decide to perceive it as art. Most people can’t deal with that abstraction — or don’t want to.”
as with a great many things, Zappa was on the mark here too.
The above sentence was not enjoyable to making. My apologies.
Bill, not to derail but this is a big reason that I, logically, have to support video games as art because they are a media through which artistic experience *could* happen.
You see, when some one who is anything but a white male goes to the standard historically inclined museum you are seeing the legacy of who is allowed and who is not allowed to make art. Women’s work falls under craft unless you are talking about one of the few lauded portrait or flower painters. Even then, they are not considered true artists and were not allowed in their time access to the same types of education or even methods of expression. Yes, there were individuals who broke that rule… like a handful of them from the Greeks to the 20th century.
You will not see Eastern art presented the way you might, say, at a historical museum in Japan.
You will not see meso-american art much.
Where you will see these things, they will be lumped together. The work of different people over a thousand years will all be collected together as “African” as if that means anything.
There was an artist actually whose entire work consisted of rearranging museum collections to challenge viewers about the read of art and history that they get passively by walking though the museum. Really brilliant work.
Now, even in a contemporary art museum or gallery, you may see art that is interactive, but this age old qualification of art as being valued by how much it fits into the historic cannon I think is one that needs tossing even as a rule of thought.
Art is whatever results from peoples aesthetic creativity, and just as those ceremonial masks may have been important to the culture from which they were taken, and Rembrant may be important to some (I can’t stand him), video games may be a valid method of cultural sharing and communication for a group of people.
Now, that is actually, to me not a fuck-it-all stance. There’s something to be said for art that is trying to communicate some large idea or resonate with people on some deeper level. But as far as rank… it’s not so simple. One might ask several different questions:
How much prestige do I gain from viewing this, from owning it? If I gain a lot it is *good* art and if I gain little it is *bad* art.
Then separately how much to I feel rewarded by my experience with this?
Two separate questions.
Me. It was my undergrad major (arts and performance) and also my subject in grad school (MFA program painting, MA program art history).
And with that though, I have to go…. it has been fun. I’ll look back later at what people said.
Robert H @ 575
Yes. I am involved in film, writing, and painting, all of which I studied, including in graduate school, and all of which I am currently pursuing professionally and/or for fun.
Not sure that it makes my opinion any more valid though.
RobertH @ 575:
Several of us (at least) have pointed out we’re working artists. I’ve been a successful working artists for over 30 years. I don’t define “art”. It’s subjective, art is whatever people decide it is. Yes, there’s classical art, modern art, and so on; still, that’s just people deciding certain things a/o styles are art in the first place.
they shopped local and raided the local acting scene.
that’s still miles above most games, which simply utilize their own programmers and artists as “voice talent”.
:P
*ahem* Including the co. I worked for once upon a time.
sadly, I was unable to make the cut to get my voice into the last game we were producing.
damnit.
:)
I did my degree in Computer Science (Game Programming). So I don’t know art, but I know how to make games.
Rutee SH0D (@536):
I think I see where you’re coming from with this…
…but I disagree that I’ve created a false dichotomy. In fact, I think you’re actually helping me make my point by using the word intended: I’ve been trying to focus on intentionality as a key discriminator all along, saying that art is distinguished by what it intends to do.
Plenty of objects or activities provoke emotional responses because they’re difficult, or critically important, or somebody’s happiness or well-being depends on it, but that doesn’t make them all art; what distinguishes art from those things (in my own purely idiosyncratic model, that is) is that it’s specifically created for the artist’s intentional purpose of evoking some sort of emotion.
My comment about functional challenges referred to things that are games in the purest sense. A basketball game may produce tension and anticipation and anxiety if the game is very competitive, but it’s not about those things; it’s about getting the ball in the hoop more often than the other team does. Golf may (famously does) generate frustration and inchoate fury because it’s so difficult, but it hasn’t been design and crafted specifically to create an occasion for people to muse on the existential nature of fury.
OTOH, a Rothko canvas isn’t any sort of test of the viewers ability to perform some skill, or to achieve some goal. Its purpose is evocative rather than competitive.
I may not be explaining it well, but I see this distinction as one of kind. I also think video and computer games can operate as either art or pure contest… and I think they can combine the two.
If the functional challenge is embedded in a narrative with artistic intentions, and is facing a character into whom you (i.e., the player) have invested your emotions, and is dependent on your real-world skills for its accomplishment, then I say you’re engaged in both art and sport.
That’s not dichotomy; that’s synthesis.
So, I’ve been away from the discussion for a while, and I have a few beers in me now, but I feel the need to address something stated by PZ a while back:
I say that this is missing a big point.
Like I said previously, I think that it is a great form of art to get all the artful pieces of a game (sound, visuals, storytelling, controls) to work together in a good and compelling matter.
In games that manage this, the game invokes feelings, they place your mind in a different place, you are affected on several levels both by the ambiance and the story, even as you don’t purposely think about it. This is what happens in a good game – if you enjoy playing it as such an experience.
There are a lot of games that are very similar in gameplay. Two FPS shooters contain the exact same “aim gun, shoot people”-gameplay. But one of them might be an epic FPSRPG that lets you explore a brand new world, feel despair over humanity’s fleeting existence and the egocentric nature that so often destroys us… while the other is just that you’re some guy out to chew bubble gum and shoot generic aliens.
The same game mechanics – walk around, shoot the bad guys, survive – radically different emotions invoked in you. In a good game, or at least an artistic game (the non-artistic, shoot generic aliens-games can also be good fun, of course), you play for the story, for the ambiance, for the feelings invoked.
The game mechanics is just a vessel for bringing you into it. It is just something that leads to better immersion into the game world, letting you experience the game more fully. In a well-designed artistic game it lets you really feel the game for a fleeting moment, letting you really care about what happens, feel sadness, joy, pain and exhilaration in regards to the developments in the story.
But – and here is an important point – you can always play the game with a “Push this button, shoot that target, solve that puzzle, kill that zombie, get a reward.”-mentality. If that is all you want from the game, you can do that.
You can walk around the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3 and completely ignore the beautiful vistas, the music that helps your immersion into the brilliant blend of 50’s/60’s pulp science fiction, values, music and general nostalgia, et cetera. You can just walk around shooting people to get caps, never bothering to talk with people, exploring the storyline or getting to know some of the well-developed characters. And you can have a very good time playing a game that way, if that’s what you want.
That doesn’t mean that “Push this button, shoot that target, solve that puzzle, kill that zombie, get a reward” is all there is to it. That just means that it is all you see.
Just like all I see in a Jackson Pollock painting is a bunch of random paint splatters that mean nothing to me. Just like a lot of poetry is clearly beyond the workings of my particular mind. Just like some experimental music is just noise to me. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t more than random colors, random words or random noise there – it just means that it isn’t exactly for me. And to be honest I don’t think I should say that it isn’t art just because I personally don’t see more than the superficial.
Yes.
NEver finished my BFA. Ran out of money.
I’ve been a professional artist for the last decade however, with video games as my medium of choice.
Shadow of the Colossus came out 5 years ago.
…and only for the PS2?
anyone ever come out with a PC version?
I bloody hate consoles.
:(
Yes, but he is A TROLL. This is why I adore him, however.
Him and Kubo (the Bleach author) are the 2 greatest trolls I know.
I love them both so much.
Are you suggesting that it would be art if people bought it for a different reason?
How about Silent Hill or Eternal Darkness? Those games are bought for exactly that reason. Eternal Darkness will start lowering the volume to make you think someone is behind you with the remote. If you end a level with low sanity, it may tell you the game is over and let you know the sequel is coming soon.
You know, I see a lot of accusations and a lot of dismissals and quite a bit of self-contradictory nonsense. Art is not “what PZ says it is” or “what Ebert says it is” but things created by people.
The fact that you can or cannot interact with it is meaningless. The fact that you can or cannot make money with it is also meaningless. In a similar vein, saying it is or is not art because Kurosawa made it is equally spurious. What is or is not art has nothing to do with who made it or why they made it, and everything to do with what people who experience it think! I wouldn’t use some of the portraits in the national gallery to wipe my ass, but that doesn’t mean they are not art.
Right. enough for me for one day.
Come to think of it, some books are interactive. Anybody remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? Of course, those are “not art.”
I’m going to say that “art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions.” (Wikipedia) And based on that definition, I’m going to go over the top and say that the video game medium is the medium with not only the most potential to be art, but that certain examples from video games are better than any piece of alleged art I’ve ever seen.
The Mona Lisa *yawn* it’s a girl without eyebrows and a toothless smile. Even the height of cinema as an art form, Airplane! pales in comparison to the impact of the Nuke scene from Modern Warfare. A scene that would not be as moving if presented a painting or a movie. The reason for the heightened potential of video games is their integration of interactivity with linear storytelling to go along with stunning visuals and music. It has all the elements of cinema which is generally considered art, and it adds interactivity, and that somehow removes its impact to the senses or emotions? No, it adds to the emotional impact. A non-interactive representation only pretends to be art in its presence.
For the most part I agree with you PZ, but I can’t help but feel this post could probably be better titled “PZ Myers ticks off TeamLiquid.net”.
As others have mentioned, Starcraft is hugely popular and very entertaining to watch for those that take the time to learn how to appreciate it.
Slightly off topic:
Does anyone else want Werner Herzog to start making games?
I /so/ want to see what he’d come up with…
You could always try running it with an emulator, if you’ve got a beefy system. I seem to recall a reasonably-functional PS2 emulator awhile back.
I still don’t get why the fandom calls Kubo a troll. He simply doesn’t plan his story ahead of time, which results in a lot of character/exposition waste as well as asspulls. I haven’t really seen anything deliberately trollish that can’t be sufficiently explained by his on the record lack of planning.
How about The Lady or the Tiger?
@575
Undergrad for my minor (Literature, technically, but we focused a lot on cross-genre and I had a lot of training in the focus of art and was recruited by more art-heavy friends and professors to be a part of performance art installations and art films).
@PZ and for everyone
Another thing on art is that new mediums unlock new abilities in the artistic sphere. Kojima’s Metal Gear series has always had strong artistic visions, unique interpretation of the audience (even actively fucking with them on multiple occasions), strong story, evocative music, strong characterization, etc… Potentially Ran worthy and with strong postmodern interactions with the player and the idea of a gamer in a lot of Metal Gear Solid 2, especially the “f-ed up” section.
However Metal Gear Solid 3 added a whole new element that is impossible in any other artistic medium.
It judges you as a person.
The game itself judges you on your tolerance of violence and your desensitization to eliminating pixelated representations of animals and people to meet goal-oriented objectives and thus comment on the nature of war and the way it destroys ethics.
It does so by having a section where you have to walk down a river and the ghosts of every person you killed rushes down the river in the other way, animals too.
Killed many people and animals? The river will take forever, minute after minute of rolling ghosts seeming to swamp and drain you and needing you to shake them off as your personal guilt as a player sinks in to your careless destruction.
Killed no-one or nothing? The river will be over in a blur, only containing bosses that you had no choice to kill to progress and is almost relaxing, except for the reminder of mortality that will claim even the most conscientious of people.
The experience is a literally accurate reflection of what you did, how you approach a game like Metal Gear Solid 3 and how much priority you give to making it “easier on yourself” or “convenience” over the value of a human life (even a virtual reproduction).
While movies like Requiem for a Dream may hate their audience and may judge them for things that most of the audience is probably guilty of (thinking they’re better than drug addicts and being generally blind to their plight), they can never be 100% accurate in the way Metal Gear Solid 3 and that impact is ever more forceful because you really did bring it, however that scene played out, onto yourself. A unique artistic point in service to the larger points on violence and war in general which the game and series more broadly explore.
So it’s great that new mediums can be opened, because they open whole new ways for an artist to make their statements and make them more impactful.
I see what you’re saying, Bill. I’m not sure if I’d use the term sport, but I suspect you don’t mean necessarily competition with other people for points so I can let it go.
i wouldn’t use any of the portraits in the national gallery to wipe my ass. most of them are much too rough, and none of them are nearly absorbent enough.
OK, so let me get this straight: telling a tale of the hero’s journey is art (storytelling or literature), showing a tale of the hero’s journey is art (film, or comics/sequential art), but writing down an idea which allows the viewer to participate in a tale of the hero’s journey is not art? You’re right that “going in and exploring art” is not itself art – but the artwork is what is explored. Just because gamers aren’t making art as they play (and even some games with player-generated content can blur that line), it does not follow that the thing they are interacting with is not itself a work of art. Games contain many pieces of art, true, just like films also contain many pieces of art. But the whole movie is a work of art in its own right, and so is Shadow of the Colossus. It’s just art that requires an active participant to be experienced (and all art is, at some level, participatory, because it has to engage the audience).
For the record, I never thought anyone was saying games are bad, I always thought that you and Ebert both were saying, “This entire realm of human endeavor which we call ‘art’ is forever closed to that class of craft.” I call bullshit. Art can be done in any medium and at any time (though it rarely is). You can have participatory art and you can have participatory art with a controller, and reaching the end of an engaging narrative with difficult challenges along the way diminishes the artful nature of the experience about as much as the demands of following complex character interactions diminish the artful nature of literature. In other words, not at all, and in fact quite the opposite (it enriches the experience and makes the audience more involved). One finishes playing an artful game no differently than one finishes reading an artful book. “Points” and “win conditions” don’t disqualify games any more than “vocabulary” and “endings” disqualify books – in either case, the viewer can quit because it’s too hard, and all it means is that that viewer couldn’t get through it.
The game is the medium, like the book or the DVD or the canvas. The ideas (and their execution) in the game/book/movie/music/painting/dance/etc. are what’s artful. The tiny laser etchings on a DVD are not the art, nor is anything that goes on in the guts of the DVD player; the art is what those etchings represent – if the movie is artful, then experiencing the movie is an artful experience. The code of a game represents a game world, and mutatis mutandis, if the game world is artful then experiencing it is also an artful experience. Braid puts you through a hero’s journey and at the end, SPOILER ALERT!, it turns out that a quirk of perspective means you played as the bad guy all along. I watch people play this game so that I can see the look on their face as they realize the true role that they have played in the game world. You think you’re saving the princess, but since you experience time backwards from other people, she’s actually running for her life from you and trying to kill you in the final level, rather than saving your life and clearing your path as you first experience it. The player’s task, pushing buttons and imagining being the character, represents Tim’s existence and experiences in a way similar to how charcoal on a rock represents a bison. Everything besides the player’s actions are the art – the world, in other words, built for the player to experience. It’s second-person storytelling; how is that possibly excluded from art?
The contest becomes paramount to you. Jeez, that’s like saying that the charity falls out of microfinancing loans when you stack up how Kiva atheists are doing against Kiva Christians – maybe for some, but not categorically, and not in principle. I got all sucked up in the contest, and now it’s not art any longer! Or charity. Whatever we were talking about. I’m sorry it’s tough for you to be immersed in this particular thing while doing it. That would definitely stand in the way of experiencing video games as art, if you can’t immerse yourself in the world while simultaneously navigating it. But I could just as easily say that “my inability to suspend disbelief when someone says things which aren’t true” prevents me from expeirencing any manner of fiction as art – but this is my problem, not a shortcoming of the medium. Turns out, I’m bad at appreciating fictional stories. They’re still art.
Chess and Go are art: sure, you can play them to win, most people do. Most people stop there. I think they’re very refined distillations of war (Go moreso than Chess), in which each player experiences the problem of leveraging existing resources into a position of advantage, and balances the need to get ahead with the need to hold on to some manner of stability. Watching a game of Chess or Go unfold can be just as riveting as playing one, if you allow yourself to be drawn into the experience. Tic-tac-toe and other solved games (even some non-complex board games, or games that rely too heavily on chance) are non-art, to my mind. Video games which are fun but not artful can certainly sell, but the medium of the video game is just as capable of being artful as any other medium. “Merely fun” games are to video games what “just another portrait of some noble” is to painting, or what “yearbook photos” are to photography. It’s what you do to pay the bills, it’s not the refined distillation of human experience that characterizes art.
Which studio? Mine did this a few times as well.
Once used the bosses wife as placeholder audio… man that was a mistake.
You’re right that “going in and exploring art” is not itself art – but the artwork is what is explored.
Mussorsgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” comes to mind.
well, assuming music is considered art.
I’ve never taken a cooking class, but I still feel (erroneously, perhaps) that I’ve got some of the basic qualifications to discuss what is food and what isn’t.
Why? Is art only made by and meant to be consumed by trained artists?
“Hey, Bob. I heard you saw that play last night. Did it ‘deliberately arrange elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions’?”
“Uh, I’m not sure, Susan.”
“Well, it said in the paper that the playwright has an MFA.”
“Oh, then yes. Yes it did.”
“But you only go to a few plays a year. Theatre certainly isn’t central to your life.”
“Uh, right. Then no, no it didn’t.”
It’s simple really. Jerry “Tycho” Holkins doesn’t like Roger Ebert. Ebert is a true craftsman. A professional writer.
Holkins is a talentless hack that tortures the English language for profit.
I recently completed another playthrough of Mass Effect and if that game ranks lower on some “art” scale than Lady Gaga…well I know that has to be subjective but come on.
The very fact that one has to push buttons is what can allow a game to make some truly emotional statements. During the mission on Virmire, two members of your squad are cut off in widely separated areas of the enemy’s base. To make sure the mission succeeds one of them starts overload sequence for the reactor you’re using to destroy the base and tells you to save the other squad member. The choice is put entirely in your hands which one of them lives or dies and that was what made the moment so powerful. We had gotten to know these characters over dozens of hours of gameplay, knew about their past, their fears, their hopes, and may have even started a romance with one of them. Now, you’re being asked to leave one of them to their death. I chose to save Kaidan and Ashley’s last line is truly heartbreaking.
Shepard: “I’m sorry…I had to choose.”
Ashley: “It’s okay, Commander. I don’t regret anything”
Going back to the ship and seeing the empty space where she used to clean her weapons and chat about everything from family to politics to the work of Tennyson was just as large a punch in the gut because I was responsible for her not being there.
If something crafted with care by dozens of artists, programmers, designers, composers, and actors is not art then I don’t know how anything else could be. I’ve never been moved by a painting or a piece of sculpture that way and only a few books and movies have been able to do so. Games are art. The act of playing them does not diminish this but enhances it. It allows you to fully experience the complex combinations of audio effects, visual stimuli, and player actions that produce the effect the game designer was trying to invoke or even one completely your own.
Just because you don’t experience this doesn’t mean it does not mean that others do not as well. There are plenty of paintings and installations and post-modern creations that do absolutely nothing for me but I don’t go around saying their entire genre is not art or even that the particular pieces are not art. Art is a subjective thing and declaring entire mediums out of bounds for art simply makes one a wretched, ancient warlock as Tycho so eloquently put it.
Yes. YES.
For me, Silent Hill was an experience unlike any other. It just…gets…under…your…skin…
Although I’m one of the minority (I think) who preferred the Part 1 and Part 3 arc over Part 2 (although Pyramid Head is, well…damn…)
And there’s a point. Silent Hill was openly inspired by the movie Jacob’s Ladder, which many people think of as an artistic, if horrifying masterpiece (it’s one of my favorites). I shall argue that Silent Hill is a very worthy homage that in some ways manages to outdo its source of inspiration. So at what point does it stop being art (movie) and become just a game?
Thanks for the responses. I also avoided getting an education by going to art school (BFA and MFA).
I was curious because I know many (most?) regulars on this site are involved in the sciences. It might actually be interesting some day to see what the actual make-up of the group is: quantum physicists, environmental biologists, deists, atheists, other similar interesting factoids, etc.
I left Kaiden, and hated myself for it. Hit me again in ME2 when exploring the wreckage of the Normandy, standing by the ruins of his old console.
I seem to recall a reasonably-functional PS2 emulator awhile back.
I’ll take a looksee.
And now, I will make both PZ’s and Ebert’s heads explode:
Paris has a video game museum.
And. Scene.
I remember in my college classes for my English minor, we came across several interviews with authors that were quite interesting. The interviewer would gush, “What a genius you are! That parable/simile/metaphor/fable was so amazing! Thousands of people find your pineapples in a fruit salad so meaningful, when you consider that they actually stand for polar bears in the arctic, and how, since the pineapples disappear first, that all polar bears are going extinct! It’s such a great commentary on life!”
To which the author would reply with something along the lines of- “Aw, shucks. Well I actually didn’t intend for it to be interpreted that way, I was actually just representing how delicious pineapples are. But I’m glad that everyone finds meaning in it in that way.”
My goofy example aside, this situation implies that there are two forms and/or sides to art-
1. that which the artist intends, and
2. that which the viewer/listener/reader interprets.
Artists create art with intention; the recipient creates art with interpretation. And since my interpretation can be different than your interpretation, it all comes down to this:
Art is subjective.
Is it correct to say that video games aren’t art? I don’t think so.
Is it correct to say that video games aren’t art to you? Sure, why not?
I don’t neccessarily think that urinals are art, but that’s my interpretation.
Took a break from this thread for a while, re-read some of it…
Are you saying Halo is not art? Then none of them are art, and the case is closed.
This is the most full-blown retarded thing I’ve ever seen PZ post. Halo is not art, therefore all video games are not art – even those that posses almost no substantial elements in common with Halo.
Holy shit!
Holkins is a talentless hack that tortures the English language for profit.
*Rubs eyes*
Is that an actual argumentum ad hominem? Really? Are you actually dismissing the content of any complaint Holkins makes on the grounds of your assumption of jealousy? Because happy day, it would warm my heart to see a true ad hominem argument after weeks of “You insulted me, therefore ad hominem, therefore you are wrong”.
Ebert is a true craftsman. A professional writer.
…an artist?
We should do an online poll…
Obviously you are completely unaware of the “Let’s Play” phenomenon.
I had blockquotes but I eated them. :<
aratina cage (@560):
Nah. I’ve agreed with him on a few details, and disagreed with some of his critics on some others, but on the overarching question of “can video games ever be art” I’ve been fairly strongly and consistently disagreeing. Or I’ve meant to be, anyway; sorry if I haven’t made it perfectly clear.
As for the rest, I’m not sure how to respond without just repeating myself. I think you and I are in substantial agreement, anyway.
Cerberus and Mr T:
Thanks for the clarifications. This has been such a fast-and-furious conversation that I was worried I wasn’t following people’s argument precisely (hence my disclaimer in the comment you responded to). I think I’m in substantial agreement with y’all, too.
Ol’ Greg (@578):
This! Even if one thought no current game could be called art, it’s trivially easy to imagine an artist sitting down and designing something with the nominal form of “game” that would be art. It’s also easy to imagine a player approaching an open-ended gaming environment as an artist. (As a funny aside, I’ve read accounts of people hacking RockBand instruments and using them to make “real” original music… speaking of using the gaming “toolbox” to make art!)
Also, WRT your comments on the European White Male centrism of museums and collections, I gather from some of what I’ve read here about representations of homosexuality and women that gaming is a similarly tilted (i.e., male heteronormative) environment. But I admit I don’t know that firsthand.
JOOC, since you are academically trained in art and I’ve just been speaking as an opinionated layperson… have I been making any sense at all? Or have I just been stepping on my crank with one foot after the other?
Robert-
I’m actually both. Cell Biologist finishing up grad school who is as a hobby also a fiction writer (genre) who did some arts training for a minor in undergrad and may start expanding into learning some film techniques and a few other projects when I get back into the states.
My partner was heavily liberal arts and arts and is in grad school for poetry. I’ve also got a number of friends who are in grad school for various forms of literature or visual arts (including one at a fairly prestigious art school for animation).
I’m a creature of both worlds really. I just like to learn and teach.
Anyone have any ideas on how we could artistically represent the results?
Allow me to say firsthand that this is certainly true for now. I know a few feminists who were very happy with Bayonetta, however (I don’t have a PS3, so no comment), and the entertainment industry as a whole is very white male oriented. Or appears to me, at least. It also seems to slowly be changing, but who knows if it’ll break out?
I’ve got to add, Braid is an awesome game. Truly creative, very impressive!
I don’t agree. Computer games could be art if designed this way.
I think that maybe we could learn a bit from the ancients. One of the books that surprised me the most in a good sense in the user-interface design area is Brenda Laurel’s “Computer as Theater”. In it, she applies Aristotle’s Poetics and its principles for theater to user-interface design. I think something of the sort should be done with computer games not only with Aristotle. For instance I’ve learned very interesting things in the same area reading Kandinsky and such.
Although I agree it’s difficult and more so because it’s a collective work. But architects do art certainly so we need some artistic game architects :-)
Oh, and wealthy mécènes would be good too ;-)
PZ and Ebert are right. Games aren’t art, they aren’t artistic and nobody buys them for being artistic. They’re entirely about competition and game mechanics and action and winning and losing. That’s why Deus Ex and Bioshock would be just as popular if they had completely removed the story and environments and just had you fighting generic enemies in generic rooms with no reason given.
Okay I’m done being sarcastic.
Bill @618
I really blame english.
We use the same words for way too many different things and then mix their usage up culturally. So we get people like Ebert arguing the exceedingly narrow cultural definitions and then trying to use them to imply that it fails even by far broader standards or PZ arguing that following him to the narrowest standards somehow means we’ve abandoned the broader categories and thus somehow believe that all or most video games suck or aren’t even the broadest definition.
Damn linguistic fallability!
This! Even if one thought no current game could be called art, it’s trivially easy to imagine an artist sitting down and designing something with the nominal form of “game” that would be art
umm, since that actually HAS been done, on several occasions that I am aware of at least, then I have to say that your position is entirely based on ignorance, and now that you are no longer ignorant, you must then agree that indeed video games not only can be, but ARE art.
If what PZ is trying to say is that video games aren’t art, but are a special type of art museum, I think he’s splitting hairs but probably not wrong. Of course, the same should still apply for interactive plays.
Oh, I hada more relevant comment then my going :< at white male heteronormativity.
Also, Steven Spielberg’s Boom Blox.
Spielberg is a filmmaker, and I don’t think too many people would object to calling him an “artist” or the products of his efforts “art.” Is this conclusion suddenly valid when he decides to work in the video game medium instead?
(And I’m not a big fan of Boom Blox, I just think it’s a pretty good demonstration of an artist from a more traditional medium taking video games seriously enough to actually create one.)
Icthyic @626-
I think they were actually trying to make that point. Hence the “even if one thought” opening. Basically a “even if they had a point, they don’t have a point, sort of deal.
But yeah, David Cage and Fumito Ueda are both very much of that school. Fumito Ueda, particularly coming entirely from a traditional arts background (hence the invention of moving impressionism that gives SotC and Ico their distinctive artistic immersion).
Hell, most video game directors (if they care) are of that school because if you’re going to spend years mostly not sleeping or seeing your family, most artistically inclined people want to do it for something with some artistic merit, even if it is just in scenes or background elements.
Video games will become art when replaying the performance becomes something we find interesting, when the execution of those tools generates something splendid and lasting.
Done and done.
Just one example: I played through Mass Effect 5 or 6 times, and it was a different, unique experience each time. The responses of other characters and dialog options made it interesting and engaging.
It’s a creation of a large team of writers, programmers, image creators, 3-D modelers, voice actors, sound engineers, and a dozen other vocations. All artists.
PZ, with #610, you have definitively lost this argument, not that you ever stood a chance. :P
I’m beginning to suspect that tomorrow both PZ and Ebert will simultaneously claim “Ha-HAA! It was all just a masterful social experiment in mindfuckery, and a work of art in itself!”
I’m surprised that the Interactive Fiction work Galatea hasn’t been mentioned here. I would advise that any who are in doubt about the ability of computer games to fulfill artistic roles and functions familiarize themselves with this game.
So many of the comments seem to hinge around the capability of computer games to really engage the player on an emotional level; Galatea does this. Some comments have mentioned the railroading that the plots of many games have; Galatea avoids this. In the end, any honest attempt at exploring Galatea forces the player to contemplate its theme, which really goes beyond what many works that are accepted as “art” within a Western tradition do.
While the smiley does of course imply jokingness, it’s worth pointing out that Biblical Creation has a museum, which does not make it art. Of course, under the dictionary definition, both the creation museum presentation and video games would qualify as art…
Yes, I am a gamer…
…but what I do is not art. What I play is most certainly not art. It’s just a game.
