Art Games

The game designer Jason Rohrer has self-identified as an artist. By doing so enters his work into a critique process that, according to James Elkins, dates back to the Romantic period in which artists are evaluated by peers on an individualized basis according to the ideals and creative direction they produce in the form of written and verbal artifacts. Arthur Danto calls these artifacts “artistic identification” in his essay, “The Artworld,” written in 1964. The study applies this critique method to Rohrer’s work in the game medium and asks how it fares when subjected to what Howard Becker calls, “a continuous process of selection” through critique. It asks, finally, how can knowing this methodology help to elucidate the path for the eventual full-fledged integration of games into the Artworld.

Video games as the medium of art

The aim of the article is to discuss selected examples of art that uses video games as a source of aesthetic and formal patterns, as a ready-made material susceptible to subversion, and also as a means of expression and artistic creation. The analysis of this type of works allows us to distinguish three main areas of interaction between
art and video games: (1) works created by the technique of subversive appropriation, that is, the takeover and transformation/recontextualization of video game elements
(game art); (2) interventions in the form of game mods (art mods); and (3) art games.

The exhibition catalog to the 2014 Blank Arcade, a showcase of creative game designs at the Digital Games Research Association (DiGra) 2014 conference. The exhibition was held at Snowbird Resort, Salt Lake City, Utah. The exhibit was curated by Lindsay D. Grace and includes work by Roger Altizer, Barry Atkins , James Earl Cox Iii, Anjali Deshmukh, Josh Fishburn Brian Patrick Franklin, Christopher Wille, Lindsay Grace, Carolyn Jong, Tina Kalinger, Deirdra Kiai, Hartmut Koenitz, Aaron Oldenburg , Benjamin Poynter, Jean-Michel Rolland, Adam Trowbridge, Jessica Westbrook and Sweat and the University of Denver and University of California Santa Cruz Xylem Project Team.

Spätestens mit Beginn des neuen Jahrtausends hat sich das Computerspiel gesellschaftlich als relevantes ästhetisches Medium durchgesetzt. Mit dieser Anerkennung als ästhetisches und künstlerisches Phänomen stellt sich allerdings auch die Frage nach seinen diesbezüglichen Eigenarten. Daniel Martin Feiges neues Buch klärt in philosophischer Perspektive Begriff, Ästhetik und Kunstcharakter des Computerspiels. Dabei lässt es sich von der Annahme leiten, dass die Konturen ästhetischer Medien beständig neuverhandelt werden. Wer sich mit der Ästhetik des Computerspiels befasst, muss zugleich auch über die Ästhetik anderer Medien und Künste nachdenken.

This paper examines the aesthetic and connective properties of arcade videogame interfaces. It considers the arcade videogame interface as a communicative and creative link that extends beyond play orientated input and feedback mechanisms. With the correct emulation and homebrew tools, videogame platforms that were originally designed as consumer only devices become malleable forms that can be interfaced at artist and developer levels, allowing previously closed hardware and software systems to function as reconfigurable digital materials.

Unpublished Masters Thesis under maiden name - Phillipa Stalker.

This essay will explore the existing definitions of art games that are currently being used in the art game/art mod genre. It will identify the leading theorists within the field, and take into account their definitions whilst at the same time establishing a set of categories within which can be defined the dominant trends in the development of the field. It will also situate art games within an historical context, both within the commercial computer game field as well as the digital art field and attempt to establish some sort of timeline within which we can see the development and emergence of art games in relation to these two disciplines. Two examples of art games, both from different categories will be examined and critiqued in the context of Artistic Computer Game Modification – A 3D game called Escape From Woomera and an art mod or patch called SOD. The art game as an entity will be examined in relation to ideas of the ‘interactive’ and ‘play’, and the implications and potential for fine art practice will be investigated.

Η εργασία που παρουσιάζεται αποτελεί μια πρόταση προγράμματος διδασκαλίας στα πλαίσια του μαθήματος των εικαστικών. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, αναφέρεται στη σχεδίαση και ανάπτυξη ηλεκτρονικών παιχνιδιών από του μαθητές της Γ΄ τάξης γυμνασίου, από την οπτική ότι το ηλεκτρονικό παιχνίδι αποτελεί πλέον μια σύγχρονη μορφή τέχνης. Η κατηγορία παιχνιδιών που επιλέχθηκε αφορά τα Mouse Maze Games, παιχνίδια λαβυρίνθων, τα οποία παίζονται με το ποντίκι του υπολογιστή. Μέσα από την μεθοδολογία που προτείνεται, οι μαθητές καταφέρνουν να ολοκληρώσουν τα projects που έχουν αναλάβει, περνώντας από μια σύνθετη διαδικασία, γνωρίζοντας και μαθαίνοντας τις ψηφιακές μορφές τέχνης. Κατά αυτόν τον τρόπο, αποκτούν μια πιο διευρυμένη εικόνα για τις εικαστικές τέχνες ενώ παράλληλα αναπτύσσουν δεξιότητες σε θέματα ψηφιακού γραμματισμού, χρησιμοποιώντας τον ηλεκτρονικό υπολογιστή ως εργαλείο έκφρασης και δημιουργίας.

