Video Games — New Media Art?
My comments to follow are in regard to a required class reading of the following:
Paul: Chap. 13, Themes in Digital Art–Gaming, pp. 196-203.
Wardrip Fruin: Reading #34: Sherry Turkle, “Video Games and Computer Holding Power,” pp. 499-514.
This particular set of readings was all about video games and their influence on the digital art revolution.
The Paul reading considered games such as Myst, Everquest, Doom, and even The Sims as examples of digital art in the gaming form. Such games were sources of inspiration to artists and served as precursors for the programs used as mediums in today’s digital art.
An artist named Natalie Bookchin addressed the gaming topic with her online project, Metapet (2002). The simulation created in her “game” follows a virtual genetically engineered office worker in an office environment of the future. Her piece humorously touches the issues of corporate productivity being improved by the use of biotechnology and robots of the future to replace the human worker.
The simulation has indefinitely been taken offline, but here is a link to her project’s site with screenshots and more information:
http://metapet.net/
Cory Archangel took a different approach to the incorporation of video games with digital art. He scavenged old cartridges of the Nintendo game, Super Mario Brothers, and reverse-engineered them to produce his landscape photography in the game’s 8-bit format. To do this, he would melt chips off of a cartridge and replace them with his own self-manufactured ones with data of his photography. The final products were landscape studies rendered in the game’s aesthetics.
Here is another work of art created by Cory Archangel and his modification of Nintendo game cartridges, titled “cloudscroll“:
Among others who also modified the mechanics of video games to create works of art, was Chinese artist, Feng Mengbo. Feng modified the software of Quake III Arena (a.ka. Q3A) to create his own piece aptly named Q4U (or Quake For You; 2002). He inserted a visual representation of himself equipped with a weapon and camcorder into the game and in a sense, made himself part of the game. Populating the game’s environment with hundreds of his “clones,” he created an interactive work of art that addressed concepts of online identity and immersive commercial environments.
Sherry Turkle compared television to video games as something you watch from afar, versus something you can participate in. She attributed certain psychological bonds that players can develop with the use of video games and those included the illusion of achievement, the allure of perfection, and having more control over certain–normally uncontrollable–aspects of your life.
One could say if a psychological attachment to a game can produce such values, would this not be a negative influence on the human psyche and morale? When you really look at it, it can be compared to the vices: sloth (creating an illusion of achievement over a real one, while you sit around doing nothing in the real world), greed & lust (amassing power and money, while you chase the virtual princess), and vanity (encouraging heightened expectations for physical appearance, while making your virtual “you” more attractive than you are in reality).
To further add to such ideas that there is a negativity to the addiction of games, it would seem that many commercial video games have a dependence on violence to entice a gamer to actually buy a game and play it. Feng Mengbo, among many others, mocked this commercial element in his piece, Q4U (Quake For You, 2002).
As for Turkle’s article, which was written in 1984 – she touched the topic of addicted gamers and their attempted escape to simulated worlds, which can still be attributed to the gamers of today. One could say it’s even worse with today’s highly detailed, even more immersive, interactive games which allow you to converse and compete with other gamers across the world.
At this very moment, if a person were to ask me whether I thought video games had a positive or negative influence on new media art, digital artists, the art community, and humanity in general, I would have to say that it’s had a positive influence on artists. Video games’ innovational elements, technologies, programs, softwares, etc. have inspired artists to create their own works and make their own statements. In a sense, gaming has essentially put a weapon in the artist’s hand so the art community can fight back against commercialism and other issues.
As for humanity in general, although many games are violent, addictive, and influenced by certain vices like vanity and greed; one should look further and consider the good things that games have inspired. Like video games, many books, movies, and television shows have featured violence, sex, and other negative elements and encouraged vices like sloth.
However, like those other forms of media, many video games also feature the epic hero fighting some form of evil, triumphing over that evil, and putting the needs of oneself aside for the greater good. Would this not be the encouragement of the virtuous way of life, rather than the pursuit of vices?
