What is art?
Right, what is it? Can you definite it simply by saying “anything created through skill or vision by human ‘hands’ is art”? Or is it more complex? Something that conveys a message or feeling? Are there levels of art? What defines valuation of one above the other? Does a painting of a garden landscape hold more artistic value than the actual creation and maintenance of that gardenscape? Finally, the big question, are video games art?
Well folks, it’s simple. Art is art is art is art… it’s art all the way down! Any creation by the human (and/or animal) mind in which it brings something tangible (includes virtual) into being is art. And its success and value “can” be measured by the mastery of basic principles incorporated within that work. There. </thread>
Yet, this idea, despite its grand simplicity, is the subject of vicious debate. Folks, art is everywhere. It is what drives the formation of all things around you. This art, in no loss of the spirit of its meaning, is very much alive in the world of interactive media. Simply put, VIDEO GAMES ARE ART. I just can’t comprehend how this isn’t a given. It’s like people debating that the oceans aren’t made of water.
Ok, but why is this important? Well, recently the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) has classified interactive media as an art form, thus allowing developers to tap into public grants to help them produce more creative projects. Ah, and there we are. The root of the problem. Money! And the people who don’t want others to have it.
So then THIS happened (follow the link to read the whole article) on Fox News. In typical fashion, they stonewalled the side of logic with some sort of insane babble that makes NO sense. You… just have to watch the video, it’ll make you sick. TL;DR, they used Call of Duty as a reference for the kind of games this funding would go to, and while it’s still art and apt, it’s not the type of game the money will go towards. It’s games like Minecraft or Love or Portal or indie games and such. These things that are absolute poetry in their elegance are what they are trying to promote. (and while COD being a valid candidate is not the discussion here, and being a poor example for “interactive media” as a whole, I still think it can be claimed as art, so… yeah… eat it Fox!)
My point here folks, is that they failed to see the forest through the trees. They see only the big controversial games that they love to spew the rhetoric of “violent games = serial killers”, (again, another debate for another day, but they don’t… ever.) and focus only on those as representatives for the entire media. That is completely unfair. It’s like saying all film is bad and has no artistic value because of Time Cop.
And I propose a dare… I dare Fox News and affiliates. I dare their supporters and nay sayers of interactive media as art. I dare them to play, nay, to just watch THIS VIDEO of the game Love and still hold on to their view that video games are not art. Because if that game doesn’t move you in at least the slightest to agree that games are art, then I’m sorry, but you just have no soul.
Well, what says you?
Loading ...Ps… Looks like some things are getting a bit congested in my schedule, so no big comic friday. But uh, I’ll have a mini ready for you. (in theory) I’ll let you all know what’s going on with my side project, but it’s something I’m trying to get ready for in this next convention in July… so yeah… sry bout that in advance.
I’d fall into the “Duh, yeah!” category. But you can also rate them from, “my kid drew this and now it’s hanging on the fridge” to “My kid made this and now it’s displayed in a museum.” Not all art can make people think about the ethics and what it means to be human. A vase can be pretty, you can flowers in it, but it will likely never inspire the same reactions like Move 36.
Thanks for the forewarning, my father is pretty much brain washed by Fox. I predict an annoying conversation in my future and now I can get some facts and formulate a defense; instead of being caught by surprise and having to endure his ignorant onslaught. He’s a smart man, and would be smarter if he thought for himself instead of letting the tv tell him how to think.
Side tangent: that fox is adorable, if somewhat stupid.
heh, well, that’s why I added the 2nd part of gradation, where I feel the highest value can be put on something that can demonstrate a mastery of some principle of art/design/(marketing)… (just wanted to toss that in there again… a master artist doesn’t just know what looks good, but why it looks good, and coincidentally, also follows the principles of good advertising… who’d have thunk?)
That is to say, look at some of the greats in art… why where they great? It’s not like they were the ONLY person making art in their time. But they were masters in something(s) specific that draws viewers in.
I was never really in the school of thought that “art had to be meaningful” in order for it to be “high art”. Actually, I hate that phrase, high art. A Rubik cube is thought provoking, but it’s not high art. I kinda got into trouble with this in my artschool days, cause I inject a LOT of humor in my work (yeah, I know you’re shocked) and apparently that’s not so kosher with the purists. So my valuation of art will be different than their’s, but that’s ok. And we could debate that vase vs installation for quite a bit, though I’ll again fall back to “it doesn’t have to have multiple layers in order to be beautiful”. (ps… in related news, the genome inserted into the plant accidentally gave it consciousness, which sent it on a rampage through the cities, destroying everything… if we only had some zombies to combat this art gone wild!)