/thread
Now back to doing my dialies in WoW.
Paris has a science museum. So?
Another point worth mentioning is the Silent Hill Story FAQs. There are a good number of them all disagreeing and all with heavy literature analysis and criticism as would be worthy of academic literary criticism (if they were better cited and cleaned up a little). Basically, there have been huge sections of fandom simply trying to piece together all the subtle elements of the connecting plots and thread through the larger themes and points the works were making with varying interpretations often involving theories of how related each of the games were to each other.
So, narratives complex enough to generate a large level of high-grade academic criticism deconstructing them?
That’d be another checkmark in the column of video-games not only as art, but of art “deserving” (for lack of a better word) of considerations by far narrower definitions and considerations.
And note me here, but I honestly do not believe it will be long before we start seeing academic level literature or art history dissertations on video games and video game storylines. Hell, I’m pretty sure it’s already occurring as I knew of several people who were doing art history theses on video games.
What? Of course it’s art; it’s just not good art.
I mean, it’s sure as hell not science.
Ichthyc (@626):
Ummm, yourself.
First, I said in my first post on this subject, and have repeated occasionally throughout the thread, that I’m not much of a gamer. As far as firsthand knowledge of gaming is concerned, yes, I’m ignorant. But so what? I’ve been honest about that, and I’ve tried very hard to avoid taking positions that depended on knowledge I admittedly didn’t have.
Second, my comment about something being possible in no way makes a statement or pretends any knowledge about whether it has been done. I very deliberately made it conditional: “Even if it hasn’t been done [which does not assert that it hasn’t], it obviously could be done.” You got a problem with that formulation?
Finally, I’ve been arguing all along that “video games not only can be, but[, within the limits of my self-admittedly meager knowledge, probably] ARE art.”
I feel like I’m taking a bit of friendly fire, here; in what particular do you think we disagree, and strongly enough to make you YELL at me?
@637
PZ, seriously? Are you trying to mindfuck us by doing the same thing the tone trolls do, ignoring the huge gaping flaws in your argument to snipe at the silly easy-to-handle objections?
Pathetic.
I’m coming in WAY late on this, but I had to add my two cents worth regarding watching people playing video games.
Before we all moved to different parts of the country, several of my friends and I would get together and make a weekend out of playing through whatever the newest survival-horror title was out (usually from the Silent Hill or Fatal Frame series). We were all there for the story; the person stuck actually playing the game wasn’t the one lucky one who enjoyed his task, but rather the one with gameplay skills enough to minimize dying.
I can’t watch someone play a racing game, Halo, World of Warcraft, or any of the mindless hours spent leveling in Final Fantasy. But games like Bioshock, the original Silent Hill, or Fatal Frame 2… yeah, I’d be more than happy to sit and watch people play over and over again.
Finally, I’ve been arguing all along that “video games not only can be, but[, within the limits of my self-admittedly meager knowledge, probably] ARE art.”
oh.
sorry.
*cleans powder burns off Bill*
P.Z., this is the most fantastic troll ever.
If you aren’t trolling, then I think the issue with Ebert and yourself is that you weren’t raised with video games. You were about 25-30 (according to your posts) when you first played games. :-/
I do know that there are games that meet the qualities you originally provided (a game I would replay several times and enjoy and get meaning out of each time).
So, yes, I think you are an ancient wretched warlock. Like my crazy catholic mother, except she’s a witch. ;-D
Paris has a science museum. So?
so indeed.
let’s discuss whether a particular scientific experiment could be considered art, or whether any given scientist could be considered an artist.
well?
PZ:
The quote below illustrates exactly what you are simply failing to understand here.
“I see the game, not playing it, I get a good impression. It looks like art. Then — and here’s the point you elided — I play the game, my impression is diminished. It becomes mechanics. Push this button, shoot that target, solve that puzzle, kill that zombie, get a reward. Do it some more. Get more rewards. The art fades into the background, the contest becomes paramount.”
Well I’m very sorry about that. Really, the world of gaming apologizes for not holding your interest. However your experience says nothing about the experience which I, and many others, have while playing video games. Playing the game for me does not in fact just reduce it to a contest, it immerses me even more in the world. Instead of viewing the wonderful landscape, I am inside of it fighting for my life. I don’t care how many games you have played, if at no point you have felt that feeling of immersion in a gameworld then you are just as qualified to speak on the matter as someone who has never picked up a controller.
Do you think that everyone here who has told you about their gaming experiences is just lying?
Gaming being art does not stand or fall on you having this experience with a video game.
If you played every damn game in the world and came away cold it would in no way diminish the experience that I had playing Bioshock or Mass Effect 2 for the first time.
I would accept that there is a spectrum from video games as art to video games as sport. Most multiplayer shooters are probably closer to sports in terms of the experience that most people have. I would accept that when you play a video it feels like a sport. So fine, for you, a video game is a sport. For me, and millions of other people, this is simply not true. Hate to get all PoMo but we are talking about art after all.
Another plug here for Planescape: Torment as art. I replay it about once a year, much like rereading a favourite novel – the only thing I have that is vaguely similar is Kim Newman’s Life’s Lottery.
Both of them are art specifically designed for an interactive medium; I wouldn’t say that the reader/player are creating art, but they are most certainly experiencing it.
The movie Star Wars is art. *well you might no agree with that, but you probably agree movies in general are art* A game based on the movie telling the same story isn’t art.
Why? Because you have to press buttons and complete challenges to advance the story in a game? Does this mean I could turn Casablanca into non-art by editing it so you have to solve a puzzle or hit the right combination of buttons on the remote between every scene?
Something like “World of Warcraft” or “Halo” is art to the same extent that the prints of watercolours you can buy from IKEA are art – they’re created by the demands of what sells well, not by any particular idea or emotion from the artist’s soul.
If we are to reject them as art because they are shaped by economic constraints, then the cartoonist drawing pictures of tourists on the street is not an artist, the classical painters who worked on commission did not create art, and the ceiling of the Sistine chapel is not art. If Michaelangelo has to make a living, then so does everyone else.
I think the problem is in this debate Ebert, Myers, Penny Arcade are all confusing defining “art” with the problem of distinguishing good art from bad art. And that’s a matter of taste. I think any creative work should be considered art, and then you can move on to the worthwhile discussion of what you like about it, what you don’t like and why. But do play “Katamari Damacy” and “Psychonauts” before declaring that video games are all artistically vapid.
Incidentally, the British tax payer paid for this “art”:
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999875&workid=12975&searchid=18658
Seriously. I’m not saying it’s not art, I’m saying it’s utter crap and it’s not worth paying for. Maybe Ebert should be saying that too.
I’ve been quiet so far, mostly because everybody’s already said most of what I want to say. I have to respond to a couple of PZ’s comments though.
My answer to all of these is Bioshock. Although I haven’t seen Ran, I have seen a lot of beautiful, emotional artistic films, and Bioshock affected me more than any of them. I’ve never seen a movie that made me feel actual fear, but that’s exactly what convinced me to buy Bioshock, despite the fact that I didn’t really like first person shooters at the time. When I first played the demo, my heart was pounding in my chest every time I saw something move in the shadows.
The game wasn’t about solving puzzles, or shooting targets, or earning rewards for me, although it did have those things. What it is about is exploring the beautiful shattered paradise of Rapture, and finding out how it came to be the way it is. The mechanics of the game don’t diminish the artistic elements, quite the opposite. If Bioshock was a movie, or a book, I couldn’t become as invested in it as I do. It’s emotional impact is as powerful as it is because I become the protagonist rather than just watching him. When I can hear a splicer around the corner gibbering madly to herself, my heart leaps into my throat, because I feel like I’m really there, fighting to survive. When I defeat a Big Daddy and I’m standing over a terrified little sister, holding her teddy bear and crying, I feel real empathy for her, and feel good about helping her (or inversely, guilty and ashamed over killing her to harvest her Adam).
I’m guessing you won’t read this, PZ. I mean, there’s already close to 700 posts, you’re probably getting sick of this argument. I just had to give my 2 cents, though, because if that’s not art, I don’t know what is.
People are bouncing about between two arguments.
1. The snob argument — if it’s not good enough, it isn’t art. I do not accept this one, which is why I said that if you won’t accept Halo as art, then your whole point is gone. The genre is either art, or it isn’t. You get to point out that most of what is produced is bad art, but to dismiss the validity of an example because you don’t like it means you’re in the snob trap.
And yes, that means that what Uwe Boll does is art. It’s extremely bad art, but still…he’s trying.
2. The argument I actually favor is that video games by their nature should not be regarded as art. They’re different. Of course video games use art, but they have more in common with an athletic event, which is a game. And telling me over and over again that this game is beautiful, this game is inspiring, this one has mood and character, doesn’t change that at all…because sports fans will say the same thing about their game.
In this category, most of the arguments here make art a pointless term, because everything is art. It becomes an exercise in artism, which is the pretty, flashy cousin of scientism. You just can’t take something you like and bloat it up to the point it encompasses everything, or it becomes meaningless.
By the way PZ. You have said many flat out incorrect things about video games which you have not responded to.
“A great painting or poem is something that represents an idea or emotion, communicated through the skill of an artist, to make you see through his or her eyes for a moment. Computer games just don’t do that. No team sits down to script out a video game with the intent of creating a tone poem in interactive visual displays that will make the player appreciate the play of sunlight on a lake, for instance. It’s all about balance and game play and keeping the action going and providing a means to win or lose, and most of all, it’s about giving the player control in the game environment. No one wants to play a game that’s on rails and simply leads you to the conclusion the author wants. In that sense, a good game hands the player a toolbox to work within the game environment — it is to art as providing a studio and a set of pigments and a collection of brushes.”
This paragraph contains at least 5 gross misunderstanding of video games. Frankly too many have responded for me to rehash it. Search around and respond to these if you want the gamers here to take you a bit more seriously.
I’ve been quiet so far, mostly because everybody’s already said most of what I want to say. I have to respond to a couple of PZ’s comments though.
My answer to all of these is Bioshock. Although I haven’t seen Ran, I have seen a lot of beautiful, emotional artistic films, and Bioshock affected me more than any of them. I’ve never seen a movie that made me feel actual fear, but that’s exactly what convinced me to buy Bioshock, despite the fact that I didn’t really like first person shooters at the time. When I first played the demo, my heart was pounding in my chest every time I saw something move in the shadows.
The game wasn’t about solving puzzles, or shooting targets, or earning rewards for me, although it did have those things. What it is about is exploring the beautiful shattered paradise of Rapture, and finding out how it came to be the way it is. The mechanics of the game don’t diminish the artistic elements, quite the opposite. If Bioshock was a movie, or a book, I couldn’t become as invested in it as I do. It’s emotional impact is as powerful as it is because I become the protagonist rather than just watching him. When I can hear a splicer around the corner gibbering madly to herself, my heart leaps into my throat, because I feel like I’m really there, fighting to survive. When I defeat a Big Daddy and I’m standing over a terrified little sister, holding her teddy bear and crying, I feel real empathy for her, and feel good about helping her (or inversely, guilty and ashamed over killing her to harvest her Adam).
I’m guessing you won’t read this, PZ. I mean, there’s already 650 posts, you’re probably getting sick of this argument. I just had to give my 2 cents, though, because if that’s not art, I don’t know what is.
Another thing worth noting for the “generational problem” is that games have a barrier before experiencing it.
This is of course true of most art mediums. You’ll get more out of literature if you know about literary craft and tropes and deeper elements and you can’t even get into them if you don’t know how to read and will only get a little out of them (often frustratingly) if you are only literate and struggle with difficult passages.
Gaming, to slip into the immersion of the experience, to let the world consume you and to progress in the story requires similar basic skills that lifelong gamers take as for granted as lifelong readers. And these skills are often an even higher barrier than we notice for even entry-level appreciation. To say, experience Bioshock, you need to be able to work 4 regular buttons, 2-4 shoulder buttons, two thumb sticks, a d-pad, basic 3D manipulation and movement, basic shooter mechanics, basic shooter conventions, and a bunch of other things most of us have learned over a long time playing video games.
For my dad, playing this game as his first “first-person shooter”, it was very difficult to get the hang of and it was almost hard to pay attention to the amazing details of the background and subtle story elements because just trying to “not die” on the easiest difficulty level was over-consuming his focus.
He actually was able to appreciate the game’s depths as a form of art and storytelling when I was sitting with him watching the game because I could give him hints on how to survive, how to manage things like health and mana and how to find the story elements easier and some hints on how to deal with the turrets, cameras, and splicers in a way that made them easier to manage.
Basically that may also be affecting things like PZ’s or Ebert’s denunciations of the medium, especially when the works that are easier to figure out also don’t tend to be the most artistically dense. The works most artistically dense tend to be rather brutal to players who don’t know the shorthand gamers have built up over the years (here’s how to move in 3D, here’s how to target or run, this is probably highlighting an element I can interact with, I should explore this area, here’s how to fire something or swing something, here’s how to manipulate inventory, my reflexes are honed by memorization of the controller so I don’t have to look to know what to press, etc…).
PZ, I haven’t seen you answer those serious and well thought of comments, like (just picked up a few more recent ones, there are plenty more) D #600, Cerberus #597, Zabinatrix #585.
I just don’t get it. What’s so special in video games as a medium for expressing oneself, conveying emotions and thoughts that it could (or should) not be accepted as art? I’d really like to know.
This is very disappointing.
One must have either a very narrow definition of art, a very lacking knowledge of games, or both, to come to this conclusion PZ.
Certainly, some games are of a virtual-sporting design, but a great many more are nothing short of story telling marvels, where the plot unfolds around the viewer, including the viewer, rather than simply before his eyes.
Lets assume a motion picture is art. Does it cease to be art if the audience gets to make a decision on behalf of a character at some point, and see the repercussions play out before them? What if they get to make a thousand moral choices and get to see a complex result of their decisions play out? In a world that is crafted by artists (if we may still call them that) with as much deliberate intent as a major motion picture. That is the experience of modern gaming.
Lets assume the static image is art. Does it cease to be art if the artist shows a series of static images based on the viewers reaction to the previous piece? No, PZ, it simply becomes interactive art. That is the experience of modern gaming.
Both the process, and the end result, is truly and unmistakably art, by the most base of definitions.
Your conclusion, speaks more of your limited experiences with the subject than it does of the subject itself, and it’s disappointing that you would use the soap-box you have here to wrongly discredit a legitimate medium.
You can’t display a symphony or a theatrical performance in your home- does that mean that music and theatre are not art?
Art isn’t so expansive as to include sports, but video games (though they contain sporting elements), are nonetheless art. To suggest, as Ebert does, that the visuals and the writing and such in video games are only other forms of art interespersed in the gaming experience is almost comically ignorant coming from a film critic. Is the dialogue and dramatic structure in 90% of films just theater and literature interspersed in the film experience (as filmmakers like Dziga Vertov suggested)? No! It’s part of a cohesive experience!
To suggest that the “game” portion of the experience definitely disqualifies it as art ignores the reality that games are almost inevitably won, and played along very particular narrative arcs. I would agree that earlier games, such as Donkey Kong, don’t fully qualify as art. They are much more like board games and the like. However, games like Deus Ex or Mass Effect are most definitely art. They have narrative arcs. They communicate themes. They feature compelling original characters. They derive their emotional power from the careful and deliberate arrangement of music, visual action, dialogue, etc.
If you want to say video games aren’t art, then you need to create a definition of art that includes film, music, theatre, and all the manifestations thereof (including participatory forms, such as improvisation, theatre of the oppressed, etc.). If you can’t create such a definition, then you have absolutely no grounds except personal prejudice on which to deny video games their place alongside other mediums of expression. Needless to say, this is impossible. Video games are indeed art, no matter what old fogies who don’t play them say.
@PZ 637:
Found the timing amusing; you know, big long thread about video games not being art; Paris has a minor rep for being a capital of art,…
Ah, never mind.
Yes, yes, we get it, P.Z., we can’t have everything be art. But you’ve yet to explain what definition of ‘art’ you’re using, why games do not comply to it, and why your definition is better than “It moves you.”
Hm. I’m not sure this would hold true for all the games I’d consider “art,” but…yeah, if you wanna call some of them interactive novels/movies and not really “games,” I don’t care. Heck, some of them specifically tried to use that label in the early days.
This is a good example of ‘not getting it’.
And ‘Missing the point entirely’.
This is also the exact argument used against film near the beginning of the last century.
Telling us over and over again that ‘it just isn’t art’ isn’t a good argument, and fails on many levels.
Paraphrasing you earlier, Games will be art when people replay them to appreciate them again.
People do, and ignoring that is intentionally obtuse.
And telling me over and over again that this game is beautiful, this game is inspiring, this one has mood and character, doesn’t change that at all…because sports fans will say the same thing about their game.
no.
what you are missing is us telling you not that something is beautiful or inspiring, but that it was INTENDED to be so.
please, look at the definition of art itself that has been posted numerous times.
Now, tell us EXACTLY how, if a production team for a video game intended it to be a piece of art, how it is not, since by definition that makes it so.
if the user of a video game percieves it as art, then by definition that also makes it so.
No, we’re using the dictionary definitions of ‘Art’.
The question is how you’re defining art, and how you justify excluding one medium over another.
So you don’t have to search the whole thread to refer to the definitions (from masterdarksol at 535):
Wikipedia:
Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions.
or Merriam-Webster:
The conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects
How do video games not fit? What definition are you using that excludes video games? Are you ever going to cop to the straight out false content in your original post that has been pointed out several times? Seriously, we get it. You’re an old cranky warlock unmoved by video games. But that doesn’t let you dictate the state of video games without actually being familiar with how others experience them.
Oh, feck.
Read PZ’s piece, disagreed with both himself and Ebert for possibly the first time ever… and waded into what was at the time 638 comments.
I tried really hard to read them all, as I
alwaysusually do before responding, but it’s getting a bit late here in jolly ol’ Ireland and… I’m sure someone else has already expressed these very thoughts, but:The definition of art must certainly change over time, as new media are developed. If cinema can be considered art, then so too can video games. Good production values are relevant to both. I’ve been playing and reviewing video games since their very inception, and am also a complete film freak (watched many significant films from 30’s through 90’s).
Bottom line: I’ll take Planescape: Torment or Pandora Directive or Fallout 3 over my fav films (not telling) *anytime*. Reason: the ability to interact with the medium magnifies the intensity of the experience many-fold. Full stop, end of story, game over.
I have to disagree here, PZ. I think that’s the whole difference between art and science, which many people confuse with the difference between “subjectivity” and “objectivity.” Art is a mimetic vector; that’s what I meant when I specified that games such as Galatea “fulfill an artistic function.” If it doesn’t speak to you, it’s not art to you, and that’s perfectly valid. There’s no valid way for any second party to examine what a person responds to as art and reasonably say, “No, you’re wrong; that’s not art and this is.”
This doesn’t hold for science. With appropriate justification, it’s perfectly reasonable to say, “No, you’re wrong; that’s not science, this is.”
“If you want to see something really boring, watch someone else playing a video game. Then imagine recording that game, and wanting to go back and watch the replay again sometime. ”
The real irony here is that I read this while listening to commentary on a Starcraft 2 replay of somebody else playing Starcraft 2.
PZ, I love you to death, but you just really don’t understand videogames, and neither does Ebert. Spend 40 hours playing through Bioshock or Fallout 3 or Final Fantasy or Mass Effect and tell me there is no art, grand storytelling, creativity, conveyance of ideas, and any of the other things that make literature, poetry, or paintings enjoyable.
And on the competitive side of gaming, the parallels to sports are even more blatantly clear.
Gotta be a generation gap thing.
PZ, you’re wrong about the whole if video games as a whole aren’t art then none of them are art. The argument can be made that competitive multiplayer is more like a sport than art. But you are committing an error by saying that this means that all of video games are the same as sport. It would be the same as the argument that since not all physical activities are art that means ballet cannot be art since basketball isn’t art. Personally, I would consider halo’s singleplayer art and the competitive multiplayer sport.
Okay, people have asked this before, but it’s been ignored, so I’m going to go ahead and ask again: As a storytelling medium that combines words, emotion, music, and imagery, what EXACTLY sets games apart from movies or theater, other than the interactivity?
Further, your own rejection of quality as the defining trait of art is the death knell for another of your arguments. If, as you say, sou reject that standard, then the opinion that games haven’t reached the standards of, say, Ran, IN NO WAY shows games as non-art. Inferior art, perhaps, but art nevertheless. If the work of Boll counts as art (though bad), then if a game can match the “window into the human condition” set down by Boll’s work, they are art.
Brownian, OM @ 603
Absolutely not! Of course you are mixing apples and …
In re food: you have a lifetime of experience with it. You have eaten hundreds of different foodstuffs on thousands of different occasions. You have developed preferences and most likely have developed an overarching aesthetic regarding food. Perhaps you cook on a regular basis as well, maybe even experiment with foods, research and create recipes, etc. You might be a gourmet. Have you put in the same amount of effort, exploration, and consideration regarding any of the arts? Possibly so; obviously I don’t know.
I do know, however, that most people in this culture (and I use the term broadly) do not consider any of the arts in a profound and systematic way. They are grazers, not thinkers. Their tastes are parochial and shaped by the lowing of the herd in their immediate vicinity. Although they are surrounded as no society in history has been surrounded by the arts they tend to be artistically illiterate. These comments might seem offensive but if I were to substitute the word “science” for the word “art” I doubt that I would get many on this blog who would disagree with me. Don’t for a second imagine that art is not rigorous and demanding of passion, discipline, and a thirst for truth. There is a reason why it has been a sister of the sciences over the centuries.
So art is not by the elite for the elite. It is a common stirring throughout all cultures. As children we all are artists, as we all are scientists. If science is the hunger to know then art is the hunger to express. As we “grow up” we tend to devolve into what we perceive society expects us to be; we become sheep. Our curiosity wanes along with our desire to express our unique vision of life. For most people art as a vital part of our lives dies by junior high school.
People who are not formally trained in art can, and often do, have prodigious talent. They likewise can possess insight into what art is, and what it is not. In the same way people not formally trained in the sciences can possess abilities and insights into science, some of them profoundly so; look at the number of discoveries made by amateur astronomers. However, my limited experience is that most people are clueless when it comes to art. They bleat what they have been told; they enshrine the prejudices of their groups; they could care less about anyone else’s opinions; they are blind and bigoted.
We live in a country where 40% (is that the right number?) do not believe in evolution, where 20% believe that the Earth is stationary in the center of the Universe. These statistics I know rankle the readers of this blog. Individually we have weighed the theories and parsed them out, and it seems incredulous that anyone could possibly hold to such opinions. I view the declarations that have appeared here regarding what does and does not constitute art with similar bemusement. I am not an “expert” because I went to art school, or because I have been involved in art for almost fifty years, to the exclusion of someone who has not; there are plenty of narrow-minded parochial art graduates out there. However I have pondered the nature of art and have striven to develop a clearer insight into what it is. My past is littered with discarded hypotheses because I can not be satisfied with something that does not bear up under rigorous scrutiny. I have called bullshit on myself countless times, and hope to continue to do so until I die.
In biology I trust PZ (or any number of other people who have participated on this site) over the likes of Ken Ham regarding biology and evolution because I know PZ has not given up asking questions, and therefore is more likely to provide meaningful answers. I don’t expect him always to be right but I do trust that he has greater experience and insight than others who have not followed a parallel path. I also believe he is prepared to shred hypotheses as they are proven false or are outmoded. I and others who have devoted considerable time to the question of art possess more experience in that area and are more likely to possess (though not automatically) insight into the nature of art than those who “don’t know about art but they know what they like”.
To add, I have a folder on my computer of my favorite Starcraft replays (i.e. videos of other people playing), my favorite Warcraft 3 replays, and my favorite Super Smash Bros replays.
PZ and Ebert really have no idea.
PZ @652
1. That would have been your argument. Most people have been arguing from the broader, more generally accepted definitions of art as used by the actual art community. Those of us who have chased you and Ebert into the narrower more cultural definitions of art (high art, good art, etc…) have run into you denying you’ve done this and then flipping around and trying to accuse us of doing it.
Video games are an artistic medium. Same as literature, film, visual art, plays, music. That’s pretty hard to deny and most people have commented on that. Those of us who’ve chased you up the “snob” tree have pointed out that by narrower more cultural definitions of “high art” or “good art”, there are exceptional forms of video games that can hang with exceptional forms of other art mediums.
But the raw snob argument? You’ve really been the only one arguing from that position and honestly, I’d really rather you stopped. I’ve had one infuriating ignorant argument with a Myers on these threads already, two is making me question my will to live at a very stressful point in my life (I’m finishing up my master’s thesis by day).
2. I disagree. Really? You don’t say.
Yes, I know it’s sort of a sun rises in the East response, but the fact of the matter is that in the visual arts community, hosted by galleries, produced by art professors in major universities, funded by public arts programs, appreciated by “high art” connoisuers, isn’t really big on static art.
What artists currently think of as “the hot shit” these days is:
Multimedia, interactive conceptuals, performance art, engaging the viewer.
So many of my visual arts friends were really hectored on those elements, it was everywhere in my undergrad classes and I was mostly literature. The big thing in the arts is combining multiple elements of film, visual art, aural experience, and the like and asking the viewer to partially interact with the exhibit and installation, even responding to inputs to greatly change what is being presented.
This style is especially true of interactive art which is a very popular genre right now of the visual arts, most major new exhibitions having at least one example of this type of work in any series of installations and most modern artists encouraged to make at least one piece that addresses it or utilizes it.
It has been popular in various forms for at least a couple of decades now.
So video games are hardly unique by means of asking the user to input however minimally in the unfolding of the narrative story (been to installations that had you press buttons with a word on it to unlock the next mode piece of the installation or the like), or having you drive a piece of artistic expression(and more complex art installations where thousands of actors create a world you explore, touch and experience).
So, not unique.
And really, that gets into the heart of the matter, by your definition, playing the game isn’t art, and many people have said, sure, that’s fair. Playing a game is pushing the buttons in an interactive art installation. The player is the audience, the controller are the interactive bits, the museum is the console or computer, but the installation? Still art, as is the game.
And to arbitrarily say that there is a dividing line once you actively interact means that modern visual arts and the museums that host their installations have a lot to answer for.
This isn’t some parody of postmodernism (oh words have no meaning), this is the nature of art as defined and practiced by those fully considered to be artists not only broadly, but by the narrowest of standards.
Interaction does not eliminate the artistry of the piece and the audience may change a work of art, may participate in a work of art, may even bring large new meanings to a work of art, but they can’t eliminate the art.
It’s the nature of artistic mediums and their purposes.
Oh, but you interact with them for entertainment? Well, again, you run into the problem that most art mediums are also entertainment mediums (books, films, music, plays). Many newer versions may even try and involve the audience or rely on their expectations of conventions thanks to postmodernist techniques. The lines are already pretty blurry and I don’t see how asserting a fictional line somehow relegates video games (an artistic medium) to not art simply by the mode of interaction.
I’m sorry it upsets you that a medium long noted as the province of children and solely for entertainment is turning into just another medium of artistic expression seemingly before your very eyes. I really don’t know what to do about it, except to note that something very similar will happen to all of us when the next “new” medium arises out of technologic possibility.
And the team that makes a game (often) tries to combine visuals, music, sound effects, voice acting, script, back story and game mechanics to a thrilling, engaging, thought-provoking, emotional experience – much like people making films do (without the game mechanics, of course).
Some of them fail. Some of them don’t try very hard. But a lot of them do try, and even if they fail at making you look at more than the “press button, kill dude”-mechanics of it all, the do still try. Just like Uwe Boll, they try.
Sports fan will say that they were moved to tears over their team winning or losing (something that I personally don’t experience, but it’s still true). But I don’t think that they will say that the match was art because of it, and neither will I.
The intent of a game of soccer is to win a game of soccer, not to instill emotion. The intent is to play. The intent of playing a video game of some kind can also be to play.
The intent in making a game is to make people happy or relaxed, to scare, to instill some other emotion or to make people think. Comparing it to sports is very much apples and oranges, and probably some pears as well, since not all games are the same and all that.
I’m not saying that this intent automatically makes it art. I do say that the argument “people get emotional about sports too” is not an argument that makes a fair comparison. People can get emotional about a beautiful piece of music, an extraordinary painting and a basketball match. The basketball match is not art, so the piece of music and painting is not art either?
