Art Games! Part Deux.

"What constitutes an art game?" The time has come once again to tackle this rather hefty question, as well as equally interesting sub-questions of what different roles both game design and art direction play into art games as opposed to mainstream games. Due to the massive writer's block I am currently experiencing at the wrapping up of my final term, I will start off with some limericks as to what two very apt, and one very random person think art and art games are.

simulacrum [ˌsɪmjʊˈleɪkrəm] n pl -cra [-krə] Archaic  1. any image or representation of something  2. a slight, unreal, or vague semblance of something; superficial likeness  [from Latin: likeness, from simulāre to imitate, from similis like] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

In Manuel Pina's class we have been learning about and discussing the simulacra as it is both created and deconstructed by art. According to Manuel, in order for a piece of media to considered art, it must somehow work to deconstruct the medium it is created in. In any given medium, the images created for mainstream consumption seek to simulate reality to such a believable point where it can be twisted ever so slightly. Art (at least in the conceptual sense) is any image created in a given medium, not with the intent to mimic reality, but to question, explore, and display that's medium's ability to mimic reality. There's no reason to differentiate the merit of a given image as art or not dependent upon its medium, but rather wether or not the image itself questions and deconstructs the medium in which it was created.

Soooooo random. Youtubed 'Simulacra' and found this. An artful machinima accompanied by words of Jean Baudrillard.

George Johnson, recently named one of the top 10 innovators in the Canadian film industry by the Georgia Straight, and professor of narrative design at my school, has similar definition of what he considers an art game to be. Like a good art-house film, he says (i'm paraphrasing here): "an art game is any game that examines the nature of what it is to be a game." To take the film example, Adaptation at every point in the action, seeks to either subtly or overtly remind the viewer that they are watching a film. In a like way, art games should remind the viewer that they are in a game. This can be seen as the opposite of the widely accepted main stream of both films and video games, which tend to opt for the maximum level of immersion (having you forget you are watching a film or playing a game).


Hilarious excerpt from Adaptation.

On the flipside of this view, I had the recent experience of attending part of a new indie developer's meetup event here in Vancouver, called "Full Indie". The event features independent game developers, ranging from single programmers/designers to small groups, presenting the games they have been developing, getting feedback, and looking for assistance. At one point early into the presentations, the laptop-projector setup exp'd some technical difficulties, and projected a massive blue screen for a few min. To fill the air, the host was quick to quip, "you know... it's one of those new art games" prompting a hearty laugh from the audience. Though likely the laugh was as much knowing as it was mokcing, this joke nevertheless reflect the somewhat dubious view people in the video game still tend to view art games with. We can see once again, like art films, art games tend to play to a smaller niche audience to be viewed as successful.

An angry man yelling about film critic Roger Ebert's, by now, well known statement that video games can't be art.

Both points (though vastly different in terms of critical origin) are equally valid in positioning art games in the broader game discourse. Art games are self-concious in terms of their construction in a particular form of consumable media, and are also admittedly created for a specialized niche audience, a.k.a., the art-house. Due to their niche-bound nature, art games tend to be created by smaller teams with smaller budgets, and therefore must be designed extra creatively within these constraints in order to even be noticed and publicized. Teams of one-two can make a noticeable game if they innovate and work hard enough. This means for the programmers/designers to do something completely different in terms of game design to get real gamers enthused whilst also making up for the lack of programmers necessary to create a completely immersive world (full of a.i.'s, rules, physics, etc). On the art side, there may simply not be enough to make convincing real life details for a 3D world, and therefore artists must create something unique yet awesome looking, if not just to capture roving eyes on the internet.

Excerpt from IndieGame: The Movie featuring an interview with Edmund McMillen, co-designer and artist on Super Meat Boy.

But for this game to be critically successful, and consequentially garner attention on Kotaku and other blogs, it must have a tight design. This means cool game mechanics supported by cool visuals. Both must be totally unique in their respective fields, but must together, must commingle to create a fully satisfying concoction in the unified field of game design. Certainly this is true not just of art games, but of any popular and well-received independent game at all, such as Super Meat Boy (gameplay video). Because any art game which expects to be seen or heard of by the public at large needs a forum upon which the public may learn about it. Unlike galleries for paintings and installations, or even theatres for films, art games have only countless independently owned consoles and computers to be displayed upon. Both a challenge and opportunity.







