5.5.07

There should be a law.

As part of my continuing scrutiny of all things bizarre and slightly offensive to my view of the world, I bring you these two tidbits from the last twenty four hours:

"I'm in the Arts, too- I'm an animator for video games"

-which, despite my high regard for people who do such work, is not, yet, an Art with a capital "A." I'm sorry, it just isn't. I know the video game industry employs more people and makes more money than film in North America, but reallllllyyy-no.

Next- the phone call:
*RING RING*

me-"Hello?"

young woman on phone-"Is Alicia there?"

me-"No, she's moved out.'

her-"Well thanks for telling me!!" (annoyed tone changes this from a thank you to a sarcastic bitchy thing...)

me-"I would have told you sooner but I don't know you."

Enjoy your weekend!
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

not all games are art, but then again, not all painting, sculpture or dance is art either. (ahem, thomas kinkade fans). That said, there's nothing wrong with Craft with a capital C, and Art with a capital A, but we seem to confuse Art for Craft and vice versa far too often. There's plenty of films that are just examples of craft and not art; they don't move you, they just make you react in an autonomic way.

Some games ARE art: Ico, Rez, Shadow of the Colossus, Myst and its immediate sequel Riven if you want to talk about pure sensation and audio-visual stimulation, immersiveness, crossed with a sense of storytelling and purpose. It's a very new art form (barely 30 years old) so the tropes of older forms are still leaving a large imprint; we won't know what real 'game-as-art' is until its own formal vocabulary has been established apart from the arts that preceded it; so, assuming computer/video games survive another 50-100 years, we might start to see some progress. In the meantime, why not contribute ideas instead of dissing it?

4:20 AM
mtlanglo said...

Anon! howdy- thanks for dropping by today. You'd see that I did say "yet" in the posting- and I agree with what you say to a point- but I doubt mass produced video games will ever be "Art" because they are too entwined with economies of massive size and will lack anything approaching a personal or socially driven agenda.
Two- the equipment to play the games is only designed to last maybe 5 years on the outside- even PC platformed games don't handle OS upgrades very well. Will I be able to share my thrilling love of Myst with a group of undergrads 20 years from now? Will they be able to experience it in the same way? I doubt it entirely.

But beyond the transient nature of the craft and the over-bearing profit nature of the creators and distributors of the end product, the main reason no one in the field should ever think of themselves as "Artists" is because they USUALLY fail to place their own work, their own vision of their projects into a wider perspective of the "Art" world- from early video art, to instillation video sculpture- they either lack the education to place it there, or the will. Even in your well written response all of your examples were self-referential to actual video games and makes no effort to connect to the "Arts" that preceded and influence them.

So- if you have a blog- please write your views there and drop us a link- it would be interesting to read what you have to say.

7:51 PM

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