An exploration of the relationship between games and art that examines
the ways that both gamemakers and artists create game-based artworks.
Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth
century, as can be seen in the Surrealists' use of Exquisite Corpse and
other games, Duchamp's obsession with Chess, and Fluxus event scores and
boxes--to name just a few examples. Over the past fifteen years, the
synthesis of art and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers.
Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not
considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and
experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players
focus on the innate properties of games and the experiences they
provide, giving little attention to what it means to create and evaluate
fine art. In Works of Game, John Sharp bridges this gap, offering a
formal aesthetics of games that encompasses the commonalities and the
differences between games and art.
Sharp describes three communities of practice and offers case studies
for each. "Game Art," which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory
Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames
as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter,
tools, and processes. "Artgames," created by gamemakers including Jason
Rohrer, Brenda Romero, and Jonathan Blow, explore territory usually
occupied by poetry, painting, literature, or film. Finally, "Artists'
Games"--with artists including Blast Theory, Mary Flanagan, and the
collaboration of Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman--represents a more
synthetic conception of games as an artistic medium. The work of these
gamemakers, Sharp suggests, shows that it is possible to create
game-based artworks that satisfy the aesthetic and critical values of
both the contemporary art and game communities.
