Are Videogames Art?

Angry Black Man asks: "The San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art is currently debating whether or not videogames can be considered a type of art. They are currently holding a symposium entitled "ArtCade: Exploring the Relationship Between Video Games and Art." What do you guys think about this? Also, if videogames are considered art than what stops other computer programs from also being considered art? Censoring videogames because of violence or even programs because of DMCA-type laws may be considered censoring art - something that many Americans have traditionally been very opposed to?" When Slashdot covered computer graphics as fine art, many of you agreed that it was. When asked about beautiful code, many thought so and gave their reasons as to why. Now comes a question about the combination of the two. Are computer games not considered art simply because of its nature as an entertainment medium, or can video games be considered art precisely because they can be thought of as combinations of graphics and code?

Comments

Anything can be art...

[Buran]

... if their creators believe that it is. Whether or not someone thinks my drawings are art, I think they are -- and that makes them art. They take skill to create, and I take joy in making them. That, I think, is art.

Re:Anything can be art...

[nehril]

indeed. Are movies art? are photographs art? Well, it's too broad a question. Films, photography, and videogames are a *medium*, and as such they can be many different things. "movies" and "photographs" encompass things like documentaries, security camera videos, medical images, astronomical images, etc. Whether any particular product is "art" depends on what you define art to be.

In the same vein, it's ridiculous to ask whether "video games" are art. Video games can be anything from educational, to part of scientific experiments, to, well, anything.

The field of photography initially went through a stage where people doubted and debated whether photographs were art or mere transcription. As the field evolved the question became more refined: is *this particular* photograph art? That the technology of photography can produce art is no longer in question. Digital Interactive Entertainment or Video Games or whatever you want to call it will eventually go through the same cycle and come to the same conclusion.

Is Final Fantasy VII "art"? Is Mavis Beacon Typing Teacher? Is this even a valid comparison?

Let me be the first to say "Duuuuuhhhh"

[IdocsMiko]

Of course video games are art! Designing a video game is designing an experience for an audience. You balance a variety of elements such as sound, color, pace, all of which come together to form a unique whole. Different people have different tastes and will come away from the art piece with different impressions.

Art forms like video games tend to get mired in these sort of debates because they lack snob appeal. People figure that if it doesn't need an endowment, it's not art. People don't sit in high-rent apartments in an artsy-fartsy section of town in fancy clothes sipping spritzers and discussing the finer points of Q3, so it must not be art.

Science fiction has gotten mired down in this debate, as has commerical art of all forms, as did theater at one time. Good grief.

Art or craft?

[Webmonger]

To me, it seems that computer graphics can definitely be art. But programming is more of a craft. It's about making something well. And just like a well-executed piece of furniture, a program's internal beauty is irrelevant to the users-- it's how it looks and how it works that matters to the people who use it.

Sure, computer games contain art. Their music and images often have artistic worth. But we want computer games that are well designed and skillfully executed, not artistic statements.

I'm a programmer, and I've got a lot of respect for the creativity and hard work that goes into computer games. But I see them as a craft, not an art.

Anyone know why this is a story instead of a poll?

Art, Schmart

[timothy]

Why do people agonize about whether particular things can be "considered" art?

If you consider something to be art, who the heck is going to stop you? Other people might disagree (hey, my thoughts on art may vary from yours -- so what?) but that's about the extent of it.

Now given that, I don't particularly agree that video games are art, *unless that's what the creator intended*, in which case I have no objection -- then it's art. IMO (which one one else has to buy), Art is *intentional* - accidental doodles, sunsets, plants, shadows, streams or functional objects might be artful, or beautiful, or even artistic, but things get too floppy for me if anything that happens to look nice, or that makes you think, is automatically "art." Not everything sculptural (Zhang Ziyi, for instance, or a Nagra tape recorder) is actually sculpture.

Having groused that practical objects which happen to be pretty aren't, I would say that the other direction is not quite the same, though. An artwork could have a hands-on function which rendered it a useful object ... again, a matter of intention. If I make an object with a long metal prong flattened into a small, blunted, flat-edge blade that happens to fit into the slot at the end of a woodscrew, and declare that the primary purpose and my artistic intent is for it to be manipulated by human hands to express the beauty of simple machines by inserting or removing screws from objects, Fine -- it's art that happens to serve as a screwdriver. That doesn't make every screwdriver art.

Maybe this helps to explain why I think the money given to the NEA would be much better given to model rocket clubs around the country, or never taken from taxpayers in the first place.

timothy