Roger Ebert recently posted an article here http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_never_be_art.html about how video games "can never be art".
To defend his point, he uses Kellee Santiago's TED talk where she argues that video games are art and argues against her. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9y6MYDSAww&feature=player_embedded
You don't have to read or watch those links if you're pressed for time, I take up their arguments in what I'm going to say. Although I recommend you do take the time to read Ebert's article and watch Santiago's presentation.
Unfortunately, I don't find Santiago's argument particularly compelling either, so it's no surprise that Ebert manages to trump her so soundly. She cites wikipedia for a definition on art where it says "Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." Ebert then argues against that definition since he says that as a Chess player, he believes his game fits that definition and seems to imply that his game is not art. But isn't it? A carefully designed game with intricate rules that forces the player to look past the obvious. Build the desire to win while inspiring emotions of nervousness, trepidation, excitement, loss and glory. If something that can do all of that isn't art, then what is?
Ebert offers Plato's definition that "art should be defined as the imitation of nature," and later offers his own notion that "it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage through what we might call the artist's soul, or vision." But what Ebert doesn't take into consideration is the danger of taking anything Plato says at face value and taking a single point of view from one text. Yes, Plato says that "art should be defined as the imitation of nature," in one text, but then in The Ion, Socrates warns the Rhapsode Ion of taking such a simplistic view on art. Ion has only one point of view of the poet Homer and knows of no other poets. Socrates argues that Ion could not have a mastery of that knowledge without knowing several other perspectives and understanding the other poets as well. Ebert, and even Santiago, are both making the same mistake where they try to define art from a narrow perspective.
I propose that art is anything that allows us to see a new angle on a subject (or object) that we never saw before. It inspires us through our emotions and then forces us to contemplate why we were so moved by it to learn new perspectives.
Maybe I'm making the same mistake as Ion, Ebert and Santiago, but I feel that my definition offers a little more leeway in terms of the medium to allow almost anything to become art.
One limitation that video games have as art is their tendency to appeal to their rather short history. Games like "Passage" or other pieces by Jason Rohrer have charming 8-bit graphics that resound nostalgically with gamers from the 80s, but for most gamers, those who started playing with either the last 2 generations, the Playstation and Playstation 2 generations, or even the newest gamers of the Wii, 360 and PS3 generations, this style has no appeal. As one of my professors once said "which is the better form of art: The ultra-artistic super introspective indie film in theater 1 with an audience of 3, or the kind of shallow movie with an obvious message and an audience of 500 in theater 2." How great is a piece of art if it has a limited audience? It's certainly one hurdle that games have to overcome.
To avoid this post becoming any longer, I'll stop for now, although I still have lots to say against Mr. Ebert. I promise that games as art is something that will come up again.
Very nice Corry! Silly stiff-upper-lip critics in part, I think, are just scared that their life's work is actively evolving without them, and will continue to do so after they're dust in the wind. Or maybe they simply don't see the beauty in something that is created and therefore must have some good in it. Video games are indeed crafted by mankind, and therefore in my logic are able to be interpreted as art as anything else made by man.
ReplyDeleteGood job, Corry :)
ReplyDeleteI can definitely see both sides of the argument about games being art or not. One the one hand, art, as you said, is the imitation of nature, but as modulated and expressed through the artist's creativity. Just taking a picture wouldn't be art, but being able to inject something else in the picture, like a story or whatever, would make it art. At least that's how I see it.
People are so reluctant to accept games as art because I think they view it in a way that is way too conventional. The game's art does not lie in its narrative, or in its visuals so much as in its mechanics. That is where games set themselves apart from the other media.