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[Fuzz]

It just seems odd to posit screenshots as art when the game itself is already someone's artistic creation. Mipey, photography is used to capture life, which is not anyone's artistic creation. It's like framing a photo of someone else's painting and expecting it to be called art.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I don't think posting screenshots in an art show implies that the games themselves aren't art. And photography is generally considered to be an art, yes. At least among photographers and enthusiasts (and I've no reason to doubt them at their word, even though I'm not heavily into it). Not that screenshots are photos exactly, but there's an analogy.

[Gnarf]

I could find it via Google too

Okay. Or via the link in the first post in the thread.

- is it a well-known show? Does it feature famous prestigious artists like, uh, I don't know who is popular in art circles right now, except that it's not Kinkade.

Yeah. I can see how that's probably a little bit harder to find via Google.

- or is it a just for fun thing, where a screenshots collection wouldn't be out of place, with a bunch of art students or something attending it?

The International Centre of Graphic Arts is a museum housing a collection of fine art prints from the 20th century to the present day, a gallery for exhibitions of contemporary fine art, a fine art print publisher with its own printmaking workshops and the producer of the Ljubljana International Biennial of Graphic Art. It has a collection of over 3,600 fine art prints, 800 artists' books and numerous other art publications.

The bulk of the works included in the Centre's collection of fine art prints were created after World War II by some of the great names of the Paris School of the first post-war decades, members of the Cobra art group, artists from Eastern Europe and members of the Ljubljana School of Graphic Arts. The collection of artists' books and other art publications contains works by internationally renowned artists.

So it's not just some guy's house, and if we put something with "absolutely nothing artistic about" it on display there, I can understand how that might be a little pretentious.

Of course, it can still be a hilarious in-joke or just something art students attend for a bit of fun (art student and pretentiousness are mutually exclusive), etc., etc. What I was responding to came off like there was nothing pretentious about putting things with no artistic value on display in art museums. That's the bit I was wondering about. (and of course, if you happened to know an awful lot about International Centre of Graphic Arts, and knew that this thing was probably nothing anyone was taking serious, then that'd be fair enough and all)

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I'm not sure how seriously to take them, yes. I mean, it's not like it's the Louvre. That would be kind of funny. But this is just some art group I've never heard of. And both of my parents and one of my grandparents are painters who have had their work featured in various galleries, so I don't have an insignificant knowledge of the art world, so I figured if I never heard of them before they probably aren't an ultra-famous group. That passage you quoted still doesn't really give too much information about how well-known they are. Most shows are going to claim stuff like "internationally renowned artists" -- it's marketing -- but that doesn't actually mean they're that famous.

I also don't think there's anything that has no artistic value at all. If you put anything in a museum and people come and look at it, it gains artistic value just by having that done to it.

But anyway, if I understand correctly, you're saying the artistic value of screenshots is low compared to the artistic value of the other stuff they show (which is currently unknown to me), and that it's "pretentious" to place the two together, because it's pretending that screenshots have as much value as those other, unknown, things. Like whatever the "Cobra group" has done. Yes?

[Gnarf]

I also don't think there's anything that has no artistic value at all. If you put anything in a museum and people come and look at it, it gains artistic value just by having that done to it.

Okay. Then pretend I used your words and said "absolutely nothing artistic about" instead. Or pretend that "no artistic value" means "very little artistic value".

But anyway, if I understand correctly, you're saying the artistic value of screenshots is low compared to the artistic value of the other stuff they show (which is currently unknown to me), and that it's "pretentious" to place the two together, because it's pretending that screenshots have as much value as those other, unknown, things. Like whatever the "Cobra group" has done. Yes?

No. Way I recall it I made sure not to say a thing about the artistic value of the screenshots. You said that even if there was nothing artistic about screenshots, you did not understand how it would be pretentious to show them. I thought it would be pretty reasonable to assume there was some pretension involved if things with nothing artistic about them were put on display in an art museum.

If it was not about that, but whether or not it was really a serious art museum, then I misinterpreted and now everything's clarified and everyone can carry on.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Ah, understandable. When I said even if there was no artistic value to them, that was a bit of satire -- I thought it was kind obvious that nothing has zero artistic value. So I didn't actually mean the sentence literally.