Digital cultures engage users’ social, creative and emotional labour – a process that can be described as affective. For some theorists and artists, this dynamic is inherently exploitative. However, within this exploitation is the potential, particularly in social media and games, to provide fuel for playful critique. The concept of ‘play’ is frequently used to describe users’ engagement within such cultures. This phenomenon evokes a long history in the arts of deploying ‘critical play’ modalities. In light of this situation, how might we begin to sketch a broader portrait of a ‘player’ engaging with the site of ‘critical play’?

This PhD project explores this question through a mapping of artists’ critical play within digital environments. With the focus upon affective engagement in digital environments, I argue that it is the reflection and interrogation of processes of identity representation that, in turn, drive much of the motivation for ‘playing critically’ as a productive probe. More generally ‘Critical Affection, an expanded portrait of the artist-as-player in digital cultures’ seeks to contribute to play debates at the intersection of games studies, new media and contemporary art.

Literary Gaming is placed within the burgeoning fields of digital-born literature and indie/art game research. It explores a body of digital artefacts situated on a continuum between ludic e-literature and literary art games and engages with hybrid receptive and interactive processes that combine reading and gaming. Informed by avant-garde modernist and postmodernist theories, such as Situationist détournement and deconstruction, and ludological concepts of chance, choice, rules, fun, forms of play (Caillois 2001/1958), (illusory) agency (McCallum-Stewart and Parsler 2007) and procedural rhetoric (Bogost 2007), this monograph offers close readings and "playings" of texts that inhabit different places on the literary-ludic spectrum. The analyses are positioned within the broad trajectory of functional ludo-narrativism (Ryan 2006), which aims to examine how elements of game design, gameplay, narrative and (poetic) textuality concur to evoke distinctive receptive and interactive experiences.

By the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, computer games have long discarded the stigma of media non grata. With games studies established as an academic discipline, ludologists have determined - although not always agreed upon - what exactly computer games are (not), particularly vis-à-vis what were often felt to be somewhat intrusive attempts on the part of literary and media studies to impose definitions and theories indebted to, for instance, narratology and film studies. By the same token, since the years leading up to the boost of the gaming industry and the proliferation of commercially oriented, run-of-the-mill genre blockbusters from the 1990s onward, there has been a steady increase in independent game design and development, which has given rise to a wide range of non-commercial artefacts such as art games, online adaptations and parodies of classic platform games and shoot 'em ups, educational, political and socio-critical browser games.
This chapter looks at one specific type of such experimental, anti-establishment projects, which I shall refer to as the paradox of literary gaming - "paradox" because literature and computer games are two entirely different receptive, productive, aesthetic, phenomenological, social and discursive phenomena. Having said that, I aim to demonstrate that some qualities of literary computer games and ludic-experimental digital literature of all three major genres (poetry, drama and narrative) are indeed compatible, especially considering how the digital medium enables semiotic multimodality, rule-drivenness, playability, relative agency and interactive variability, thus inviting artistic hybridity and aesthetic fluidity.
In what follows, I shall first introduce the essence of general and digital "gameness" (Juul 2003, 2005) as well as the textuality of computer games. I shall then go on to explore the interface between experimental literature and computer games and propose a spectrum between ludic digital literature and literary computer games, which I consider a more appropriate concept than a textual-generic typology. The second half of the chapter will be dedicated to a number of concise close readings covering poetic, dramatic and fictional artefacts.

