Sci-Fi Writer Considers BioShock's Artistic Merit

The LevelUp blog considers an article on the Washington Post site, where their tech columnist did a little experiment. He set Science Fiction author Michael Dirda down in front of Irrational's BioShock, and asked him to consider the game's artistic merit. N'Gai has himself some interesting commentary about the article, which raises a flurry of question on its own: "Dirda, to use his word, doesn't know the 'rhetoric' of video games. Me: I've spent so much time playing video games over the years that I'd forgotten people aren't born instinctively knowing how to 'circlestrafe' a monster ... 'I could lose myself in this, in some ways, easier than in a book,' he said. Dirda said the game showed him that video games 'obviously have artistic value' and will likely become more of a recognized art form. So: Is BioShock art? 'I would hesitate to go that far,' he said after a short pause."

Comments

Sci-fi author?

[Negatyfus]

As far as I can tell, the man is a book critic. The write-up makes it seem as he's actually written sci-fi books?

not a sci-fi author.

[sammy baby]

Michael Dirda is not a science fiction author. He's a literary critic. Which the submitter probably should have known if he'd read, like, the very first sentence of the article: "On a recent Saturday morning, I headed over to the house of Pulitzer Prize-winning Post book columnist Michael Dirda with an Xbox 360 under my arm."

From the third paragraph: "But [Dirda] is a sci-fi fan and an open-minded fellow, and I was curious whether BioShock's story would be compelling enough to draw him in."

Did a quick Amazon search of his work, and the only things I noticed were essentially books about reading itself.

Just sayin'.

Re:The Interesting Thing

[Gulthek]

What is art?

Generally people have a vague notion that art is something that everyone agrees is art. That art is cultured, refined, high-brow, sophisticated. That art must be appreciated to be art. Art is that which is hung in museum galleries and fawned over by elite scholars who write detailed analyses describing their value and meaning. People believe these scholars and nod their knowing agreement, sure that they too see the same value that the experts have ascribed.

At the other extreme there are those who say that all that I've just described is emphatically not art. That art is the living, breathing, messy, chaotic act of creation. That art in museums is dead works and that true art is that which is happening all around us.

Some say that if something is fun then it isn't art. That movies and comics and videogames and television and books can never be art because they are made not to express a feeling but to entertain and delight.

Some say art must be beautiful. Some say art must be meaningful. Some say art must be passionate.

I have a serious problem with all of these claims and, in fact, the very debate itself. Every single one of these claims are all predicated on the fact that art must be something. It doesn't. Art is what it is and what it is is entirely, completely, and utterly subjective. There is no debate here because it all comes down to personal perception. No one can make a genuinely compelling argument about the true definition of art because it is not possible to rationally argue an aesthetic point of view.