Anyways… dont even remember what I was talking about… but uh… art good! something like that. XD
I really try to stay away from TV news since it’s mostly turned into over dramatic Springer type chair fights, instead of actual intellectual conversation about topics or, heaven forbid, talking about news.
heheh, thanks! if you happen to like foxes, especially the stupid ones, check out this webcomic StupidFox.net!! It’s got a fox and it’s kinda a cute little comic. >)
I guess I should clarify what I mean. Everything created to be seen/ heard is art, from classics like David, Mona Lisa, Starry Night being the first thoughts, architecture, ceramics, video games, my merely adequate attempts at dragons, literature, hand turkeys, dance, and those rap songs that cuss at least once per verse. Good is such a subjective term.
Art doesn’t need to be complex. In CoD, art was involved when they designed the scenery, the characters, the weapons, ANYTHING visual had an artist working to design it. Is it pretty to look at? Only if you like brown, but it does set a mood for the game of desolation. Pong could use any series of colors, but using red or green would alienate the colorblind, so that is still a choice.
I’m a bio nerd in a pretty big way, and I just learned recently about BioArt. The goal is to manipulate living tissue into something unnatural to make a point to people. We have the technology to make a solid attempt at controlling life. Should we? Where do ethics come in, and where does the ethics meet closed mindedness?
Have you heard about the glow in the dark rabbit? That was a piece by Eduardo Kac where he added a gene to produce flourecent proteins into a bunny his wife named Alba. The whole point was to induce chatter and bickering in people so our society considers these concepts.
This same man did the aforementioned Move 36. To summarize: in 1997 a programed computer referred to as Deep Blue was playing chess against the world champion, Gary Casparov. In Casparov’s mind the game was lost at move 36 when the computer made a move that was subtle and better in the long run rather than the option that provided immediate gratification which everyone watching predicted. At this time, man lost to the machine.
Kac translated “Cogito ergo sum” (I think therefore I am) into binary, and then that binary code into the four bases used to express genomes and placed this strand in a plant. He made a chess board of white sand and dark earth and planted the genetically modified plant on the square where move 36 was made.
http://www.ekac.org/move36.html has more info and a picture of it.
Sometimes you even find it when you weren’t trying. Scientists assigned musical notes to the twenty different amino acids so that you could play the genetic sequence of a protein and compare the correct version next to a test version. If you heard a discord, that means at precisely that note an amino acid is wrong, and we know exactly which codon so it is a lot easier to find the misnomer in the DNA instead of pouring over two really long lists of CGAT to find the difference.
DNA by nature is repetitive as is music. This next link is Gamma Crystallin, the protein that makes up the lens of your eye, the round rubbery bit between the bulge and the inner fluid that changes shape depending on depth.
http://whozoo.org/mac/Music/gammalens.htm
(link at the bottom since my phone won’t open it)
I know I’m out of the ordinary for it so I’ll let that end today’s biology rant.
Oh the fox is CUTE! I didn’t need sleep tonight anyway I’m sure.
lol, you and your crazy bioengineering. though I fully approve of the use of genetics as a form of art. ya know, to a point though… if it’s something that’ll make the product a little critter that’s in horrible pain, then that’s kinda bad. or if those musical genes start creating zombies by accident, then maybe it’s not such a great idea… but if it means I can have a glow in the dark cat… that can also fly… then heck yeah!
The DNA music is not much different than asigning symbols, such as letters, to sounds. Being able to read the strand to match the notes to codons is about as much science as there is, something that can done with an electron microscope.
There are commercially sold glow fish. The looked like beta fish, and had the coding for fluorescent proteins added in. I understand they acquire more glow fish by simple breeding now; no need to make the process more expensive.
They don’t fly though.
The thing about the NEA - yeah, art is worthwhile…but we, as a nation, are drowning in debt. 14 trillion - think about that - 14 trillion dollars.
Are there other things that can be cut? Sure. Like the THREE wars we’re now involved in. And subsidies of every kind, both ethanol and oil. And cleaning up the massive waste in our government bureaucracy. And the billions we’re giving in aid to foreign countries.
Once all that (and the other various forms of government idiocy) is eliminated, we can look at how much money we actually have. And THEN decide what the NEA does or does not get.
