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[Matthew]

Art is that what is shown in well respected musea, gallery, biennale, festivals, manifestations or initiatives.

http://www.acmi.net.au/independent_games_festival_2007.jsp

Many of your other points are eroding, too...

[Alec]

lol

I love people that say true art can only be stuff that ends up in museums.

What a fucking lame idea.

Games are another art form, like all the other piles of other art forms that are out there. Good, that's established. Now let's move the fuck on to making interesting stuff with it.

[Derek]

But the great thing about discussions is that, even if no conclusive answer is found, I always end up learning something, either about the topic at hand or about the people involved in the discussion!

[fish]

games are bad art.

[Jimbob]

bad games tend to be called art

[fish]

lots of potential!
lots of garbage!

[Icedemon]

ok, i've been gone for a couple of weeks, so this might be a bit out of the drift of the conversation, but i've given this some thought, and:


Myst.

Game was made for nothing more than puzzle solving and artistic expression. I'm sure there are others, but that game is an example of video game art at it's finest. And sure, there are games like GTA 3 and Contra, which are badass but arguably not very artistic... but neither is splashin paint on a peice of canvas. If someone wants to call it art,  it's art for them. If other's agree, no matter how many, then hell, it's art!

[Arne]

Semantics again.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=art

It would seem a lot of things can be art since it's a very broad umbrella term.

I would even argue that games are so crammed with art (from nearly all subsets thereof) that they are in fact more art than anything else we do. They're highly immersive, multi spectrum experiences.

If anything fails to measure up against the definition of art in the dictionary, it's the 'art' seen in hanging on the walls in some galleries.


Trickier in Sweden though. Our word for art (konst) (maybe it isn't a word for art anymore, but a subset) has already been completely hijacked by people who... weld iron scrap together, then sells to the goverment (who pays with tax money of course), then the crap ends up in parks and public places. "Interpenetrational relationship in C-moll" - a steelbar intersecting a granite block at an angle.

[Anthony Flack]

Well, I'm sure that people who are involved in that sort of minimalist stuff are generally sincere about what they are doing, and have their reasons. A sculpture is supposed to work within the environment it's in so you'd have to look at the effect that the thing has within the park rather than in isolation. And I can sympathise in a way; it can be hard to make something that isn't cheesy, and I think this is part of the instinct that leads some people to strip their art way down to nearly nothing. But of course that has become a well-worn trope now too, but I still would find a steel bar through a granite block in a park a lot easier to stomach than a Mark Ryden painting.

[Arne]

Well, I do think abstract sculpture is a justified art form, I've been to enough exibitions to have seen good examples of it. Clever, charmy, witty stuff. I just said it's unfortunate that if you say you're an artist here, people might think you're doing that stuff, and probably badly. Also, I would argue that given the nature of abstract art... although arguably there are less fail states than in figurative art, you really can get away with murder. The whole peer review process seem to be lacking. There's just some dudes doing stuff, and brand/name recognition seem to be much more important than the art itself.

I happen to know one of the people who make some of the local public art. He's completely batshit insane. Recently, they put up a new... thing down in the public space at the harbour here. No one likes it, and everyone thinks it's a waste of money. Except the few involved naturally.

Personally, I'd rather see classical nude women, Megaman, Albert Speer stuff or Pretorian Stalkers. Seriously, it doesn't get better than Pretorian Stalkers.

[Anthony Flack]

There's just some dudes doing stuff, and brand/name recognition seem to be much more important than the art itself.

Sadly, I think this is true of pretty much all art; especially at the high end. Fashion, plus art-as-investment and art-as-status-symbol makes it so. All the artists I know are working to raise their profile, because the bigger your name, the bigger your pricetag, and it's just that simple.

I happen to know one of the people who make some of the local public art. He's completely batshit insane.

I have a passing aquaintance with a few fairly prominent artists, and batshit insanity does seem to be a rather common trait. Also: alcoholism.

[fish]

myst was fucking awesome.
had a HUGE impact on me.
cant say enough good things about myst.
myst is great!

[AdamAtomic]

A short passage from Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 masterpiece Childhood's End:

"The group of artists and scientists that had so far done least was the one that had attracted the greatest interest - and the greatest alarm. This was the team working on "total identification." The history of the cinema gave the clue to their actions. First sound, then color, then stereoscopy, then Cinerama, had made the old "moving pictures" more and more like reality itself. Where was the end of the story? Surely, the final stage would be reached when the audience forgot it was an audience, and became part of the action. To achieve this would involve stimulation of all the senses, and perhaps hypnosis as well, but many believed it to be practical. When the goal was attained, there would be an enormous enrichment of human experience. A man could become - for a while, at least - any other person, and could take part in any conceivable adventure, real or imaginary. He could even be a plant or an animal, if it proved possible to capture and record the sense impressions of other living creatures. And when the "program" was over, he would have acquired a memory as vivid as any experience in his actual life - indeed, indistinguishable from reality itself."

[Anthony Flack]

Ah, but how much would it communicate to you, to "be" another person in this way? To experience what it is to be me - the feel of my desk, my pants, my shoes; the breeze from the window, the view of my room, the unholy heat radiating from my Macbook. Communicating sensations is easy, but what does it tell you about me?

If you want to experience the sensation of being a doctor in an ER, it isn't about the feeling of the blood and the masks and the rubber gloves. It's the pressures in his mind, the years of medical training, the snap decisions...

Sure, you could experience all kinds of sensations and adventures by mechanical means, but it's how we make sense of our experiences that's important.

[Alevice]

I don't think it might be the intention to put yourself in 100% accurate role of a doctor, if you get what I mean, but rarther just an expanded perception of reality that otehrwise would be impossible.

There are those alternate reality games, that are basically a large scale and perhaps more immersive version of traditional roleplay.

I've always interested in trying to play such games, but I don't really know if they are played in mexico somehow. :/