faetal on 19/12/2012 at 12:19
That's the beauty of art - everyone has their own take on it. Here's a question - is a photo-realistic painting of a bowl of fruit "art", or not? My guess is yes, because the aesthetic properties of the bowl with fruit in it were chosen as the subject. If that happens to mundane, then perhaps the artist is conveying the mundane. Now the next question - am I imbuing this piece with aspects I am imagining, or are these things really there? Maybe purpose has some role - for example, we won't call a non-stylised map "art" because we are supposed to use it for something, whereas the picture of the fruit just exists for its own purpose.
demagogue on 19/12/2012 at 13:46
Yeah that's how this Gadamer chapter I'm reading basically put it. Art is whatever is made for nothing more than its own sake in appreciating it (or whatever you're supposed to do towards its medium -- listening to it, looking at it, touching it, playing with it).
This is exactly why he explicitly said appreciating art and playing a game are the same type of thing... Because there's no deeper purpose doing it than having the experience of doing it itself (the experience being joy, or some emotion, or a feeling of freedom, whatever it is). And this was 1960. If he's already connecting art and playing the games of 1960, the point is only stronger now.
zacharias on 19/12/2012 at 14:45
Quote Posted by faetal
Here's a question - is a photo-realistic painting of a bowl of fruit "art", or not? My guess is yes, because the aesthetic properties of the bowl with fruit in it were chosen as the subject. If that happens to mundane, then perhaps the artist is conveying the mundane.
My take is arguably a bit cynical but photo-realism is still very popular (read: lucrative) so there's definitely a purpose to
making it if you are getting 20 or 30k or something for it. (That still goes for abstract art of course but it's still usually less popular even in art circles and less likely to generate such cash.) N.B. I'm not at all saying that popularity or success = bad art but the financial side is part of why such work keeps on keeping on..
faetal on 19/12/2012 at 14:48
Yes, but there isn't a reason for *buying* it, practically speaking. All popular art is lucrative.
zacharias on 19/12/2012 at 15:05
Sure there is. If the artist's reputation doesn't crash (and if they get into state galleries etc it won't) the value can go up considerably. Or to serve as a status symbol (however silly that might be) etc. Also, not all popular art is lucrative..that's a massive simplification.
Ahris on 29/12/2012 at 01:39
Personally i don't have a specific definition of what art is. I think a videogame CAN be art but not videogames in general.
A philosophical question would be 'Is a game art just because it CONTAINS art?'
Is a museum art just because it contains art?
I think that for me to consider a videogame a piece of art, all elements of it would have to be integrated in an aesthetically seamless and stylish fashion. That doesn't happen very often but i've seen it now and then.
fett on 1/1/2013 at 17:45
I realized that they are in fact art while helping make T2X. I was amazed at how many creative disciplines were required to even begin something like that - voice acting, music, design, writing, editing, architecture, interior design, drawing, mocap, etc. I remember having this revelation that gaming might be, in fact, the highest form of art when done properly because it is the only art form (currently) that must encompass all other art forms. Additionally, the audience has the opportunity to change the work by interacting with it - something that cannot be said of any other art form. I think we see this, or at least hints of it, in games like Thief, Psychonauts, Dishonored, Skyrim, Vampire Bloodlines, Deus Ex, etc. Regardless of the limitations of the tech at the time, all those disciples must come together to form a coherent whole. What's really mind-blowing is when you consider that some of those earlier games that we would consider more "artful" were made by small teams, where a single member had to bring a variety of creative talents to bear, rather than houses assembling teams for one specific task, as is the case today.
Volitions Advocate on 1/1/2013 at 20:15
I thought the multi-disciplinary angle was my strongest argument. It's just not logical to say that something that is brought together with so many forms of art couldn't be considered art. The museum example I think is different because it is a receptacle, and I don't think games are receptacles.
SubJeff on 2/1/2013 at 02:38
Films can be art, games can be art.
Not all are.
zajazd on 3/1/2013 at 08:56
The games that try to be art mostly are small shtty games with very simple mechanics, like Journey for example. People who like those games do so because they want to set themselves apart from the masses because they'd like to think that they are better than the masses and that they see something in those games that others aren't able to see. Same thing happens in all other mediums (music, movies, literature). For example you can notice that on many music sites when the staff pick their favorite albums of the year or whatever, they always pick the most obscure albums that noone else has heard, and the more obscure they are the better/cooler. And when you look at some bands - let's take Animal Collective - all the 'cool' kids loved that band but the moment Animal Collective became mainstream all of a sudden this band wasn't interesting to the cool kids anymore.