But, if it comes down to essential services and the NEA…I’m afraid the NEA doesn’t have my vote.
well, here’s the thing… and I think I wrote up a nice essay about the economy and how to fix it in one of my other minis, but here’s the short of it:
the economy NEEDS circulation. it’s an ecosystem. people work, they get money, they buy things that they couldn’t ordinarily produce (services, products, food, gas…) with money, and the cycle is maintained. this system breaks down in a huge fundamental way when the flow of money stops. that’s what’s happening now. in a recession, people just hold on to their money. this stops the flow, people lose jobs, and a different, more destructive cycle starts.
What this NEA does is take national funding (your money) and spends it for you. it redistributes wealth to fund projects. these projects could be small or large teams of employed skilled workers. these workers have other needs, such as production items, outside help, or other tangible goods needed in the process… this further “trickle ups” the money.
I’m all for cutting costs and whatnot, but cut it in the deadends, not at the roots. TRICKLE UP works, trickle down… well… not so much. Think of the NEA not as a funding for artists to sketch nekked ladies, but another form of economic stimulus. Heck, if you really wanted to do it right, inject a lot more money into small businesses and domestic production. But yeah, that kind of logic ain’t taken too kindly round these parts.
I’ve seen this economy start it’s failing for a long time now, and as an artist, I’ve felt its effects very strongly. I’ve seen art classes dropped from the curriculum, funding slashed, and redistributed to other areas (like engineering and business). Which is fine and dandy that the school gets a new business building at the expense of the arts, but what does that say about us as a society? A society that has moved away from the appreciation of creativity, the shunning of medical innovation and scientific exploration… I fear we may just be entering another dark ages of the arts if we continue down this path.
Those are a bit of strong words, but it’s how I see it. Arts might not be universally appreciated, but it’s an extremely important part of society. A thousand years from now, what will historians make of us? Will they care that we wasted all our money to line the pockets of bank, airline, and automotive executives? Or will they wonder why there’s a blank spot in innovation and creative expression. It’s an extreme example, I know, but we can’t just turn our backs on these industries just because they don’t give “bottom line profits”. In fact, this could be the best use of money! Sending it to the artists and creators, who in turn, redistribute that wealth through the production process. It’s goods and services that you need to be buying! Hording money to wait it out doesn’t help anything.
Sigh… I’m tired… hope all of this makes sense and not just some block of nonsensical ramblings… we’ll see in the morning! lol!
TLDR - NEA creates jobs. jobs=good. give money to bank execs=bad. vote coffinshaker as president! me fix all!
Video games being funded as art would really be one of the best forms of economic stimulus. They employ a lot of people, can sell really well if they’re good (especially with pretty much every system having something like the App Store or XBox Live Arcade that cuts out the need for physical copies of a game to be made, and with the Internet and word-of-mouth being really strong sources of publicity for games off all types), and can even start a business because a good game design team is all a studio needs to get started. Not to mention that this will probably be a huge boost to RPGs because storyline quality is more critical to them than to other games, and yet that’s more of an “artistic” thing that isn’t easily marketable like mechanics and thus won’t be as encouraged by corporate funding structures. RPGs being boosted would be huge for voice actors (RPGs need a lot of them compared to other games and are bigger projects for the main cast, which means more actors getting more money), writers (again because they demand more than other genres on average), and - obviously - RPG fans (which I readily admit to being and I imagine most people here are).
Well put George! and you are correct about the RPGs… remember the days when the “80hr game” was standard? and that didn’t mean 72 hours of grinding! now you can breeze through content of a game without any real connection to the characters. sure they look pretty, but what’s the point of that? ha, like those Transformer movies!
and this isn’t limited to RPGs either. what you speak of also translates to all genres. so hopefully now with the recently settled court case, we can move forward as an art and continue to develop.
Money… money never changes. I think what they should do is divide subsidised art and projects that cannot get a grant. Difficult? Yeah. Impossible? Probably. But that is the only idea. Unfortunately some people understand the way media influence people. Sorry to say, but the drink you’ve last drunk, the shirt you’re wearing, the language you use — it is the doing of smart guys who actually know what they’re doing. Before you deny it, think, and think deeply, is there any connection between what you do and what is said on TV? Yeah, sucks..
That said, I’m opposing all the guys that try to influence others’ point of view for whatever reason. Just no. Heck no.
my god… each one of those things all goes back to Coke! XD
oh yeah, advertising really has by the horns now a days. almost falls into that evil topic of “social engineering”. it’s scary. but that said, if you attack a work of art (any, painting, music, or even more pronounced in our society, a movie) like a product, you can really sell it. sure, it might be hollow when you get in elbows deep, but those suckers can really sell! which, again, is why I say using some concepts of advertising in artwork isn’t necessarily a bad thing. it becomes a bad thing when you try to hit all of them at once… then you get some kind of twisted horrific creation that has to be killed with fire! I’m sure you can think of a few examples of these in the movie/music industries.
