So sayeth the guy who talks about movies a lot: never can video games aspire to have, amidst their mighty pantheon of wondrous achievements, a single, solitary instance of a “Work of Art”.
I disagree, and I think it comes down to definitions here. Apparently, I have a broader definition of art than Ebert…or perhaps we approach it in two very different directions, leading to radically different final definitions that end up with some overlap. In reading through his argument, I’m really unable to discern precisely what his definition of art IS.
Of course, the basis of his discourse is a rebuttal of a rather poorly made argument, by a woman who undermined her point at the very beginning of her talk by agreeing with Ebert that “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.” This isn’t a very persuasive rhetorical maneuver, nor is it true. I emphatically can name games worthy of such comparison, and know people who would name other such games.
She then continues down the strictly shoddy rhetorical path of continually throwing up obstacles to her argument. Games which have been with us for centuries or millenia are not art. This actually isn’t too controversial, which is why I think she so easily agrees: how is baseball art? Football? Mahjong? We don’t really call these art normally, and since we’ve never granted them the positive assertion, then the negation must apply. If something isn’t art, it’s “Not Art”.
I think this is partly a problem of our linguistic structure, where we have the exact same syntax for denying a property to something and saying we don’t know if it has that property. If we never say something is art…that could mean, you know, that we’ve just never gone about thinking about it. But Kellee Santiago simply goes on with the uncontested assertion that none of these games are art, appealing directly to common usage. Never does she ask why they aren’t art.
Instead, she hops over to wikipedia to try and define art, arriving at this:
Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions.
Of course, the article has a giant label over it, pointing out potential issues with it. This definition, for instance, has no corroborating citations. Wikipedia is built strictly on summarizing multiple sources in an effort to distill common, accessible knowledge, of which definitions are a part. But let’s work with this, since it’s going to, at least initially, be Santiago’s starting place. It’s worthwhile to point out that further down, wikipedia delves into the substantial argument raging with the philosophy of aesthetics (a particular philosophical endeavor I’ve always found cringeworthy, anyway), quickly diluting the clarity of its original definition. Further, as Ebert notes, chess may fit that definition…as might football, baseball, mahjong, and other non-video-games.
Part of the issue here is that beauty, passion, the “Dionysian”, as Nietzsche called it, is somehow missing. Take Kellee’s final definition: “Art is a way of communicating ideas to an audience in a way the audience finds engaging”. What, precisely, is the idea communicated by music? It doesn’t seem to be anything specific. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, something I tend to consider a staggering work of art, seems to offer no specific concepts or conceptual arrangements. Pachelbel’s Canon in D is another wonderful artistic accomplishment, and the idea there seems to be…the generally accurate application of the rules of the canon, rules which are quite precise. Indeed, the act of creating a canon, as Bach was famed for, was very much like…a game. Simply look at the puzzle canon.
In fact, it feels like she just pushed the argument off. Anything can be said to communicate an idea, as, strictly speaking, the moment a human comes in contact with something external, an idea is formed to attempt to mentally model this something. Really, the thing differentiating art seems to be “engagement”, which remains poorly defined.
See, there’s little point in continuing. We can’t use the examples she gives as a means of inductively arriving at a general definition of art, because she’s trying to convince they are instances of art. We’d need to know they were first, and then try and move from there. So really, she’s trying to claim her definition is good, and show how games are getting close to whatever her definition is.
It’s no good; her argument is, as Ebert properly notes, not terribly cohesive and difficult to see from the examples given. She already conceded the ground that these examples aren’t art…they’re apparently the chicken scratches of early cave painters. I agree with Ebert in his response to this:
They were great artists at that time, geniuses with nothing to build on, and were not in the process of becoming Michelangelo or anyone else.
Art, I think, has to be considered an end in itself. A work of art is self-contained.
But then, what is art? Ebert doesn’t seem to have a solid definition either, nor does he respond to the “engagement” definition. He does point to a single difference, as he sees it, between games and art.
One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome.
