Art as an Innovation for Games: A Closer Look at Role of Art in Games (original) (raw)

Game as Art: a matter of Design

(Published at Videojogos 2010) As claimed by Chris Crawford in 1984, games must evolve to a potential form of art. Over 30 years later, the discussion demands a more mature state of the art, since games are still seen mostly as entertainment products. Considering them as a direct heir of cinema, in terms of language and dispositive parameters, games may be seen as a new form of media, and thus a vehicle both to entertainment activity than to artistic expression. To explore such possibilities, it is necessary to re-think the means of production and to purpose a new model of collaborative work that involves technicians, scholars, and artists.

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Games as a New Predicate for Art: What can Arthur Danto's Theory Reveal about the Role of Games in Art?

The game designer Jason Rohrer has self-­-identified as an artist. By doing so enters his work into a critique process that, according to James Elkins, dates back to the Romantic period in which artists are evaluated by peers on an individualized basis according to the ideals and creative direction they produce in the form of written and verbal artifacts. Arthur Danto calls these artifacts ‘‘artistic identification’’ in his essay, ‘‘The Artworld,’’ written in 1964. The study applies this critique method to Rohrer’s work in the game medium and asks how it fares when subjected to what Howard Becker calls, ‘‘a continuous process of selection’’ through critique. It asks, finally, how can knowing this methodology help to elucidate the path for the eventual full-­-fledged integration of games into the Artworld.

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When Art Is Put Into Play: A Practice-based Research Project on Game Art

ArtMonitor, 2017

When Art Is Put Into Play: A Practice-based Research Project on Game Art is a practice-based research project that aims to contribute to the understanding of the relation between play and art from the specific perspective of computer-based Game Art. This is done firstly through the production of nine works of art that through their means of production all relate to Game Art as it has come to be known in the last twenty years or so. Secondly, the relation between games, play and art is discussed from a Game Art perspective. This project as a whole aims to map and exemplify cases where Game Art successfully inherits rule-systems, aesthetics, spatial and temporal aspects from computer games. This work has in turn resulted in a provisional response to the question of the possibility for Game Art to successfully create a state of play, whilst still maintain agency as a work of art. The claim is that the friction between art and play makes it doubtful that art can maintain its agency as art through play. This claim is made as a result of the artistic process leading up to the works of art that were made as a part of the thesis. It has been strengthened through the study of the concept of play and how it relates to artistic practice.

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Gaming in Art: A case study of two examples of the artistic appropriation of computer games and the mapping of historical trajectories of 'art games' versus mainstream computer games.

2005

Unpublished Masters Thesis under maiden name - Phillipa Stalker. This essay will explore the existing definitions of art games that are currently being used in the art game/art mod genre. It will identify the leading theorists within the field, and take into account their definitions whilst at the same time establishing a set of categories within which can be defined the dominant trends in the development of the field. It will also situate art games within an historical context, both within the commercial computer game field as well as the digital art field and attempt to establish some sort of timeline within which we can see the development and emergence of art games in relation to these two disciplines. Two examples of art games, both from different categories will be examined and critiqued in the context of Artistic Computer Game Modification – A 3D game called Escape From Woomera and an art mod or patch called SOD. The art game as an entity will be examined in relation to ideas of the ‘interactive’ and ‘play’, and the implications and potential for fine art practice will be investigated.

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The Incompatibility of Games and Artworks

Journal of the Philosophy of Games, 2018

Recent debate has focused on whether videogames are art. Whatever the answer, the debate has largely taken it for granted that videogames are games, and that this is unproblematic for the art status of videogames. This paper argues that something being a game is incompatible with it also being an artwork, and thus insofar as videogames are games, they cannot be artworks. This incompatibility arises out of the different attitudes that are prescribed for engaging with games versus those for engaging with artworks. Citing a modified definition of games from Bernard Suits and commonly held conditions of artworks, I show that for an artist to intend something as a game or an artwork is to intend essential constitutive conditions of the object that preclude the object from being both a game and an artwork. This requires a reconsideration of several contemporary theories about games and art while also providing an analysis of games that calls for them to be appreciated as what they are wit...

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Videogames are beginning to share the forms and concerns of art and should be considered an artistic medium Cover Page

Making and analyzing games: not as art, but as literature

Proceeding of the 16th International Academic MindTrek Conference

Despite the common tendency to understand computer games as a medium somewhere between film and traditional software, this paper argues for a more appropriate position amongst literature. This writing explores the opportunities in analogizing digital games not as art, but as literature. Within this framing new opportunities reveal themselves for innovative game design and more manageable archiving of games and their relationships. It should prove useful to media theorists, designers, and game librarians seeking a new way to frame the analysis and production of digital games.

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Computer Games as Works of Art Cover Page

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Games, the new lively art Cover Page

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An Aesthetics of Games Cover Page