No, the argument doesn’t work in that context and I don’t think it works in this either. You seem too hung up on the “play” part – playing a sport and playing a game with narrative are substantially different experiences. And those experiences were created with substantially different intent.
Neither can you continue to assert that a bunch of things you like are art but that video games are just different without making the term meaningless to everyone except you.
You’ve yet to explain why the fact that something a game renders it not art.
Further, no one here is insisting that everything is art. What most people here are asserting is that many modern video games meet the definition of art put forward by Wikipedia, Merriam-Webster, and yourself at the top of this post. None of the definitions save yours (when your later comments are considered) say “Oh, unless it also meets a definition for a game. Then it can’t be art.”
PZ, you may as well claim that a book cannot be art while it’s being read on a Kindle, because it becomes all about pushing buttons to make the next screen load.
PZ, some recommended reading:
I borrowed a copy from the county library. Read through the first half, about the creation of the Ultima games (especially the 3rd-6th games) and tell me they’re not “a kind of distillation and representation of human experience, filtered through the minds of its creators.” Richard Garriott had very specific ideas about what video games represented through the world they present for the player to interact with. You may think watching someone play a game is boring (and if that’s not a criteria for art, why even bring it up?) but millions of other people don’t. You may
I enjoy your posts to the Panda’s Thumb, but have to throw some of your own advice back at you on this one. You often complain about non-biologists trying to speak authoritatively about biology and how badly they get it wrong. What makes you think you have the experience to talk about video games?
I could be wrong: you might be the highest-ranked guy on XBox Live, but to me is sounds like you think of games as being Tetris or Pong. I’m sure dozens of other posters have already pointed out that many games aren’t simply competitive scoreboards anymore, that stories and narratives are expected and often crafted to high standards. What’s the ‘narrative’ for sports? How is playing a game and being guided through a progressing story different from reading a book and being guided through a progressing story? I don’t buy the sports categorization.
-Wheels
You often say that if someone is saying BS, people should tell them so they can learn from it.
You’re spouting BS PZ.
Max Payne (the game, not the movie) is a perfect example of the artistic merit of computer games. The emotional response I’ve had from gaming are easily on par with the same I’ve had from any other form of media.
There are so many examples of games as art, especially from the independent developer community that you’re message simply reeks of total ignorance of gaming culture.
At the very least read this.
The intent of a game of soccer is to win a game of soccer, not to instill emotion. The intent is to play. The intent of playing a video game of some kind can also be to play.
indeed. and yet, a wonderfully executed gameplan is often described as “a work of art”, as are individual performances by players, or even entire teams.
this would likely fall under the definition of perception, instead of intention (allowing for my own ignorance of whether there actually HAVE been gameplans whose intention was indeed to be art), but still…
Okay, that link’s not showing up. Knew I should have abused the Preview button when I had the chance!
Anyway, the book is The Official Book of Ultima. Do the scientific thing here: read up about the subject and if necessary revise your position. If it’s not necessary, tell us why.
-Wheels
Robert @671
Standing up and applauding.
That was a great comment.
You just can’t take something you like and bloat it up to the point it encompasses everything, or it becomes meaningless.
your application of meaning here is subjective itself, otherwise, we better get to work reworking the very definition of art used in any given dictionary.
Who would have imagined that, of all things, arguments over the nature of computer games as art/not art would be the source of ‘Deep Rifts(TM)’within the skeptical community as represented on Pharyngula?
I wonder how long it will be before some theist comes out with the idea that, since we cannot agree on ‘trivia’ like computer games, atheism must be DOOMED!
They will probably just go with the old chestnut that, since many of us are gamers/have been gamers in the past/are apologists for the ‘morally corrupting evil’ of computer games, then we must all be immoral degenerates who wish to destroy the minds of children and brainwash them into acts of random violence (you know, the same tired argument that is wheeled out after every school shooting anywhere in the Western world).
*as an interesting side note on Pharyngulite behaviourism, it appears that pharyngulites do indeed devour their own. Even the patriarch is not immune (as PZ is even now discovering). This would be perfect for a nature programme. Perhaps ‘The Private Life of Pharyngulites’, ‘Life on the Blog’ or ‘Pharyngulites in Teh Intertoobes’. Where is Sir David Attenborough when you need him?*
Khantron #669,
Oooh, yes! This is good. Would Ebert (or PZ) consider pre-flight safety demonstration videos to be art? If not, well then I guess all film is not art.
Who would have imagined that, of all things, arguments over the nature of computer games as art/not art would be the source of ‘Deep Rifts(TM)’within the skeptical community as represented on Pharyngula?
*yawn*
apparently, this is the first you’ve noticed that we debate each other?
@Robert H #671:
Very good post. I agree there is a vast difference between the layperson’s appreciation of art and someone who has taken the time to study it thoroughly. I mistakenly anticipated that you were going to assert that only a student of art would be qualified to comment on it at all, and I tried to pre-empt that with sarcasm. (Plus, I love writing little dialogues.) I apologise for dismissing your efforts as a student of art and an artist.
Gregory @683
Academics, atheists, progressives, etc… put two in a room together and they’ll probably start heavily debating something or arguing with each other eventually.
It’s part of the nature of having any community built of diverse people from a wide variety of life-experiences, knowledge bases, and unchecked biases coming together who also tend to be anti-authoritarian.
We will fight, we will learn, we will passionately argue, we will talk past each other, etc…
It’s part of being human. Closed cultures merely look more “united” because they squelch dissent and otherwise ask their members to try and hide any sign of uniqueness.
Well, that and we’re all Satan, polluting tomorrow’s youth with gay commie abortions.
You must have never played flowers for the PS3 lolz…
If I organized a sports team to play a regular game of X in the middle of MoMA, and then asserted that it was a piece of ‘performance art’, for the paying audience, would I be correct in doing so?
And if I then trotted down the road, purchased Madison Square Garden, re-named it ‘Madison Performance Art Museum’, and re-appointed all visiting sports fans as ‘museum patrons’ but otherwise kept everything the same, would the games contained therein become art?
And what would the difference be between the two situations?
In all honesty, I don’t know where exactly I stand on this. I just thought of it. But if anybody thinks this is worth answering and has any more concrete ideas, polite or otherwise, please let me know.
The great thing about arguing simultaneously with several hundred people is you get to pick the weakest arguments to rebut.
I’ve seen Ran. Bored the shit out of me.
I’ve played Shadow of the Colossus. One of the most touching, engrossing, phenomenal experiences I’ve ever had. I can’t think of many other mediums that have made me reflect so heavily on the nature of love, loss, and sacrifice as that one.
I don’t think I had a point here, other than that I don’t quite get art.
The term “art” basically IS meaningless, PZ. I’d say a basketball game has more emotion, skill, structure, and beauty on the part of both the players and the audience than that kind art popular within the art community nowadays that seems to revel in its own meaninglessness and detachment from even the artist themselves. There are videogames that are more “art” than half of the stuff I’ve seen displayed in contemporary art galleries I’ve been to recently.
I think the only reason nobody considers a basketball game as a piece of art is because nobody has thought to exhibit it as one yet.
Art is any endeavor beyond what is necessary for survival which produces beauty, invokes emotion, or comments on the human condition. Neither intent, quality, quantity, medium nor content have any bearing on the determination of a thing as art.
There is no difference between a child’s crayon scribble and a master’s magnum opus in the determination of inclusion as art.
The only difference is the level of skill used in the endeavor and how successfully the work produced the intended result. Thus there is a quantifiable component and a very subjective component in the *critique* of art but this has nothing to do with whether or not a thing is art.
Critiquing of art can only determine where a thing lies in the spectrum of high art to low art.
If a thing is poorly crafted and fails to convey beauty, emotion, or meaning to a viewer then that viewer may only make the argument that the thing is of low art. But the viewer can not dismiss it as not being art. Or worse dismiss the entire medium. This demonstrates a failure of impartiality, a disregard for the artists efforts and a certain level of intellectual arrogance.
Three things that I did not expect Ebert as a professional art critic to demonstrate.
I also feel that there is a failure of definitions going on here. Video games are a medium not a genre. A better term would be “interactive, computer generated, visual medium” but video game is easier to say like book or film. Just as the written word is a medium with many genres so are video games. Some video games are meant to be like “games” in the traditional sense (direct competition, formal rule system, mechanisms for scoring points, win/lose conditions) and some are meant to be interactive story telling devices. The controls and game mechanics become the words and grammar that the player (reader) use to experience the story. To claim that video games cannot be art is like claiming that anything written on paper and bound into a book cannot be art or after looking at a child’s finger painting declaring that paintings can never be art.
To equate video games as a medium with sports is like equating the printed word with crossword puzzles. There are many titles that have already been pointed out (Heavy Rain, Myst, etc) where your sports analogy fails. In those titles the user’s actions determine the pace and details of how the story is revealed. There are no points and the only win/lose condition is reaching the end of the story. Those “games” are every bit as much art as any film or fiction novel.
@MrFire, read what Frank Zappa says about your question at @313. If you declare your performance to be art, and a paying audience perceives it to be art, then it’s art. Good art or bad art is a matter of taste, and in matters of taste, there can be no dispute.
Ichthyic @ 685 and also Cerberus @ 687;
Actually, I had noticed the tendency toeward debates in these parts before. What with it being the entire point of the comment threads. I had hoped that my post was worded in such a fashion that its playful mockery would be evident, but apparently my inept attempt fell flat on its misbegotten face.
Just to make things clear; my post at 683 was supposed to be humourous. I was trying to make a play on the all-too-often-heard theist claim that atheism is in the process of self-destructing due to ‘Deep Rifts(TM)’, which is their standard, crowing response to any incidence of atheists or skeptics showing any difference of opinion with one another on any topic.
I am feeling somewhat singed by friendly fire here…
That will teach me to think that I am funny.
I’m inclined to agree with PZ @ 652 in disregarding the arguments about visual beauty necessarily meaning that videogames are actually art, because you can just hire the greatest painters in the world to design all the game’s world for you, and you will not have done anything uniquely videogame-ey. However, I’m not sure about the assertion that a medium either is art or isn’t art. For instance, nobody would say that books, per se, are art. After all, a Windows 95 manual is not art. Perhaps all novels are art (99% of which are terrible, but still art), but if novels are to be distinguished from software manuals, it’s a question of degree, not kind. It’s not too big a stretch to imagine a piece of fiction done in the style of a boring manual, and this could be great art. So I don’t think that videogames per se are art, but I don’t see how they can’t in principle become art. It is, again, a question of degree, not kind.
About a year ago, I wrote a piece on this topic on my blog. Check it out here.
Oh it’s already past 3 AM around here, so I’d better be off… probably to play Battlezone (that -98 version).
@residualecho:
Thanks, the Frank Zappa excerpt was great.
Maybe I’ll read the blasted thread next time.
PZ @ 652
Art is a way larger catch-all word than most people realize, or apparently are willing to accept. It isn’t a pointless term but one that requires greater specificity. You can’t tantrum away the fact that video games are art; you don’t get to be the gatekeeper of what does and does not constitute art. It’s not up to you! It is an axiomatic term; of course it’s broad. That’s why it is broken down into subgroups, such as visual arts, spoken arts, literature, music, etc. And each of those subgroups is further broken down, almost ad infinitum-think cladistics here (though that probably isn’t a perfect analogy).
Using the word “art” in the first place is the cause of the bloating you disparage; by its very nature it is a broad term. Most people who are opposed to your viewpoint are bothered by your selective granting of the term, something which you are in no position to do (nor do you want to be such an arbiter I am sure). Your position is hopelessly and irredeemably wrong; do try to give it up before word gets out that you’re a closet art fundamentalist.
Do I think any video game is the equal of Der Ring Des Niebelungen? No, not even close. I am prepared to discuss for hours my reasons why, but at the same time I must be prepared to honestly listen to the opinions of those who would champion their favorite game, and be prepared to amend my position if I feel it warranted. However I can not and must not state that that game is not art, only that I hold a low opinion of it. To so wantonly condemn video games to the non-artistic dung heap is the aesthetic analog of division by zero, everything becomes meaningless.
Yes, I’m sure lots of people have games they’ve loved. You can list them all, and tell me why they’re so wonderful. And it’s irrelevant.
The key error in that argument is you’re railing against someone who dislikes video games and never plays them. That’s not me. I don’t have a lot of time to play them now, but I have, and I appreciated them as games. Nowhere do I claim that you can’t have a strong emotional response to a game, so telling me that you’ve had a strong emotional response to a game isn’t an argument. I’d agree with you.
I’m also not arguing that the medium makes it art. Not everything on film is art. Not everything written down on paper is art. Not everything in the digital medium is not art.
This is an ontological issue, not a case of me trying to diss games. Categories should have some meaning and utility, and throwing “everything I like” into a category you want to call art is just not useful.
PZ #700, so what exactly is the reason to single out video games as a medium that can not be art?
What the fuck definition do you use for art? Everything in your initial post is wrong, so it’s obviously not those vectors.
Well, I got it, for one :)
You might say I’m a friendly Fire.
*chirp chirp*
Ok, that was bad.
“I am large, I contain multitudes.” – Whitman
Art is what people made and do. People make shit out of other shit. We call that shit “art”; whether it is good or bad, whether or not it has your favorite aesthetic, intellectual, or emotional properties. This is not a difficult concept to understand, but for whatever reason people do not accept it. If video games don’t meet your criteria because they’re too much like a “sport”… well, that’s too fucking bad. What the art does to human experience is all that matters when judging its value as art. That it is made by people for aesthetic reasons is the only thing necessary to make it art.
Having a hard time keeping up with all the posts, so I’m sorry if someone already covered this.
All games don’t have to be art for a subset to be art. Baldur’s Gate (RPG) is basically a story with player participation, there’s no inherent competitive element. If you consider movies and books to be art, I think a strong case could be made for some games to fit as well.
Tetris is the other end of the spectrum. It’s made to test reaction time and planning skills and is more a parallel to sports (or competitive games).
And then there are a large amount of games that fall somewhere in between. Usually with a story driven singleplayer part and a competitive multiplayer part.
Some bad analogies:
“Ballet and basketball are both physical activities.”
“Fictional books and scientific books are both subsets of books.”
And at 700, PZ again misses the vital question: Okay, yes, not everything that exists is art. None of us feel otherwise. However WHY are video games distinct from other forms of entertainment and storytelling by being in the “universally not art” category? At this point, barring a real, solid explanation, I have to assume that you chose to cast out video games almost arbitrarily in order to affirm your view that non-art exists. After all, for the claim to be true, there must be an example of non-art, so games are as good a scapegoat as any, right?
Gregory @695
Aw…
Now I feel really bad for not including a good opener.
My comment was meant as an addition to yours, taking it partially seriously to note the why, but also trying to continue the riff of humor in your post.
So, it’s not you, it’s me.
@ PZ #700
Conversely, just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s not art.
Again, your original definition in your post:
Video games fit this description. Not only that, but other definitions:
Wikipedia:
or Merriam-Webster:
Most video games fall under both of these definitions, while sports do not. Notably, those games that appear to not fall under these definitions would be the sports-genre games.
While you might argue that you’ve never played a game that was as good for you as reading a novel, that’s subjective. I’ve played many games that were much more impactful to me than any novel I’ve read. I’m not saying your experience with them would be the same, just pointing out how subjective it is.
I get the impression that you’re continually attempting to move and conceal the goal-post because you’re uncomfortable with the idea that you may have been hasty in your judgment.
PZ, are you ever going to actually define art? We’ve provided several neutral definitions that obviously include video games. The burden of proof is sort of on you to back up your assertion that they are not.
Of course video games use art, but they have more in common with an athletic event, which is a game.
Is a jigsaw puzzle art?
How about if it is a puzzle showing some famous piece of art?
How about if someone were to physically take some famous piece of art, cut it into a jigsaw puzzle, and then invite people to put it together?
At precisely what point does the “art” overwhelm the “game” being played with it? And why it is so unthinkable that video games can cross this line?
PZ, this makes no sense:
Some films are art, and some films aren’t
Some graphic images are art, and some are not
Some painted images are art, and some are not
Some written stories are art, and some are not
BUT NO VIDEO GAMES ARE EVER ART
I think we should just post a link to this thread from now on anytime PZ is shocked at how a creationists can ignore 90% of the arguments being thrown at them, repeat the exact same disproven talking points over and over and declare victory.
The onus here isn’t for us to defend why they are, PZ, it’s for you to present a valid argument as why they’re to be excluded.
Were not stating that every game is art, just as not every painting, every photograph, or every film is art.
We’re saying that there are some games that are.
Previous analogy, just because the Picaso is just a bunch of squares to you, doesn’t mean it’s not art.
Just about every assumption you’ve made about game design and the actual process of creating the experience has been wrong.
Strawman. We’re not disagreeing with you because we think you hate games, or don’t play them, we disagree with you because you’re attempting to act as a ‘gate keeper’ as to what constitutes art.
What you /are/ doing is ignoring valid arguments and definitions of art because you wish to exclude one medium over another for no definitive, valid, reason you’ve been able to state.
Good. We’re getting somewhere.
I should note in 709 that PZ’s own provided definition fits video games. If he wants to keep holding that video games aren’t art, he needs a different definition.
All I can say (and you’ve mentioned it) is to check out Shadow of the Collosus, Portal, or Bioshock. Best examples I would say of video games as art (and not “indie”). But based on your opinions of Flower and Braid I wonder if anything will make you reconsider or if this is simply a difference of opinion or degrees. Shadow gets close enough for me to call it art. By the way everyone of my examples (including Braid) requires the player to complete the whole game to get what i’m talking about. I know you probably don’t like that answer, but it’s the truth. You wouldn’t watch a film half-way through now would you?
Nonentity, or how about this guy’s work:
http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425546436/768/sky-booms.html
Al Souza makes large paintings almost entirely out of puzzle pieces which he reassembles to make abstract art.
PZ: My edits are about the only coherent way I can understand what you’re trying to say here. You can describe art and criticize art. These are two very different things. When you talk about art, please make it clear how you make this distinction (in general, and specifically in regard to video games). Thanks.
I keep reading the OP and beginning to write a reply, then get frustrated at delete my post. Claiming a medium cannot have artistic merit is such crap that knowing where to begin in refuting such a statement is hard.
Plenty of games have been made purely for their artistic merit. The Graveyard is a perfect example.
if you were actually serious, this would be the point where you at least tried to explain just what does make something “art”, in your opinion. the definitions of the word you alluded to in your original article all encompass videogames quite handily, as folks have harped on at length, and you’ve not even tried to explain why those folks would be wrong about that.
PZ @700
But many of us have been arguing by the definitional state of undergraduate level and graduate level art classes and art history classes on the subject. By the accepted definitions and practices of the existing arts communities and by the standards and practices of a large majority of the arts communities regarding what is and isn’t an artistic medium.
Being composed almost solely of other art mediums and adding a controller at the end and allowing interactivity doesn’t really separate the medium from other art mediums.
The art mediums can be used for purposes that even the creators may be hard-pressed to call art, but the medium itself is on fairly solid terms in ways that do not diminish what art means as its used by art teachers and professional artists as well as by laypeople.
If you want to argue that not every example of a medium is art, there is room to debate, but taking that more narrow definition, we still run into plenty examples that fit that description (RPGs, which are interactive novels, interactive tone poems and art conceptuals, any game with a narrative arc). As noted in earlier responses, no matter how narrow you try and define art into even the Kurosawa scale, there’s a game out there that fits under it.
So there’s really no definition of art that excludes all video games and definitely no definition that doesn’t exclude a large amount of art considered art by the arts community (rather than fans of Messi’s passing ability).
It’s another artistic medium, PZ, with all the hallmarks, failures, triumphs, etc… inherent in that. And with greater or lesser amounts of investment of the artistry or craft both as parts and as a cohesive whole, much like film.
I don’t know what else to tell you and I don’t know why you are so invested in video games somehow being fully cut off from the world of art merely because you enjoy them for their competitive aspects.
It’s really much deeper on a whole as the people who wrote about it for their undergraduate and graduate level theses could tell you. And as many of us here are.
Plenty of games are carefully crafted to use beautiful visuals and sounds to elicit strong emotional responses in the player. That sounds like art to me.
For me, games like Flower and Braid are pure, unequivocal interactive artworks, but other more traditionally game-like games fit my own personal definitions of art as well. Shadow of the Colossus and Ico are good examples of the latter.
I think PZ’s argument that you wouldn’t want to watch someone playing a game is a logically faulty one, but it’s also demonstrably false. Particularly beautiful or engaging games can be almost as entertaining to watch as to play, especially if they feature a well-told story.
When it comes down to it, though, what art is is so subjective an argument as to be essentially meaningless.
As a note, PZ, there appear to be people here who have dedicated the last ten to twenty odd years to makes games as an art form, rather than ‘just some shit people play with’.
Dismissing that is extremely insulting.
I think the problem, honestly, is not that Eberts and Myers don’t know what art is. It’s that they don’t know what a video game is.
In Ebert’s and Myer’s minds, video games are akin to sports or chess matches, and (rightly or wrongly) do not consider such competitions to be art. Fair enough. But that barely describes half of the video games made today. Adventures, Role-Playing, Puzzles, and many more contain none of the aspects of “games” that Eberts obsesses over. As someone mentioned above, these are less “games” as they are “interactive experiences”, but that’s awfully pretentious and most gamers, unlike Ebert, aren’t so pretentious.
They completely do. Frequently. You seriously need to listen to the directors’ commentary on the Half-Life games. They talk endlessly about creating impressive vistas, setting the proper tone, getting the pacing and atmosphere just right.
Reading Ebert write about this is like a man with no ears declaring that art could not come from these weird people blowing air into oddly shaped metal objects. Until you have experienced it, dismissing it is simply close minded. As a rational skeptic, I’m disappointed in you, PZ.
Most games are not art but some definitely are. Many good examples have been given and I second them all but I would like to dissect an aspect of a very recent, extremely popular game: namely that games often are many things at once rather than one.
I’m thinking of Modern Warfare 2. The realization blindsided me as the game, from its very title, burns with testosterone in a way one would rarely associate with anything complex. But it is very much so.
– In multiplayer it is pure sport. It is an excellently engineered way to allow ourselves to prove our mettle against the next guy. Be it through reflexes or brains. It is also highly addictive as all such enterprises are.
– In single-player story mode it is most of the time an action-packed adventure with an emotive response akin to a great action movie and not very more complex. It mixes negative aspects such as repetitiveness and predictability with positive aspects like exhilarating visuals and audio on par with the best Hollywood can offer. Yet I would not call it art.
But then there are those rare moments, expertly inserted and directed, which traverses the mere action flick. They deal with death. Namely, your death. First: SPOILER ALERT. Seriously. If you’re planning on buying the game don’t read the next paragraph.
Movies often deal with betrayal. It is an universal topic. Action movies often deal with betrayal through murder. Modern Warfare 2 manages to give this a new dimension: this time it’s not that guy on the screen you kind of identify with who gets betrayed and killed. It’s you. It’s the character whose eyes have been you’re eyes and whose actions you’ve controlled who gets shot by a man you trusted and then dumped in a ditch, dying, only to be lit on fire. Even though this is the second time this happens the emotional response is powerful, even for a hardened player as myself.
The events leading up to the betrayal are cliché and had MW2 been a movie no one had been surprised. But it isn’t: the first-person perspective alters ones expectations and puts a level of trust and empathy in the virtual compatriots other media just can’t match.
My ending statement is this: we can’t define games by the same guidelines as movies, books, music or paintings as they are all of these and have the capacity of being even more. And if even a “low-brow” game such as MW2 manages to provoke emotions mostly associated with art, who says video games can not be art?
Me must, after all, remember that no media is art per definition. It is what we make of it that makes it so.
@Ol’Greg #716
That’s certainly interesting. I suppose, following my train of thought.. would it only be art if the artist assembled it, and not if other people were to assemble a likeness of it for the fun and challenge rather than just to view it?
What if the artist was more interested in it for the challenge of making things fit together than for the end product.. would that make it “not art”?
Myers and Ebert have sort of painted (no pun intended) themselves into a corner. There’s a huge multitude of things that are classified as art, and almost any attempt to classify something as “not art” (as opposed to “not good art”) will invariably throw out a swath of it. When even corporate logos are sometimes considered art (or are used, just by themselves, as art), how can you possibly exclude an entire genre as rich in visual, audio, and storytelling expression as computer games?
This is as bad as the age-old “Nascar isn’t a sport” argument. (pleasedontletthatderailthethread, pleasedontletthatderailthethread…)
At #724.
Moments like that are the best of the medium. I’ll never hear the phrase ‘Would you kindly..’ again without shivering, just a little.
Another note: Has anyone noticed PZ is moving the goalposts? ;)
It’s a well known secret among artists that not all artists are trying to make the deep assertions others may see. An idea as simple as, I wonder how many of these I can stack together without them falling can lead to an entire body of sculpture in which people may talk about it being informed. It’s considered informed if it can (whether the artist gives a damn or not) be fit into some contemporary gestalt.
So you have artists who pack legos into cracks in buildings, or methodically erase each word in a newspaper with a magic rub… or others who come up with systems. There’s a young local artist around here that does that, and my own work leaned in that direction although I would actually prefer to work with “new media” from now on myself.
Honestly I think there’s an interesting interaction between artists who work within the constraints of their own system, inventing a game so to speak (I’ll write the entire book of Moby Dick using only the letter e, or I’ll make a painting using every internal part from a Compaq Presario traced outward in a spiral from smallest to largest) and artists who work within a system where others will be exposed via conformation to some system, to some set of rules, by playing a game.
I truly don’t think that gameplay will remain so unimportant in understanding the philosophy of our times for long.
I think an appropriate tactic here is to actually bother delving into the philosophy of aesthetics.
Just my (soon to be buried) two cents.
PZ @700
…cough, cough. Er, Boss? What you are doing is throwing things you don’t like out of the category of art. Your will to exclude is based on nothing other than personal preference. Again, what is art and what is “good” art are two separate issues which you have repeatedly appeared to conflate. What is art is a matter of definition, not of preference; what is “good” art is a matter of preference, not of definition.
PZ:
Except it is strictly relevant when applied to the fact that you gave the following criterion for videogames “becoming art”:
The examples of “wonderful” video games being given are not simply because people think they’re wonderful. In many cases these are being cited by your commenters in exact contradiction to your claim that they would never want to watch someone else playing, or watch a replay. So this is probably where a lot of thse “moving the goalposts” accusations are coming from.
And #723, actually, this is interesting:
I know a guy who just simply does not appreciate music. While his hearing is fine, when it comes to music he just plain does not get it, and has learned to tune it out as irrelevant noise. But no-one, including him, will argue that music can’t be art — it just isn’t to him.
That is, as several commenters have pointed out already: “This is art” is a meaningless statement unless appended with “…to me”. And I think this is a very important point that PZ is missing by miles. Although, to be fair, lots of very smart science types often miss it, possibly because they’re used to being able to point at something and say “This is NOT science”, as Kalirren alluded to at #657.
So if I understand this quote from your opening post correctly, this is what you believe to be the non-vacuous criterion that distinguishes art from non-art, and makes “art” a useful category.
So if an artist fails to communicate their conception to you personally with a work, does that mean that the work is not art, period? I don’t think that’s valid. If you think it is, then you’re a chauvinist regarding your own conception of art.
The (more reasonable) alternative to this position is to acknowledge that a useful category definition of art can possibly exist that is not your own.
Responding to #723:
While I agree with you that the view of games as being primarily games is definitely having some influence on how PZ and Eberts both look at the issue, that sort of runs sideways into the point that one’s conception of whether or not something fulfills an artistic function really depends on how one chooses to experience it. Is elevator music art? Is symphonic music that is being used as elevator music -still- art?
If you look at a computer game as just a game, and a game is never art for you, then of course you’re going to believe that computer games can never be art.
Wow, stick to the science, you are totally off base here. I don’t blame you too much since you are essentially ignorant of the form. That isn’t meant to be an insult, but if you don’t know that there are many, many abstract and expressionist games that have no real goal except to impart a feeling or mood in the player, than you don’t really understand the medium. But knowing that you are not familiar with the form, why do you think you are in a position to make sweeping statements about what the form does?