Hymm, would you then consider advertisements as art? ;> Writing my MA Thesis on that actually, so I could talk and talk for hours, but nah, I’ll let you live in bliss ;)
indeed! there is a LOT of art in advertisements! here’s the run down… if you get 10 seconds of view time on any piece of art, consider yourself a master. most of the time, it’s a fraction of that and using the elements and principles of design “effectively” can draw your viewers in and hopefully get them to actually take notice of your work. ads have to do a lot in a short amount of time; you need to draw the viewer in, keep them there long enough to absorb what you’re selling, and shove as much relevant info about your product into their brains that you can.
it’s not easy, but the most effective ads will stick with you. now, keep in mind that everything I said about advertisements is the EXACT SAME theories that go into art as a whole. the art is the product and ad. see what I mean?
What I’m trying to get at is that ads can be amazingly well done in both technical production and creativity. many ads employ full on artistic styling to almost create something that can stand on its own as a work, but with the added logo in the corner. some ads you don’t even realize you’re being sold on something.
and here’s another question you can drum up… if advertisements can be art (duh), can they also be high art? (the difference here is that all things can be art, but the “high art” is what will make the history books and sit on the walls of rich people) we’re all familiar with the Andy Warhol soup cans thing, but what if Campbell did it instead? or commissioned Warhol? can there be a fine art gallery of advertisements? I’m afraid my opinion on this matter wont be the popular one, but I really feel anything can be high art too, not just paintings about some artist working out his psychological issues on canvas. I think my next poll will deal with this, but I often run into the odd opinion that comics/cartoons can’t be high art… like at all. which is insane to me, but whatever.
of course, I could go on and on about this, but let me just sum up with a few links to some galleries of the most amazing works of art… that just happen to be advertisements!
AdsOfTheWorld.com - awesome online site!
LuerzersArchive.us - a magazine you can find in book stores, but it’s one of my favorites!
and there’s quite a few more out there too!
As I forgot to mention before, Art is a very broad term so it is impossible for such actions as ‘granting money for everything that is art’ — still governments do so. That’s what the fuss is about now - some games should get the funding because they provide an additional element to the culture’s achievements (pun not intended), while some are made just for earning a buck, providing the viewer with entertainment. The same applies to ad in a way as they are simply a different instance, somewhat a subgroup, of what is ‘art’ - like the construction of engines is a part of technology, even though it deals in a very specific niche.
That said I guess that what is made for money is almost never art, but on the other hand artists also sell their products, so maybe the initial concept is more important (try to verify it though..). A hard nut to crack, really, but it’s a fact that both ads and VG will be developped more and more so maybe it’s almost time to decide about their future and where we want them to go? Riddles..
Going with Duh. *Nod nod* If it involves a form of art to produce then the ending project is a form of art. And animation is a art syle…*scratches head* Either way, some have their perfered art, like I enjoy the more…well flat stuff like pictures and others like the towers of trash-I mean ‘scrap metal’! Its the same with animation and video games. Call of Duty and games like that are just more realistic, violent games, but does that make them any less of a piece of art? o.o
*crickets*
I lost everyone somewhere after Duh, didnt I? ^^;
No, not lost. I completely agree with you. I’m pretty sure I lost everyone as soon as I decided at midnight last night to spew forth science jobber jabber. Not my best late night decision.
and this is what I don’t get… VIOLENCE HAS BEEN AROUND SINCE THE DAWNING OF MANKIND. there! it’s been said. we are a violent species, so lets just embrace that, shall we?
as far as my “call of duty is a valid piece of interactive art” argument goes… just because it’s violent, doesn’t mean it has no merit. violence, sexuality, disease, and every kind of disturbing taboo inbetween has been done in art. and not only that, it’s held up as that evil “high art” term I hate so much! I remember in art history classes seeing all kinds of crazy violent things. so just cause it’s interactive now, it’s not art?
you can all do some google searches of artworks, but war, murder, and killing have all been depicted in great detail in works from every era; from the ancient greeks to the medieval to modern times.
one stands out in my head, Saturn Devouring His Son. I mean, it’s pretty gory, yet is held up as an amazing and priceless artwork. so… how is this any more valid than something done in an interactive media?
so yeah, I totally agree that there’s so much art out there, that it won’t hit everyone the same, but it’s not to say that if it fails to tickle your fancy, it isn’t art. sigh… I don’t understand it either… it seems so simple and clear to me, but these tv guys just aren’t getting it. >p
I believe that art is what is made from people who considers themselves to be artists, and that real art is made with no intend whatsoever to make money. Money from art is a bonus, which gives the artist the means to finish his or her next project.
