Display Mode: Exhibiting Video Games as Art, History (original) (raw)
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Classifying Videogames as Art and Why It Matters Now
This dissertation analyses the idea that videogames can be considered art in order to argue that wide ranging benefits could be seen if the institution recognised them as such. I have explored the idea that the institution is the key to progress the notion of videogames as art and both art museums and universities alike must be behind the progression of what is considered the artistic canon in order to create new opportunities in the field of making art. I have reviewed popular arguments for and against the inclusion of videogames in the institutional artistic canon and then considered videogames in the light of several theorist's ideas of what art is. Primarily I have looked at the ideas behind cluster theory and the theory of mass art as a way of justifying videogames as art. I have followed this with case studies of This War of Mine (2014) and the developer Sam Barlow who has produced many videogames including Aisle (1999), Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (2009), and Her Story (2015). Lastly I have considered what might be the long-term benefits of classifying videogames as art within the institution, primarily the enfranchisement of young women artists. I do this by reviewing the new National Curriculum in computer programming and considering how, in the light of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's
Play on display: the exhibition of videogames in the museum
2010
This thesis examines the exhibition of videogames in major cultural institutions. The focus is on the curatorial narratives presented by differing exhibitions, specifically the context in which the works are ‘framed’. Of particular interest is the extent to which context supports the interpretation of videogames as cultural artefacts. It will consider how differing approaches to display can construct videogames as activities and/or as artefacts. This analysis provides an understanding of the narratives that are currently being generated from the display of games in these institutional environments. Through their displays, museums and galleries organise collections into narratives, into recognisable histories and into doctrines, mediating the relationship between visitor and objects. These narratives have historically been embraced as culturally legitimising and authenticating. What can it mean to exhibit videogames in the museum? What can the museum learn from exhibiting videogames?
Videogames are beginning to share the forms and concerns of art. During the current era, calling videogames an artistic medium is controversial. However, defining videogames as an artistic medium is important as the medium offers infinite possibilities for artistic expression. This essay attempts to establish the possibilities of videogames as an artistic medium, explore their place in the contemporary art world that simultaneously rejects and embraces the new cultural form, critically analyse certain examples of popular videogames that share the forms and concerns of art and discuss artists that have embraced videogames as an artistic medium. Undoubtedly, there is a genuine artistic richness in this new cultural form, even if it is in its infancy.
Video Games As Objects Of Art: Revival Of The Play-Element In Contemporary Artistic Practice (2012)
Ac tA Ac A de m i A e A rt i u m V i l n e nsis / 67 2 012 A RT A N D PL AY Art and play are two fundamental characteristics of humans. Being comparably important, the two notions are strongly interconnected -something that is not only longstanding but has also been carefully observed. Hayden Ramsay notes: "As thinkers from Aristotle onwards have noted, part of the benefit of artistic performances is the opportunity to express and explore powerful emotions and beliefs in safer and more con-This paper examines creative uses of video games. The starting point of the article is an observation of the inherent interconnection between play and art. The demise of the play element, as observed by
Video Games as a medium of artistic expression
This dissertation studies video games as a medium of artistic expression by engaging three key elements of Marcel Duchamp's 1957 essay The Creative Act: Institution, Intention and Artefact. By first studying how Academia and the Artworld in general have engaged historically with video games. Afterwards, the formal and structural qualities of video games are engaged with, bridging the gap between this new medium and art history through aesthetic theories. Finally, medium specific qualities that complicate their study have been addressed by comparing video games with film and Marcel Duchamp’s ideas on the creative process. It is then concluded that while the field of video games-as-art is still in its infancy and that a majority of video games are not art, it is possible for specific video games to be accepted as artworks.
“’No paraphernalia, no nostalgia’: Decoding MoMA’s New Video Game Gallery.”
Raiford Guins is an Associate Professor of Culture and Technology at Stony Brook University. His research on the history of video games seeks to draw closer relationships with the fields of Design History and Design Culture. In his most recent book, Game After: A Cultural Study of Video Game Afterlife (MIT Press, 2014), he investigates the emerging strategies of collecting and displaying video games within museums as well as the role that artifacts play in the documentation of game history. In this interview by Matt Ferranto, Guins shares his thoughts on the Museum of Modern Art's (MoMA) video game exhibition.
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...
Computer Games as Works of Art
2012
This chapter aims to answer the question: Can computer games be regarded as works of art? To answer this question, one has to analyse the notion of art and also the term computer games. Art can be conceptually analysed within a dialogue of continental and analytical philosophy: with different authors of philosophical aesthetics such as Hegel, Heidegger, Adorno and Danto it can be systematically said that works of art have to be understood as a source for our historical self-understanding. Concerning computer games, despite their young existence they have already developed a significant heterogeneous tradition: an essentialistic concept of computer games is -in the same way as an essentialistic concept of any medium -inappropriate. Thus the answer to the initial question can only be that some computer games are candidates for being regarded as works of art, while by no means can all computer games be regarded as art. Computer games do not differ from other media and arts in this respect: the fact that something is a movie or something is a song does not make it a work of art necessarily.