Esta investigación doctoral se centra en estudiar las prácticas artísticas y productivas delos juegos digitales que ocupan un espacio en el mercado actual de los videojuegos bajoel nombre de #altgames. El objetivo es sistematizar las características de estemovimiento de creadores, contextualizando la transformación del lenguaje de losvideojuegos. A partir de los estudios culturales y de la tradición de estudios posmarxistas,abordamos la cultura del videojuego poniéndola en el centro de un entramadosociotécnico que está en diálogo con los regímenes de producción capitalista y con elsistema del arte. El resultado de las prácticas investigadas es la ampliación del espectrode lo posible en lo que se refiere al videojuego como medio expresivo, como industriaproductiva y en cuanto a sujetos a quienes apela. Sus creadores, hombres y mujeres quehasta hace poco no tenían ninguna posibilidad de acceso a la industria, encuentran en elvideojuego un lenguaje de expresión capaz de articular un posicionamiento crítico que notendría cabida en las producciones mainstream o independientes. El concepto de “juegosposibles” que da el título a esta investigación se refiere a esos videojuegos que superan laidea de videojuego y de su cultura asociada tal como se entienden comúnmente.Conjuntamente al análisis teórico se acompaña la investigación con una práctica decreación de dos juegos digitales a partir del marco #altgames. El primero, Homozapping,es un videojuegos alternativo resultado de un laboratorio de creación colaborativo dondereflexionar sobre la teoría queer, las políticas de representación de los cuerpos, y losvideojuegos como herramienta de investigación social y pensamiento crítico. El segundo,Juegos del común, es un proyecto de ludificación de datos abiertos que explora laposibilidad creativa de los datos para la generación algorítmica de videojuegosimaginándolos como vehículo de conexión entre el espacio digital y los territorioshabitados de la ciudad. Estas propuestas, alumbran la posibilidad de colonizar nuevosespacios donde el videojuego se convierte en agente articulador de procesos colectivos yde transformación social y tecnopolítica en un sentido amplio. Es posible, de hecho, mirara estas propuestas como temporalmente fuera de la máquina capitalista, y así ofrecer unespacio de posibilidad radical, intersectorial y abierto a comunidades diversas que ocupanel espacio digital y territorial de las ciudades.

This paper is a taster of my current book project, contracted with MIT Press, which deals with 'Literary Gaming'. It studies the creative interface between digital literature and literary computer games and proposes a specific methodology to analyse those artefacts.
My talk revolves around the interface between literature, art, and gaming. I look at theories of literary play and liminal forms of digital art, which are situated on a spectrum between 'literary' computer games and so-called 'ludic' digital literature. In particular, I focus on two texts: the ludic Flash fiction The Princess Murderer, and the 'literary' art game The Path.

When Art Is Put Into Play: A Practice-based Research Project on Game Art is a practice-based research project that aims to contribute to the understanding of the relation between play and art from the specific perspective of computer-based Game Art.

This is done firstly through the production of nine works of art that through their means of production all relate to Game Art as it has come to be known in the last twenty years or so. Secondly, the relation between games, play and art is discussed from a Game Art perspective.

This project as a whole aims to map and exemplify cases where Game Art successfully inherits rule-systems, aesthetics, spatial and temporal aspects from computer games.

This work has in turn resulted in a provisional response to the question of the possibility for Game Art to successfully create a state of play, whilst still maintain agency as a work of art. The claim is that the friction between art and play makes it doubtful that art can maintain its agency as art through play. This claim is made as a result of the artistic process leading up to the works of art that were made as a part of the thesis. It has been strengthened through the study of the concept of play and how it relates to artistic practice.

Η πρόταση που παρουσιάζεται αφορά το πώς η τέχνη με την τεχνολογία μπορούν να σχεδιάσουν στοχευμένα εικαστικά έργα που θα αποτελούν εκπαιδευτικά διδακτικά μέσα. Είναι κοινή διαπίστωση ότι το σχολείο, δεν είναι το πιο ελκυστικό μέρος για τους μαθητές. Επιδίωξη αυτής της πρότασης είναι η αλλαγή του κλίματος κατά την εκπαιδευτική διαδικασία, οι καλύτερες επιδόσεις των μαθητών και η σύσφιξη των σχέσεων εκπαιδευτικού-μαθητή. Η «δύναμη» του έργου τέχνης εισέρχεται και διεισδύει μέσα στη σχολική τάξη για να βοηθήσει και γιατί όχι για να αναβαθμίσει την εκπαιδευτική διαδικασία. Παρουσιάζεται και αναλύεται ένα τέτοιο έργο, το βιβλίο-παιχνίδι επαυξημένης πραγματικότητας, που αναφέρεται στο μάθημα της Λογοτεχνίας. Καταληκτικά, προτείνεται μια διαφορετική αντιμετώπιση της εισαγωγής της τέχνης στην εκπαίδευση, δημιουργώντας εκ του μηδενός έργα σχεδιασμένα για συγκεκριμένες διδακτικές ενότητες και μαθήματα.