I think a major part of the problem is that you are making an assumption that the game aspect is separate from and in opposition to the art. What’s game is not art, and what’s art is not game. So you think that even if aesthetic considerations come into play in the design, they’re still fundamentally games and not art. But this doesn’t stand up since numerous people have described how the game itself is the stuff of art. The game is constructed artistically, to change people’s visions* and have an emotional impact (which can be especially powerful in that rather than reading about or watching characters in a narrative, they participate directly). And people have talked about how successful some are in achieving their artistic intent.
*This includes games that are constructed artistically to lead people playing to look at games and their own participation differently – kike a novel written to implicate the reader in some way.
Video games could be art, in the same way jazz or just plain dancing can be.
Art doesn’t have to be something were you are a “spectator” — traditionally most art wasn’t that way. It’s a question of the skill of the MC (the programmers & artists) and of the participants (players).
You’re stuck in a very Modern epistemology, loaded down with worship of expertise in areas that simply don’t merit it.
I don’t want to be just a spectator. I want to participate. In some sense, games have more potential than movies exactly because of that. Movies are authoritarian, and that to me ruins some of the experience — I’m told what to feel.
I’d rather play my crappy guitar with some friends than sit in a symphony, on a day to day basis — It’s not that I’ll never do the latter, it’s just that 9 times out of ten, I’d rather be involved than just be a receiver.
Joe @713
Actually, many of us are stating that every painting, etc, is art! If something has to be universally appreciated for it to be art then there is NO art. If it is a majority that must think it’s art then we are at the mercy of the mob. If it’s the cognoscenti who are the judges then we are left in the hands of the aristocracy. Again, we have the right to determine for ourselves what constitutes good or bad art. We may even delude ourselves into stating something is or isn’t art. But we don’t have the right (nor the Jovian ability) to determine what constitutes art for others. Let’s not become censors.
Robert H #736
A good point, and my statement is amended.
It should have read ‘Not ever game is good art’ ect.
Hoist by my own petard. ;)
SC @734
This also.
Something can be entertainment and art and most people accept that dichotomy very well. Casablanca is almost universally considered one of the masterpieces of the film art medium, it’s also fun to watch and often entertains and uplifts those enjoying it.
Similarly an art piece can also have elements of fun or game in them and to avoid the video game aspect, I’ll cover two pieces of visual art.
There is a giant slide, I believe it’s in a modern art museum in Chicago, that’s part of a giant theme of the museum that each art piece is to be experienced, connect with each other, etc… This part and many of the other pieces in it are also fun devices. Slides down a conceptual art piece, rooms filled with balls, etc… The pieces are all considered art by the museum and the visual arts community and examined by those standards there is a lot to be gained from them. You can also slide down a giant multi-story slide. Fun and art.
Secondly, here in Denmark, part of the Women’s History Museum here in Aarhus is something called the “Kid’s History Exhibit”. It’s a giant art piece containing the history of children in Denmark utilizing the real pasts of several children’s possessions throughout various parts of history. The conceptual as a whole is to represent the chaotic role children had on many women and to really explore the roles both of women left to care for the kids (negative interpretation) as well as the positive experience of being a kid exploring, learning, discovery and the positive emotions that would carry with it for both child and mother. Overall, its a great art piece.
It’s also a game. At the mouth of the exhibit you draw a card with one of the children and a bio of their past and your game quest is to find all of their possessions and thus be further drawn into the chaotic landscape of all these possessions to find those belonging to “your child”. Here was a whole new element artistically to the role of the mother and a game as well.
There have also been more traditionally a number of giant art installations where performance actors move as game pieces depending on human interactions or treat the interactivity as a sort of game activity by giving various “instructions” to the viewer and so on.
Point is, enjoyment and those aspects which are game don’t take away from the art portions, nor cast universal judgment on the piece as a whole and what it is trying to accomplish as a whole art piece.
There are whole art movements that are all about exploring this space, specifically because people like Ebert believe art should be static and partially inaccessible and it has been greatly harming public perception of the visual arts as a whole and museum attendance in specific (and thus the impact of each art piece and what its hoping to achieve).
Another quirky thing about that definition is that sports are replayed all the time, so does that make a really good game-play art?
The key error in that argument is you’re railing against someone who dislikes video games and never plays them. That’s not me. I don’t have a lot of time to play them now, but I have, and I appreciated them as games. Nowhere do I claim that you can’t have a strong emotional response to a game, so telling me that you’ve had a strong emotional response to a game isn’t an argument. I’d agree with you.
substitute “Andy Warhol’s pieces” for “video games” and I bet you can start to see your definition of art becomes functionally vacuous.
sorry, it’s not your claim that video games aren’t art that’s even the issue any more, it’s that you apparently HAVE NO functional definition of what art is to work with.
Sometimes things fall into multiple categories at the same time. Some video games are just that – games. Some video games, including many mentioned dozens of times in this thread, are able to be more than that, in addition to being primarily games.
You’re right. Our words should mean something and we shouldn’t just change what they mean on a whim. Our categories should have boundaries and not be so vague as to be useless. But why should we pigeonhole video games as only games? They contain art, artists work countless hours with programmers and testers to fine tune the product, so why can’t they be considered art, too?
As a rather strange analogy, On the Origin of Species is more than a supremely impressive and important scholarly text, as we all well know. Charles Darwin wrote with such elegant prose that it comes damn close to being artistic in its own right.
I’m an avid gamer. I’m utterly addicted to World of Warcraft, while playing Final Fantasy XIII, and breathlessly anticipating leaving Azeroth once FF XIV is out.
The Final Fantasy series contains lush environments, wonderful melodies, and some memorable characters.
That said, I agree with PZ and Ebert.
My personal definition of art is something that can be with us so long as we’re willing to preserve it.
Centuries from now, we will still be performing Shakespeare, marveling at Van Gogh’s use of color, and chuckle at David’s wee-wee.
I’m 99.9% certain we will not be playing Baldur’s Gate, Dragon Age, nor even Pong.
Brownian @686
A belated thanks and no need for apologies…
I have cried as a result of a game in the same way I may cry at a good film, book, play or even a song. This is cathartic crying, something I have not experienced outside of art.
The catharsis wasn’t the result of any specific occurrence in the game, it was the culmination of the experience as a whole.
There were no real mechanics in the game. You could move and turn on and off a flashlight. Monologues were triggered from walking to a certain location but you didn’t know where such a location might be, you just walked around. It was a game, yes, but it was hardly a game in a traditional sense. There was no score. One had to go out of one’s way to die. One didn’t even encounter non-player characters.
Perhaps such a cathartic experience can result from something besides art, I wouldn’t know.
We’ve already established that it’s not interactivity that excludes games from being classified as art. So what does?
Ah, so is it the imposition of rules, then?
There was a segment on the radio the other day about an art installation called Sonic Babylon. It’s a “sound garden”, where visitors walk through with a handheld device, and hear a different audio experience depending on their physical location. They can also “plant” and “prune” sounds within the garden.
So it’s definitely interactive, and it was obviously considered art by both the creators and the interviewer. But it also imposes rules upon the interaction. There are some sounds that can’t be removed or altered; there are probably only certain places where sounds can be “planted”; and I expect there would also be a degree of refereeing involved (to remove any obscenities visitors would inevitably insert).
Do the rules and framework of the interaction then preclude it from being art? I assume not. However, by the same token, they do not make it a game either.
“Game” seems much easier to define than “Art”. It’s not a dictionary definition, but I’d say a game requires two things:
– interactivity, and
– a measure of progress or a conclusion (or both), based on your interaction.
There’s no such thing as a non-interactive game. If you took a recent Final Fantasy game, and removed all the interactive elements, you’d just have a movie made up of the cutscenes. (And in that case, be better for it in my opinion — but that’s a different argument! :) )
If there’s no way of winning, losing, or even tracking your progress, then I think it’s interactive art, not a game. The Graveyard (as posted above), though built using a “game engine”, isn’t a game, it’s something you experience.
So if Sonic Babylon took the simple extra step of giving you a score (based on the number of listeners to your “flowers”), or win/loss conditions (if all your flowers get pruned from the garden), it would become a rudimentary game (at least by my definition above)… and by your reasoning, cease to become a work of art?
Why is that?
@Pastor Farm:
Unfortunately, the fact that you are a gamer is as irrelevant as the fact that Ebert is not.
By labeling video games as “not art” by your “personal definition” you have already made your point subjective.
Not only that, but I think video games fit your definition too. “As long as we’re willing to preserve it?” So that means the fact that many gamers have elected to hold on to their copies of games makes them art? Donkey Kong is still around, and even in its original arcade form. There are places that preserve and continue to play that, and other games like it. How is that different than a statue you keep? or a group still performing Shakespeare?
Centuries from now, we will still be performing Shakespeare, marveling at Van Gogh’s use of color, and chuckle at David’s wee-wee.
I challenge you to name ONE piece of modern art then.
Pastor @743
God that’s a terrible definition of art.
It’s an argument of longevity that doesn’t even separate Sumerian tax receipts from the traditional art mediums and discounts almost everything currently made in those art mediums within the last couple of hundred years by the narrowest definition of art I’ve ever seen.
Furthermore, if you’re willing to retool your generational scope outside of “been around for a couple of centuries”, it also accidentally includes video games. A number of “classic games” have been deliberately preserved historically so that they will continue to be with us, Pac Man, Pong, Super Mario, Metroid, Kirby, hell, even Pokemon.
Hell, most of gamer history is in the preservation of the “classics” so they will not be forgotten by history and pre-emptive judgments on what are currently considered the “classics” of the medium as an example of the growth of the medium.
So, a) it’s a bad definition, b) it accidentally includes video games, c) it doesn’t include the most artistically complex or deep video games or even art in general.
That’s impressive in a bad way.
So your definition of art is that it can’t be detected within the lifetime of the artist anyway. That sounds useful, and that certainly doesn’t ignore recent traditions like the street artists of venezuela.
Pastor Farm @743
You make art sound like taxidermy.
I’d like to draw attention, if I may, to a rather important point that looks to be overlooked in the general pile-on. PZ has agreed that games are art insofar that they are expressions of an older art: storytelling (albeit interactive storytelling). So individual games are works of art because they are stories (stories unorthodoxly told, but stories nonetheless).
What the question has morphed into is, is there a dimension to games that is unique to them? Can the very mechanics of gameplay be pressed into service as an artistic medium?
Or am I wrong for assuming this?
Be it as it may, the alternate question is much more interesting because it is not as easy to answer. I have mentioned before Bioshock which uses the conventions of gameplay and subverts them to pleasing effect but that effect, impressive though it may be, is not crucial to the game itself. Braid has been mentioned numerous times and it is interesting because it uses its core gameplay mechanics to serve as a counterpoint to the central idea of regret. The story is what it is but the game aspect induces us to think in a certain way which, combined with the story, may cause us to experience some form of catharsis.
In other words there are games which are doing interesting things with their gameplay which may qualify them as games-as-art in the strictest sense of the word.
However there are very few such games. Most, I will concede, are, at best, interactive stories. In the defense of games they are a young medium, a challenging medium (possessing as they do an unprecedented level of interactivity) and they are subject to technical and commercial restrictions quite a bit more stringent than those affecting movies in their early years.
Also, to contrast with movies — they too are an extension of storytelling and one may say that the moviemaking art that goes into your average-to-bad Hollywood movie is matched by whatever art is employed to make a story interactive (which is a peculiar property of video games and few other things).
The Scream. (I’m married to an artist, and typed her papers.) For forgettable Modern Art, Motherwell.
Along the lines of Cerberus’ comment #738, I’m going to quote from the Cracked article on Rez, a game apparently based on the work of synesthete artist Wassily Kandinsky (I haven’t seen it):
Now, ignoring the hyperbole—it is Cracked—tell me how an interactive audio-visual experience in which the experiences of sound and light bleed together and change with feedback from the viewer in order to represent the rare human experience of synethsesia doesn’t meet PZ’s claim that “[a]rt is a kind of distillation and representation of human experience, filtered through the minds of its creators.” We’ve already noted that interactivity doesn’t exclude something from being art. This is a case in which the interactivity of the medium furthers the goal of representing human experience. I’m not claiming the game istelf is good (and most of us including PZ agree that being good isn’t necessary to being art), but that the creators of the game set out to create art, whatever else the function of the creation. In this case the function is a game, but having a secondary or primary function beyond being art doesn’t disqualify something from being art, as clearly demonstrated by architecture.
By the few criteria PZ has posted about what constitutes art and the many more about what doesn’t (aside from the quality of being a game, Rez meets the definition.
Whether or not PZ would enjoy playing the game or find it less interesting than War and Piece is irrelevant, as is Pastor Farm’s exhortation that translates into “I can’t define it, but I’ll know it if it’s still around 300 years later.”
What’s really interesting about the misbelief that art is sterile, something only found in museums, and solely consisting of the work of dead white men is that most of the modern innovations in the visual arts that disprove most of the misguided theories of those who hold those misbeliefs, was created for the specific purpose of combatting those misbeliefs.
The movement towards interactivity in visual art, creating visual art that was also fun or utilitarian or part-performance, even incorporating games into the art installations and methods of interactivity was made because too many people were treating visual non-animation/film art as some long dead mode of expression that couldn’t possibly evolve with the times.
The artistic impetus for the artistic movements that smash the unfounded theories of art of many laypeople is because of these very narrow impressions of art by laypeople.
Quelle Ironic.
Pveljko @752
Indeed there are.
I mentioned the growth of a whole new means of making an artistic point in Metal Gear Solid 3 in my point @598 that is unique to the artistic medium of video game.
And @426 I noted very artistically dense games that contain very postmodern deconstructions of the player themselves and actively uses the nature of their interaction to make a deep artistic point.
Overall, yes, even by the narrowest possible definitions of what is art and artistically valued, video games have a contender in the mix.
It’s almost like they were just another art medium or something. (Note the sarcasm isn’t being directed at you, I’m just building off your post)
I can’t check Ebert’s arguments right now as the comments number seems to crash my browser. So I’m getting in here late before this thread goes the same way. Someone’s probably made these points already, but whatever.
Saying games will never be art is at best provocation, but I fear more likely it’s modernist hubris that makes about as much sense as saying “evolution is complete” or “science is finished”.
The core of PZs argument has a couple of flaws that show a lot of inexperience with the breadth of the medium, similar to one who has watched only music videos declaring all moving pictures not art. One fault is to consider that game design is merely about handing the player the tools of play and an environment to play in. This is completely wrong. The notion only fits for a tiny and very recent subset of video games and then only superficially
Game design is concerned with engineering an experience. This is very important to understand. Although their marketing generally highlights the fun toys you will get to play with it is just that, marketing. Games are intent on creating the illusion of freedom and they go to greater and greater lengths to enable that illusion while still maintaining a solid core.
PZ remarks that “No one wants to play a game that’s on rails and simply leads you to the conclusion the author wants.” But this is exactly what most games do, whether you are aware of it or not (ideally not). This part of the argument is too ill informed to be dealt with further.
The second element is the performance part. That’s an interesting angle and it’s true I can’t think of many examples of games people will want to repeat in the same way. Games (well, most narrative driven ones anyway) are more interested in the individual experience over the collective one. But as some have pointed out people do record and recount the events of some games, some are like sporting trick videos (Quake Done Quick, for instance). Others are kind of journalistic (Boatmurdered, various Let’s Play… writing). I can’t really see them grabbing people outside their particular familiar niche in each case, but their number is generally increasing greatly. It will take time to see if any of these crosses over into the popular consciousness. These days there’s just so much stuff to contend with.
The main problem games as art arguments face is the search for a good parallel. Most of those given are films, paintings, plays, poems etc Games borrow heavily from these, it’s true, but they add interactivity into the mix and that’s where it gets messy. None of it progenitors are interactive in anything like the same way and they’re not meant to be. So often we end up with games=not art arguments essentially saying the interactivity is what sets games apart from proper “art”.
But they’re looking at the wrong arts. We flounder around with comparisons to the ones we know best, the ones where we’re fairly sure we know why they are art(and the makers have this problem as well). There are a couple of artforms I think we’re ignoring in all this and both of them are musical. Symphonies and Be-Bop. These two rely on interpretation and improvisation respectively. No two iterations are alike. Aside from a central core they are subject to a great variety of changes according to the conductor or the group. Although not as popular as they once were they are both unquestionably art.
This doesn’t get around the performance point by itself. But it something that needs to be added to the consideration. Games are musical. They’re a jam between composer(s) and players(s). A jam that will be repeated and reinterpreted both individually and collectively. All the grounds for disputing that games are art dispute that the core of music is art by the same token. They may be happy with that, refining “art music” to only the sort that people gather to watch and none other. That’s not good enough for me and I think every music fan who ever attempted to play ought to agree.
Perhaps only time will clear this up. One day, when some kids find the umpteenth fan remake of Elite or Ultima 7 and plays through it again we won’t really need to ask if this medium is really like the other arts anymore.
I dunno if someone already commented but there’s a mountain of comments….Final Fantasy 7. Pure Art, story on rails, and still love to play it over and over again.
Nerd, if I understood Ichthyic’s comment at #748 correctly, he’s pointing out that Pastor Farm’s definition precludes us from calling any contemporary work ‘art’, since we cannot know the extent of some future population’s desire to preserve it.
His definition also excludes much cave and prehistoric art, since it wasn’t preserved by future populations as much as by the propitious indelibility of the medium.
Nerd, if I understood Ichthyic’s comment at #748 correctly, he’s pointing out that Pastor Farm’s definition precludes us from calling any contemporary work ‘art’, since we cannot know the extent of some future population’s desire to preserve it.
exactly.
Meh, They were trying too hard with the whole True Art is Angsty* thing (although it’s still an example of art). I think Final Fantasy 6 is a better example, or Final Fantasy Tactics. And then you have Final Fantasy 9, which was a rather artful blending of motifs from the previous stories (it tends to get left out of discussions about good games, but as a fan of the series I think it was great).
*Yes, this post is mainly because I didn’t get my daily fill of linking TV Tropes with the one massive thread overshadowing the neverending thread.
It seems to me that the point PZ is attempting to make is that the actual gameplay mechanics cannot constitute art, therefore the experience as a whole can’t be considered art.
However, I can think of at least one example where the emotional experience of a game is entirely dependent on a creative use of the game mechanics.
In the first God of War, at the end of the game, you find yourself in a position where you’re trying desperately to fight off hordes of enemies in order to protect your wife and child.
Here’s the important part; During lulls in the combat you can hug your family, and doing this depletes your health bar and refills theirs.
This is a straight-up game mechanic. In no other medium does the abstract concept of a health bar exist. It was a way to interact with a game in a manner that I found to be more deeply emotionally engaging than any movie.
And then you have things like this.
“Utilizing ‘World of Warcraft,’ ‘Halo 3’ and ‘Grand Theft Auto 4,’ Machinima Theater auteur Eddie Kim presents four classical theater texts, as performed by online video game characters manipulated by gamers live on stage. These are video games as digital puppetry. Technicians will use several X-Box 360 consoles and laptops linked to each other and to gamers over the internet to control digital characters in real-time in front of an audience. ”
The rabbit hole just keeps getting deeper.
I’ve left a lengthy thesis comment rebutting Roger on his site as well as a follow up to my initial points, so I won’t bore you with the details. They are available elsewhere, but I’m going to have to disagree with you PZ. Like Ebert, you have compared the idea of a video game to sport, stating that the primary objective is competition or triumph. This simply is not true in many modern video games.
The point is the experience. The point is the story. I find just as much enjoyment in watching others play the game in order to feel the expression created by the atmosphere, visuals, music, dialogue, etc. in much the same way as a film, literature, a painting or other media convey emotional and thought provoking significance.
Play Flower for Playstation 3 PZ. Trust me. It is akin to a visual representation of a Zen Koan. The actual gameplay is secondary and less interesting than the feeling evoked by the experience. One does not play it to win. One plays it to be moved by the beauty of nature. To experience the life, hopes, and dreams of flower petals floating on the wind. Play it and tell me it is not art.
I’m sorry to say it professor. I love ya, but you are wrong on this.
Oh, PZ! What a disappointing post, you’re wrong. At least it’s an opinion based on the wrong sort of arcade-like games. What can I say, even though I’m not a gamer now, my experience of playing Silent Hill 2 clearly had a marked effect on the kind of my current sense of aesthetics across the board, and moved me more emotionally than any poem ever has.
I don’t enjoy poetry in general, I feel nothing at all when reading it and if I was alone in the world it wouldn’t be called art. That doesn’t mean it isn’t.
And yes, I certainly have watched recordings of certain games being replayed purely for the emotional experience… I know that watching games being played like hearing about dreams is notoriously boring, but It’s definitely a matter of the kind of game we’re talking about.
I disagree that a recording of someone playing a video game cannot be either Art or entertainment.
Youtube – Really hard Mario
The quips and commentary that this guy makes as he plays a hacked SMB ROM are hilarious, and entirely clever, surely deserving of as much the title of “art” as any clever comedy routine.
Um, NSFW due to language.
amglasgow, you just brought up an interesting fascet of this debate: What about stand-up comedy? Is that art? I would argue that as a window into human experiences and the human condition, Carlin was every bit the poet that T.S. Elliot was, if not more so, but I’m curious to hear what others think.
My apologies if someone else has already put forth this suggestion, but I have not read all #750+ previous comments (and I suspect very few will read mine). In the event that you do, thank you and I will try to be brief..
I’m a game developer with over eight years of experience of making games, and I can understand how Ebert and Myers can think that video games are not art. They clearly have no idea what goes into making them, and are basing their assertions on false assumptions. Because of this, there isn’t a single game that they can play that will convince them otherwise.
What they fail to fully grasp is the process of game development. It’s much easier for them to see how movies, and paintings, and dance performances can be art, because they are more familiar with their creation processes. However the art of creating a fun experience is not so clear cut.
So Ebert, Myers, and anyone else who claims that games are not and cannot be art, I challenge you to participate in the process of making a fun game and then ask yourself again, can a game be art?
(I’m posting a lengthier reply to this on my live journal if you’re so inclined to continue the conversation with me.)
Myst:
This classic is at the same time an interactive painting and a tale of betrayal. I have replayed it at least a dozen times, and I enjoy it differently every time. As with many particular works of art, the appreciation of this piece can be enhanced by learning about its development, and appreciating the spectacular feat it was under the technological limitations of its time.
Knowing the solutions to all the puzzles already, you may ask why I have played it again. I so do for the same reason I read the subsequent novels – to enjoy the story.
Braid:
A much newer game than Myst, it combines a twisting story of one man’s journey through life with the visual style of an oil painting and beautifully enveloping temporal manipulation. This game does a good job of symbolically representing the journey through life experienced by everyone, while at the same time blurring the distinction between hindsight and foresight (as I believe most people are unaware of just how fallible human memory is, I think that bringing hindsight and foresight together is a valuable thing for a human to see).
I would also consider Dwarf Fortress, Planescape: Torment, Osmos, The Path, and The White Chamber to be art, though I don’t want to make this comment longer than it already is.
Ultimately, There is no way that I could claim every video game as art, but since not all photographs are art either, I don’t see this as a hindrance to the thesis that video games can be art.
Notice I am not simply saying that these games have compelling stories (Dwarf Fortress and Osmos don’t even have stories), nor simply that they are visually beautiful (Dwarf fortress is ASCII). While these aspects are art in themselves, I am also arguing that the format as a video game is integral to the artistic experience here – that the blending of story, visuals, music, and interactivity within the experience of virtuality that comes with all video games is the fundamental mode of expression for these artistic ideas.
But then, I have a history of misunderstanding things, so I could certainly be wrong. After all, I also think that the proof of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is beautiful and elegant.
I think some of the arguments here are at cross-purposes. Ebert, especially, declares that competitive matches aren’t art. There are many video games like this. Some here argue that competitive matches are art. Honestly, I don’t see the point in making this argument. It can be summed up by whether something thinks a really great pass in football is art. The Koreans consider the video game Starcraft to be a serious competitive game, complete with sponsors and stars and even it’s own recent betting scandal. They do like watching it just as people do more physical sports. Whether this category is art won’t be resolved on any time soon and the video-game aspect of it is completely besides the point.
However, there is a whole other realm of video games that don’t fit this mold in any way, shape, or form. Most of these are the “games on rails” that Myers doesn’t seem to think anyone would like to play (though I can show you sales figures that say otherwise). These games don’t feature competition. They have a preset story that unfolds as the player progresses through the game. Many of them will have divergent stories depending on the player action, so that playing it twice will yield a different story. The Mass Effect series, for instance, has been trying to push the bar on this by making story elements more of a tangled skein, so that even small actions change the story in different ways and different combinations. (how well they’ve succeeded is another matter) These games tell stories far more rich and complex than you’ll see in movies.
Other linear games include the Half-Life series that are far more of a Indiana Jones feel to them. The story isn’t complicated and exposition is all but removed, and like Indiana Jones, the artistic value is more in the pacing, visuals, and action. All of which are superb.
The term “video game”, unfortunately encompasses both the chess/football variety as well as the much deeper story telling and adventure variety. It’s pretty hard to get the chess/footbal style ones into the definition of art. In the story telling and adventure variety, it’s not hard at all, assuming the creators are good enough.
Most of what defines the distinction between art and not-art is a set of rules and meta-rules in a fairly fluid game, at which Ebert and PZ are noobs.
Cerberus @739:
Yes. I think MoMA in New York has some similarly interactive displays. My favorite is an interesting type of obstacle course made from what appears to be stocking material.
————————————————–
Oh, and with Sim City, I am definitely playing a game and participating in a work of art at the same freaking time.
Actually, I think that hits the nail right on the head. PZ’s mentions are a long list of games that we would probably class as the same as the original old style 4 color comics from DC, etc. Is it art.. Meeeh! Yeah, if you like that sort of art, but I never read any of them for the damn pictures. lol Then came along what might be arguably the first try graphics novel, Elfquest. It was like someone from bloody Disney dropped their newest animated film in my lap. Hell yes I consider it art, by comparison. Now, you get what are *called* graphics novels… Some of them are still not much over and above thick old style comics, a few are sort of in between, and almost none of them come even **close** to what Elfquest did. If you put that in terms of say, films, you would be talking Ed Wood vs. What Dreams May Come, then ending up with 5,000 clones of Die Hard, following the later one. Halo, as people have pointed out PZ, is the Die Hard of story driven games. Yeah, its got some amazing stuff in it, but its still cheap, by comparison to those that where more interested in the story than the game mechanics, and a need to have a “multiplayer” mode, for the “online” people.
Having that as the “core” thing you are aiming for is.. not generally conducive to producing a game that is on the Elfquest/What Dreams May Come level of art. They are damn good if you are making Die Hard XII. Its real hard to get something that does both well, and doesn’t muck it up with some silly “get stronger” style thing.
But, I do think you still miss the point. Its a different “way” to tell a story. Its like.. if you made a story that worked like madlibs, where the people listening to it are “required” to add in their own elements. The interaction and choices don’t stop making it art, and more than the comedians doing that shtick with an audience stop making comedy (or their result fails to be art, or worth rewatching).
PZ wrote:
and
and
and
I am having a difficult time reconciling 1 with 2 and 3 with 4.
I’d definitely say Games are art. Not all games but there have been a few exceptions.
Games allow the player to explore themes and situations in a more engaging way than traditional medium ever can. It’s one thing to watch the main character from Ico try to keep Yorda safe from the shadows, but it’s another thing entirely to be responsible for it yourself.
For the record, Silent Hill 2 is freakin’ awesome. I like Tycho’s take on it.
Again made that much more powerful by virtue of the fact that the game makes you responsible.
Now that I’ve read some of the chat I note I’ve been scooped several times over. Some even bring up oddities like The Path, compare games to jazz and frogInc, up there a ways, chucks in dance as an interactive art form I missed.
Good work Pharyngula gamers.
As nice as your argument about re-playability sounds, it’s just not applicable. If movies lasted 50+ hours and whenever you went to an art museum you had to spend two nights there I hardly imagine you would participate more than once or twice a year.
Now imagine new and spectacular art museums and 50+ hour movies are coming out every year, where would you find the time for the older ones?
The example of the old painters and sculptors, I find fascinating. Personally, I don’t get them. Van gogh painted flowers… and people are in awe of him. I don’t get it. Same with the statue of David. I just don’t understand the fuss. Sure, it takes skill, but I don’t see any deep insights in it.
