Very cool, if true

Aaah, to me that's "information", which can be gained from artistic objects, but it isn't the "art" bit :->

I've certainly gained a lot of information from a wide variety of art in my time. It's an excellent way of getting things across to people without making them feel like they're being educated :->

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communicator.livejournal.com

I explained badly. I don't at all mean new information. I mean conceptual models. For example, Mr Darcy is not a real person, so I learn no factual information from reading about him, but I might change my mind about how I react to arrogant people, I might see them in a more sympathetic light. of necessity any example will be clunky and false, because it's much more subtle than I can put into a comment field.

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But that's because the writer encoded a model of how arrogant people work into Mr Darcy and explained his behaviour in such a manner that you now have a better understanding of them, which leads to increased empathy. Or am I misunderstanding?

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communicator.livejournal.com

I wouldn't call that information, that's all, may just be semantics.

I can remember going round stately homes with my parents as a child, and looking at the faux-clouds on the painted ceilings wasn't that much fun as an experience. But then later, looking up at the sky above my school, and seeing the clouds in a new way, more intensely. So, that to me is why experiencing art is something more than the pleasure of the experience, it's the permanent boost to your life.

Anyway, leaving semantics aside, do you get that from games?

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Yes and no. I've certainly looked at things in a new way outside of games having played games. For instance, being more aware of where I might suddenly be sniped from when crossing open ground :->

In general, outside of that I have lots of highly emotive and social memories, but the actual 'game' bits don't tend to produce more than that. The bits around the game (plot, dialogue, etc.) can obviously produce that kind of thing.

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How are you differentiating (and why?) between those portions of what makes for a gamey experience?

You don't see art by just opening your eyes. You have to throw yourself in and hope for a reward. Isn't that the same as, say, moving across a map and experiencing melancholy (cf Shadow of the Collosus)?

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Because those bits feel qualitatively different to me, so it makes sense, in my head, to differentiate between them.

Exploration doesn't feel as gamish as combat, for instance, to me.

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They're different parts of the experience, sure. I don't see how that's important. Let's see if we can tease this out...

Take Portal. You've played it to hell and back, right?

Portal is a very good jumping game. Pow pow jump jump. I'd suggest that what makes it art, though, are the blacker-than-black script, bleakly clean level design, hints of backstory, and GladOS as a satire of lots of end bosses. Even the bit about the button. The game knows it's just a button.

Altogether, you've got art. Every time the game struggles (so confidently) against the typical and the ordinary, it's art. The individual pieces are good, and the jumping is good, but they give you a reason to jump.

This seems no different to me looking at a piece of sculpture. Sculpture's quite a good example, actually, as there's often an assumption that the audience's position in space relative to the piece matters. As does the light, say. You need to explore the piece, in a sense.

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It comes down to the same thing as whether architecture is art. And some people feel that the basic "there's a wall holding the ceiling up" bits aren't, but the stuff you plaster over the walls and paint on the ceiling can be. I think I feel the same way - the jumping bit isn't art, but the script bit is.

It's all artificial definitions in the end - "art" is a feeling in people's heads.

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When you first start to use your portal skills to escape, was that an experience with artistic qualities?

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Not to me.

Which isn't to say that it wouldn't be to some people.

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So when you defined art as a designed experience, are you saying the design is irrelevant and the emotion it evokes is the crucial thing?

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The design is vitally important, insofar as it is what provokes the experience.

And also, that there is intent. A sunset isn't art - because it's not designed, it just happened*.

*This opinion to be revised once we reach levels of tech necessary to design sunsets. I'm looking forward to voting for my favourites at the yearly award ceremony.

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That's Iceland getting a head start on the technology. :D

When I get back, I'm going to run some deliberately artistic RPGs for you.

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RPGs aren't Computer Games though - they definitely evoke a very wide range of emotions, and the mechanical gamist aspect tends to be a lot lower in most games than it is in most computer games. As your focus tends not to be on the mechanical side of things that'd give you a high art quotient :->

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Hehe!

But you have it backwards. I focus on the mechanics in order to produce art.

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Art is better understood as a value rather than a binary state. That's why the "Is it art?" conversation never works out. "To what degree is it art?" is a better question. You could argue (successfully) that the Jeremy Kyle Show is art, but its artistic worth is clearly a lot less than Henry V or The Last Supper.

And with all due deference to the good people of Wikipedia, saying that art is "a designed experience which evokes emotion" is a rubbish definition. Poking someone in the eye is a designed experience which evokes emotion. All novels, movies, songs, paintings, whatever, prompt some kind of emotional response (even if it's boredom or irritation). The difference between art and entertainment is that entertainment stops at that initial response; art remains with the audience after the experience has ended.

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That's not the Wikipedian's definition, it's mine.