This is interesting, I think, because it seems to miss the point. It is not that games have “rules, points, objectives, and an outcome”. That’s like saying a human body has hands feet, torso, chest and legs. A game IS those things. He’s correct, if you don’t have rules and goals, you don’t have a game. You can win at a single instance of a game; you cannot “win” a game. The game sits seperately from our playthroughs, giving weight to them, providing the bones to hold up the meat of our interaction.
A game, in its essence, consists entirely of a conglomeration of concepts, of abstract rules governing a “world”, a set of particles upon which those rules operate. If ever there were a medium which sought to express ideas, games, in all forms, is it. Games are representations of structures of motion, whimsical, semi-real, relevant, or absolutely divorced from any connection to the rules of our own world. All of the narratives constructs, the stories, the setting, the graphics, the music, the controls, the design, all of these are woven together into the higher form of a game. They are subordinate to the whole, which is experienced as discovery.
Consider a Monet. Impressionism is not, at least to me, terribly interesting initially. However, upon finally seeing a monet, in person, from a distance, I discovered what was being shown: not simply the static image of a pond, or a snowed-upon roof, but the distillation of the motion. Seen from afar, they managed to convey a more dynamic, visceral representation of the subject matter than a more statically detailed rendition. That’s not to say Impressionism therefore was better art…it simply has its own virtues.
I am left to think that it is something of this sort which makes something potentially art: it’s ability to evoke passion in us. Art is something towards which we cannot be indifferent, or at least which was cared for in its making. Passion is the true tool of the artist, and all the myriad forms of “art” are simply new ways to express the passion of the artist. Perhaps I am simply troubled by the lack of concern for the artist, for we focus on the audience. Does an artist even think of the audience? Is an audience necessary to art? Or is art the result of the vain attempt to give form to what is strictly a concept, to birth into reality something hinted at in a mind? If it is this latter, isn’t the impact on the audience simply a secondary concern?
Really, part of my disagreement here is that I find logical proofs to be artistic. Indeed, they cannot fail to meet any definition provided by either Ebert or Santiago, yet I bet neither of them would wish to call logical proofs…art. There is, however, no other word I can find to apply to the deft mental construction, the elegance and awe-inspiring brilliance of things like Cantor’s Diagonalization Argument or Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems. If math and logic can produce works of art, I find myself open to discovering works of art anywhere.
Thus, I disagree with Roger Ebert and Kellee Santiago that games have yet to produce a masterpiece of the form. I am quite willing to assert the Silent Hill 2 ranks as an absolute masterpiece of a game, on par with any of the masterpieces of psychological thriller I have seen and certainly equal to any of the great novels I have read. I put down super mario brothers as an example of distilled fun, and put forward that watching what truly great players can do with the game says that the game itself is a work of art. I would happily contend that Modern Warfare 1 (but not 2) was an absolute masterpiece of first person shooting and single-player gaming. I think Final Fantasy VI and VII are both worthy of being called works of art, along with Chrono Trigger. These games were not merely pivotal points in games history.
I shouldn’t fail to include Braid, though I sadly haven’t played it. I would happily call Audiosurf a successful piece of experimental art. Geometry Wars Evolved also qualifies as a work of art. For me, Extreme G 2 delivered to me an experience which was evocative and brilliant (I couldn’t quite call Extreme G 3 better, and I didn’t play Wipeout XL, so I can’t comment on it). Many Bioware games could arguably fit within this pantheon of masterpieces of art, along with many of Blizzard’s works.
Tetris is a masterpiece.
These are things I would put in a gallery, if a gallery could be a place where one person could sit, ensconced in the setting envisioned for these games for the time it takes to squeeze their wonder from them, and call them worthy of display. I do not think games are lacking for works of art. I think the world of video games overflows with some of the most profound and earnest creative effort humanity has ever born witness to, whether crass entertainment or high-minded morals. Heck, the world SURROUNDING games gives birth to a massive creative effort, from the fansites to the webcomics to the theorycrafting to the remixed music.
In fact, I defy Santiago or Ebert to describe a single artistic subculture which has ever promoted such a diversity of creative effort.