I do get Shakespeare (though the age of the language occasionally gets a bit thick, it’s harder & harder to pull off properly as the language drifts). I love Casablanca. I love reading old myths and legends.
I believe the highest art is storytelling. In this regard, video games stack up pretty well.
I will freely admit that I have, on many occasions, actually set aside a few hours to watch other people play video games, in person or on YouTube. I don’t really mind not having the controls myself; I’d rather just get the visual art, the music, and the storyline out of the game without buying it and playing through all the combat. It’s not really any different than a movie in that regard, is it?
I don’t know if this game has been brought up, but is anyone familiar with the game “Facade?” It’s actually a free download, and plays out rather like a short film. The only “reward” is to get to continue to experience the situation.
I think we’re still all waiting for a more precise definition of what “art” is from PZ.
“Of course video games use art, but they have more in common with an athletic event, which is a game.”
And those games which have almost nothing in common with athletic events? Many games (The Path) are nothing like an athletic event.
The examples people are giving (well, mine anyway) are not to say “this game is awesome, it has to be art”. They’re to demonstrate an emotional experience which has been specifically crafted and designed, which could not have been communicated via any other medium (as storytelling can). I think we all need a definition of “art” which excludes such a thing, because that’s definitely within any working definition I can come up with.
Holy shit, I saw this when it was new, and figured I would wait until I was off work to comment. 800 comments later… I’m not inclined to see if someone already made my point, so I’ll just make it, possibly again.
Every RPG (role-playing game, which with you are obviously unfamiliar) that has ever existed belies this sentiment. I would cite Planescape and Grim Fandango as obvious examples. They’re a lot like interactive movies, after their fashion.
You and Ebert just need new shit to not be old shit. “You kids and goddamn rock and/or roll, that’s not music! Because I just declared it was NOT! I’m special and I have powers!” Whatever, dude.
Games are not just an art form, they can be the highest form of art their is. Let’s just look at the nuke scene from Modern Warfare; would you be more emotionally connected to the scene as a picture or painting, as a scene in a movie passively watched, or as the scene you go through as a character that you just used to get past difficult challenges. The answer is that the interactive medium is far superior. Through greater familiarity with video games the question most asked will not be “is it art?” the question asked will be “how could we have called anything else art?” like the painter who looks at his childhood colorings.
This post prompted me out of lurking, and I’m late to the party, but there is actually a small philosophical literature on this subject including this book which considers video games in terms of recent philosophical aesthetics:
http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405187883.html
Ebert’s arguments are pretty lousy, but I make the case for video games as art in the book better than I could here.
Well, thanks to the flurry of posts I get to reply to a comment… 500 places up but… eh.
Anyways the criticism that that the “video games aren’t art” statement comes from a position of ignorance is entirely valid. If I claim that the golden rule is one of the 10 commandments that betrays an obvious ignorance of the bible. Likewise saying things like ” A great painting or poem is something that represents an idea or emotion, communicated through the skill of an artist, to make you see through his or her eyes for a moment. Computer games just don’t do that. ” and “No one wants to play a game that’s on rails and simply leads you to the conclusion the author wants. ” betray an ignorance of many modern games. Anyone that spent much times playing can see that those statements are clearly false. They are not subjective, just flatly incorrect because a lot of games do precisely that.
Really the art question boils down to semantics, but if you claim that movies are art then you have to include video games as well simply because there is nothing at all that a movie can do that a video game can not. That is just a fact. Besides the obvious visual eye candy, a story told via a game can be just as thought provoking and perception changing as any movie.
Maybe not Pac-Man, but play something like Eternal Sonata with it’s ruminations on mortality and legacy and tell me that games can’t create the same kind of experience as any movie.
“Art” is an attempt to create something that will affect the senses or emotions of others. It doesn’t matter what it is. It can be good art or bad art (this is largely a subjective call), but if someone out there has a feeling they want to convey to me and they create something to do it and, ideally, that item manages to create the desired emotion in people then that is art (for the record, I feel that the vast majority of it is bad art).
So, when I see cave paintings, I feel awe. Maybe not because of their beauty, but because of their age and the sense of time they create and, though this was not the original intention of the people who made them, they are art.
When I see Michaelangelo’s David, I feel humbled by the skill that went into it’s creation and it is art.
When I watch “Godfather” I feel wonder at the depth of the characterisation and the quality of the film, and I know it is art.
When I play a game and feel awe, or humbled or it’s depth, I must also acknowledge that it too is art.
It is too early to tell if any one game is great and culturally relevant art. Examples like Bioshock, Halo or Fallout are all well and good, I love them all, but time may wear out their appeal. But give gaming a few decades to create something that has a universal and long lasting appeal and then we can call it great. I feel confident that day will come, but it is not here yet. Nevertheless, great or small, good or bad, they are all a form of art.
Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.
Hmm. Video Games do fit most if not all of the above.
Cinematic scenes using virtual worlds that are very elaborate and colorful. Anyone remember “The Last Starfighter?”
Music in most modern video games have intensify the scenes intensifying your emotions. Heck a lot of these video games have release soundtrack albums. Can anyone remember 2001.
Most important of all a lot of modern video games have plots, elaborate story lines, and character development if written would fill. Novel.
I have to admit that most video games do not do art very well but it is art.
I can list several video games where you become intestacy engorged into the story, its characters, and cinematic.
One of the greatest video games of all time, Final Fantasy 7, has a great story line, characters that you emotionality feel invested in as they develop, and great cinematic for its time. The video game is the story. It tells the story by having you interact with it. Makes you think what if, and even has its social commentary.
Sure there expectations of performance but don’t you expect the same when you go to a Broadway play.
Is it weird that this particular topic is the first–in my years-long history of lurking and never feeling the slightest inclination to contribute to the discussion–the first one to rouse me to bother signing in to comment?
It’s a pity I don’t have anything new to add–Ico and Shadow of the Colossus have already been mentioned a few million times–but if a person’s definition of art does not even permit the inclusion of X, even though X is appreciated as art by a considerable number of others, who have been moved to great emotion by a masterfully crafted example of X, does that say more about art, or about X, or about the person?
Brownian had it right back at #29:
@PZ:
I don’t think basketball, played by regular rules, is art. However, I do think that basketball exhibition teams are artists, in the same way as other performance artists, such as dancers or figure skaters. And in the same way as I think basketball exhibitions can be art, I think video games can be art. For example, can you explain how something like this is not art:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8052008650019223319#
It was created by a group who were intending to display their abilities for the benefit and delight of others. How is that different than a dance? (I did not create that, btw) If you have not played Quake, you might not appreciate the difficulty and incredible aspects of the video, but it should still be obvious that they are not competing, but displaying — which is art. And this same sort of thing is done for any number of games.
One trouble with talking about whether video games qualify as art is that “video game” is a broad umbrella and “art” is not well defined. I am good friends with several artists, and one of the common discussions they have is “what qualifies as art?” There does not seem to be a generally agreed-upon definition, so if you could put a complete definition of art up, then we could have a more productive discussion.
@773 and the person quoted:
I was thinking about comics an “It’s not art!” thing earlier. PZ might be inclined to say that field a manual is not art, but what if that manual was in the form of a tutorial comic written and drawn by master artist Will Eisner (of The Spirit and A Contract with God)? There is exactly such a body of sequential art: Joe Dope comics that show soldiers how to do everything from fix a Jeep to keep inventories current.
I think the most disappointing thing here is that there aren’t just people saying “but this game moment was special to me,” there are actual rebuttals to each of his points and criteria that PZ is just brushing aside; these are even coming from people who do art professionally or study art academically. Maybe they’re getting lost in the sea of comments, but I have a hard time believing he’s missing all of them.
@PZ, all your points for what art is and why games don’t meet the requirement have been shot down at least a dozen dozen times already, and it’s not just people saying you haven’t played the “right” games so much as saying you haven’t evaluated these games’ artistry fairly. I’d say, and I see that others have before me, is that you’re confusing a game with playing a game. You talk about paintings, films, and poems, but you don’t say those fail to be art because of what the audience is doing with those objects. Yet that’s exactly the way in which you evaluate a game, despite your wrong-headed characterization in appeal to how games are made. Video games don’t just “include” art in the form of visual and audio assets, many of them are a package of those assets in a specific, coherent and predetermined way to convey the game makers’ message through a narrative. The way that comic books are a mixture of text and imagery in narrative as Sequential Art, some video games are likewise a combination of images and sounds to communicate an idea to the audience.
Whether the audience is participating actively by playing the game or passively by watching the game be played, you’d have a hard time arguing that some video games take all the aspects of film and literature like protagonists, antagonists, a set chronology of events as a plot, and even sometimes morality plays, yet mysteriously fail to be art. So far your criterion seems to be that you think it’s boring watching other people play a game, but there are thousands of Youtube videos with the pageviews to prove you wrong: you can’t introduce such a subjective criterion like that and then claim other people are missing the mark for your supposedly objective ontology. You keep italicizing the word “games” but then only argue about the act of playing a game, and even there you’re wrong. There’s plenty of room for playing a game to be performance art rather than just a competition like sports. You may not have experienced it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
TL;DR version
“Art is a kind of distillation and representation of human experience, filtered through the minds of its creators.” Well, how is it that this does not apply to Halo but would apply to a sci-fi film with the same plot? If I’m going through the single-player story mode in Halo, am I not entering the world that the creators envisioned and participating only in the ways that their vision and the confines of the medium allow me to, so that they convey their experiences through the metaphor of the game? If I watch someone else play, how are they not equivalent of an actor in a movie I’m seeing?
Everybody’s listing games they think exemplify games-as-art, so I’ll join in, and give my reasoning.
SPOILERS BELOW, I’ll visually mask them for the unwary.
Lots of people have mentioned Braid, and I agree; not just because of its visual beauty (and it is stunning), and not just for its surprisingly emotional effect through its minimalistic storytelling. The game design itself imparts significant meaning that couldn’t easily be communicated via other means. At its heart, it is a standard platform game, with a unique time-rewinding mechanism. Each world introduces a variation on the time-control theme, and the final world plays in reverse. In the last level, you finally see the princess as she runs from an angry knight. She operates controls to help you escape the tunnels, before finally reaching home. But something’s not right, this level plays forwards… after finishing, you have nowhere to go, but you can rewind time; and you see the sequence of events as they fit this world, running back to the beginning, the princess trying to seal you into the tunnel in fear. Finally she escapes with her hero. I can describe it, and you can have it presented to you; but you only really feel it when you play the game.
What’s with the ragging on Pac-Man? It doesn’t have much of a narrative, but that’s not a defining characteristic of art.
Mondrian’s artistic standing is not disputed; why not Pac-Man as art?
Anyone want to bet how long it’ll take until some right-wing website will break the news about the Great Video Game Schism of 2010, the final nail in the coffin of the Atheist movement?
@791, you’re not framing that right.
There should be more violence and juvenile-ness, because only children play games, and all games are Chainsaw Bloodlust 5: SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE.
Is that out already? My copy’s still on preorder.
@Rutee, OK then, the final, nine-inch nail in the head of the rotting Atheist zombie. Better?
No no, I meant attributed to atheists, “whom are schisming over htat silly child’s toy, the video game”
I can see Fox News giving out that headline. Wasn’t it a Fox Affiliate that was trolled epically by some 4chan Anons?
Actually, what is the general opinion here of what art is..?
To me, a piece of work doesn’t need to invoke thought to be considered art. An artist friend paints me a picture, and I admire how beautiful it is, so I consider it art. A game tells me a beautiful story, puts me in a world of the creators’ imaginations, I immerse in it, and consider it art. It seems like the kind of art that shocks people into thought only came about in modern times – personally, I don’t have much taste for those.
Also, I probably don’t play as many mainstream games as the gamers who comment here do. I tend to play more home-brew games (eg doujin, indie), and so my impression of video games is probably quite different from the majority.
You know what else is boring? Listening to a painting, or sniffing a CD of classical music. Art doesn’t stop being art just because there are right and wrong ways to interact with it.
But that’s not the most important point. I’ve seen people arguing that ok, some games aren’t art, but some are. I disagree. Consider: all paintings are works of art – even though some are better than others. Some bear prolonged scrutiny, and some do not. Some books can be read and re-read, while others go straight in the charity bin. What clouds this issue is that games can be enjoyed and endlessly revisited even if they aren’t great art, and I think people of a mind with Ebert find the notion of an artform in which artistic merit is not necessarily paramount offensive. To put it another way, Ebert can’t accept games as art because he can’t legitimately call Bejeweled a ‘bad game’.
As others have done, I urge doubters to play Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and Portal. These are games I have replayed more often than I’ve re-read most books, or re-watched most films. I played Ico and SotC with my family in rapt attendance; in both cases there was not a dry eye in the room as the credits rolled. They are without question works of art.
So? All you’ve done is define your particular flavor of Art, and you value utility. The only parallel that comes to mind is watching the Catholic Church argue that they possess the ‘true’ Christianity, and all the others are mere pretenders. I mean, the label ‘Christian’ should have some meaning, otherwise you have to let everyone in who uses that label…
Art is what people call art, in much the same way that the definition of a word is what people use it to mean – English dictionaries are field guides, not statements of fact. Trying to tell gamers that games aren’t Art because it doesn’t fit your defined standards is like trying to tell Mennonites that they not Christian because they’re not Catholic.
While excommunicating Games from ‘Art’, that nevertheless doesn’t change that, by their own admission, many commentators here will continue to experience games as Art. Are they wrong? Is this an appreciation that dares not speak its name? A form of forbidden appreciation?
It’s like stating that because you define marriage as only occurring between a man & a woman, that gay marriage isn’t ‘real’ marriage. Um, okay. You can go around pretending that, but people’s behavior is in direct contradiction with your definition. The problem is in your definition, not the people’s behavior.
It’s Art because people are appreciating it as Art. All else is fiddling.
Not art? Two words: Hoshi Saga
check that flash game out.
This is completely, 100% a generational thing. In the early days of cinema, theater critics dismissed it as mindless entertainment that could never amount to true art. The same story is played out every time a new art medium comes up.
Isn’t this a science and skeptics blog? Stick to what you know, PZ. Leave meaningful analytics to the professionals in the games industry.
Shorter PZ:
“The movie Resident Evil is art, but the game Resident Evil isn’t. Why? Because i said so.”
PZ, I appreciate the distinctions you are trying to make here. But I disagree with the conclusions you make from them.
Let’s separate the components that make up video games and put them in two boxes
Box 1:
Box 1 has the elements that are ‘pieces of art contained in the video game’
Box 2:
Box 2 has the elements that make a video game a Game
If I understand your arguments correctly, from this distinction you contend that everything in box 2 is not art. This is emphatically NOT true.
Take this idea:
If I wrote a story to convey that idea, it would be considerd ‘art’ even by people who didn’t accept the idea as true.
Game mechanics can be used to convey the same idea. In Civ 4 the player has the option of imposing slavery on his civilization. In game mechanical terms this allows me to trade population and happiness points for production points. As your civilizations tech improves (and your population’s productivity improves with it) this option becomes less and less attractive.
So in essences its is expressing the same idea using game mechanics (the exchange of population and happiness for production, increase of productivity with tech) and victory conditions (which give the incentive of maximizing production)
Why is the first method(story writing) considered ‘art’ when the second method(game mechanics) considered non-art even if they are trying to achieve the same thing?
As a though experiment, if you remove everything from Civ 4 that you think belongs in box 1 leaving nothing but the barest interface required to play the game, it would still be art.
I find it funny that a movie critic wrote this. Because most of his problems with the video game genre (being fed by big industry for consumption by the masses, no clear single ‘artist’, no ‘great’ rated alongside Da Vinci and Picasso) applies to movies as well.
You will not convince me to believe that Luc Besson or Roman Polanski or even Alfred Hitchcock is one of the greatest ‘artists’ the world has ever seen (Polanski of course is a rapist, probably should keep him out of the reference) but a movie nut might argue against me vehemently regarding the same, so I respect their views.
As for me, I’m an engineering student who draws and writes and reads and plays video games and (of course) is extremely interested in biology. I tend to find ‘art’ (my definition of it) everywhere so I don’t have the most stringent criteria, I find it in bits of code and algorithm and logical circuit design that makes life easier for people, and I find it in nature, the mere concept of evolution- everywhere.
Usually I’m attracted greatly by the ingenuity, craftmanship and skill involved- so videogame graphics, jurassic park, Da Vinci’s engineering blueprints and Alan Moore’s V for vendetta mean more to me than Picasso’s abstracts and definitely more than Mondrian’s… lines. So cirque du solais is art to me, so is an incredibly well executed volley or lay up in tennis or basketball- anything that tugs at the boundaries of what is possible- and what is not- inspires you to think differently and broaden your viewpoint- and not just because the artist intended it to be art. (< This of course is another definition- and not a bad one at that!) Literature is full of examples of this- writers write things for money or out of sheer spite- and their books are revered as avant-garde art- Kafka- Burgess- prime examples. But enough about my extremely lazy definition of art.. I critique the article. The man, Ebert, says that games that focus on the story rather than on 'points' cease to be games- what rubbish! Don't presume to deconstruct an entire medium to support your mediocre argument.
Games that are good art can be put into exactly two categories- Art in the sense of being exposed to images and concepts that you weren’t exposed to earlier.
Shadow of the Colossus and Mass Effect are examples of this. A little dumbed down to be more articulate, of course, but I never fault art for being articulate (
Also, thanks to the guy who showed me Hoshi Saga- fun game.
Well PZ, your doing a fabulous job of ignoring the more difficult to address criticisms of your earliest post. As many others have pointed out, it’s chock full of meaningful errors. Can you at least admit that? Because if you can’t, you are just being deliberately obtuse, and us trying to change your mind obviously has no use at all.
Now you say games are more like ‘sports’, than other forms of art, because they (can) contain an element of competition or goal-orientation. Hmm, ok.
Games are created by a large group of artists (actors, writers, modellers) through an extensive creative process that takes years. Landscapes, people, characters, creatures, entire worlds, histories, myths, weaponry, stories, dialogue, ambience, music, all are created from scratch, to immerse the player into an emotional and rewarding experience, exactly as is the case with established artistic mediums like movies, novels, paintings, music.
But wait, your right. It is actually more similar to bunch of guys throwing a ball around semi-strategically.
That’s just absurd.
I’m with Ebert on this.
The difference between any game and art:
A robot can win a game. A robot cannot appreciate art.
This is true all the way from chess to Super Mario.
Video games can contain art. So can car commercials, which employ many artists. But the central goal of a car commercial is not an emotional movement; it is still 100% successful if you simply buy a car.
In gaming the audience/player’s role is to meet a material goal or else he isn’t playing. And that’s all he needs to be doing.
An art audience/players’ only requirement is that they move emotionally. They are physically free to succeed or fail in any other way and it doesn’t matter.
Sorry, PZ, your argument (and Roger’s) is based on equivocation and the argument from ignorance. You say:
Yes. They. Do!
Seriously, have you seen a computer game since 1975?
Of course computer games are art. What else are they supposed to be? They’re suddenly not art because they’re not passive? All the elements of imagery and music and storytelling suddenly count for nothing because you can interact with them?
Most of them are bad art, but that’s irrelevant. Movies are art. Most of them are bad art, but all of them are art. Books are art, paintings are art, poetry is art, music is art. Most of them are bad, but that doesn’t mean they’re not art.
Ebert is arguing that if it’s a computer game it’s not art and if it’s art it’s not a computer game. That’s ridiculous just on a basis of logic, but there are dozens of counter examples already mentioned in this thread that smack it down with fact as well.
Planescape: Torment? Not just art but high art.
Ok, before this thread is closed for excessive length, I’ll write one more excessively long comment. After a good night’s sleep I felt the need to check this thread again when well-rested and clear-headed and see if I could better understand PZ’s arguments. I mean, our dear, tentacled overlord is lovely and I usually agree with almost everything he said, so I thought that I must have missed something.
I’m still not seeing it.
From what I can see, this seems to be the running thread of the argument (discounting that in my eyes the original post painted a much different argument): games are containers for art but that container is not art.
Among other quotes:
This is something I addressed before with the argument that all the pieces – both game mechanics and “artsy” stuff like music, graphics, voice acting and so on must fit together as a whole. That is what makes it a new kind of art to me, since unprecedented to combine all of those things with great interactivity to try to create a complete experience.
I just don’t understand what this “the game itself” refers to – it seems like PZ is saying that the game mechanics is the game while the graphics, sound and stuff is just something to bring you the game. I disagree. It is not just a pile of disjointed art with a pile of game mechanics on top. It is all a whole. “The game itself” is all of it as a complete, integrated unit.
I also don’t understand the thing about how if one game isn’t art then none of them are.
A distinction many has been making is that there are games that are substantially different – not just in their quality, but in their intent and type. “Video game” is a term that encompasses both Tetris and a fully fledged RPG, but that doesn’t mean that those two games are of the same type.
Some games are all (or at least primarily) about the game mechanics. PZ seems to argue that they all are, while the rest of us argue that they are not.
Almost all games can be played as if the game mechanics were the only thing important – and a number of comments imply that this is how PZ plays games:
And so on. In the comments it seems clear that PZ plays “just” to win, to gain points, to advance in level, beat his opponents and so on. That’s one way to play and something that there is nothing wrong with. One can have a very good time playing a game like that.
But what people have been pointing out is that just because you can have a good time just concentrating on that small part of the game doesn’t mean that there isn’t more to it.
You can play a different play style as well, and yes I do think that it is relevant and significant if someone doesn’t see this or haven’t experienced it in his gaming.
Even if you say
I still think that it’s relevant – the fact that you seem to have a wholly different experience than most of us is relevant because one certainly should have a complete experience before judging something.
There are both superficial and deeper qualities to most games. The superficial (“Push this button, shoot that target, solve that puzzle,” etc.) are easy to see – just like it’s easy to see the superficial notion that a Jackson Pollock masterpiece is just paint splotches.
There can be more to both of them and there can certainly be more intent behind both of them.
If someone is seeing just the easy to see, superficial part of something I think that it is highly relevant in discussions like this.
Oh, and as for
I just must echo what others are saying about the directors commentary from the Half-Life 2 episodes. Those just contain brilliant examples of exactly that.
You can listen when they describe how they carefully use the design of the game to invisibly nudge the players attention – making the player turn to look out over a beautiful vista or at an important part of the game, to invoke certain emotions or to influence what the player is thinking.
All of it has to be integrated with the game mechanics to make it work as a whole – one, all-encompassing work of art where interactivity, sound and visuals work together to present those things.
Does it succeed? For some players, maybe not for others. But regardless of if it succeeds, the intent is certainly there, even if you say that “No team sits down” to do things of that kind.
Pastor @743
That’s an unusual way of looking at the question. I’d take the opposite position, if I were playing armchair futurist. In some hypothetical art history class 200 years from now, the lesson on the late 20th and early 21st century wouldn’t even bring up painting, literature or theater. A few movies, comics, pieces of music or animation might rate a mention. But the stuff that will be seen, in retrospect, as being really important and innovative, is going to be Grand Theft Auto, Silent Hill, Shadow of the Colossus, God of War, Final Fantasy et al.
I would guess, anyway. We’ll see.
@#808
A robot can watch a movie.
A robot can win a game (sometimes- logical puzzles can’t be solved by robots- but maybe by sheer brute force computation- it’s not as easy to watch a movie though)
A robot cannot appreciate a movie.
A robot cannot appreciate a game.
As simple as that,
At least make your analogies a little harder to twist into my own viewpoint.
@PZ, I might be willing to grant that Halo is not art, but that does not mean that other games can’t be. As a bad analogy, my comment on your blog post is not art, but B. Traven’s books are. Both are writing.
The producers of BioShock claimed that they spent practically all their creative time in the gameplay mechanics, and then just packaged it in artwork to make it appealing. That doesn’t really matter, because the experience that I had included a wider spectrum of intense emotions than a film or piece of music has ever done for me.
It’s not the same as Halo, where I just had fun blasting aliens.
As a sidenote I want to encourage anyone that has missed out on Grim Fandango to play it. It is the best adventure game ever made and contains some of the funniest dialouge ever written, all packaged in beautiful graphics and music.
Zabinatrix, here’s a little substitution:
—
And so on. In the comments it seems clear that PZ defecates “just” to void his bowels. That’s one way to defecate and something that there is nothing wrong with. One can have a very good time defecating like that.
But what people have been pointing out is that just because you can have a good time just concentrating on that small part of defecation doesn’t mean that there isn’t more to it.
You have a different style of defecation as well, and yes I do think that it is relevant and significant if someone doesn’t see this or haven’t experienced it in his defecation.
There are both superficial and deeper qualities to most defecations. The superficial ([details elided in the interests of non-scatophiles]) are easy to see – just like it’s easy to see the superficial notion that a Jackson Pollock masterpiece is just paint splotches.
—
There should be more violence and juvenile-ness, because only children play games, and all games are Chainsaw Bloodlust 5: SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE.
Game of the year, every year.
Tycho and Gabe are exactly correct and you and Mr Ebert exactly wrong. Of course, this is usually the case when you try to tell someone what *isn’t* art, so that shouldn’t surprise you in the slightest.
One of the comparisons Ebert makes is to the game of chess. As it happens, this is perfectly apt. Every chess set ever made is a work of art by any reasonable definition, thirty-two chessmen rendered in some combination of the abstract, the realistic, and the fanciful. Thirty-two pieces of sculpture united with a mathematically perfect grid of alternating squares to create a piece so suited for display that it is the centerpiece of many a sophisticated room, and collectible in itself. The rules may also be considered a form of art, as there is certainly an art to creating the rules of a game. The rules impact the feel and flow of a game, but even if we grant that the rules are mere artifice instead of art (which is already an absurd distinction, but I’ll allow it,) there remains the chess set itself.
A video game is not the game of chess, but the chess set. Playing it is a way to experience it as art, but also a sport in its own right.
As an aside, I will say that the great works of other forms are appreciated too much or the newer form too little. Video games do indeed have their equivalents of Shakespeare, of Leonardo, and of Beethoven, but even if you consider that they don’t, you must concede that Video Games are a comparitively young art in a medium with distinct and definate (if expanding) limits. We had thousands of years of history from which to select Homer and Hayden and Hunt, and reasonable people may still disagree on whether their art is great because there is no objective standard for greatness. Video Games have not yet been with us a century, and they are a medium with rapidly expanding limits. There can be little doubt that the best is yet to come, so if you claim that Video Games have among them no great work of art, it may be that you will simply have to wait.
@#808
Um, what is your viewpoint, exactly?
Simply that a robot can watch a movie, read a book or look at a painting with a lot more ease than with which it can play a game. It just needs a camera- and perhaps a mechanism to turn the page- no programming.
Derive what you can from that.
MultiTool #808,
So robots determine what art is for you? LOL. That is incredibly ridiculous. A robot never appreciates anything it does, not even winning a game, but nice try at hoodwinking that problem. We might call a robot playing a game art, though, and we could install that in our homes to display to visitors.
You now join PZ and Ebert in denying that film can be art because car commercials most definitely are Not Art™.
This is absurd reductionism. People don’t want to play a game for the game mechanics or the (fake) material goals of the game. Heck, most people don’t even know what the exact goals of the game are when they get the game. Games have to be attractive to humans (not robots) despite the rules of the game or the objective of the game, that is what makes video games art. Next thing you are going to tell us is that cars are not works of art.
“There are no artists in foxholes.”
Discuss…
To aratina- there are games that exist primarily for the the gameplay mechanics. (E.g. most multiplayer games/FPS’s/Racing Games etc) These thrive on the competitive nature of the play.
But a truly good RPG or stealth-espionage or mystery game is the same as a good book or movie. If someone took >(pick any great movie you want with a little bit of action or adventure in it)< and made a game out of it of equal quality- it no longer has artistic merit? Bull.
@John Morales, 815:
I… Uhm, what? I’m sorry if I’m responding to the wrong thing, but I do not quite comprehend what you are trying to show me by that substitution. Are you saying that bowel movements and games are the same thing? Or are you saying that there is only one conceivable goal in defecation, so therefor there is only one conceivable goal in playing a video game?