The art should be what the artist feels like making, either to make a point to people or to show his or her feelings or some such intentions. After that being said, art is still very individual and most of it I dont really like, but I still see it as art.
About movies, commercials and games I think that artists are, for the most part, hired by producers or programmers to make art for the use in the game, not making the game itself art but including art in the game or movie. If the game/movie is, from the start, intended as a piece of art. Then art it is. If it is intended as entertainment or to simply make some money, then it is not art.
My best example of this is the music industry. Most musicians describe themselves as artists or musicians. In my mind the difference between these two desciptions is the intend. Artists make music, musicians make money.
This is my humble opinion on this heavy subject ;-)
yeah, it’s kind of unfortunate to the individual artist when you do things on the commercial level, since it’s mostly a group work type thing and you lose a lot of individual identity… but none-the-less, it’s still a “kind” of art.
still… kinda need money to stay alive. it would be nice if all our needs were met doing the things we love…. buuuut that’s not how it works today. >(
Art is about the act of creating something brilliant from nothing but a few basic tools and the desire to make something amazing. Some of the best art happens when there is more desire to create art than there is to create money.
When most people look at a game, they will evaluate the graphics and consider that the art content. Or perhaps they consider the game’s design a form of art as well. I tend to also consider the underlying code a form of art, which is something that tends to get ignored because it isn’t visible. Aside from the careful planning and design required to create programming code, it’s noticeable whether or not the programmer cares about what they’re doing. This is very evident when looking at Minecraft’s creator, Notch. He will often try to fix all bugs, not just the ones that make the game unplayable. Back when WoW was created, Blizzard was their own company; much like Mojang is right now. To draw further parallels, when I started playing World of Warcraft, the game was unbalanced and difficult; not unlike Minecraft! But I don’t mind, because if there are bugs, they get fixed. The balance was something I just deal with, because hey, nothing’s always fair, right? More often than not, there is a wait period before bugs get fixed in either game; but the important part was that they were at least considered.
Over time I’ve notice a slight change in Blizzard’s priorities. Rather than keeping the game in working shape, they’re focusing more on releasing content. This is apparent in the lack of QA which has people virtually yelling: “But we DID give you feedback!” Some notable examples include the droprate of various items (Battered Hilt, Crystallized Firestone), bugged quest lines (Vash’Jir), poorly implemented class mechanics (Warrior Rage, Spell Pushback, Pet UI). These are just a small portion of the bugs that have gone live and been ignored for weeks or months before they even admit there’s a problem. Worse yet, it’s almost patch 4.3 and a few bugs have persisted since the beginning of the expansion, like getting a different warlock pet than you died with.
In a business based around art, you need to pull a profit to make producing that art worth your time. But you can’t expect defective art to pull the same price as the real deal. Hence, if this trend continues, I fully expect World of Warcraft to eventually die off like the games that preceded it. I’d give it another two expansions at the minimum before things really start to go south, but the groundwork for disaster is already in place. They’ve made the mistake of trying to directly produce money, rather than trying to produce art, which therefore would earn them money.
Ehhh, I made a few typos and didn’t split the paragraphs. Bedtime I guess.
code is definitely an art! it may not be as luxurious as photos of nekkid ladies… but there’s definitely a poetry in it! especially when you talk about optimizing codes to where simple “elegant” strings can do the same as a huge wall of jibberish, it’s probably quite the thing of beauty to those who can read it.
me… code makes me want to stabby things… but still, I can appreciate the delicate orchestration of the maths and programming used to make it come alive.
sadly, maybe a little overly pessimistic, “art” doesn’t always net profit. what sells really well, is “art for the masses”… that commercial stuff. it’s poked and prodded and molded to produce a response that has mass appeal… to me, that’s commercialized art. now, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but keep in mind that all those great masters we know and love, didn’t make that good a living off of it. well… till they died off anyways. my point is… there’s probably a balancing point somewhere in the middle… but stuff that’s all artsy art, it probably doesn’t have the appeal to pull in 12 million people. some get lucky, but I’m not holding my breath on it.
lol… well, I declare my website to be a grammar/spelling nazi free zone! lord knows I can’t write a single sentence without a few hundred red underlines, so no worries on anything. as long as we know what you’re getting at, I don’t really care if it’s all proper or not. >)