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Prestigious Art Gallery To Exhibit Video Games

Posted by Hemos on from the what-about-my-award-winning-homm4-characters dept.

dipfan writes "Anyone passing through London (England) in the next few months should check out Game On - the history, culture and future of video games, an exhibition at the prestigious Barbican gallery, which opens on May 16. The exhibition publicity says: "Game On will trace the 40 year history of computer games from Space War, which was made way back in 1962, right up to the latest, as yet unreleased games from the likes of Nintendo, Sony, Sega and XBox." Cool. Exhibits include the first home games console (the Magnavox Odyssey from 1972), special sections on the influence of anime and manga, and lots of playable games, from Pong onwards, and a whole lot of other interesting stuff. The Barbican cinema is running a games-related film festival to go with the exhibition: Tron, The Matrix, etc. Even if you can't make it to London, the exhibition is going to tour the US and Japan."

4 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Back in my day we had an a exhibit too by acomj · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The decordova museum in MA had a video game exhibit in the 80's (abiet a long time ago). Back when games were games. THey had atari 2600, intellivision and coleco vision all playing donkey kong. THe had a lot of stand up machines too, asteroids, ms. pac man etc. They took tokens they sold at the front desk, except Zaxxon which was free. Went there a couple days after school when there were no crouds... Kick'n.

    We had 8 bit color and mono sound back then, none of these fancy shmancy 3d cards they have now...It was amazing what they could get out of that hardware!

  2. Wait? Gaming is an art? by FortKnox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If Britian views gaming as an art on a different medium, they need to get into the US Government to give Gaming the same rights as art...

    Art is protected by the First Amendment, but Games aren't... Bah!

    --
    Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
  3. Truly a sad state of affairs by DrBiscuit · · Score: 1, Insightful
    It used to be that the young were educated into the traditions of culture: Shakespeare, Rembrandt, da Vinci, etc. But in our new permissive, culturally-relative society it's anything goes and we treat throwaway entertainment as "art". This appears to be especially the case in the young male population wherein even the most picayune and trivially obvious statements are held up as profound wisdom.

    But it never hurts to try: Stop your video game. Turn off your computer. Go to a real art museum. Then come back and compare the image of, say, Manet's A Bar at the Folie-Bergere with a picture of Mario. Which one is art again?

    --

    Angela Taylor, PhD
    Los Alamos National Laboratory
    Feminist, scientist, scholar, woman
    1. Re:Truly a sad state of affairs by JonnyCalcutta · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Shakespeare was throwaway entertainment for the masses.
      Rembrant painted pictures for money so some rich tart could have something nice to hang on her wall
      DaVinci was the Duke of Milan's biatch.
      95% of everything is crap.
      Hindsight is everything.
      I hate art snobs.