Also included in not art: any piece of art in which the artist’s intent is not explicitly stated, because interpretation is essentially participation.
They’re following a script, they rehearse, etc. I guess if you want to make an argument for the Choose Your Own Adventure format as being a vehicle for art, you could point at that Cortázar book Hopscotch.
Would Shakespeare be Shakespeare if they just made up lines and changed the plot on the fly? Ophelia decides she doesn’t want to kill herself after all, Hamlet only wounds Polonius, the Queen decides to get a divorce to make Hamlet happy, and Hamlet then decides to pursue a post-graduate degree in philosophy. Oh, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are gay.
Alright, allow me to add my pretentious opinions on this issue.
To me, art might be anything I doodle on a page or write in an email, but the worthwhile type of art – let’s call it “fine art,” which I think is the kind your really debating here – is defined by one thing. That is, the intention of fine art is primarily to invoke an aesthetic response. Defining “aesthetic” is complicated, so I’ll leave that for another time. The most important part in the context of this discussion is that an aesthetic response is not just being entertained or thinking something’s cool.
Games, almost by definition, are primarily (important word) concerned with entertainment, fun, and challenge. I believe there are games that had aesthetic concerns, but they were all secondary to the gameplay and fun. For comparison, a philosophical treatise might be beautifully written, but I think it’s best not to define it as fine art because it is primarily concerned with getting a coherent point across.
I think I disagree with Mark that interactivity destroys the art. As Erik points out, many forms of art are collaborative and participatory. You can find non-linear literature out there that’s definitely not a game, but allows the reader to decide what threads of the story to follow. I think that sort of thing can reasonably be called fine art.
But can there be a game that focuses on aesthetics before fun? It probably wouldn’t be a very good game…
But can there be a game that focuses on aesthetics before fun? It probably wouldn’t be a very good game…
ICO? Parappa?
Only if the camera wasn’t digital, right?
The distinction of craftsmanship and art is a decadent bourgeois delusion. Ars, Techne, Kunst – always the same stem as artificial or crafty in the general sense. People insisting that art is different from craftsmanship are usually trying to sell works whose craftsmanship is really bad (cf. “art” movies and “modern art” in general).
“Art” is just craftsmanship that we like a lot.
I’m pretty sure American McGee is working on this project right now.
Since there are a lot of confusing different ways to use the term art, maybe this debate should be about the question “should we expect games to vigorously pursue new creative ideas, to constantly experiment with new forms and structures, to address serious themes and shoot for powerful emotional and intellectual reactions, or should we be happy with games as harmless, engrossing, but essentially inconsequential recreations that shouldn’t be expected to do these things?”
To me this is what the art vs. entertainment debate is really about. It’s not about some existing inherent quality of games that we can identify, it’s about where do we want games to go. Do we want them ruined by a bunch of pretentious self-aggrandizing poseurs making cryptic navel-gazing wankfests, or do we want them to remain buried in the paleolithic mud of retarded pre-adolescent power fantasies and mindless escapism?
I know which way I’m voting!
/mc
Allow me to provide another explanation for that “bourgeois delusion.” Yeah, the “decadent” one.
Craftsmanship is just as valuable as fine art, but it is different. Fine art, being concerned with aesthetics, is likewise only circumstantially concerned with anything practical. To put it another way, art is useless. For the most part. Craftsmanship provides something that is useful – and that’s its main goal.
‘Games are not art. They are entertainment. If you call games art, you open the door for anything to be art. For instance, if games are art, I defy you to name any form of entertainment that isn’t art. Rap? Country music? Magic tricks? Stripping?’
So a slippery slope argument with unpleasant forms included in it discredits the logic? Huh?
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=art*1+0
‘The making of what is expressive or beautiful, or things that are considered to be expressive or beautiful.’
Looks pretty clear to me.
‘They have artistic elements, so if that’s your definition of art, knock yourself out experiencing the art that is Eternal Darkness. I prefer a definition that sets Faulkner apart from Remedy’s Max Payne dialogue.’
Perhaps you shouldn’t compare the best of one thing to the worst of another. Make the argument that Planescape: Torment isn’t art, at least. Sheesh.