Yes, both things have a clear end result – emptying of the bowels is the result of any defecation, stomped goombas is the result of playing a Mario game, and racking up experience points is the result of any play through of a CRPG. But beyond that I don’t see any comparison.
Those inevitable results (points, killed enemies, power ups or whatever) from playing the game is just one of the effects. The game also affects you. That effect is not static and is not the same if you play with different goals and different mind sets.
And my point was also that the game can be created with the intent to give you certain emotions, while you can have a good time playing in a style that doesn’t lend to that. I did not argue that the act of playing is the art – I’m just saying that if you play certain ways you might not see the same thing that the game designers might have intended.
There is no designer that intended for me to have any particular kind of epiphany while on the john, so I don’t see why the comparison would be apt – different styles of defecation does not lead to different insight into the intent of a designer. But PZ clearly argued that he knew the intent of design in the original post, and when it comes to games there is a designer and there is insight to be had by playing in different ways.
So… Care to explain more about what your substitution was supposed to illuminate? I’m really not sure if I understand what kind of argument or comparison you were making.
Ebert’s comments are as ludicrous as some early 20th century painter (who had never watched a movie but once had one described to him) blithering that movies can’t be art because they are sequential.
So yes he annoyed a lot people and probably disappointed even more who expected more from him. His description of Braid (a game he has never played) was so profoundly ignorant that he lost the argument right there on the spot.
Torvoraptor: it has been mentioned twice on this thread. You’re welcome. :)
PZ, I’ve read the blog entry and all your responses (but not all comments, my browser chokes on the page size, so I apologize if I reiterate what others have covered). I can’t tell whether you argue against game playing being an art, or the game itself being (an object of) art, or both. You conflates them and it contaminates the discussion somewhat. So I’ll try to address both.
Your main argument (not exposed until later in the comments) seems to be that the element of competition disqualifies (computer) games as an art form. I don’t see why this should be the case. If the game is the art, then playing is the method for experiencing the art by definition. After all you can’t really appreciate stories without narrative, or music without hearing – the medium dictates by its nature the methods and limits of the experience.
You also seem to consider games to be at best containers for artwork, but then you do the genre (or indeed, computers themselves) no justice. It is the potentially unlimited level of interaction that adds a dimension that arguably few other art forms have.
torvoraptor #822,
Primarily, but with video games you do not have gameplay mechanics in absence of game aesthetics no matter how simplistic they might be for without a video component it could hardly be called a video game.
@#819, @#820, et al:
Your examples don’t undermine my point. Sure robots can physically do things, and nothing else. But that’s exactly why no one makes robots to watch movies, while they do make robots to play games. It’s just a distinction, and if it’s not important to you, then that’s OK with me.
I am really not gonna fight this battle to the last man. ‘Cause:
1. As many people have noted, art is a pretty broad, fuzzy notion. When I say I agree with Ebert, I mean that *I* agree with Ebert, not that you have to. By some definitions chewing is art, and I can even see it that way without necessarily being on board.
2. I am way outnumbered here and don’t have the Carpal Tunnels of Steel it’ll take really hash this out. If I were a robot I could!
Haven’t read much after ~#250, but from what I can make, PZ is arguing that the game mechanics itself, controlling something, doing stuff, can they be art? A question like that is incredibly difficult to answer, because the actions are too closely linked with the story, the characters etc. It’s very difficult to isolate the mechanics from all that, because many games are about that link. The gameplay is fun, but the ramifications of your actions really enhance that eg. Metal Gear Solid 3 – there is a scene where the ghosts of everybody you killed try and assail you as you walk down a river. If you slit their throat, their head rolls back on their neck. If you killed someone, and then a vulture came down and started eating the corpse, and then you killed and ate the vulture, the ghost would cry “you ate me!”, and so forth. In that case, your actions, the decisions you made whilst playing, have come back to effect you, and you must see the ramifications. A case for it being art?
Another example, tied even less to the story, would be Mirror’s Edge. A first person Parkour game. You control the main character, and make her do crazy shit. But she moves so fluidly, and you respond so fluidly, and when you’re in the ‘zone’ as it were, and you just are unstoppable with your movements, it’s a wonderful feeling; on top of that, it gives you an insight into what it must be like to do parkour, and a respect and admiration for practitioners. When looked at like that, one can consider it – the very act of controlling and being in control of Faith – Art.
I guess the problem with this question is that it is very hard to instill things like imagery, meaning, and so forth into the very controls of the game. Because a game is meant to be an immersive experience: you don’t look for metaphors in your own actions, so how can you in a character you control? But even then, it’s been done: Braid has been mentioned, with your controlling of time have some meaning or other (I can’t quite remember, it is mentioned in this thread though).
If I’m right in understanding PZ’s point of contention, then, all in all, I believe he’s missed the point. A game is a package: gameplay, story, sound, visuals, and so forth. You have to take it as that package, because that’s what a game is. It’s the entire thing. These days, most would not consider something like Call of Duty 4, were it stripped of its story and multiplayer and visuals and all but the bare bones required for shooting things, a videogame. In that case, I would simply consider it technology.
MultiTool:
But they don’t make games with the intent of having them be played by robots.
Some games, like Minesweeper are really only mechanical, logical, robot thinking – but few games are like that. Just because you can make a robot that plays a game that is designed to instill emotion in you, like some big, story-driven RPG, doesn’t mean that it is in any way meaningful to do so. Just like it isn’t meaningful to have a computer look at a movie through a webcam.
I find the comparison very apt. When making both games and movies there is intent in making them resonate with thinking beings – the game mechanics of getting points and whatnot (the part that a robot can do) is not all there is, just like the mechanics of seeing a movie is not all there is to a movie.
MultiTool #827,
It doesn’t matter whether you find it important or not, your point was frivolous. Robots do whatever they are designed to do. It has no bearing on what makes something art.
Your reason for agreeing with Ebert is apparently that robots don’t appreciate art, which is silly because they don’t appreciate winning a game either.
Zabinatrix,
Well, obviously not the same thing, except in that they’re both mundane activities that can have deeper meaning and engender esthetic appreciation and an emotional response, wherein the artistic is manifested.
Does it matter if the activity is created by people, or by nature? Think of it as “found” performance art.
;)
[Allright, I’m (ahem) bullshitting and can’t keep a straight face.
But hey, best as I can tell, art is what someone claims is art.
Dog turd on a plate? Art.
Drawing of a can of Campbell’s Soup? Art.
Blank canvas? Art.
Video game? Art.]
^Fair enough
Chimp Turd on Canvas has been sold for amounts that could feed small villages in Africa for months- because some critic found artistic value in that.
So add ‘art’ movies and modern art to your list in that last post. They are as mundane and pathetic as a dog turd or a blank canvas or a video game as you claim.
I have two words: Heavy Rain.
If you haven’t “played” it, you have no right to comment on video games being art or not.
Jeez, what’s this thread doing still alive? Anyway…
John @831
Yep, sure does! Think of artificial v. natural. A sunset isn’t art. Putting a frame around it is. Without sentient life on the planet there would not be art. Art must be mediated by consciousness.
As for your four examples
1,2 and 4 definitely can be construed as art. 3 depends on the intentionality of the artist, unless you want to take the position that it must be solely because it was made.
You pays your fee, you takes your chances.
Ebert knows the history of his own preferred “art” form pretty well. He knows it wasn’t that long ago that many art critics considered film too populist and uncouth to be treated as “art.” Really, Ebert should know better than to make such a pronouncement.
And I think he knows it. His usually clear & direct prose is all over the place in this rambling piece. He can’t even decide on a definition of “art.” And WTF does he mean by, “I tend to think of art as usually the creation of one artist.” Surely he is not such an auteur theorist that he believes this condition is true of all, or even most, films.
The argument that video games might contain art but the games themselves are not art is an artless dodge, with obvious parallels in film: Oh, the costumes might be art; the mise-en-scene might be art; the script might be art; but the film itself can’t be art. Baloney.
There already exist journals like Game Studies (http://gamestudies.org) which discuss rhetorical and aesthetic qualities of video games, despite Ebert’s claim that the games possess no such qualities.
But if nothing else, the strong disagreement Ebert has received is pretty good evidence that he’s already wrong — plenty of people do experience video games as art. And who the hell is Roger Ebert to tell them they’re wrong?
I didn’t read through the previous 800+ comments so I might reiterate some points, but I have to:
– Grim Fandango is art –
I mention this one first because it can be classified as art by definition or by using aesthetics principles.
This game is using imagery and music to unveil a beautiful story. The story is linear (it’s on a rail so to say) so from this pov it’s pretty much like a book – a good book.
About watching somebody else playing I have only one word: Starcraft
In South Korea Starcraft is more popular than soccer, baseball or basketball. It’s a sport, an e-sport.
A mind game, more entertaining than Chess or Go because it involves quick thinking and hand-eye coordination. A top korean Starcraft gamer takes a decision and performs an action every 200 ms and that’s something you have to see live.
Here’s a movie about Starcraft in South Korea:
Starcraft in South Korea
After seeing such a crowd of people watching breathlessly someone else playing we can’t really say games aren’t fun to watch.
Let’s not forget that 80% of the people creating a video-game are artists.
– Graphics artists
– Game designers (some of them are similar to writers and some of them similar to architects)
– Musicians and sound engineers (yes it’s part engineering but that doesn’t dismiss it as art)
(and programmers but we can say they are engineers although they also require an inclination for art in this industry)
It’s a Glassperlenspiel. And its sooo new, the game development begun only 40 years ago.
The people creating a game are entertainers and entertaining other people seems to me like a form of art.
John Morales, #831:
I and others made the distinction before that art is made or done by people. Being made or done by people is the only necessary and sufficient condition for calling something “art”. (Not “good art”, mind you, just what is needed for something to be art.) One can argue that some kind of found performance art is still the work of people. Even if no alterations to the found object is made, or if the event itself is “natural” and unintended, it has to be “framed” by someone as being art. Outside this frame (which may only be conceptual), there are things which are not part of the artwork.
One could wander around all day long, pointing at things saying, “That’s art! That is also art!” Feel free to do that sometime, if that’s what floats your boat. Our ability to have genuine aesthetic experiences is not limited to things found in a museum. Ebert declaring that a game is not art is only an admission that he cannot or will not see the beauty, craftsmanship, etc., that go into making a game and experiencing a game. It is his own personal limitation, not one of the game itself. Yes, you could replace “game” with “dirty ashtray” or “Jesus painted with turds” and it would change nothing.
There’s been a lot of bullshit on both sides of this conversation, but it’s not because art is bullshit. One doesn’t get to call a video game “art” simply because one enjoys it a whole bunch. Those making this assertion are right that a video game is art, but for completely the wrong reasons, and will probably make this mistake themselves in the future and in other contexts. If we drop the antiquated notion that “art” means really super-meaningful stuff that I like, then we could begin to have a production dialogue.
At MultiTool 808:
Did you port that argument right from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (“I do so admire you humans…”) There’s nothing precluding a sufficiently advanced AI from appreciating art, whatever ‘appreciate art’ means.
Unless you wanna posit that the ability to appreciate art comes from our ‘souls’ or ‘minds’, or something like that. (And you really don’t wanna. Not here.)
And a building is still 100% successful if it keeps the rain off of your head. Yet architecture is considered an artistic endeavour.
Went in. Did my banking. Came out.
Oh, and the building was beautiful, BTW. But I didn’t need to appreciate that to balance my bankbook.
See 99% of the last 800 comments for games in which the programmers’ intent was to move the players emotionally. [SPOILER] As to being free to succeed or fail, well, Call of Duty 4 sets you up so that the game ends with you failing, no matter what. A nuke is fired. The world as you know it ends. You, and everyone else, is fucked. Just like Hamlet.
@MultiTool #827:
Wrong. They don’t make robots to watch movies because the technology doesn’t yet exist. As Zabinatrix pointed out, the robots that can play games only test certain functionalities of certain games, much in the same way a light meter is used to test a certain functionality of cameras in the process of creating film.
But the person who invents the FocusGroupBot 3000 will become rich beyond our ability to imagine.
“productive dialogue”, not production
Robert H (@737):
I noticed the same comment you did, and I think there’s a bit of a language problem that obscures the underlying principle: I would say that every painting is art, but neither every photograph nor every film (and BTW, shouldn’t we really say motion picture to be more accurate?) is art. The distinction is a matter of language usage: We typically don’t use painting as a countable noun unless we are talking about an artwork. As a gerund, painting names an activity that involves putting paint on something, and whose product very frequently is not an artwork… but when we say “a painting,” we almost always mean something that is unambiguously art.
The same is not true of a photograph, which might be art, but also might be evidence or data or recordkeeping or journalism (which itself arguably overlaps with art, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation) or…. Equally, a film might be art, but might also be produced for some other, non-articstic, purpose (some of which, like journalism, might also overlap with art).
What underlies the language is this: Art is a matter of intention. Almost any physical or virtual object can conceiveably be produced as art, if that’s the intention, and the artistic impulse can be, and very often is, overlaid on forms and genre that embody other intentions as well.
And at the risk of redundantly and repetitively recapitulating my previous argument, the question of what is and is not art is entirely separate from the question of what is good or bad art.
All: Something a bit oblique to the conversation, but related to the theme we’re discussing, that I’ve been thinking about for years.
Ever since I started reading the Harry Potter books (which was, I confess was a few years after they began appearing), I’ve been thinking about quidditch, the wizarding sport. There have been attempts to create real-world quidditch teams and leagues (often as college clubs), but AFAIK they’ve never succeeded, and it’s not hard to see why: The game is fundamentally based on magical action (flying on broomsticks, chasing enchanted balls that move, to some degree, in a self-directed non-Newtonian way) that not only can’t be performed in RL but can’t even be meaningfully simulated in the physical world.
So my fantasy has been this: Imagine combining arcade and video game technologies with virtual reality to enable actual teams of actual players to play real, unscripted games of quidditch in a digital virtual space. I’m picturing two teams of players sitting on motion controllers (i.e., similar to what arcade games use to control motorcycle racing games), wearing motion-capture gauntlets and gloves (because arm and hand motion are important in the game) and VR helmets. The teams would play real (real in the sense of being unscripted, with the action and outcome determined by nothing other than the rules of the game and the skills of the players) vitual games, which would be recorded by virtual cameras (i.e., the video would be captured as it would be by cameras in a typical sports arena, except that the arena in this case would be a digital virtual reality), augmented with play-by-play and color commentary recorded in real time by real sports announcers, and televised. The result I’m imagining is a sport (with results and season standings and playoffs and championships) presented on television in a perfectly normal, traditional way… except for the fact that it’s a game that woud be impossible to play in the physical world.
So now here’s my question, and why this musing is relevant to this conversation: Would such a product be art or sport? My take would be the latter, because despite the vast amounts of imaginative and creative work required to make this happen, it would fundamentally be a contest, presented as a contest, primarily for the interest of people who care about the outcome of the contest. Aspects of the production (virtual set decoration and costume design) would be very artistic, but the game itself would not be a work of art (nor would playing in it or watching it be).
OTOH, the quidditch scenes in the HP movies are without doubt instances of art. Go figure, eh?
Note to self:
Buy 1 gal. Milk
Return books to library
Invent FocusGroupBot 3000
Call Mom & Dad
What about old paintings which were simply (ostensibly) photographs before the invention of the camera? Are they art? The main intent was more akin to “recordkeeping”.
Just to be clear, my musings (@840) about virtual quidditch were not intended as an argument in favor of the original proposition that “video games can never be art.” Instead, it was just one more way of saying that art is art and sport is sport, regardless of the medium in which either is rendered. However, the products that go under the general heading of video games are sometimes art and sometimes sport and sometimes blend the two.
Bill Dauphin, OM:
Both.
People made it. That’s it. It sounds awesome, by the way. If you made it, you would also happen to be filthy fucking rich. ;)
Being a contest does not mean something is not art. That’s just how that particular kind of art is experienced. Since our everyday life experiences also consist of games, competition, etc., there is nothing in “contest” that doesn’t speak to some part of the human condition. There doesn’t seem to be any reasonable way of excluding games from art.
I’m going to have to disagree with you here. This is like judging all films on the basis of some of the mediocre ones. Film encompasses dreck like Transformers, but also features works like Casablanca.
I challenge you to play something like Portal to its conclusion and still think it’s not a work of art that happens to be interactive and fun in addition to conveying rich ideas and emotions.
OK so the thread is already a zillion comments long, but a text search reveals that nobody has yet linked to Every day the same dream. It’s a game. I contend that it is art. It plays in your browser and will take only 10-20 minutes of your time to explore.
PZ wrote:
I’d say that the game linked above does this. But instead of being a short narrative fiction, it is packaged as a short interactive fiction. Just because your interaction is a part of the experience doesn’t make it less meaningful.
I agree with you Billy C that Ebert’s normally tight prose is less focussed than a film studies major’s summer project on this one. What are his claims?
“One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game.” Well, one obvious difference between art and architecture is that you can fit an H&M inside a piece of architecture.
What about his Matlock finish? “I allow Sangtiago the last word. Toward the end of her presentation, she shows a visual with six circles, which represent, I gather, the components now forming for her brave new world of video games as art. The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management. I rest my case.”
Really? That’s the problem? Finance & Marketing? Well, if Ebert thinks those non-artsy aspects of video game development exclude them from the definition of art, then he’d better rethink his career as any kind of critic of art, since a minuscule number of films are auteur pieces free from executive meddling (and even those aren’t all art, nor are all hugely financed and focus-grouped blockbusters not art). Perhaps he doesn’t recall What Just Happened, a decidedly inartistic film about the inartistic aspects of the film industry. And if he thinks there are no indie, Dogme-95-like video games being produced, well he’d best put down the remote altogether and do a little reading.
If anything has at all come out of this discussion, I think it’s pretty conclusive that whatever ‘art’ is, many video games fit the bill if many films or architecture pieces do. And it’s that, as Ichthyic pointed out above, it’s that PZ and Ebert “HAVE NO functional definition of what art is to work with.”
I want to thank all the people for posting on this thread. I have many more games to play now. Can I get Braid on the PS3?
I still think P.Z. is wrong, but I think that is because I grew up with video games and he didn’t.
Brownian #838,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t they already have something like this for music? Unless it is a gimmick…
Paul (@842):
Point well taken: I should’ve made it clear that I was talking about current usage.
Even in the present, I can imagine using the same techniques employ by an artist/painter to produce something that wasn’t art. One example that springs to mind is courtroom illustrations… but I suspect most of the practitioners of that dying craft would claim they do have artistic intent, even beyond their nominal function of recording facts. That said, I still say that if you say, “a painting” to someone, they will almost always think of a work of art, produced and “consumed” as art. If, OTOH, you say “a photograph” to them, they’ll think of a picture of their 9 yo child holding up a freshly caught sunfish, or perhaps something on the front page of the newspaper, showing their mayor being led away in handcuffs. You’d probably have to remind most people that “a photograph” can be a work of art.
As to whether “a painting” made centuries ago is art if its original purpose was non-artistic… that’s an interesting question. To a certain extent, the answer is how would we know? If there’s contemporary documentary evidence of the painter’s purpose being something other than artistic expression, I’ll entertain the idea that it’s not art; failing that, I think the default position should be that anything we experience as art is art.
if there aren’t already teams of people in arcade game development studios working on this, i shall be very upset at whatever copyright lawyer is preventing them from hopping to it.
Partially true, playing a video-game is an experience you can’t really capture in a physical symbol to display in your home. It’s not painting and it ain’t photography.
But you can say the same thing about many other forms of art. If you display a picture with Mozart in your living room it will only be appreciated people who really enjoyed his music.
Some other people will say “well it’s a picture of some guy, maybe a relative of Mr. Meyers”
However being music you can display it as what is it: music playing from your cd-player and people would enjoy it. Some of them, some of them wouldn’t be touched by it.
Same happens if you display a picture with a portal from the game Portal. Some people, “les connaisseurs”, will really enjoy and appreciate it, we can enthusiastically talk about the game for some time. Some other will say is just some kind of post-modern picture depicting some relative of mine.
I can also show the actual game-play of Portal to people and some of them will really enjoy it (true story, been there done that)
So far the only difference I notice is that some form of arts are easier to display than others.
By the way, it seems easier do display a video-game than a book. How would one go displaying a representation of what one experienced by reading “Crime and punishment”?
Looks like Escherichia coli (#796), Kraid, and I play the same types of indie browser games. Every Day the Same Dream is, without question, an interactive short animated film. The only question is whether or not PZbert would consider it a game.
@thuktun #845
I challenge you to play something like Portal to its conclusion and still think it’s not a work of art that happens to be interactive and fun in addition to conveying rich ideas and emotions.
Part of the problem is that it’s certainly possible to play a game like Portal entirely focusing on the puzzle aspects, and completely ignoring the world that is built around you in the process.
What people like Ebert don’t seem to recognize is that the fact that there’s an underlying game doesn’t diminish the way it’s used to enforce growing suspicions about the people behind the observation windows, or the emotions evoked when you finally reach the end of the tests. That the video game as a whole definitely can contain the kinds of emotion, self-examination, and shifts of perception that are usually attributed to “art”… and that to claim that it just “contains” art is an attempt to separate it from something that is integral to the experience.
A music-listening robot? That’s it. Music isn’t art. After all, we just can’t call everything art now, can we?
I know I shouldn’t waste my finger stength typing something on a 900-comment post, but…
My girlfriend is a painting major at Cornish College of the Arts, and the 2010 BFA show includes her work, which includes…
A video game called “Afternoon With Allen.” The interface is a somewhere between a dating sim and Myst, but what you do in the game – and the point of the game – is a little more mysterious and not as genre-specific. It will probably be available on the internet by midsummer.
You know, PZ stepped on a land mine or two, but I’m guessing only one detonated. “What is art” could get you 1000 comments in some circles, but I’m guessing (without reading) that the explosion here is from gamers.
Have fun.
By the way, I’ve got my eye on you people. If any of you do manage to invent the FocusGroupBot 3000, you owe me 10% of the royalties as a “finder’s fee” for the inspiration.
Fucking patent trolls. ;)
I noticed that Super Columbine Massacre RPG! has yet to be brought up.
Hey, us artistes need to eat too.
Hey, flOw is now freely downloadable for the PS3. If any of you indie game fans haven’t yet seen it, I highly recommend that you do. (The flash version has always been free.)
Anyway, thanks to this thread, I know how I’m going to spend this weekend.
Patent trolls are patenting.
When I invent FocusGroupBot 3000, it will have a “kill Brownian” sub-program, in which decisions will be optimized to most efficiently achieve the goal of killing Brownian. It will also be an interpretive dance, in order to make the experience as enjoyable as possible (for everyone except Brownian or people who dislike interpretive dance).
Mr T:
I grok that you and I are basically on the same side of this argument, but I’m forced to disagree with you here. It is precisely this claim — that anything made by people is art — that encourages PZ to accuse the rest of us of rendering art a meaningless term by defining it vastly too broadly.
Part of the problem is language again: artifice, artificial, artifact, etc., are all (obviously) closely related to art in their etymology. But it doesn’t follow that every artifact is a work of art… at least not in the sense that people commonly use the term “work of art,” and not if we want that term to be a meaningful discriminator. If, OTOH, you modify your comment to…
…then I’m right there with you: Whatever people make as art is art.
But I still think it’s possible to employ the techniques and media of art to make a product that has no intent to be art… and I think my virtual quidditch may be an example of such a product.
OTOH, Paul’s question (@842) about paintings produced before the invention of photography, potentially for purely documentary or other nonartistic purposes, has started me wondering about the extent to which experiencing something as art makes it so, regardless of the intentions of its creator. I suspect there are vast numbers of artifacts from ancient cultures that we put in art museums because of their intrinsic beauty, and because the evoke in us thoughts of another world, that were in their own time purely utilitarian articles. Are we wrong to think of them as art? Must we know the intentions of their makers before deciding? I don’t know, but it’s an interesting question to ponder.
And what if something we know wasn’t intended as art is perceived as art? Does that make it so? For example, let’s consider the studio in which virtual quidditch games are produced: If you shot video of the real-world scene, it would reveal 12 people (or maybe six; there’s no real reason both teams would have to be in the same studio) in a dimly lit, soundproofed room, sitting on what looks like high-tech hobbyhorses, wearing dark bodysuits studded with luminous dots and a futuristic helmet. They would be (during gameplay) writhing, squirming, and waving their arms in the air.¹
Show that video to an audience that didn’t know what it was, and tell them it was an experimental modern dance performance, and they would absolutely accept it as such. The producers don’t think of themselves as choreographers, and the participants don’t think of themselves as dancers, and none of them think of themselves as artists… so are the viewers of that video wrong to relate to it as art? ‘Tis a puzzlement….
Brownian (@853):
Isn’t PZbert a classic arcade game? Wait… nevermind…. ;^)
Yeah, in fact, I think a more defensible version of their argument would be, “To the extent we can call a video game ‘art,’ we should not call it a ‘game.'” I’d still disagree with that, mind you, but it would be a better argument than “video games can never be art.”
Plus, this version of the argument would essentially be a dispute over terminology, rather than (as I take Ebert’s original assertion to be) a categorical argument about the fundamental potentialities of a medium.
¹
Uh, no. If an artist makes a ham and cheese sandwich because they want lunch, is it art? You’re positing some sort of dichotomy between people and artists that doesn’t exist. People can make art. Artists can make things that are not art. I know this isn’t a major point in your argument, but it helps to keep track of the minor details.
And yes, I’m nitpicking you today. I don’t really disagree with your general position, but you’re fun to talk to >.<.
D’Oh!! I was afraid I might forget to add the footnote @863, and shore ’nuff I did. It was to be an anecdote about how amusing video of people waving their arms in the air can be.
My sister-in-law is deaf, so for a while I was keeping track of the news of that community. Back when my wife and I were first getting to know each other (so 25+ years ago) one of the colleges for the deaf (Gallaudet? [sp?]) hired a hearing woman to be its president, and this incensed the student body, who wanted a deaf person for the job. I recall seeing a news report of an event on campus, in which the new president spoke to the student body, in an (ultimately futile) attempt to placate them. The video I remember seeing was of a whole basketball arena full of students, almost completely silent, but all YELLING in sign language at the top of their
lungsarms.I know it was serious business for those involved, but simply as a piece of video, it was surreally hilarious.
Wow, I think this is the first time that PZ does not make any sense at all.
Lots of eccellent comments, folks, I have learned a lot about games, and yes, about art. I’m impressed by the show of strength by the pharynguloid collective mind, against its creator nonetheless.
PZ, pleeeeaaaase do the honorable thing now: take a good night sleep, read slowly and carefully through the whole thread, let it sink in, and ADMIT YOU WERE WRONG.
I know you’re human, but I really really want to keep on admiring your intellectual honesty.
Bill, thanks, but I don’t think that change makes the statement any more or less meaningful. Give an example of a single person who has never made “art”. Everyone is an artist, but most don’t know it and are really bad artists. If we try to define “artists” as a distinct class of the general population, we perpetuate the mentality that artists are some segregated group of elites. That’s just not the case. One could basically say (and many did), “That jazz/folk musician isn’t a real artist. Classical musicians are the only True Artists™.”
Bill, you write:
You’re still confusing the relationship between what someone judges to be good art and what is de facto art. A definition of “art” in general has to include every case, not just the good stuff. Is there any room for “bad art” in your conception of it?
People can make art with the full intention of it being considered “High Classical True Art with a capital-A, created by a True Artist”. It could still be bad art. None of that changes the the fact that it is art.
LMAO because of Mr T’s patent-pending murder technique for specified target in #862!
Go back to “people made it” and stop right there. That is all that is required for it to be art. Obviously, most art (in the broad definition) is pedestrian, trivial, and/or bad. As far as “High Classical… etc” that concept is a non-category for most artists, though there are some people trying to revive the atelier tradition who might be delighted to be considered High Classical, etc. Most of the twentieth century was about artists systematically destroying all conventional and culturally accepted definitions of art, which is the main reason why art no longer holds a particularly exalted position in the cultural hierarchy. Hie yourselves off to an avant garde gallery, thumb through a few issues of Art Forum, or some similar possibly grueling experience and then start to declaim on what is art. It’s like somebody talking about botany without paying any attention to plants.