Recently published, abstract flash and browser games such as Love (2010), The Marriage (2006), My Divorce (2010) can be summarized as games about love. As opposed to simulation games such as The Sims 3 (2009) in which the topic love is more or less realistically depicted the given abstract games consist on the semiotics level mainly of geometrical forms like squares and circles which move through the gamespace in a certain manner according to in-game events and player inputs. Mainly the titles of the mentioned games reveal their topic as games about love or love relationships. This incongruity between the title and the dynamic system of geometrical shapes seems to be a paradox at first sight which provokes a reflection on the relationship of the topic of these games and their semiotic properties as well as their rules and represented mechanics (Aarseth 2003, Sicart 2008).
In terms of the ontological game love model by Jessica Enevold (2010) this paper contributes to the section “love in games” since it is especially interested in the way in which the theme of love is modeled in the examples or why it can be projected on them. To identify love in the described abstract games I will use the approach of cognitive linguistic metaphor theory according to which love in everyday western languages is to a large part understood in terms of space. The centrality of the love theme in the chosen examples as well as its graphical and mechanical minimalism will provide a rare counter perspective to games which usually operate with more naturalistic simulations of love phenomena like Heavy Rain, The Sims 3 or apply specific romance mechanics during the game like e.g. Dragon Age (c.f. Waern 2010) or Mass Effect. This paper makes the reader aware that there is a comparatively small and peripheral group of games which investigate the topic of love with very simple and abstract means which do consequently not result in a naturalistic simulation but in a playable concept of love. Thus, this contribution will focus on love as an abstract concept and its realization in games. It helps to understand game love as being influenced by an everyday understanding of love as it is always already pre-structured by the mostly conventional metaphors we use to talk about it as opposed to philosophical concepts of love.
The leading research questions to be answered in this article are: How can the mentioned games be understood as games about love? Are they love simulations, love metaphors or simulations of a metaphorically structured concept of love? Discussing the first two options, especially the last notion will be emphasized. To tackle these questions, this article will discuss and analyze the mentioned games. It will make use of different definitions of the term simulation from the field of game studies as well as from natural and social sciences such as Frasca (2001, 2003), Juul (2005), Bogost (2007), Begy (2010) and Hartmann (2005). Furthermore, it will apply a notion of metaphor derived from the cognitive linguistic metaphor theory by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980, 1999) which considers the human ability of metaphorical reasoning as a fundamental structure of thought and experience which results from our bodily being in the world. In doing so the article will in addition discuss earlier explicit approaches on metaphor in (abstract and non-abstract) computer games as there are Madsen and Johansen (2002), Rusch (2009) Begy (2010) and specifically on love metaphors in games like Rusch and Weise (2008). However, it will criticize especially earlier approaches by Rusch (2009) and Begy (2010) who consider the games to discuss not as metaphors but for instance as simulations of love relationships only. To strengthen the argument that the given games can be considered as simulations of our metaphorically structured concepts of love this article will refer to empirically grounded cognitive linguistic research on commonly used metaphors for love such as Kövesces (1988, 2003, 2010). According to Kövesces love is understood in terms of conceptual metaphors such as LOVE IS A UNITY OF PARTS, LOVE IS CLOSENESS, and LOVE IS A BOND. It will become apparent that especially metaphors which conceptualize love in a spatial manner are appropriate to describe the game states of the given games and make their theme comprehensible. As the distinguishing feature of computer games as opposed to other forms of media is their spatiality (Aarseth 2000, Wolf 2001, Nitsche 2008, Günzel 2010) one can conclude that games can implement an abstract topic like love especially through the implementation of its spatial characteristics.

Desde hace más de 20 años los videojuegos han encontrado el reconocimiento del sistema del arte entrando en los aparatos institucionales que la gobiernan y la producen como museos y galerías. Este inclusión se ha producido a partir de dos fenómenos. Por un lado han ido ganando el estatus de producto cultural marcando un espacio propio en las políticas culturales y de consumo representando el producto paradigmático de la así llamada tecno-cultura. Por otro lado los videojuegos se han convertido en una parte integral de la práctica artística contemporánea identificando en la Game Art y en los artgames subgéneros que aprovechan el material icónico, el imaginario, las herramientas y lenguajes procedente del videojuego como materia prima para la creación. En esta ponencia se presentan algunos casos de estudios que demuestran la expansión producida dentro del medio hacia territorios que desbordan la categoría de entretenimiento y que convierten el consumo en una práctica productiva.

This paper outlines experiences and lessons learned in organizing a variety of digital art exhibits for small and large scale events. The perspective is provided as a cross-disciplinary set of heuristics, drawing on the decade long experience of the curator-artist and paying particular attention to playable electronic media (e.g. games and toys) as installation works in an art context. Lessons learned from exhibits organized or co-organized by the author in the United States, Europe and Asia are shared. These events were offered with support from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Leuphana University, the University of Utah, Abertay University and others. Additional observations are provided as an artist who has exhibited at more than 40 events in the last decade. Formally the paper offers an ontology for defining distinguishing between exhibits, festivals and showcases. It is not the intention of the author to create a compendium of exhibition and curation practice. Instead the a...

