Are video games Art?

[Darth Drabek]

I'm at work, and thus cannot pontificate at length on the subject (nor would I want to), but art is whatever is aestetically pleasing to me.

 

I consider the jawdropping environments Team Ninja made for the DOA games to be art. Same with the writing and voice acting of a particularly compelling NPC. They engage my mind in thought, and entertain me.

 

Rosjberg is right - art can be entertainment. It can also be downright difficult and unintelligible. Sometimes one kind is better than the other, sometimes not.

[alanschu]

Most films are purely entertainment, but in film a small number of extremely driven people have succeeded in bending the medium to their will and create films which are works of art.

 

The whole "auteur" thing and that.

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Why is art mutually exclusive from entertainment?

[Baley]

Art is what happens when an artist lets himself loose on a canvas, lump of clay or sheet of paper.

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And if his purpose is to entertain the audience, is it no longer art?

Edited June 8, 2006 by Baley

[alanschu]

Art is what happens when an artist lets himself loose on a canvas, lump of clay or sheet of paper.

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And if his purpose it to entertain the audience, is it no longer art?

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And doesn't include people that let themselves go with strings vibrating in rhythm.

[Plano Skywalker]

Its been a while since i've been here so this may have already come up but anyway. I'm doing paper for my english class over weather or not video games are art.

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I think the general theme here is that you may as well ask "what is art?".

 

if I take a piece of canvas and have a fan about 10 feet away and I start emptying cans of paint into the space between the fan and the canvas and, thusly, end up with something that has about 300 orbs and lines on it of different colors, have I just produced art?

 

some people think so; some, presumably, would not think so.

 

I generally consider entertainment and art interchangeable...there is entertainment I like and entertainment I do not like....there is art I like and art I do not like.

[Volourn]

To me, it's real simple: art is art. Paintings, drawings, and the like. I do remember that in Art Class we surely weren't aught about movies, games, or books. Those who were in other classes like Creative Writing, English, and the like.

 

Game over.

Edited June 8, 2006 by Volourn

[Baley]

Its been a while since i've been here so this may have already come up but anyway. I'm doing paper for my english class over weather or not video games are art.

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if I take a piece of canvas and have a fan about 10 feet away and I start emptying cans of paint into the space between the fan and the canvas and, thusly, end up with something that has about 300 orbs and lines on it of different colors, have I just produced art?

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Was it your goal to produce something creative, something stimulating or even stale, did you put your hopes, your dreams and that little part of your persona I call the soul in it?

 

Then why not? Art is not some ugly 500 year old dame on a musty dried-up canvas. Art is our collective soul, mankind's creative urge. It's war and it's passion and it's peace and spirituality. It has no limit and no boundary. It might not even need a creator. A simple idea might suffice.

 

Pointless narrow-minded elitism is art's greatest foe.

[alanschu]

So art is what is taught in school art class?

[Plano Skywalker]

for the record, I do think that the "fan painting" is art. I think that *anything* that is "creative" or "fictitious" is art.

 

I have a very broad definition of the term.

 

 

at the local malls where I live, there is often a "deco art" shop in which you can buy paintings of surf crashing, lighthouses, ships, etc. the painters keep painting the same pictures over and over again.

 

are they producing art?

[Baley]

That would depend on how similar the images are to one another. A perfect identical copy is hard to make by hand. If not impossible. But if the artist puts his soul in said painting I am willing to call it art. As long as he is as well. "Good Art" Now there's a subjective term!

[Darth Launch]

I believe that most forms of creativity are forms of art (something about it being inherent in the process of creation or whatever)... so I guess video games could be considered art in that sense (but I never vote in polls and don't intend to in this one)... and whether it's good or bad art is something else

[Blarghagh]

To me, it's real simple: art is art. Paintings, drawings, and the like. I do remember that in Art Class we surely weren't aught about movies, games, or books. Those who were in other classes like Creative Writing, English, and the like.

 

Game over.

 

Oh really? I distinctly remember making two short films and writing a song for my art class.

Edited June 9, 2006 by TrueNeutral

[LoneWolf16]

To me, it's real simple: art is art. Paintings, drawings, and the like. I do remember that in Art Class we surely weren't aught about movies, games, or books. Those who were in other classes like Creative Writing, English, and the like.

 

Game over.

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That's a really stupid way of coming to that conclusion...no offense.

 

Think about it, the class has to have a curriculum that it can get through in one years time, or a semester. Try fitting the study of music, movies, writing, painting, and drawing into a single class.

[kirottu]

Pointless narrow-minded elitism is art's greatest foe.