And poking someone in the eye would count, for me, as an artistic experience, albeit an incredibly simple one, if it was done the right way, in the right situation. I tend to prefer art that's less basically confrontational though, I've never been a big fan of punk.

Your conception of art, if I am understanding you correctly, is one that changes the outlook of the person experiencing it?

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It's not neccessarily transformative - art can also just be about re-examining things that are already there.

When I mentioned primary emotional responses, I'm thinking in particular of weepie movies. If they make people cry, then that's a strong emotional response but it doesn't mean they're art. It just maens that they're doing their job efficiently. The tears don't /belong/ to the audience, they've been /extracted/. Art tries to find something inside the audience that it can move and the emotional response comes from a genuine place within the audience.

For the record, I don't think there's anything to prevent games being art. I just don't know if anybody's achieved it yet.

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Also: as for poking people in the eye, if you pitched it right you could be in with a shout for the next Turner prize.

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I don't really agree WRT weepies - you need to aim them at the right audience, in the right way. Different people are affected in different ways by different techniques, and something that might make me cry could leave you dry eyed. Finding the thing the audience cares about and moving them to tears doesn't seem any different there.

The problem is that some things are incredibly common levers that require no subtlety to their pulling, so that rather than building a complex and delicate instrument to tickle the precise spot in people they can instead jab in a plunger and just pump away. Strikes me as the same kind of thing, with the difference merely being one of subtlety.

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Which is why it's sometimes better to think of art as a value rather than a state. You can argue about whether something belongs in the box marked ART or the box marked NOT ART until one of you bursts into tears (or pokes the other in the eye), or you can talk about how much artistic value you got from that thing.

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...although I realise that comment still leaves you needing some kind of definiton of art itself.

That's a very long and subjective conversation. Here's a short aphorism in the meantime, from Picasso: "Art is the lie that makes us realise truth"

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This is very true :->

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khbrown.livejournal.com

Aren't weepies cathartic at some level?

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anton-p-nym.livejournal.com

I'd certainly argue that games provoke/invoke a lot more emotions than excitement and achievement; a great many games have made me feel awe (would you kindly refer back to Bioshock's big reveal?), fear (the first Aliens vs. Predator game had me gibbering like Hudson in the Marine campaign), protectiveness (Tali ain't dyin' in no duct in *my* Mass Effect 2 even if "I" have to wade through fire), frustration (too many to name)... all as intended experiences. People sometimes get attached to game characters; witness fanfiction, or the popularity of Nintendogs.

-- Steve has great respect for Roger Ebert as a film critic, but zero respect for his analyses of games. (The irony being that Ebert is making many of the same mistakes that theatre critics did a century ago when panning the naescent film industry as a mere diversion from artistic pursuits...)

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iainjcoleman.livejournal.com

I prefer Frank Zappa's definition: art is something that someone puts inside a frame and calls art. (Of course, whether it is any good or not is a separate, and more difficult, question.)

The frame is the important bit, and need not be literal. For example, Zappa goes on to define music as a series of vibrations in the atmosphere that start at a particular time and stop at a particular time.

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Oh, yeah. If someone wants to call something "Art" then I'm happy to let them :->

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Yes, but fuck Ebert in his stupid ear.

Games have deliberately and with malice aforethought evoked emotions like joy, fear, wonder, awe, lust, shock. And lots of the mathematical wonder/curiosity I also enjoy in minimalist art or sculpture, say.

It also helps if you play a lot of games. My experience of Call of Duty or Portal would not have been the same if they were my first FPS. Similarly, I wouldn't get the same kick out of Lynch if I didn't have at least a basic understanding of some of the themes, particularly as presented in cinema, such as infidelity and deception.

Which leads to an interesting conclusion. Good art needs bad art.

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Oh, absolutely. Did you _see_ his review of Kick Ass???

I definitely agree that you need "basic" games before you can enjoy more complex ones. The first time you encounter a new concept you don't care if it's been in 3000 movies/games/books - it's still new to you, and you need to have internalised it before you can really enjoy the variations on it. The Big Lebowski is a fun movie, but even better when you realise it's a variation on a theme (the crime thriller), only inverting the main character to be entirely incompetent/passive.

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The Big Lebowski is a good one - I hadn't put it beside noir or detective fiction because The Dude is so passive. He's not deliberate, except that he wants recompense for his rug. On Facebook, a friend listed him as a favorite detective and I had an ah-ha!

There was an unexpectedly good thread on RPGnet recently about small observations that made a difference to your enjoyment of a piece of art. Like, count the black people in Friends. Or look at how Paul deliberately constructs his myth in Dune.

I just read his review. Bet he wouldn't have liked Crank either. :)

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http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100414/reviews/100419986

He's generally fine with violence, but when a cartoony 11 year old girl is involved it's all too much for him.

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