La figura del detective fue y es objeto de una gran cantidad de relecturas. Tres juegos recientes confirman una tendencia en ese paisaje de reconfiguraciones: la figura, arrancada de su emplazamiento habitual (las distintas variedades del policial), sale prácticamente de la escena y pasa a cumplir un rol vincular que posibilita la interacción con un entorno. En Gone Home (2013), Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2015) y Tacoma (2017) se presenta un misterio que debe resolverse recorriendo espacios, leyendo documentos y manipulando objetos. La pesquisa apunta a recomponer un relato ausente, pero la propuesta global de los juegos no es narrativa, sino de carácter exploratorio. En los tres casos, se verifica una tematización en torno a la posibilidad de acceder a la verdad de los hechos. Este trabajo analiza la reconversión de la figura del detective y su transformación en insumo enunciativo, zona de habitabilidad textual que viabiliza el contacto discursivo.

This paper discusses the conditions of possibility for relating to, understanding, and appreciating “gameplay performances”, that is, computer games as played by other people, through an existential-ludological and phenomenological analysis of 'mundane vehicle simulators', in particular Euro Truck Simulator 2 (2012, later ETS2) with TruckersMP multiplayer mod (2014).

No es sólo la locura, sino también la impotencia lo que mejor identifica los ángulos ciegos de la razón. La incapacidad de actuar de otra manera que la que ha sido programada en nuestro código genético, en nuestro condicionamiento reflejo, o en nuestro aprendizaje previo. Esos puntos ciegos, incontrolados e irracionales, están representados en las siguientes obras a través de dos preguntas decisivas relacionadas con el comportamiento y la identidad. Una está focalizada en el cuestionamiento de la noción de masculinidad -¿hay un soldado en mí?- y la otra, en la rabia e irracionalidad de instintos y pulsiones -a través de la recurrente pero definitiva ¿qué es lo que puede un cuerpo?-.  Nada es banal ni complaciente en estos juegos. Los artistas que rompen las reglas demuestran su insumisión y discrepancia planteando paradojas y desafíos, bordeando las trincheras de la tolerancia moral, proponiendo retos. Los artistas desafiantes ya no pretenden reestablecer o reinventar lazos sociales, no buscan el consenso; sólo exhiben una pertinaz voluntad de evidenciar controversias instalándose en el desacuerdo.

Part game manual, part catalogue, part archive, How to Play Eddo Stern revolves around a body of 17 works made by Stern along the last two decades which, although developed with different media, can be understood as “games”. The book collects the massive amount of small bits and pieces that make up the folders of Stern’s game projects: 3D models, texture maps and atlases, backdrops, animation frame sequences, code snippets, circuit diagrams, as well as emails, design documents, meeting notes, and installation diagrams. Most of the visual digital artifacts such as the models and textures when processed through the game software or built into an analog game become coherent visual forms, but in their unassembled, out-of-context form these fragments and artifacts maintain visual beauty and poetic truth.
Artist and game designer, Eddo Stern is Faculty at the UCLA Design | Media Arts Department in Los Angeles, CA, and director of the UCLA Game Lab. He works with various media including computer software & hardware, game design, live performance, digital video, and kinetic sculpture. His work explores the uneasy and otherwise unconscious connections between physical existence and electronic simulation, surrounding the subject matters of violence, memory and identification.
Featuring an essay by Matteo Bittanti, the book has been edited by Domenico Quaranta, designed by Fabio Paris, and co-published by the Link Art Center, Brescia and HEK, Basel.

Matteo Bittanti, Domenico Quaranta, Eddo Stern, How to Play Eddo Stern, Link Editions + HEK, Basel 2017. Paperback, color, 224 pages, ISBN 978-0-244-30739-4