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World of Discourse 
Roger Ebert Maintains: Video Games Cannot Be Art
Posted in Commentary, Ethics, Games, Philosophy, tagged Aethetics, Art, Philosophy, Roger Ebert, Video Games on April 20, 2010| 3 Comments »
So sayeth the guy who talks about movies a lot: never can video games aspire to have, amidst their mighty pantheon of wondrous achievements, a single, solitary instance of a “Work of Art”.
I disagree, and I think it comes down to definitions here. Apparently, I have a broader definition of art than Ebert…or perhaps we approach it in two very different directions, leading to radically different final definitions that end up with some overlap. In reading through his argument, I’m really unable to discern precisely what his definition of art IS.
Of course, the basis of his discourse is a rebuttal of a rather poorly made argument, by a woman who undermined her point at the very beginning of her talk by agreeing with Ebert that “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.” This isn’t a very persuasive rhetorical maneuver, nor is it true. I emphatically can name games worthy of such comparison, and know people who would name other such games.
She then continues down the strictly shoddy rhetorical path of continually throwing up obstacles to her argument. Games which have been with us for centuries or millenia are not art. This actually isn’t too controversial, which is why I think she so easily agrees: how is baseball art? Football? Mahjong? We don’t really call these art normally, and since we’ve never granted them the positive assertion, then the negation must apply. If something isn’t art, it’s “Not Art”.
I think this is partly a problem of our linguistic structure, where we have the exact same syntax for denying a property to something and saying we don’t know if it has that property. If we never say something is art…that could mean, you know, that we’ve just never gone about thinking about it. But Kellee Santiago simply goes on with the uncontested assertion that none of these games are art, appealing directly to common usage. Never does she ask why they aren’t art.
Instead, she hops over to wikipedia to try and define art, arriving at this:
Of course, the article has a giant label over it, pointing out potential issues with it. This definition, for instance, has no corroborating citations. Wikipedia is built strictly on summarizing multiple sources in an effort to distill common, accessible knowledge, of which definitions are a part. But let’s work with this, since it’s going to, at least initially, be Santiago’s starting place. It’s worthwhile to point out that further down, wikipedia delves into the substantial argument raging with the philosophy of aesthetics (a particular philosophical endeavor I’ve always found cringeworthy, anyway), quickly diluting the clarity of its original definition. Further, as Ebert notes, chess may fit that definition…as might football, baseball, mahjong, and other non-video-games.
Part of the issue here is that beauty, passion, the “Dionysian”, as Nietzsche called it, is somehow missing. Take Kellee’s final definition: “Art is a way of communicating ideas to an audience in a way the audience finds engaging”. What, precisely, is the idea communicated by music? It doesn’t seem to be anything specific. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, something I tend to consider a staggering work of art, seems to offer no specific concepts or conceptual arrangements. Pachelbel’s Canon in D is another wonderful artistic accomplishment, and the idea there seems to be…the generally accurate application of the rules of the canon, rules which are quite precise. Indeed, the act of creating a canon, as Bach was famed for, was very much like…a game. Simply look at the puzzle canon.
In fact, it feels like she just pushed the argument off. Anything can be said to communicate an idea, as, strictly speaking, the moment a human comes in contact with something external, an idea is formed to attempt to mentally model this something. Really, the thing differentiating art seems to be “engagement”, which remains poorly defined.
See, there’s little point in continuing. We can’t use the examples she gives as a means of inductively arriving at a general definition of art, because she’s trying to convince they are instances of art. We’d need to know they were first, and then try and move from there. So really, she’s trying to claim her definition is good, and show how games are getting close to whatever her definition is.
It’s no good; her argument is, as Ebert properly notes, not terribly cohesive and difficult to see from the examples given. She already conceded the ground that these examples aren’t art…they’re apparently the chicken scratches of early cave painters. I agree with Ebert in his response to this:
Art, I think, has to be considered an end in itself. A work of art is self-contained.
But then, what is art? Ebert doesn’t seem to have a solid definition either, nor does he respond to the “engagement” definition. He does point to a single difference, as he sees it, between games and art.