But anyway, I can see this both ways; I can see that it'd be pretentious to display game screenshots in a gallery, but I can also see that it's pretentious to think that it'd be pretentious to display screenshots in an art gallery. Derek Yu's work is certainly around the quality many of the professional artists I've seen in galleries. I don't know about this particular gallery, but I like his work enough to think that it wouldn't be out of place there.

[Alevice]

I loved to take carefully crafted Garrys mod screens, in partcular with the civil protection. Lighting and such is manipulated via those goddamn lamps.

[Fuzz]

I don't think posting screenshots in an art show implies that the games themselves aren't art. And photography is generally considered to be an art, yes. At least among photographers and enthusiasts (and I've no reason to doubt them at their word, even though I'm not heavily into it). Not that screenshots are photos exactly, but there's an analogy.

To clarify, I meant that photography is an art because it is a still frame of life, not another's creation. Screenshots, however, are not art, although the game itself is.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I tend to think that components of a game can still be art in their own right -- not just the game as a whole, but individual sprites, individual tracks of music, and so on. They're components and parts of a whole, but also their own individual things. So a screenshot, containing sprites and so on, can still be aesthetically interesting, even if it is only a minor part of the whole game. Sort of like individual frames of animation from an animated movie can still be interesting aesthetically, even if they are only a part of the movie.

[Fuzz]

I suppose there is something to be said of the organic qualities of a screenshot, but it does seem pretentious to take promo screenshots and display them as art.

[agj]

People, did you forget about modernism already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Found_art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Art

[policedanceclub]

I suppose there is something to be said of the organic qualities of a screenshot, but it does seem pretentious to take promo screenshots and display them as art.

But are they doing that?
I personally got the idea that they were taking screenshots of beautiful video games and displaying them as screenshots of beautiful video games.

[Fuzz]

I suppose there is something to be said of the organic qualities of a screenshot, but it does seem pretentious to take promo screenshots and display them as art.

But are they doing that?
I personally got the idea that they were taking screenshots of beautiful video games and displaying them as screenshots of beautiful video games.

Ah, that would make sense. The exhibition description seemed more inclined to treat the screenshots themselves as art.

[shrimp]

I personally got the idea that they were taking screenshots of beautiful video games and displaying them as screenshots of beautiful video games.

Ah, that would make sense. The exhibition description seemed more inclined to treat the screenshots themselves as art.

Yeah I think that is about right... both of those. Pretty much. I thought it was good to limit the scope of what they claimed to be showing to "visual design in games" rather than gameplay-mechanics-as-art, although an exhibition of that might be more interesting, if harder to stage.

Not really sure what the idea was of the "joke" entries like Bikini Karate Babes. Maybe just to keep people on their toes...

Apart from that, I guess it's probably good for exposure of how nice and "artistic" games can look.

[cactus]

Haven't they shown single frames from movies as art before? (If so) What's the difference? Personally I think this is pretty cool. I'd love to see this happen to one of my games at some point

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think a lot of people just have this mental association that "art = pretentious" or something. A lot of the time these art shows are just to show pretty things that are interesting to people. If you actually do go to art museums or art galleries you'll be disabused of the idea that everyone there is looking at the stuff through a monocle and talking about its deeper meaning etc., usually the people who go to such things just go there to look at interesting stuff, the same reason we play interesting games.

[Fuzz]

I enjoy art. I go to the art gallery all the time. I don't think it's pretentious. It's just this particular situation that I believed to be showcasing the screenshots themselves as art that I thought pretentious.

[Craig Stern]

I suppose there is something to be said of the organic qualities of a screenshot, but it does seem pretentious to take promo screenshots and display them as art.

That's what I thought this was at first also, but the description of the event makes it sound more like it's supposed to be a means of displaying the in-game visual art of games as art, rather than the screenshots themselves as art (if that makes sense). It's like the difference between taking a photo of The Thinker and saying, "this statue is art," and taking the same photo and saying "this photo is art."

The exhibition I Was Disappointed by Lara Croft presents the visual-art aspect of computer games. Different art disciplines and the rapid advances in computer technology influence the development of the artistic language of computer games, which have become an unavoidable part of the contemporary visual world.

[esc]

Maybe people have this idea of superficiality in the artscene, lots of people in fancy suits walking around musea, babbling about various paintings, sculptures. There is also a lot of money involved for some of those people. I think that is where the pretentiousness feeling comes from.