Would Shakespeare be Shakespeare if they just made up lines and changed the plot on the fly? Ophelia decides she doesn’t want to kill herself after all, Hamlet only wounds Polonius, the Queen decides to get a divorce to make Hamlet happy, and Hamlet then decides to pursue a post-graduate degree in philosophy. Oh, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are gay.
Not being a big Shakespeare fan, I don’t know what the Hell you’re talking about, but I’m glad somebody got called gay before it was all over.
Let’s use Max Payne as an example of video game as stage play. As far as I know, as hard as I participated, nothing I did changed any major plot points or influenced which characters lived or died. I had some say in how I killed the game’s ten thousand interchangeable extras, but you can consider that a stage direction or line inflection peculiar to my personal production of Max Payne. And most games with a story are just like Max Payne - events that you can meaningfully effect are largely incidental to the plot, much like the relationship you describe between a theater company and its artistically correct staging of a play. You can think of every time I died as a rehearsal for the big night when I finally played the game all the way to the end. I suppose you could die and then give up on the game, but you can also stand up and storm out of a play. Thank God.
In closing, second only to “immersive”, the word most used to describe games is “linear”.
I’m usually in the “games are art” camp, but now I’m beginning to think that the definition of “art” is too broad. Technically, anything that can be perceived can be considered “art,” in which case the descriptor is largely meaningless. So yes, games are “art,” but who cares?
- Alan
“the descriptor is largely meaningless. So yes, games are “art,” but who cares?”
Welcome to the postmodern art world.
How much does “art” really mean in our culture anyway? Robert Hughes argued in his documentary miniseries “The Shock of the New” that avant-garde artwork is meaningless in today’s world, because there is no real meaning or importance attached to art in our culture. You can’t shock anyone with avant-garde artwork today because no one really cares about art anymore. Stravinski was able to cause a riot with “The Rite of Spring” in his day because he used somewhat unorthodox compositional methods. Today, performers can take a piss onstage and no one cares but the janitor. There is no academy to rebel against; the art schools have self-destructed and allow students to graduate without knowing how to draw.
The only people who care about art now are academics who use works of art as hat racks on which to hang their latest gladrags of jargon.
So why argue over a dead term? Dani Bunten Berry is at least as much of an artist as Keith Haring or Basquiat.
“Let’s use Max Payne as an example of video game as stage play. As far as I know, as hard as I participated, nothing I did changed any major plot points or influenced which characters lived or died.”
Let me redefine a bit. The gamey part of games, the part you play instead of watching, is the part that can’t be called art.
The parts that are scripted can be art, though I’d be hard pressed to find an example. The artsier you want to make a game, the less the player will actually play it. The ultimate art game would be one where the player puts in the CD and just watches a two-hour cutscene until the “Game Over” credit rolls.
I dunno man, Rez seems a lot like art to me but it’s also participatory.
–Dave
I dunno, but that wasn’t the question. The question was, “would it be art?”
The most important part in the context of this discussion is that an aesthetic response is not just being entertained or thinking something’s cool.
Then what is it? Put it into words. All first year art students are required to do this. And it’s important to the discussion. It would also help if you defined “entertainment,” and explain why it’s not a component of aesthetics. And here’s the real kicker: are all things that have aesthetic value works of art? How about a sunset?
Many people define art based on value judgements. If they think a thing has aesthetic value, then it’s art. If not, then it isn’t. That has always seemed like a bizarre methodology to me. I won’t go so far as to say that it’s “wrong,” but as a definition it’s not very useful. Value judgements are subjective, which means that everyone has a different definition for “art.” Which kind of defeats the purpose of defining something, when you think about it.
I think I disagree with Mark that interactivity destroys the art. As Erik points out, many forms of art are collaborative and participatory.
Yes, such as:
Dance
Performance art
Anything written (prose, poetry, you name it)
In fact, almost all forms of art are interactive on some level, because art cannot exist in a vacuum. Many media blur the boundary between artist and audience, however, games more so than most.
Here’s an experiment. A sculptor builds the a framework in a busy town square. Next to it, he leaves a barrel of clay. Anyone that passes by is welcome to take a handful of clay and add it to the framework in any way that they want. Is it art? Why or why not?
People insisting that art is different from craftsmanship are usually trying to sell works whose craftsmanship is really bad (cf. “art” movies and “modern art” in general).