Paul:
I guess I didn’t quite express my point clearly. I’m not saying certain people are artists and others are not, and whatever artists make is art. I’m saying making art is a mode of activity: Anyone can potentially function as an artist, and whatever they make as an artist is art; it does not follow (as I gather you [mis]took me to be saying) that everything an artist makes is automatically art, nor am I suggesting that there’s any general class of people who can never be artists.
If a person makes a ham sandwich because s/he wants it for lunch, that’s not art… even if the person is a hardworking professional artist who just happens to be taking a lunch break; if a person makes a ham sandwich with the intent that it will be displayed in a gallery for people to look at and reflect on, that is art, and that person is an artist in the act of that creation.
Or so it seems to me.
Ditto. In fact, aside from a certain unease over piling on The Founder of Our Feast®, I’ve found this whole conversation entertaining and stimulating.
At what point does interactive art become too interactive to still be art?
What’s the criteria for judging what on film is art?
I have no problem saying that Gigli isn’t art, which is why I also say Halo isn’t. If you believe that every member of a genre, Gigli included, must be art, then I would also have no problem saying Halo is bad art.
Let’s forget video games for a sec. I second Shannon
and oppose Knockgoats
As a mathematicians I’m perhaps biased, but there is no doubt that there can be, and often there is, much beauty in the set of rules of a game. It is the same kind of beauty that can be found in a carefully constructed theory, in a well-written constitution.
For instance, lots of people (many millions I would guess) have a deep aesthetic appreciation for the elegance and simplicity of the rules of Go, and for the surprising ways in which this simplicity quickly unfolds into intricate and sophisticated strategies, where subtle conflicts between local and global strategies, both in time and space, have to be balanced continuously…
Since I was a kid, I had a hobby of devising games (and often coopting my younger siblings into playing them): board games, card games, role playing, all sorts, even a cross between wrestling and a two-persons ball game. More than actaully playing the games, my pleasure lay in the creative act of devising a feasible, original setup where people’s skills could be pitted agains each other.
I have always instinctively thought of this process as an artistic one, and have always thought of game designers (be they board or video games) as artists. And why not? All the tell-tale symptoms of art are present: the appreciation of creativity and originality, the search for beauty, and the desire to channel others into having certain prescribed experiences or feelings.
So, artistic ham sandwiches are meant to be displayed in a gallery, not to be enjoyed for their flavor and texture? How did you come to such a weird conclusion?
Putting it in a gallery would limit the aesthetic experience of the work, for no good reason as far as I can tell (although I’d be open to seeing a ham sandwich exhibit, even after they start to rot). I’m also having a hard time figuring out what value it would add. We do in fact have culinary artists, and if I’m not mistaken they generally don’t display their works in a gallery. Their called chefs, and they work in kitchens and restaurants.
Aren’t non-visual and non-auditory senses completely legitimate means by which something can generate an aesthetic experience?
Yes, PZ, would you kindly?
Mr T (@867):
I think I may have already most answered you in my response (@870) to Paul, but just to put a finer point on it:
No, I’m explicitly not doing that. I’ve repeated said in my comments in this thread that, as you correctly assert…
…however, I’ve also consistently asserted that what distinguishes art from other human products is that it’s made with the intentions of art. The most hackneyed and unskilled painting is art; the most exquisitely beautifully crafted carburetor is not (unless, of course, it was consciously made for display as art, or is a “found” object that’s been incorporated into an art installation… but you know what I mean). See also Paul’s question about a ham sandwich, and my answer.
Of course… but not every human-made artifact is art. Some things are intended to evoke an aeshetic/emotional/intellectual reaction in the way we associate with art, and other made things have no such purpose. If you insist on counting everything made by people as art, without regard to its kind or intention, then you make PZ’s complaint that the term no longer means anything true.
My conception if art involves the widest possible net. A while back, I recounted the story of a Yale art student whose proposed senior project involve repeatedly impregnating herself, inducing miscarriages, and incorporating both videos of the miscarriages and the resulting blood into a display. The proposal provoked a firestorm of criticism, and the project was eventually (you should pardon the expression) aborted… but I would have accepted the installation as art (however revolting), and I accept the student’s eventual assertion that the controversy itself was a form of performance art.
The point is, I’m not being narrow or exclusionary about “what art is”… but I do insist that for a noun to have meaning, it must distinguish the thing it names in some way from everything else. I believe what distinguishes art from everything else is its creator’s intention that it be art.
And that distinction is, and remains, entirely orthogonal to any question of whether it’s good art.
Seems a bit idiosyncratic, still. And not really the generally accepted definition of art, unless you also make a special exception to grandfather in particularly old samples referred to as art.
Has anyone ever taken the position that cave paintings aren’t art? We have no idea if they even had a similar idea to the modern idea of “art”. Perhaps they were simply recording history. It is rather plausible that they had no intention to create art, therefore nothing they did can be considered art?
I’ll admit I’m partial to the definition “Art is any endeavor beyond what is necessary for survival which produces beauty, invokes emotion, or comments on the human condition”. It seems to fit better tying together all the different pieces of art I recall seeing in a course of art history, as well as what it seems people consider art in common parlance.
Mr T (@873):
Heh. Our replies seem to be leapfrogging each other!
I didn’t say I thought it would be a good use of a ham sandwich to put in in a gallery; I only said that if somebody did so (intentionally), I would have no reason to deny that it was art.
Of course, lots of art consists of using items or images in something other than their “normal” role; maybe I’d see the ham sandwich in the gallery as good art… even while (or perhaps because) I was lamenting that it was a sad waste of perfectly good food.
Putting food in a gallery would limit (eliminate, actually) the gustatory experience, but who are you and I to say that’s the only (or best) way to aesthetically experience it. I can imagine food that I would find stunningly beautiful as a visual artifact, but might find repulsive to actually taste (de gustibus non disputandum, after all). In such a case, finding it in a gallery rather than on my table might actually enhance my aesthetic experience.
And in any case, surely you can imagine an artist putting a ham sandwich in a gallery show specifically for the purpose of allowing it to rot throughout the course of the exhibition… and asserting in the catalog notes that it’s a meditation on the existential nature of decay. We could have a spritely discussion of whether that would be good art, but there’s no question that it is art… because it’s intended as art.
Paul @876
I would question the inclusion of “beyond what is necessary for survival” and go with
Art is any endeavor which invokes emotion, or comments on the human condition.
and leave it with that. Sparse, bare-boned? Think Occam.
Alas, beauty was impaled by the twentieth century and no longer is included in a general definition of art. In the end, small “a” art is about any and all conscious human activity. Capital “A” Art is about intentionality or will.
Paul:
Yeah, I didn’t mean that to be quite as restrictive as it sounded. This intention-based distinction I’ve been struggling to articulate is really only meant as a way to address whether contemporary made things are or are not art… i.e., your question about whether a ham sandwich (actually, you originally said ham-and-cheese, but somewhere along the way the cheese fell off ;^} ) is art. My contention is that in cases of consciously made contemporary things, having been made as art makes them art.
Whether (and when) things that were not intentionally made as art is another question… which I mused about a bit @863, inspired by your comments but actually in a reply to Mr T. Certainly it’s possible to experience something as art that was not intentionally made as such. Does that make the thing itself art? Or in such a case, does the art inhere in the selection and presentation of the thing, rather than in the thing itself? Or does perceiving the thing as art become the actual art? Ref my previous answer to Mr T, perhaps the act of putting the ham sandwich in a gallery is art, but the ham sandwich itself is still just a ham sandwich. I don’t claim to have the answers, but I find these questions fascinating.
As for contemporary made objects, though… walk into a Home Depot and go to the plumbing section. The length of PVC pipe you find there was made by people… and by the definitions some in this thread are using, that makes it art. However, I think most of us would be hard-pressed to see it, in that context, as art. OTOH, if you buy that pipe, cut it to a length of your choosing or modify it in some other way, and put it in an exhibit with the intent of making people think or feel something when they look at it, I think most of us would be hard-pressed to see it as anything other than art. The lines you quoted above were my attempt to articulate the difference in cases like that; not to arbitrarily exclude other kinds of things from the realm of art.
Oh, trust me, that point has been made to him many many times in this thread by myself and others. He hasn’t responded to it and keeps wasting his time arguing over the definition of “art” when what really matters to the problem is that he appears to have a different definition of “video game” – is it the software package or is it the experience spent sitting down playing it? Most of us would take the question “is this video game art” to be a question about whether or not the graphic illustrators, computer programmers, and story scripters (yes, video games do have them) are producing a work of art when they collectively work in an office for a year to make the software package you buy in the store. He’s twisting it to be about whether or not 11-year old billy with the controller in hand PLAYING the game is producing art, which is a totally different question and I wish he’d admit it.
A good analogy of where the disagreement is is that computer software (which is what video games ARE), is like the instructions for a play (the script and the musical score), and that therefore you need to separate out the performance of said play from the creation of the play and answer the question of whether or not they are “art” separately. So far PZ has not done that with regard to video games.
It’s as if he saw a performance of West Side Story and critiqued Leonard Bernstein’s music based on how good the cast was at singing.
PZ, I agree with you that siting on the couch playing a video game is not art. Now instead of talking about that, would you like to switch topics to actually talking about the video game itself like you claim you’re doing but aren’t?
Whether or not something is contemporary has nothing whatsoever to with whether or not it is art. Objects do not metamorphose into art as they become older (obviously the case with myself). It inheres with the object or action itself. Otherwise it becomes a solely exterior process that has nothing to do with the creative process.
PZ,
Check out http://www.speeddemosarchive.com
It’s a collection of “speedruns,” videos of games being beaten as quickly as possible. People actually watch these videos for fun, believe it or not. A massive amount of effort goes into these videos; new tricks must be found, optimal routes are discovered, and even programming glitches are exploited, all in the name of speed and perfection. Countless hours go into crafting these video game speedruns, and I think it can certainly be considered an art form.
On a side note, if dancing is an art, but sports are not, what about olympic ice dancing? That’s a sport, right? But it’s a performance, like dancing. Would a gymanstics routine be considered art? How about any exhibition-type sport, like skateboarding or the snowboarding halfpipe? Is the synchronization of movement with music the crucial factor? Does anyone care? I’m being facetious, but the point I’m trying to make is that art is in the eye of the beholder.
p.s. – I’m a huge fan, PZ! (and a fellow atheist) I’ve been lurking for a while, so thanks for baiting me into creating an account!
Robert H (@881):
I don’t know for sure that you meant this as a response to me, but on the chance you did, let me just clarify: I was never suggesting any sort of age-test to determine whether something’s art; I was simply separating the intention-based distinction I was making from a somewhat different question about how we categorize older objects when the intentions of their creators may not be easily known.
The first question is, when a person makes a thing, how do you decide whether it’s art? That question is relevant to the original assertion that “video games can never be art,” and my answer is that it’s art if its maker meant it to be art.
The second question, which Paul asked, how about when we don’t know what the maker’s intention was (e.g., when it’s so old that we don’t have evidence, or when our current-day assumptions about how certain media are used were not applicable), or when we react to something as art without reference to its maker’s intentions. I think this is a fascinating question, but it’s not necessarily relevant to the original assertion about video games, and in any case I don’t have a ready answer.
I only used the phrase contemporary made things to attempt to distinguish my answer to the first question from my answer-less ruminations about the second one.
Maybe not. Or maybe they do: As I said before, I’m quite sure there are antiquities in art museums that were never thought of as anything other than utilitarian items in their own time. We relate to them as art, but their original makers and users may not have. So what’s happened? If you believe, as I think is an arguable case, that anything we perceive as art is in fact art… then perhaps these antiquities really have “metamorphose[d] into art as they [have] become older.”
Rich ground for conversation though that might be, however, it’s not directly relevant to the main points I’ve been trying to make in response to Roger Ebert’s original provocative declaration.
Ah, maybe that’s our problem. If a sandwich does not contain both ham and cheese, then it is not art. Q.E.D. ;)
I totally agree with everything Robert H has written. Thanks for the insightful comments.
Bill Dauphin:
I don’t want to misinterpret you, oversimplify your point, or anything else. I think we just disagree, and that’s fine. It’s difficult to say exactly what’s causing the disagreement. Please let me know what you think.
When someone intends an artifact to be art, what exactly does that mean? Basically, I think that means a person wants an artifact’s design or function to be ideal in some way or express some ideal. One can design something to be enjoyable, intellectually stimulating, useful for whatever purpose, etc. Whatever the case, we would both call that art.
What you seem to be saying is that, “They want it to be a good artifact, thus it is art (but not necessarily good art).” Hmm… that “good” word just won’t go away.
I really don’t know what distinction you could be making, except that there must be the intention of making something aesthetically valuable. Does that have to be an artist’s only intention, or primary intention, or does it just need to be somewhere on the list of his/her intentions?
Does a person’s intention automatically turn an artifact into art? Does intending it to be art make it more aesthetically valuable than an artifact, or enhance the artist’s experience of it? I don’t think so, which is why I don’t consider “artistic intention” a sufficient condition.
Can someone make an aesthetically valuable artifact unintentionally, or for any other reason than making it “be art”? I think so, which is why I also don’t consider “artistic intention” a necessary condition.
I call this an aesthetic experience. I consider making or doing something an artistic experience. These can be intertwined of course. With games, part of the appeal is that you are both sensing/perceiving the art and actively involved in creating your experience for yourself. This is also part of the beauty of performing music, whether or not it is improvised. The best seats in the house are on stage, where all the action is happening.
I think one can have an aesthetic experience without an artistic experience. However, it doesn’t seem to depend on whether or not there is intention. You can be inspired by things in the natural world, with no artist whatsoever.
Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom:
echidna:
Very good lesser-known choices, IMHO
Cerberus:
OK, for anime, I *might* concede that (more likely I’d just call it bad art). But the One Piece manga is a darn good story, and I would consider it art, and pretty decent art at that.
PZ Myers:
Perhaps you aren’t good enough at game playing? I know I can’t fully appreciate a game until I get to a certain level of skill at it. Otherwise, it’s just a personal quirk or something.
PZ Myers:
The best novels and manga I’ve read are better than the best movies and tv shows I have watched, in my opinion, but that doesn’t mean some of those movies and tv shows aren’t art.
And finding a “Ran” of games is not about whether games are art, it is merely subjective opinion about the quality of the art (both the game and of Ran (or any other art you care to insert here)).
Also, there are a very large number of games that are better art than Lady Gaga.
pteryxx:
Indeed
PZ Myers:
PZ Myers:
Some of the arguments, at least at first, assumed you had little or no knowledge of games, but we see now that you do, and a lot of the newer arguments are taking that into account.
Yeah, not all games are art (for most definitions of art, even ones that are not overly broad). But some are. It seems that either you can’t appreaciate them as art, or you see them as bad art, and then dismiss them as “not art” (if there is even a difference between those two). But that’s just a personal quirk. Most of the useful defintions of art that have been mentioned include at least some games.
As far as games being like sports, some are, some are not. And virtually all sports are not intended by the originators or the participants to produce emotion (outside of “yeah, we are winning!”, and “oh no, we are losing”), or to comment on reality or beauty, or the human condidtion or whatever. If people get that out of them, that’s fine, but it isn’t the intent. Many games *do* have those intents, though, and many players of those games fully feel the results of those intents. That’s art.
Also, out of idle curiosity, I wonder what software people are using that is having trouble with this thread? My SeaMonkey 2.0 on Linux already had something like 100 tabs open, and it handles this thread alright. If I switch to another tab that I haven’t been on in a while, sure, there will be some disk thrashing while pages are swapped in and out of VM, but it’ll calm down after a bit and be fine.
Heh.
PZ Myers ticks off video gamers.
Now there’s a focus group that can prove this is all nothing but cold calculation.
Hmm. Had a thought on the matter. Uru Online. Mind, I haven’t played it myself, but the original game was, in principle, to wander, by yourself, through a story, with a conclusion. Uru Online… is not so certain. Did they continue the story? Do they just add new puzzles and areas to explore?
A similar muddle is something like Second Life. You have areas that are artistic renditions of forests, ruined cities, etc. Some are shops, some are just places to explore, some or theme parks, some are roleplaying areas. The key thing being, unless its the later one, there are not “game mechanics” in them. If you want twitch/combat, you have to add that yourself, and Linden Labs didn’t even imagine it as possible originally when they conceived the world. There are places made by people like Rezzable that are nothing “but” art. Then you can teleport some place else and play darts, or get into a shooting fight, or some place else again, and play a mage, etc. Its pretty damn fuzzy where the art begins and ends with the system they have in place.
Something like this:
http://secondlife.com/destinations/editor
can give a good idea of what is in there. Especially places like Snakura, or, second page: Eloni, Svarga (used to run artificial life similution there too, but it lags too much to run that many scripts), NEMO. There is even two Alpha Point and Omega Point, which are designed by some of the artists working for Linden that are just.. completely nuts. You know what “game mechanics” there are? You can fly, walk, run, and if you have someone else’s 3rd party attachment for your AV, maybe swim. Everything else is, like the swimming, user generated. The point of SL is not to “win” anything. Its to experience the world, and all its crazy stuff, how ever you want. Even if that is just without money, on a free account, and only going to the G and PG areas.
I really, as with a lot of people here, don’t grasp how adding a way to “win” to something stops it being art, rather unlike sports, which do not even attempt to do anything different, and are not about the narrative of the players, or the intentional emotional ups and downs they “scripted” for the audience, but just about what ever happens, based on some set of rules.
Chess is brought up as an example of different? Why? The person playing can make art “within the bounds of the rules”, and the chess set can be art. The rules.. sort of, maybe, but not usually. The individual games played? Of course not. But that any instance of the game isn’t art, doesn’t make the game, the board, or the skill of the specific player themselves, non-art.
I absolutely agree, you and Ebert are confusing the specific *showing*, as though the venue, the participants and how long, or which parts, you see, as the “thing to be tested as art”. Its not, and more than taking a famous painting, showing it for 2 minutes to 4 people, none of whom liked it, invalidates the *painting* as art, because the display venue and participation wasn’t.
Mr T (@884):
I think we probably do, and yes it is. Since there seem to be only a handful of us still talking about this, and the weekend is upon us, I’ll probably drop out soon. However…
…I’ll give it at least one more stab:
What I mean by it is that making art is a mode of expression. By way of a somewhat narrower analogy, consider sound: There are a vast number of ways that humans can and do make sounds, and any of them can be used to make music… but I doubt many people would agree that every sound made by a human counts as music. Music is an intentional expression. Even when virtually random, ambient sound is used to make music, there’s an intentionality involved.
If I go into my garage and hammer a ten-penny nail into a 2X4, I will make sounds. I could use my hammer and nails to make music (I actually have an album of Christmas music played entirely with tools and hardware)… but it does not follow that every time I hammer a nail, I’m making music, whether I mean to be or not. To suggest that every sound a person makes is always music would render the very word music entirely meaningless.
In a similar way, there are a myriad ways that people make things, but to consider every act of such making art would be to, as PZ has suggested, entirely atomize the term, rendering it meaningless and useless. Everything people make is an artifact; any artifact can be a work of art, but not every artifact is one, because the work of making art is about expressing something.
If by “aesthetically valuable” you mean beautiful, I’d say there’s not necessarily any connection: Plenty of beautiful (and beautifully made) things are not art (because they don’t constitute an artistic expression), and plenty of great art is ugly (because it may well be trying to say something about ugliness).
I myself build model rockets (well, theoretically I do; in practice, it’s been a long time since I had time for that). I try hard to make them beautiful (or at least what passes for beautiful in the world of model rockets), because I’m proud of my craftsmanship and even because I seek the admiration of my fellow modelers. But my models are rockets… toys, in fact. They’re not art, because when I make them, I’m not making art. I’m not expressing an artistic point, nor am I trying to evoke an emotional response (unless you count “wow, that’s cool!”) or provoke a line of thought. I can easily imagine an artist using the same materials and tools as I do to make art that at least resembles rockets… but that’s not what I’m doing. I can also imagine somebody constructing a definition of art that would encompass what I am doing, but I assert that any such definition would be trivializingly broad, and thus worthless. You can’t force me to be an artist when I’m not being one.
OTOH, if I sit down and sketch a flower or a nude woman, I am being an artist, because I mean that to be an artistic expression… and the fact that I’m terrible at it doesn’t mean it’s not art.
When we praise something somebody’s made or done by saying “wow, that’s really a work of art!” or “you’ve really made an art of that,” that’s metaphor; it doesn’t really mean (nor have I ever meant to be saying) that everything good is categorically art.
To circle back to the original point, a video game designer who sees him/herself as just constructing a puzzle or a contest, and who is only interested in their work as a pure game is probably not functioning as an artist, and it’s fair to say the product of that labor is not art… no matter how beautiful it may look, nor how impeccably crafted. OTOH, a designer whose goal is to create a fictional world, and perhaps an interactive narrative structure, that is primarily intended to engage and delight people, and to evoke in them certain types of feelings and thoughts and visceral responses… well, that person is functioning as an artist, and it’s fair to say the product is art… regardless of how ugly or poorly crafted it may be.
And… it may even be the same person, just on different occasions. Art results when people make art… but not everything people do qualifies as making art.
Not even everything people do beautifully.
IMHO, of course.
Have a great weekend, y’all!
PZ, I’ll just repeat this simple question (from #657 & #702) you have so far left unanswered:
See you later, Bill!
I myself have been roped into “loosening up” a bunch of karaoke singers by singing first at a workplace function, so I’m going to have to sign off for the evening.
(While it may not be a game, I’ll leave it to the sages to decide whether my strutting and caterwauling imitation of Prince counts as art.)
I’m not expressing an artistic point, nor am I trying to evoke an emotional response (unless you count “wow, that’s cool!”)
then you are expressing an artistic point, whether you recognize you are doing so or not.
This has been an unexpected joy for me. I never thought I would end up discussing philosophy of art on Pharyngula. In the end, we either accept that art is any aspect of human endeavor or we potentially erect barricades around our ability to learn about life through the mediated experiences of others (which is not necessarily a bad thing). Obviously, the first definition is too broad and the second too narrow. Time to go to a gallery or a museum, a concert hall or a club, or pick up a book (people still do read, don’t they?) Or better yet, time to go make some of your own.
Perhaps it is a generational thing, but you are simply wrong on these points. Many video games do exactly that. Play the game Tropico. Then come tell me it’s not art.
There are counter-examples to this as well, but that misses the point. You are trying to pigeonhole the medium. The player and the player-watcher are different roles. Who ever said that art can only have the two roles of artist and consumer? What about when when you observe a sculpture by waking around it and then send a 2D picture of it to a friend — or worse, a short text description. By calling it “not art” by virtue of not being as well-appreciated by the player-watcher? Does it have to be appreciated “passively” to qualify as art? I strongly disagree with that! I appreciate art more when I actively think about it. Is the difference that I, the consumer of the work of art, manipulate the object making it “not art”?
Is a chess board not art when the board and pieces are designed by a great artist? It’s derivative for sure…. Is the distinction that the object can be art, but the game itself is not art? What about German-style board games? Is the game itself not a creation of an artist to distill some aspect of human experience?
I really don’t get the position that video games are not art. Perhaps it’s a generational thing, but I could find plenty of people who think video games are art but Jackson Pollock pieces are not.
Ichthyic (@892):
I’m apparently not quite gone yet! ;^)
Zounds! Maybe you can force me to be an artist when I’m not being one!
I didn’t notice a smiley, so I guess you’re serious when you imply that my trivial desire for ego strokes over my mad balsawood skillz™ constitutes an “artistic point,” but I myself don’t consider it one. Rather than argue the point, though, consider a different example:
I also build model rockets for competition events. These models are famously brutally ugly, partly because they’re frequently lost during the competition (making it pointless to invest any effort in making them pretty) and because decorations (e.g., paint) usually bring a performance deficit. These models are built with nothing in mind but optimizing performance; nobody cares what they look like at all. Would you be willing to admit that when I build such a model, I’m not functioning as an artist? Or do you insist that maximizing the flight duration of a model rocket employing autorotation as its recovery method is somehow an artistic expression?
The point I was trying to make (and with which I gather Robert H disagrees) is that not every instance of making a thing constitutes an instance of making art. I understand that it’s possible to construct a definition of art that negates my point, but I think in so doing you don’t so much define the word as destroy it.
Nouns name things, and the whole point of naming things is so you can distinguish between those things and other things that are not those things. Any definition that effectively eliminates such a distinction is ultimately pointless.
Zounds! Maybe you can force me to be an artist when I’m not being one!
you put extra effort into your creation in order to create the impression, for others, of your model being “cool”.
sure sounds like art to me.
re-read the definitions of art in any standard dictionary.
The point I was trying to make (and with which I gather Robert H disagrees) is that not every instance of making a thing constitutes an instance of making art.
of course not, but isn’t that a trivial thing to say anyway?
Unholy FUCK whoever it was that gave the link to those Hoshi Saga games, I’ve had no sleep
I would’ve thought so, but people (including those reply specifically to me) keep insisting that anything people make is art, and everyone who makes anything is an artist.
Hey! Yo! Kiddies, it’s not a generational thing, okay! Move past it, although it sure is a great trope. The prejudice has to do with people holding on to parochial views. Admittedly, the likelihood of this occurring increases with age, but it is not in and of itself driven by age. Those who take the position that games are not art have taken an indefensible position. People who take indefensible positions tend to be rigid in their thinking, at least on that particular subject. They may be able to make a statement that games are not fine art, or that they are not great art (both of which can be argued indefinitely, and to no avail), one of which depends on a narrow definition, the other on personal aesthetics, but they have no grounds to toss games out of the purview of art.
So stop caviling about generations or I’ll be forced to get out of my recliner and pummel you with my cane. Grrr…
RobertH,
I think part of it is, especially because PZ used some of the most absurd reasoning to exclude video games from art in general. When he said this:
it just so happened to put him automatically in the “wretched, ancient warlock” category. Video games have been bringing people together since at least Generation X, when people began to sit around watching another person play a video game and even discussing top performances of specific titles. The disparity of shared experience with younger generations in that quote strongly suggests a generation gap.
Fine, I’ll just have a beer.
Sorry, Bill. Making rockets is art. A key tenet of Modernism was form follows function. Art isn’t just about ornamentation. Decoration when it would compromise the function of the object would be a violation of that object’s aesthetic. You have intent, you have design, you have aesthetic… tah dah, you have art. Not fine art, agreed, but then this thread hasn’t been about whether or not something is fine art but whether or not it is art. You don’t have to wear a beret and grow a goatee (for that you need to be evaluated by The Committee) but in the broadest definition of the term you are indeed an artist.
I think most of this problem arose a century ago when people started looking at modern works by artists such as Picasso and Kandinsky and stated, very vehemently, “THAT’S NOT ART!!!” At which time the Avant Garde rose up and said “Fuck You! Take that! And that!” etc. By this point (2010) we have artists selling cans of their shit (and people buying it as well). Literally. Spend some time noodling around the Web looking for contemporary art: you will be confused, appalled, contemptuous, indifferent, or possibly some will resonate with you. Anyway, the point is that the boundaries of art have been obliterated, the definition has been pried open, and the magic has disappeared. You say it’s not art? Fine. It really doesn’t solve any of life’s meaningful problems whether or not it is. But there’s not a whole lot of difference between the Philistines saying “That’s not art”, and the fundies saying “That’s not science”. I don’t want to appear to be drawing false parallels: 1) you’re not a Philistine; whether or not a computer game is art isn’t a matter of life-and-death, whereas whether or not something is sound science most definitely is.
I was just talking with my wife about this and in the process googled “The art of…”, the 1st of which The Art of War, and the 30th The Art of Computer Game Design. Interesting world…
This whole debate reminds me of people who claim that graphic novels have no artistic merit simply due to their relationship to lowbrow hero comics. In some peoples’ minds, the whole genre gets binned together–Watchmen right next to Archie–and branded as rubbish, from which nothing of value can be produced.
I remember sitting around La Val’s Pizza in north Berkeley, circa 1972-3, fascinated by the very long line of people waiting to drop their quarters into Pong. Computer games are a tad older than Generation X, as is their allure. No doubt the Xies took it to new and distant levels, as they did most everything computer-related.
Robert H, well said once again, especially #902.