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This and everything else Baley has said in this thread are the truth... yes, even the "phallos" thing.

 

To me, it's real simple: art is art. Paintings, drawings, and the like. I do remember that in Art Class we surely weren't aught about movies, games, or books. Those who were in other classes like Creative Writing, English, and the like.

 

Game over.

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Oh really? I distinctly remember making two short films and writing a song for my art class.

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Also, I have never heard someone who doesn

[mkreku]

I read today that an english art museum paid

[Judge Hades]

I don't care if video games are an art or not. I play games to have fun. A game is either fun or not fun. I don't really care if the game, movie, novel, or whatever is artsy or not. Is it fun and entertaining? That is the more important question.

[LoneWolf16]

I don't care if video games are an art or not.  I play games to have fun.  A game is either fun or not fun.  I don't really care if the game, movie, novel, or whatever is artsy or not.  Is it fun and entertaining?  That is the more important question.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

But that's not the question being posed. The question...and I'm reading at the top of my screen...is "Are Video Games Art?"

 

And to me, yes, they're an art form.

 

I mean, if some guy can paint a dot in the middle of a canvas and it'll sell for millions, I'm not sure it can really be argued that something this involving on a creative level can't be considered a form of art.

[Judge Hades]

Using that definition anything that is remotely creative can be considered art.

 

Oh, look at our posts. THEY ARE ART!

[Pidesco]

Well,yes. It's just that our posts are pretty crappy art.

[Judge Hades]

No, canned excrement is crappy art. Literally.

[Blarghagh]

In fact, speech is art. When you speak, you usually use a certain rhythm, tone and volume for emphasis and possibly giving an extra meaning to your words.

 

A good conversation is art.

[Dark_Raven]

I thought a topic like this was posted before. Video games are artwork. It takes a combination of people to bring forth a work of art. It may not be a Picasso but it

[Volourn]

No.

 

If we're going by the defintion that anything 'creative' is artowrk than pretty much everything was art. Heck, what occured on 9/11 was 'art' - very disgustingly evil art; but art nonthelsss, or as others mention these posts of ours are 'art' as well.

 

 

R00fles!

 

 

"No, canned excrement is crappy art. Literally."

 

Haha.

 

D0uble R00fles!

Edited June 10, 2006 by Volourn

[Magnum Opus]

Well... there's art, and then there's art.

 

There's the sort of art that your daughter brings home from kindergarten and that you, as a parent, are ecstatic to put up on the fridge, because you know that everything she put in there is genuine, and expressive of who she is and what she was thinking when she made it. It connects with the parent at a pretty deep level, a level that goes beyond the blobs of hand-shaped paint on the paper, which, after all, are probably pretty ugly in and of themselves.

 

And then there's the "collective human soul" sort of art; more profound, more universal, more widely recognized. Famous Art. Technically, art like this has a lot to recommend it as well as being expressive of something more profound than what the piece is merely showing. ie. It looks good, or it uses a particular technique or medium particularly well or with a certain degree of skill.

 

On that continuum, I look at video games as being more toward the "gindergarten" end. Games, at present, are still fighting mightily with their medium. Games are pushed out the door half-baked, there are bugs on top of bugs and the surrounded with more bugs, often to the point that the actual game is obscured by them.

 

Beyond that, though, games are, IMO, typically there to make money and to provide a very visceral thrill. There's not a lot to recommend them beyond that quick adrenaline rush; it's there, and it's forgotten. It provides no insights, and it doesn't make you think about anything. Hell, some games go even further and succeed only when they prevent you from actively thinking. So, from that perspective, I look at games as being something similar to that Summer Hollywood Blockbuster or internet porn; takes a certain skill to pull it off well, and so can be considered an art -- it takes a great deal of skill, many skills, to pull off any sort sort of video game, and so their creation is most certainly an art, IMO -- but do I consider them art? Not really. On the "kindergarten scrawlings --> Picasso" scale, there's only one game I've played that I'd even consider putting on that scale, and that just below kindergarten scrawlings. The potential is certainly there, but right now they're being produced for a different purpose, and they're just too clumsy.

 

'Cause at the end of the day, I see things as being "an art", and then there are things that end up being art. The former doesn't necessarily lead to the latter. And then, naturally, there's art, and then there's Art. And of course, this only applies to me, so take that for what it's worth.

 

Clear as mud? Good.

[Plano Skywalker]

bottom line is that it is a very amorphous concept....it cannot be limited to paintings, sculptures and the like.

 

but where exactly the fault lines are is anyone's guess (and/or opinion).