Negli ultimi anni, il dibattito sullo statuto artistico del videogioco è stato così acceso da meritarsi persino una pagina dedicata su Wikipedia [1]. Questo fatto non deve stupire. Se da un lato il videogioco è emerso come una delle forme (e delle industrie) culturali principali del tardo Ventesimo secolo, dall'altro le resistenze indotte dalla sua origine, la sua funzione sociale, il suo stesso nome non accennano a calare. Se da un lato, nella pratica, gli intrecci e gli scambi tra videogioco e cinema, videogioco e letteratura, videogioco e televisione [2], e persino videogioco e arti visive si fanno sempre più intensi e affiatati, dall'altro, a livello teorico, sono ancora in pochi coloro disposti ad ammettere che un idraulico italiano e la sua principessa abbiano potuto dar vita a
una stirpe di monne lise.
Come prevedibile, il dibattito è pieno di ambiguità e malintesi, legati per lo più al senso e alla dignità culturale (o mancanza di) che si attribuisce, di volta in volta, ai termini chiave del dibattito: “arte”, “gioco” e “videogioco”. Senza entrare nel merito di una quaestio che finirebbe per occupare gran parte di questo testo, possiamo limitarci a far notare che essa si sviluppa lungo una traiettoria che include tesi come: il videogioco non è arte perché l'arte è qualcosa di molto più limitato di un videogioco, il videogioco non è arte perché concede troppo potere di controllo al fruitore, ma anche il videogioco è arte perché i concept artist si ispirano alla grande tradizione pittorica occidentale.
Del resto, in gran parte, queste ambiguità non sono nuove, ma si sono riproposte puntualmente ogni volta che si è trattato di prendere atto della natura artistica di un nuovo medium, dalla fotografia, al cinema, al video. La banalità di questo re-enactment, se da un lato lascia intravedere un happy ending, dall'altro offre all'autore di questo testo la ghiotta opportunità di affrontarlo in una forma leggera e poco accademica, affidandosi meno a citazioni e a autorità, e più a luoghi comuni, idee
condivise e al tanto maltrattato “buon senso”.

This paper discusses the similarities and differences between participatory, interactive, and playable art. It suggests that computer games can provide novel perspectives on interactivity in interactive art. The paper also proposes that the implications of computer games to interactive art extend beyond whatever purpose and value computer games are perceived as having as products of popular culture.

The purpose of this article is to discuss ludic art that does not follow the rules. That is, either the rule systems in them are deliberately broken, subverted or in other ways distinctively manipulated, or the viewer’s expectations–based on shared knowledge of how games work–are not met. These particular conditions are major components of the work that are discussed in the text. The aim is to discuss how these ’dysfunctional’ games nevertheless are constructive as works of art, and to further the understanding of how games as a cultural form operate within the field of contemporary art.

This paper outlines experiences and lessons learned in organizing a variety of digital art exhibits for small and large scale events. The perspective is provided as a cross-disciplinary set of heuristics, drawing on the decade long experience of the curator-artist and paying particular attention to playable electronic media (e.g. games and toys) as installation works in an art context. Lessons learned from exhibits organized or co-organized by the author in the United States, Europe and Asia are shared. These events were offered with support from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Leuphana University, the University of Utah, Abertay University and others. Additional observations are provided as an artist who has exhibited at more than 40 events in the last decade. Formally the paper offers an ontology for defining distinguishing between exhibits, festivals and showcases. It is not the intention of the author to create a compendium of exhibition and curation practice. Instead the a...

[Ponencia en IV Coloquio de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales sobre Culturas y Consumos Freaks (Frikiloquio) 2019]
El dinamismo de lo instantáneo que exigen las nuevas tecnologías parece dejar fuera de juego al objeto-libro, el cual requiere de una calma y un tiempo para su lectura que actualmente es un lujo. No obstante, en este escenario aparentemente apocalíptico para el objeto libro, la literatura y su capacidad de “contarnos” algo es transmitida a los nuevos soportes que ofrece el siglo XXI, en donde la relación entre la materialidad de la obra y su recepción es el vértice inicial para su abordaje. El exponencial desarrollo tecnológico de los videojuegos los está presentando como una nueva materialidad mediadora entre las narrativas/experiencias estéticas y el receptor, bajo un formato en donde el lector/espectador tiene un rol activo superior al que puede ofrecer un libro, una película o una obra performática pues los videojuegos contienen el potencial para llevar la experiencia de la narración hacia la búsqueda de nuevas formas de transmisión de una experiencia que estimule al espectador a ir más allá de la recepción pasiva. Además, las nuevas plataformas tecnológicas ya se permiten esa clase de interacciones tanto a nivel físico como virtual, las que no habían sido del todo exitosas en las distintas artes “tradicionales”. Para los alcances de esta ponencia, se considerará al videojuego Journey (2012), de Thatgame Company, dado su posicionamiento paradigmático como lo que muchos críticos del tema han catalogado como game art y, además, dado el hito que representa en la brevísima historia de los videojuegos en tanto apuesta por una narrativa inversiva para el jugador, cuya experiencia se construye desde un minimalismo -o carencia- de los recursos típicos de los videojuegos para dar paso a una amplitud interpretativa que bien podría comparársela con la de los grandes clásicos literarios.
Palabras clave: Literatura, Game Art, Artes, Videojuegos, Art Games, Journey, Arte y Videojuegos, objeto libro, experiencia narrativa, Thatgame Company