Hey, guess what everybody? The word has a proper meaning, and you don’t get to decide what that is! Nope! Too fucking bad! Don’t blame me. Agree or disagree, because it makes no difference. Deal with it. It’s just a fact that “art” as a term no longer means all of that high and noble edifying shit, as most people think it means. Don’t worry, you can still tell us how much you dislike it. I would even bet your judgment is going to be better than it would be if you only had to casually dismiss something as non-art without a second thought.
Even though he might be gone for the weekend….
Bill Dauphin:
Saying, “What people make or do is called ‘art’ is clearly not meaningless or useless. Even if you think the usage of the term is too broad, it’s not gibberish or anything. It’s also not entirely useless. It applies to a huge category of things and events, which is a lot, but it’s not literally “everything”. It doesn’t apply to a proton, a mountain, the mid-Atlantic ridge, a sunrise, the Solar system, or any element of an even larger category of things people didn’t make or do. (Unless, of course, you think FSM is out there, sculpting mountains and painting rainbows. In that case, you need your head examined.)
You could say the drawback is that it’s too broad and includes too many things. What exactly should it not include? “Intention” simply doesn’t cut it, because most of the time we simply don’t know what a person’s intentions are. We still call what they do art. Other times, it’s just irrelevant. You might say, “Sure, well, I can just tell when someone intended it to be art.” No, really, you can’t. That’s your opinion, and not theirs. Unless you can read minds, this is a dead end.
What else would you want the word to do, which wouldn’t rule out any piece of art, from any place or time, whether or not you know what the artist was thinking?
@Kraid #903
Has anyone (who have actually read one) claimed that graphic novels are not art? Even troglodytes like PeeZed (no offense PZ, just rollin’ with the young-en’s) would certainly agree that “graphic novels” are a form of art; indeed, art is the entire momentum of the genre. Some, for sure, are “poor” art, but the medium itself reeks of artistry.
If a potter makes a beautifully crafted mug, is he creating a utilitarian object or a work of art? Or both?
When a bower bird decorates his nest and spends hours arranging his finds, is he simply creating a nesting display, or a work of art?
If we teach animals (chimpanzees, elephants, dogs, cats) to paint, are they simply engaging in a fun activity, or are they creating art?
I guess all of my questions share a similar thread in that I wonder whether art must be created with the intention of being art. And is it a trait which is limited to beings we recognize as being sentient/self-aware (i.e. humans and the extra-terrestrials who are out there somewhere with their own version of art)?
When a potter makes a poorly crafted mug, that is still art. There is not a certain threshold level of craft before a made object becomes art; the fact that there is craft alone makes it so. Otherwise you establish a class of arbiters who deem specific pieces art, and others dross. We’re back to The Republic: who’s going to guard the Guardians… No one is. Or all of us. Individuals get to determine what they like (and I wish more of them spent some time deeply thinking about the matter; the quality of art in all aspects of life would rise dramatically). No one gets to determine for the rest of us what is and what is not art.
The bowerbird is an interesting problem in aesthetics. I would have to say that it is art, at least for the bowerbird. An easier case can be made for whale songs, which change and evolve through time. With any animals, humans included, the question is whether or not there is intentionality and, concomitantly, selection. If so, it fits under the general definition of art, at least the definition that I so arrogantly am putting forth.
No sentience, no art. Again, a sunset cab be beautiful; it can move you profoundly to the core of your being, but it is not art. Art isn’t about beauty (more’s the pity), it’s about creation.
Did I just step off a time machine?
Because what I’ve heard from Ebert sounds distinctly like the argument “critics” made about comics and cartoons not being an art form several decades ago.
Too bad they were not alive now to see Hayao Miyazaki, Masamune Shirow, and Neil Gaiman, among others.
Robert H #904,
Just to clarify, Generation X is considered to be anyone born from around 1961 to 1981, so, depending on your age at that time, you might qualify as being part of Generation X.
But leaving aside the allure of arcades and computers, the rise of personal video game systems and cheap TVs allowed preteens to bring portable televisions and video game consoles to school and to parties where a video game play-through could attract a large audience. That is the kind of thing earlier generations and indeed early Gen Xers missed out on in their formative years.
Technically speaking, I am pre-Baby Boom, but only by a few months. My actual moieties were the tear gas and acid brigades of the Berkeley Street Follies of the 60s. My kiddies are Gen X, though they prefer (or at least they used to) to be thought of as Perky Goths. My son was a serious gamer by 1982, teething on icosahedral dice, and Archon on the inimitable Commodore 64. He remains passionate and insatiable about video games and rpgs to this day.
Robert H:
You raise an interesting problem. I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that only humans make art. I admit I’ve been anthropocentric in this discussion, because I figured considering the works of non-human animals would just add to the confusion. Yesterday, I thought about bringing up various primates who seem quite capable of making art. Will we ever make a robot that can make art? I’m no expert on AI, but it seems to be a very real possibility. How about extraterrestrials? If they exist and are aware of themselves as making something, then I don’t think there’s any reason to exclude them as possible artists.
On the other hand, we run into danger when we start to anthropomorphize non-human animals (how about plants or bacteria?) if we assume, for example, an ant colony is consciously creating something when it makes an ant hill. We certainly can’t ask the ants, but they are apparently incapable of that level of conscious action. I don’t know what to call it, but it seems very misleading to say ants “make art” simply because they can unconsciously change their environment. Ant hills may resemble human creations, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are art. Are bowerbirds aware of themselves as creators of something? I doubt it, but I don’t really know enough about them to say for sure. Their consciousness is something for biologists and cognitive scientists to sort out. Anyway, you’ve raised a tough question which may never have a full answer.
Robert H #911,
Well then, that makes you Pee-Zee’s elder. It seems he could learn a thing or two about art from you. :)
Which brings up the question, is D&D art?
Mr T
Interesting question, though with extra-terrestrials we move into the real of speculation. Although I have no doubt they exist, positing what would or would not be art to them is risky business. We can go from the general case, assuming it is accepted, and state: If it’s made it is art, at which time any artifact consciously produced would needs be art. That is, anything consciously made, rather than anything consciously made as art per se, Otherwise, we arrive at a different definition of art and proceed from that position. I heard what I was told was a Balinese saying once: “We have no art; we do everything the best we can.” It is possible that extra-terrestrials could have what we consider to be art without having such a concept of art themselves. In the end, it’s all frame of reference.
Yep-hard to say about the ants, since we have no idea of what passes for sentience, though they obviously are sentient to a certain degree (as are we). I would argue that if they were aware they were making an ant hill it would be art, but if they weren’t it wouldn’t be. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t use an aesthetic to judge its merits, just that it wouldn’t be art. Same issue arises with bowerbirds: how conscious are they of what they are doing? Not too long ago we knew we were the only species that could think, was self-aware, etc. Wrong! The only one that could make tools or think abstractly. Wrong again! I doubt we are the only species that makes art but we just aren’t wise enough as of yet to know for certain. Time will tell.
aratina cage
I’m not too sure PZ is in the least bit interested in what I know about art. That I know more doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that I am his elder; it has to do with it being my area of passion and expertise. In the same way PZ could have schooled me in biology when he was still in high school; he still could with what he knew in high school; I wasn’t prepared to dissect a frog so I never took it. As Bottom said “…such a tender ass”.
As for D&D, sure! Why not! Again, it would be hard to make a case for it being fine art, but the very fact that we have the concept of “fine” art means that there are several other types of art as well, and D&D qualifies for a few. As far as I’m concerned, there’s plenty of room at the table for anyone who wants to join the party. The purist will undoubtedly be offended, but that’s half the fun !
I’m off to a granddaughter’s birthday. I’ll check in later to see if the heart is still beating. If not, this has been a lot of fun; see you around on the threads.
aratina cage:
Yes, because everything people make or do is art. Other values you might like to assign to “art” and “non-art” generally to lead to contradictions. By all means, feel free to improve on this very basic definition if you can. If I sound grouchy, it’s because I am, but it’s nothing personal.
It’s about like someone saying: “Psychology is not a science. It’s just not sciencey enough, in my opinion. But if they’re real scientists using scientific methods and make me feel as if I’m learning something sciencey with their scientistical words, then perhaps someday psychology would be a kind of science. Scientology on the other hand, that’s obviously science — it’s got it right there in the name! Duh!” They might think they’re saying something meaningful by juxtaposing variations of the word “science” with itself, but they’re not. In my imaginary example, they’re also just plain wrong. Eventually, if you want to say anything meaningful on the subject, you actually have to define “science” consistently and without circularity.
Robert H:
Agreed.
Right. I would say that if an alien is consciously aware of itself creating something, then the product is “art” according to human standards. Nonetheless, however hard it is to imagine, the aliens may not think that means anything or have anything like our concept of “fine art”, and may not have aesthetic experiences at all.
@[really long name] #906
I think once someone bothers to read a graphic novel or two, they tend to lose the prejudice that “comics” can’t be art. Likewise, I suspect that investing some time in a few good videogames would disabuse Ebert and PZ of the notion that they can’t be art. It’s fairly obvious to those of us who actually engage the medium that some of their criticisms are clearly unfounded.
Videogames are both a floor wax AND a dessert topping!
Just dropping back in for a minute in the middle of a family-visit weekend. This thread seems to have fallen to a trickle, so I won’t try to respond to everything aimed at me since my last comment. Perhaps a brief rejoinder to just Mr T (@916) will allow me to make my final summation:
Now right there is the very argument — in self-admittely grouchy boldface type, no less — that Ichthyic chided me over, saying that even bothering to refute it was a trivial point, and suggesting (without quite using the term) that I was raising a strawman by doing so.
Well, FSM forfend that we should ever have any contradictions! Actually, that’s at the heart of this whole argument: Natural human language is a chaotic thing. Multiple words have the same meaning, while similar or even related words have vastly differing meanings, and often a single word covers a vast range of meanings depending on usage and context. The fact that using language to define concepts often results in ovlerlaps, conflations, and confusion does not mean that the concepts we’re attempting to define don’t exist, or are unlimited in their scope, and are not worth the attempt at definition.
No, it’s more like someone saying mowing lawns isn’t science. Because mowing lawns really isn’t “sciencey”: Science has a fundamentally different purpose than lawnmowing, and employs philosophical principles and methodologies that are not applicable to lawnmowing.
Mowing lawns might employ some of the same physical tools as some sciences (sharp blades, motors, pulleys, wheels,…) and might address itself to the same object (i.e., I have no doubt that the study of grasses is a branch of botanical science), and I can even imagine cases where using a lawnmower to cut grass might be a technique employed in the service of science… but mowing lawns, per se, is not science. I am not a scientist, and when I go out to cut my grass (tomorrow, I hope, but rain is forecast), I won’t magically become a scientist.
And I don’t magically become an artist when I sit down to build a helicopter duration model (rocket), either. I’ve done other things that are art (mostly bad art, but the point I’ve been trying to make all along is that that’s not the point): written fiction and poetry, taken art photos (BTW, I’ve also taken photos that weren’t art; not because they were bad photos, but because they had a different purpose), made drawings and paintings. In those instances I was doing something fucking different than I am when I’m building a rocket or staining the deck or mowing the lawn or driving my car to work. You can’t just insist that whenever I do X (where X equals, apparently, anything and everything) I’m really being an artist and am just too stupid to know it; when I mean to be an artist, I’ll fucking be one… and when I’m being something else, I damn well know that.
You can’t shove me into the box of generationally blinded snobs who would reject a Kandinsky or Picasso (or Stravinsky, for that matter; let’s not reduce art to just painters and sculptors, shall we?); nothing I’ve said in this thread suggests that I would exclude anything from the category of art because I didn’t think it was good enough or arty enough (i.e., similar enough to other stuff already recognized as art). Others may have said stuff that sounded like that, but not me: I have consistently sought to define art as a mode of expression, characterized by the artist’s intent to evoke thoughts or feelings or aesthetic reactions. I can’t see any reasonable way to exclude a Kandinsky painting or Picasso sculpture or Stravinsky ballet by those criteria; I can see excluding a piece of pipe or a nut or a donut by those criteria (even though a pipe or a nut or a donut might be used in art). Art is, in the main, intentionally made as art; sometimes we experience as art, and therefore hold to be art, things that were not originally intended as art (some antiquities, for instance, or utilitarian items that come to be seen as beautiful over time)… but that does not make their makers artists, nor does it mean the original act of making was an instance of art.
You disagree, of course, because you assert that “everything people make or do is art.” When I said that definition made the word meaningless, I didn’t mean it somehow magically converted the combination of letters a–r–t into gibberish. Rather, I meant that art names a category, and by its nature, a category is only meaningful if it both includes and excludes. A category that includes everything cannot make useful distinctions, and therefore is entirely unneeded: It is quite literally without meaning.
You brought science in as an analogy, but I bet you wouldn’t accept that everything people make or do is science. Most of us accept that science is a way of thinking about certain kinds of questions, and that the realm of science (but not necessarily the realm of things to which science can be applied) has borders that are marked by principles and criteria. Some human endeavors are clearly within those borders; others are clearly outside them; and others yet touch the borders in ways that prompt intelligent people of good intentions to argue about whether they’re in or out. The arguments can only exist, and can only mean anything, because the borders exist.
If we were to accept your definition of art, it would mean the assertion Ebert made and PZ defended about video games was wrong… but wrong in a trivial way: If every human action or product is art, the it’s always wrong, and trivially so, to say anything can never be art. Under that definition, it’s meaningless to even frame the question.
Yet 900+ comments suggests a fairly strong vote that it’s not a meaningless question. Your definition suggests that it’s impossible to say anything true about what isn’t art, and thus PZbert are wrong; I, by contrast, think it is possible to say true things about what isn’t art, but that what PZbert have said is untrue… and nontrivially untrue. They’re not wrong because they haven’t seen a good enough game, or because they’re snobs, or because they’re crotchety old men; they’re wrong because they fail to recognize that the term video game encompasses products and activities that fit within the categorical borders of art.
PS: cicely’s New Shimmer reference (@918) wins the internet!
Comment reference numbers in my last are off by 1. Sorry ’bout that; something must’ve gotten deleted upthread.
Truly though… anything humans do CAN be art right?
That’s what art critics have been trying to make us think for this last century. Dada-ism and Modern Art and monkey faeces paintings…
torvoraptor (@920):
Right. Or to put a finer point on it…
Anything humans [can] do CAN be [done as] art.
I would say there are virtually no limits on the tools, techniques, or media used to make art, nor on the subject matter art addresses… but I do say it’s possible to distinguish between making art and other kinds of making and doing.
torvoraptor (@920):
Right. Or to put a finer point on it…
Anything humans [can] do CAN be [done as] art.
I would say there are virtually no limits on the tools, techniques, or media used to make art, nor on the subject matter art addresses… but I do say it’s possible to distinguish between making art and other kinds of making and doing.
Bill @ 918:
Just a quick question here, and thanks to everyone on this thread, btw. It’s been a blast pondering and redefining what (I think?) art is.
John Doe, let’s say, makes a bowl on a potter’s wheel, fires it up, and uses it for his breakfast cereal. By the above definition which seems to have been hacked out on this thread (that art must be specifically created/intended as art) he has not made art, since the bowl was made for its utility, not with any artistic purpose in mind.
Now let’s say Tom Smith visits our potter, and says, “Wow! That’s a beautiful bowl! Can I buy it?” Tom then buys it and proceeds to put it in his art gallery.
Is the bowl art or not?
To me, it seems that perceiving something as art validates it just as much as creating something with the intent that it be art.
To sum up: Can’t it be art to me, even if it’s not art to you?
It’s not my intent to render the category of art useless by including all things, but rather to suggest that the abstract concept of art is unique to each individual and their own perception?
And for this I also bring in the definition of aesthetic (n) from Merriam-Webster:
“Main Entry: 2aesthetic
Variant(s): also esthetic
Function: noun
Date: 1822
1 plural but sing or plural in constr : a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste and with the creation and appreciation of beauty
2 : a particular theory or conception of beauty or art : a particular taste for or approach to what is pleasing to the senses and especially sight
3 plural : a pleasing appearance or effect : beauty”
#2 in particular seems to suggest that by the dictionary, at least, we can each individually conceive our own definition of art, and that rather than a limited, static category, art as a personal aesthetic value is fluid and individual.
I know this thread is just about worn out, but the topic continues to intrigue me.
Thoughts?
Urrk, sorry ’bout the double post above.
katiebour (@923):
Maybe so, based on Tom’s reaction to it… and maybe John will be an artist thereafter, if he decides to make bowls as art going forward (and note that intended them to be seen as art is independent of whether he continues to intend them to be used as breakfast cereal). But I’m still not sure any of that means that John was being an artist when he made the first bowl.
Yes, but either way, the object is distinguishable from not-art… if not by the intentions of its maker, then by the perceptions of the viewer. One or the other (or both) is categorically dividing the universe of made things into art and not-art. It is that categorical distinction that Mr T and some others have been denying, and that I have been asserting.
I have (it will not be surprising to Pharyngula regulars to hear) more to say on this… but the family is waiting to go out to lunch.
It’s alive…
Bill, that’s your idea of dropping back in for a minute?
I’m time constrained as well so I’m not going to get very far in this…
I’m sure THe Holy Noodle will forgive such blasphemy. The problem with said contradictions is that if one pulls a dangling thread the whole edifice collapses, which is not necessarily a bad thing; perhaps the less one talks about art the better. But talk we do as talk we must so the specter of definitions arises to pollute the whole discourse. What is being posited is an axiomatic description of what constitutes art. Art per se is not the same of fine art, commercial art, conceptual art, industrial design, dance, singing, music, etc. Art is a vast hamper into which an incredible number of disparate activities can be, and are, included. If we alter the definition to be more exclusive then arise the aforementioned contradictions: someone posits that X is not art because of the definition and some contrarian, just to be a dick, uses the exact same definition to prove that it is; the definition fails and a new one is substituted in its place.
Again, this has been the main battleground of art for the past century and is pretty much either a fool’s errand or a suicide mission. A point in case: an artist cans up his own shit, complete with label, and sells it in a gallery. Is this art? Well, er… Or another puts a shark in an aquarium of formaldehyde-that’s it. Marcel Duchamp purchases a uninal, signs it R. Mutt, puts it in a major show; the piece is hidden by the curators; Duchamp says, “Hey, where’s my art?”; out comes said urinal-it’s now one of the cultural high points of 20th century art. Why? I couldn’t tell you. But that doesn’t change the fact. Yves Klein dips worms in blue paint and then dumps them onto a canvas: art. Joseph Beuys cradles a dead rabbit and whispers into its ear: art. Etc.
More specific definitions have failed so the broadest possible definition has become the default. It can’t get any broader; it is axiomatic. Is it satisfying? No. The alternative is to dispose of the category altogether, which isn’t particularly practicable (to say nothing of being downright petulant). Objectively, art is what we do intentionally. Subjectively, it’s what we say it is. The problem on this thread arises because some participants want to force their subjective opinions on the whole as objective fact. Does this sound familiar?
So here we have a question of crystalline purity that we all desire to experience at least once in our lives: If it can be demonstrated that a can of shit is art, can we then argue that a video game is not? The pons asinorum awaits.
I am an artist, for whatever it’s worth. I have nothing but contempt for the vast majority of contemporary art. I believe that many of society’s current ills arise because of a lack of meaningful art in our lives. I would be ready to throw everything out that was produced in the 20th century if the taint of the worst abuses could forever be erased. Too bad for me.; it’s not going to happen.
I am not trying to tar and feather you by implying you’re an artist; I use the term in only the most general and least useful of ways. It may very well seem reductio ad absurdum, but then it probably is. So perhaps we end up disagreeing on what art is and who artists are; I can live comfortably with that. I can also be comfortable with people opining that video games are not art. On the side I will probably think that they don’t know what they are talking about, but whether or not they do agree doesn’t stop leaves from making chlorophyll-I trust we can move on. I am recalling the perhaps apocryphal comment by Galileo when forced to recant that the planets orbit the Sun, to wit ‘But they do’. So… video games aren’t art (but they are).
Robert @ 925:
I agree with you personally in that urinals-as-art aren’t (at least to me.)
Thanks for making me look up pons asinorum :)
I am not a professional artist, but an amateur one, creating paintings/drawings/pottery from time to time for nothing more than my own gratification. I enjoy the attempt even if the end result doesn’t quite turn out the way I had in mind.
As for the category of art being so broad that we can take it for granted that whatever we want to proclaim art is automatically art, I again reiterate that the definition of art can also be dependent on the individual.
It seems to me that art, like religion, like sexuality, like so many other things, has become less something that is mandated by society (“This is what art is to you/what religion you shall follow/what lifestyle you lead”) and more of a personal choice.
In the last few hundred years, people became indoctrinated into religion by their families and communities. There was, generally speaking, no question of whether or not you were an adherent.
(I do not deny that there are always exceptions to the rule.)
One’s sexuality was also largely mandated by communal expectations; you will get married, settle down, raise a family, etc, because that’s what you’re supposed to do, regardless of actual orientation.
In the last century, people have rebelled against what they should do, what they’re expected to do, and choosing to make personal choices rather than those dictated by society. In a way I think what you’ve described regarding art reflects this.
Think of the classical education that a young person of relative wealth would have received one or two centuries ago. In regards to art, they would have been exposed to all the great masters, and in terms of practical artistic education would have made replicas of great works, etc. They would have been taught “Yes, this is art, this is how you make it, these are the acceptable mediums, and if you want to be an artist, stay within the lines and the definitions.”
(And again there are exceptions to every rule, and of course great strides were made in art in terms of perspective, watercolors vs. oils- but it seems to me that only after a “great artist” has validated a change in art as it was would that change then be incorporated into society’s schema of what art “was.” Or maybe it’s just a critical mass of artists standing up and waving a middle finger, saying “this is art and I don’t care what you say.”)
IMO the modernist movement of art seems like a massive rebellion against the idea that anyone can dictate to us what art is and isn’t. It’s like this car commercial from a few years ago.
Forgive me if I seem to be repeating or restating what you said in the above, I’m just trying to clarify and I do in fact have a point to make. :)
Nowadays instead of being forced to live a hetero lifestyle, folks can choose to be hetero, gay, bi, poly, or asexual if they want. They can make these choices without hiding who and what they are and not be burned at the stake or stoned to death (at least in this country, most of the time.)
We can also choose what religion to adhere to, or none at all, with full transparency to the rest of society.
I would argue that the definition of art follows this trend, and that each of us can decide what art is and how we make it without stigma. The bag is wide open and the cat long since gone. Nowadays it’s less about what medium you use, or what subject you represent, and more about what you’re trying to say, and how well you do it.
And again, this narrows things down from a societally-dictated viewpoint of what art is to a personal interpretation of what art can be. I think this is a good thing, urinals and canned crap aside. And within that definition there is certainly room for some of us to say “Yes, video games are art, to me” and for some of us to say “No, video games don’t represent my personal aesthetic of what art is.”
Oh, and by the way, cracked.com wrote an article on Ebert’s piece- it sums up a lot of what was said here and makes a few more interesting points about why, sometimes, video games are a better medium for artistic expression than other traditional forms.
Here’s the link.
Robert H (@925):
Heh. I do seem to find it difficult to say just a few words on this subject, don’t I? I sat down last night at ~2:00 am (EDT), on my way to bed after a long evening of DVD watching with houseguests, and really intended to write for just a minute or two… but you see when I hit “send.”
Indeed it is a “vast hamper,” including all the subcategories you’ve named and more. But to say that “an incredible number of disparate activities can be, and are, included [in art]” is not the same thing as saying every human activity (and every product of human activity) is art. It is this latter claim (which, to be fair, was made most explicitly, in boldface, by Mr T rather than you, but unless I’ve misunderstood, you support this argument) that I’ve been pushing back on; the former assertion is in no conflict whatsoever with my position.
In fact, if the examples the two of you have presented — Kandinsky, Picasso, Duchamp, et al., all of whom have artist next to their names in biographical dictionaries and encyclopedias — are any guide, I don’t think you really mean whatever people make and do is art; I think you really mean something more like whatever artists make must be accepted as art, no matter how silly it seems or who tries to dismiss it. (And BTW, if that is what you mean, I haven’t been disagreeing with you.)
Here’s the thing: The definition I’ve been pushing would accept all these examples as art without question… and more, my definition would provide a philosophical basis for refuting the very sort of curmudgeonly naysaying snob you keep trying to portray me as being.
But, there’s still a distinction to be made: Somebody bought the next urinal from the same plumbing fixtures supplier Duchamp used, but this one went to, instead of an art gallery, a public restroom somewhere. One is art… but the other is not. And for the one that’s art, the artist is Duchamp, not some nameless worker in a porcelain fixtures factory.
Or imagine a hiker who puts her shit in a Ziploc bag for purposes of packing it out of the woods. She’s done essentially the same thing as the artist in your example — place human excrement in a commonplace utilitarian container ‐ but in this case is it art? I don’t think so. If somebody takes that Ziploc bag of backwoods shit and hangs it in a gallery, I’ll accept it as art… but in that case, the artist is the person who decided to display it, not the one who excreted it.
Maybe someday somebody will gather up my broken model rockets (they all end up broken, if you keep flying them… and if you’re not going to fly them, there’s no point in building them in the first place) and display them as art… but if so, the person doing the gathering and arranging will be the artist.
Art comes from people making art; conversely, it is the making of art, rather than any degree or credential or consensus of art professors, that distinguishes people as artists. But it is not, IMHO, the case that making anything is the invariably the same thing as making art.
People argue about the Kandinskys and Duchamps of the world (and the existence of these arguments is a Feature, Not a Bug©) precisely because they think distinguishing something as art is meaningful. If, as people in this thread seem to be saying, everything is art, then, in a perverse and sad way, nothing is art.
Yeah, I suppose I can, too… but it has been a fun conversation.
We’ve probably beaten this one to a pulp. Katie and Bill (and any others still lurking in the shadows). I completely understand where you are coming from. The fact that I fundamentally disagree means little as, despite the rhetoric of the last few days, I totally sympathize with your positions. It’s not my job to be proselytizing for my definition of art, especially on this blog. As I’ve said, agreeing or disagreeing will do little to enrich your/our lives, cure AIDS, or convince the Fundies to open their eyes to the world around them and to be amazed and curious about what they see.
So… are video games art?
It has indeed been an interesting conversation.
I haven’t recognized even half the games mentioned. I’ll probably stick with some nice ancient games like chess, go and trivial pursuit.
I just want to share a few last thoughts to try to make my thought process a little clearer. At the very least, someone could inform me why I’m so terribly wrong.
I don’t want to give the impression that I’m actually happy with the status of modern art. As a composer, my specialty is hellishly long periods of unlistenable noise. (Just kidding… I think.) Needless to say, I’ve had my share of problems trying to keep up with the insanity.
The way things are now, I could choose any random object and make a case that its degree of artistry is equivalent to X, Y & Z pieces of “real art” which have been explicitly designated as such by someone who considers themselves an “artist”. To me, whether a person self-identifies as an “artist” is less relevant than most other considerations about the work itself.
If someone thinks what a caveman did is art, then it’s art. The creator’s self-image just doesn’t seem to matter at all. If the biggest drawback to this approach is that ordinary objects are considered just as much “art” as a can of feces, then I can live with that.
Probably, uh… most of them, I guess… well, my favorites are, uh… Yes, already!
“There are absolutely no video games that deliver, to even one human, an experience beyond a sum of their parts.”
Agree or disagree?
If anyone could write a definition of art which everyone agreed upon, we might even be able to have a rational discussion about this.
“Art?,” said Andy, “It’s just a can of soup.”
PZ: “If you want to see something really boring, watch someone else playing a video game. Then imagine recording that game, and wanting to go back and watch the replay again sometime. That’s where games fail as art”
Yeah, because it’s FASCINATING to watch someone read a novel or watch the recording of someone looking at a painting. That was a rather dumb litmus test of what art should be.
Playing certain games(I’m not talking about Wii Sports or Guitar Hero), like watching a film o reading fiction, is not just mashing buttons or like playing basketball. There can be amazing music, wonderful ambience, an interesting narrative and they can evoke a whole range of emotions during gameplay.
You might argue that it’s different because I’m talking about writing and music… “real” art, tacked onto a game but videogames fuse all of that into an immersive experience that is unique to each person who plays it.
I know I’m really late to the party and that no one will read it(or perhaps it was already stated much more eloquently in one of the nearly 1,000 comments before me) xD haha but I had to get that out of my chest. ^_^