Video Games as Art
Whilst the widespread cultural saturation of video games is unquestioned - the multi-billion dollar industry more than rivaling, and by some reports suprpassing, that of the film industry - the artistsic significance, and even the philosophical importance, of video games still suffers the fate of all new forms. Derided as shallow and inferior and regulated to subserviant rungs on the old Low-Art - High-Art ladder.
This article from Aaron Smuts entitled 'Video games and the Philsophy of Art', points out some of this lack of intellectual rigour in regard to gaming. Whilst the article is a few years old and much has evolved as games become serious (even Hip) acedemic fodder what has cocnerned me of late it that this intellectual focus is soemwhat misdirected. For whilst there is a bastion of effort directed at the sociological impact of gaming, the health impact, the community aspect, the cultural significance there is still relatively little attention focused on understanding the pure aesthetics of gaming; gaming as art, or indeed as I would argue, Gaming simply as Cinema - as an evolved and
remediating (Bolter and Grusin) cinematic moving image form. A form that both borrows intensly from pervious cinematic forms as well as forging ahead new visual languages.
Posted at 01:00AM Jun 22, 2007
by Mike Jones in 3D graphics & gaming |