Como citar este artículo:
Montero Barrientos, Nicole (2019) "Los videojuegos como una nueva materialidad de lectura y formato artístico: El caso de Journey." En IV Coloquio de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales sobre Culturas y Consumos Freaks (Frikiloquio). Universidad de Buenos Aires

El surgimiento de una forma nueva como la del llamado walking simulator en 2012 y su posterior expansión suponen una nueva modulación productiva del videojuego bajo la rúbrica del art game. Utilizada primero de manera despectiva, la etiqueta de walking simulator pasó a designar un conjunto de juegos con una propuesta inédita que consiste en la centralización del acto de caminar y, al mismo tiempo, en la debilitación (o desaparición, incluso) de elementos de orden lúdico, como la presencia de una red de objetivos y de tareas por cumplir. De ese terreno híbrido y oscilante surgieron juegos cuya singular propuesta discursiva se analizará en este trabajo a partir de tres casos.

FILE GAMES RIO 2014
FILE GAMES RIO 2014

Editorial Concept: Paula Perissinotto and Ricardo Barreto
Design: Estúdio Quadradão: Andrea Ribeiro and Leandro Lopes
Year: 2014
Pages: 103

FILE GAMES RIO 2014: FILE Games: “FILE Games 2014? by Anita Cavaleiro (FILE Games Coordinator); 27 works with their own texts. Anima+: “FILE Anima+” by Raquel Olivia Fukuda (FILE Anima+ Coordinator); 65 works with their own texts; Partner Festivals: Japan Media Arts Festival, SICAF, Siggraph. Games and Theory: “A Narrative Theory of Games” by Espen Aarseth; “Playing and Gaming: Reflections and Classifications” by Bo Kampmann Walther; “Games and Life: The Emergence of the Ludic in Cyberculture” by Fabiano Alves Onça. FILE RIO 2014: Exhibition. Installations: 6 works with their own texts.

With this exhibition, we wanted to communicate a simple, yet powerful message: Italian art has made a decisive contribution to the recognition of videogames as one of the basic forms of contemporary culture and, more generally, to the reflection on videogame as a cultural artifact. The importance of this contribution can be measured by both the
timeliness of some results, which have anticipated – or have developed in sync – with
similar international achievements, and by its quality, indirectly proved by their participation in major international exhibitions on the subject. We felt it was was necessary to document these achievements in an event in which could reach a mass audience, and thus stimulate a broader conversation.

The purpose of this article is to discuss ludic art that does not follow the rules. That is, either the rule systems in them are deliberately broken, subverted or in other ways distinctively manipulated , or the viewer's expectations-based on shared knowledge of how games work-are not met. These particular conditions are major components of the work that are discussed in the text. The aim is to discuss how these 'dysfunctional' games nevertheless are constructive as works of art, and to further the understanding of how games as a cultural form operate within the field of contemporary art.

[Conference presentation at the PoCG2019 Conference: Philosophy of Computer Games – The Aesthetics of Computer Games. Comments and suggestions are appreciated – xvikar@gu.se]

This paper outlines experiences and lessons learned in organizing a variety of digital art exhibits for small and large scale events. The perspective is provided as a cross-disciplinary set of heuristics, drawing on the decade long experience of the curator-artist and paying particular attention to playable electronic media (e.g. games and toys) as installation works in an art context. Lessons learned from exhibits organized or co-organized by the author in the United States, Europe and Asia are shared. These events were offered with support from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Leuphana University, the University of Utah, Abertay University and others. Additional observations are provided as an artist who has exhibited at more than 40 events in the last decade. Formally the paper offers an ontology for defining distinguishing between exhibits, festivals and showcases. It is not the intention of the author to create a compendium of exhibition and curation practice. Instead the aim is to provide context and a starting point for the evolving intellectual examination of curatorial practices around digital games. It is hoped that these assertions support the growth of such work by providing a starting point for other practitioners.1

Computer games have come a long way in terms of being considered a creative practice, even an art form. Apart from dedicated festivals, also established electronic art institutions have embraced computer games. Previously separate practices of computer games and interactive art (Wilson 2008; Leino 2013) are slowly converging. However, I argue that this has been possible only because a fundamental conflict ‘built in’ to computer games as a “medium” (cf. Sharp 2015), between the artist and the player, has been conveniently overlooked. The game artist wants to
express themselves through their creations, while the player wants a new instrument to play (with). Apart from either side compromising on their interests, there is no reconciliation in sight; hence the “tragedy”.

Despite the common tendency to understand computer games as a medium somewhere between film and traditional software, this paper argues for a more appropriate position amongst literature. This writing explores the opportunities in analogizing digital games not as art, but as literature. Within this framing new opportunities reveal themselves for innovative game design and more manageable archiving of games and their relationships. It should prove useful to media theorists, designers, and game librarians seeking a new way to frame the analysis and production of digital games.