This is interesting, I think, because it seems to miss the point. It is not that games have “rules, points, objectives, and an outcome”. That’s like saying a human body has hands feet, torso, chest and legs. A game IS those things. He’s correct, if you don’t have rules and goals, you don’t have a game. You can win at a single instance of a game; you cannot “win” a game. The game sits seperately from our playthroughs, giving weight to them, providing the bones to hold up the meat of our interaction.
A game, in its essence, consists entirely of a conglomeration of concepts, of abstract rules governing a “world”, a set of particles upon which those rules operate. If ever there were a medium which sought to express ideas, games, in all forms, is it. Games are representations of structures of motion, whimsical, semi-real, relevant, or absolutely divorced from any connection to the rules of our own world. All of the narratives constructs, the stories, the setting, the graphics, the music, the controls, the design, all of these are woven together into the higher form of a game. They are subordinate to the whole, which is experienced as discovery.
Consider a Monet. Impressionism is not, at least to me, terribly interesting initially. However, upon finally seeing a monet, in person, from a distance, I discovered what was being shown: not simply the static image of a pond, or a snowed-upon roof, but the distillation of the motion. Seen from afar, they managed to convey a more dynamic, visceral representation of the subject matter than a more statically detailed rendition. That’s not to say Impressionism therefore was better art…it simply has its own virtues.
I am left to think that it is something of this sort which makes something potentially art: it’s ability to evoke passion in us. Art is something towards which we cannot be indifferent, or at least which was cared for in its making. Passion is the true tool of the artist, and all the myriad forms of “art” are simply new ways to express the passion of the artist. Perhaps I am simply troubled by the lack of concern for the artist, for we focus on the audience. Does an artist even think of the audience? Is an audience necessary to art? Or is art the result of the vain attempt to give form to what is strictly a concept, to birth into reality something hinted at in a mind? If it is this latter, isn’t the impact on the audience simply a secondary concern?
Really, part of my disagreement here is that I find logical proofs to be artistic. Indeed, they cannot fail to meet any definition provided by either Ebert or Santiago, yet I bet neither of them would wish to call logical proofs…art. There is, however, no other word I can find to apply to the deft mental construction, the elegance and awe-inspiring brilliance of things like Cantor’s Diagonalization Argument or Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems. If math and logic can produce works of art, I find myself open to discovering works of art anywhere.
Thus, I disagree with Roger Ebert and Kellee Santiago that games have yet to produce a masterpiece of the form. I am quite willing to assert the Silent Hill 2 ranks as an absolute masterpiece of a game, on par with any of the masterpieces of psychological thriller I have seen and certainly equal to any of the great novels I have read. I put down super mario brothers as an example of distilled fun, and put forward that watching what truly great players can do with the game says that the game itself is a work of art. I would happily contend that Modern Warfare 1 (but not 2) was an absolute masterpiece of first person shooting and single-player gaming. I think Final Fantasy VI and VII are both worthy of being called works of art, along with Chrono Trigger. These games were not merely pivotal points in games history.
I shouldn’t fail to include Braid, though I sadly haven’t played it. I would happily call Audiosurf a successful piece of experimental art. Geometry Wars Evolved also qualifies as a work of art. For me, Extreme G 2 delivered to me an experience which was evocative and brilliant (I couldn’t quite call Extreme G 3 better, and I didn’t play Wipeout XL, so I can’t comment on it). Many Bioware games could arguably fit within this pantheon of masterpieces of art, along with many of Blizzard’s works.
Tetris is a masterpiece.
These are things I would put in a gallery, if a gallery could be a place where one person could sit, ensconced in the setting envisioned for these games for the time it takes to squeeze their wonder from them, and call them worthy of display. I do not think games are lacking for works of art. I think the world of video games overflows with some of the most profound and earnest creative effort humanity has ever born witness to, whether crass entertainment or high-minded morals. Heck, the world SURROUNDING games gives birth to a massive creative effort, from the fansites to the webcomics to the theorycrafting to the remixed music.
In fact, I defy Santiago or Ebert to describe a single artistic subculture which has ever promoted such a diversity of creative effort.
Read Full Post »