True. And many of the people that we consider to be great artists counted themselves as craftsmen. If you define the two terms as concept and execution, they are very difficult to seperate. For instance, it’s very difficult to make something that is well crafted but lacks artistic value, and likewise it’s pretty rare to see something that has artistic value in spite of poor cratsmanship. Some artists have tried to seperate the two (like the members of the Bauhaus movement and, as Mr. Wells pointed out, far too many post-modern artists), but never with much success.
Technically, anything that can be perceived can be considered “art,” in which case the descriptor is largely meaningless.
That would be a meaningless definition, I agree–as meaningless as defining art based on a judgement of aesthetic value. That is why I always add human creativity to the mix. A rock formation is not art, no matter how pretty or interesting it might be. A rock formation created by a person, however, is art.
The gamey part of games, the part you play instead of watching, is the part that can’t be called art.
Why?
They’re following a script, they rehearse, etc. I guess if you want to make an argument for the Choose Your Own Adventure format as being a vehicle for art, you could point at that Cortázar book Hopscotch.[/quote]
What about the play The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based on an unfinished story by Charles Dickens? At the end of it, the audience votes on “whodunnit”, and the actors present an ending based on that. There are a finite number of suspects, and each one has a pre-written (and rehearsed) ending.
If the audience were allowed to pick, say, “Queen Victoria” as an option, even though she’s not a character in the play, that might be a valid argument against this play being a “work of art”. But they’re not. The audience chooses from a strictly-constrained set of possibilities, possibilities that have been defined by the artist(s).
Even if it’s unscripted, it’s still constrained. The geometry of the levels, the implementation of physics, the placement and AI of the enemies, all these things put limits on what the player can do. When playing Max Payne, I can’t choose to just walk through walls, or be invisible, or not take damage from enemy bullets (well, not without cheat ccodes, anyway). The artistry is in creating a set of potential experiences that (ideally) will translate to “fun”.
Of course, the game designers I respect most are always talking about “emergent gameplay”, which is when the set of possible behaviours is sufficiently large, complex, and inter-related that the designer doesn’t have full control of the player’s experience. But that should really be a whole separate discussion…
See what happens, I leave a thread for twelve hours and look what I caused. It’s amazing how subjective art is, not only what is considered to be good or bad, but what is or isn’t, in fact, art. There are very few things that humans produce where we often don’t know what to call it. Vegtables, for example, don’t have that problem. You look at a carrot, you recognize it’s a carrot, and everybody agrees that it’s a carrot.
Now take a Britney Spears song. The little teeny-boppers out there who dig her music would probably call it art, if they understood the concept of art at their age. We may not like Britney Spears (her music, that is) and we may not consider her music to be art. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make it less so. If we’re going to consider an opera singer an artist, or a great rock group like The Who. Then you also have to lump Britney, Christina, N’sync and all those other musicians we would label “crappy” as artists.
Getting back to games, how about screenshots? Suppose I find a painting that was created by Picaso on the net somewhere. I print it out and hang it on the wall. Then I take a screenshot of, oh say, Dungeon Siege, a really nice one with mountains and forests and such. I print it out, and hang it next to the first one. What have I done? Besides having just insulted Pablo Picaso, I mean.
I’m not sure if something can have artistic elements and not be art.
At least, the nice thing about art is that we don’t all have to like it. Which means that if games are considered to be pieces of art, somewhere on this planet, somebody is not only playing, but actually enjoying Daikatana. Not me, personally I thought the game sucked monkeynuts.
I’ll just say one more thing, and at least Tom, I think will agree with this.
Sacrifice was truly a great, yet underappreciated work of art.
So if someone showed you two identical rock formations, yet one was natural while the other had been created by a person, not only would one be art and the other not, but you wouldn’t be able to tell which one was art and which one wasn’t, until someone informed you which one was man-made? And you were an art major? Fuck me.
Art is communication. Or it’s one form of communication. For communication to exist, there needs to be a communicator and a communicatee. If forty monkeys typed for forty years, one of them would turn out the works of Shakespeare. But that doesn’t mean that the monkey is communicating with you–or that he has created art–even if you perceive it to be so. It’s just an act of random chance. If you set up your computer to speak random words aloud and then let it run continuously, eventually it would spew out some phrases that actually make sense–perhaps even a phrase that you have heard before, from a real person. But one is still communication and the other is not, even though the phrase is the same.