Despite the common tendency to understand computer games as a medium somewhere between film and traditional software, this paper argues for a more appropriate position amongst literature. This writing explores the opportunities in analogizing digital games not as art, but as literature. Within this framing new opportunities reveal themselves for innovative game design and more manageable archiving of games and their relationships. It should prove useful to media theorists, designers, and game librarians seeking a new way to frame the analysis and production of digital games.

This paper describes the theory and implementation of a 2-tiered procedural rhetoric game. The game, Black Like Me, employs critical design to encourage players toward situational analysis instead of mere attribute matching. Players are presented with a color matching game at the surface, but the game is designed to reward players for holistically evaluating a scene and subverting the explicitly suggested game rules. The game is designed to train players toward perceiving ambiguity and employing alternative play strategies. Author

Some of the main Fluxus archives, today housed at established cultural institutions such as the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles (USA) and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (Germany), were assembled under the stimulus and guidance of first-generation Fluxus artists (George Maciunas and Wolf Vostell in the cases mentioned). This tells us that these pioneers of network-based art practices were keenly aware from the very outset of the crucial role played by the document in — and within — their artistic praxis. Moreover, it indicates the importance they placed on the archive as a space where these documents were compiled and preserved in the expectation that they would eventually be activated as devices for a new approach to art history.

The purpose of this paper is to show that understanding the archival practice as a creative process aimed at redefining the past, transforming the present, and envisioning the future was inherent to the new artistic developments taking place under the Fluxus umbrella from the early 1960s onwards. The early forms of performative and network-based art practices posed a challenge, both to the historiography and the economy of art, that would naturally extend to the archive as an alternative cultural institution: a sort of foreign body pushing from outside the walls of the official art system that would eventually succeed in opening up a crack by infiltrating established cultural institutions. These, which we can call Other Archives (paraphrasing Ulises Carrión), required, and still do so, other stories and histories of art, other research methodologies, and historiographical constructs, as well as other curatorial and museological practices. Insofar as this step emanates directly from the very artistic practices they bear witness to, these Other Archives can be seen as channeling the transformative power of those artistic practices to the historiographical, curatorial and museographical practices.

A selection of case studies from the Fluxus network, ranging from Mail Art and collective projects to Artists’ Archives and publications, will illustrate how the transformative power of the early forms of performative and network-based art practices was largely based on a documental approach aimed at shifting the rules of the game of the art system.

In November2017, I went to New York to attend the two screenings retrospective the Anthology Film Archive dedicated to Nathalie Magnan. I spent ten days in New York meeting a lot of friends and professionals and artists and I also visited some exhibitions and art galleries and this article might give some perspective on the actual art and video games scene in New York;)

This dissertation investigates the production of parodic digital games performed by the developer CyberGamba, and it's yours possible relations with carnivalization and the anthropophagic movement. The production company - founded on São Paulo - created a series of digital games appropriating the universe of the television-show Chaves, intertwined with other works developed by the digital games industry. This present research is structured as follows: initially we will broach theoretically the digital games and their dynamics of creation and modification; in the next section we will dedicate ourselves to the concepts of carnivalization, approaching anthropophagy and contextualizing the production of CyberGamba. Finally, we will analyze the development of the developer and investigate the polyphony established between the examined works. The methodological strategy of a case study in digital games followed in with the works of Robert Yin and Espen Aarseth, collaborating the auctors with the plan addressed in this research and contributing to the non-linear analyses of the works surveyed. Finally, São Paulo's productions proved to be carnivalized research objects, structuring new dialogues, clarifying the powers and unveiling problems and tensions arising from the realized polyphony.

This dissertation investigates the production of parodic digital games performed by the developer CyberGamba, and it's yours possible relations with carnivalization and the anthropophagic movement. The production company - founded on São Paulo - created a series of digital games appropriating the universe of the television-show Chaves, intertwined with other works developed by the digital games industry. This present research is structured as follows: initially we will broach theoretically the digital games and their dynamics of creation and modification; in the next section we will dedicate ourselves to the concepts of carnivalization, approaching anthropophagy and contextualizing the production of CyberGamba. Finally, we will analyze the development of the developer and investigate the polyphony established between the examined works. The methodological strategy of a case study in digital games followed in with the works of Robert Yin and Espen Aarseth, collaborating the auctors with the plan addressed in this research and contributing to the non-linear analyses of the works surveyed. Finally, São Paulo's productions proved to be carnivalized research objects, structuring new dialogues, clarifying the powers and unveiling problems and tensions arising from the realized polyphony.