A few games that have made a true an impact upon me really typify this interaction between a unique visual style and gameplay. The first would have to be Echochrome. With it's crisp minimalist aesthetic, it's drawing mannequin protagonist, and M.C. Escher inspired game mechanics, as well as the fact that it is produced by a significant studio, it may be construed as a game that is trying too hard to be considered art. This however does not matter to me, because the pastiche of art styles (including a brilliant neoclassical soundtrack) and incredibly innovative game mechanic work so well together, I cannot help being attracted and enthralled into this paintng-like game world. However, once I am transported there ala the transitive effects of simulacra, the game mechanic itself leads me to thoughtfully postulate on not only the game world in which I am, but also my own life. The mechanic involves the manipulation of perspective. The rules of the game world change according to how the camera views it. If the camera can't see an obstacle, it doesn't exist, and thus the user must navigate their mannequin through the puzzle-maze.

When I am in this world, manipulating my possibilities through a mere change in perspective, I am forced to wonder... to what degree can I do this in my own life? It's not a new conceit to compare life to a game, but when we 'gamify' such fundamental life concepts as perspective, we can begin to see the gamelike nature of these things even more clearly. Going in this direction, one can begin to see the true potential for video games as art. If video games seek to mimic real-life like no medium before, what potential does this medium have to tell us about that aspect of our life?

[Flow: more on this coming soon]

[The Passage: more on this coming soon]

[Braid: more on this to come]

Remix Culture

Here's a link to anything and everything related to the remix culture.

www.remixtheory.net

Imagination Becomes Reality

The External World by David O'Reilly
 
This 20 min short film, a beautiful and crazy animation, really typifies what I was trying to express last class about the simulacra and how with media, and the internet in particular, imagination becomes reality. 'The External World,' expresses it a much more artistic and poetic manner. Below is the trailer.

FULL LENGTH FILM HERE: TheExternalWorld.com

  

The External World TRAILER from David OReilly on Vimeo.
  

David O'Reilly is an incredible animator and non-traditional storyteller who has made a few other beautiful short films, all of which can be found on Vimeo. Another great one is Please Say Something.
    

Art Games

Have video games attained the status of art yet? Does it really matter when we consider their power for innovation?

Last class we discussed whether or not video games had reached the level of 'fine art', and whether or not they would go further towards this potentiality in the future. An interesting point that came up was that the video game medium itself may not have matured enough yet to be able to be self-reflexive. During their inception and initial maturation, mediums such as film and photo may have not produced truly self-concious art pieces until the medium itself reached a certain technological plateau. Once a medium has plateaued, art within it starts to conceptually deconstruct the medium itself, showing us how the medium itself has already affected and changed our perception. When painting had truly reached its limit, a truly brilliant painter named Marcel Duchamp produced a ready-made urinal (The Fountain) and labelled it as art to show the meaninglessness he saw for himself and other artists to try to innovate in the area of paintings at this point in history.

Rather than acting as a detached deconstructionist of the medium, art produced during the initial evolution of said medium functions as a creator of inovation. Because art produced at this time is less about conceptualism and more about just trying new things, it a less intellectual but more dynamic, original and probably exciting place to be. This is the phase in a medium's development when pure innovation is still happening. The medium itself is trying to attain its maximum potential for realistically representing the so-called "real world", and during this time people will keep finding new and immaginative ways to do this visually, interactively, and emotionally.

To add this discourse, I've decided to post a few of my favourite flash-based art games. Because the medium of flash games, for the moment, has somewhat plateaued, it gives artists certain design constraints to work creatively within. These artworks are innovative in the way they work within these constraints, as well as highly conceptual because of the current constraints of the technology. Submitted for your approval, some conceptual art flash games:


But That Was [Yesterday]...


This is probably the most emotionally affecting game I've ever played... and it was made in the flash! In addition to featuring a purely image and sound conveyed narrative, the gameplay mechanics are also extremely conceptual with regard to the game's central theme and message. The emotion conveyed by the interplay of narrative, incredibly music, and art makes this one of the most beautiful things I've ever experience through a computer screen. A sublime soundtrack completes the package and can downloaded at the designer's website. Made by a game designer known only as Bean.


Everyday the Same Dream


An interesting exploration of modern, work-a-day melancholia. If you play it, you will probably get the concept pretty fast. However there are further layers of mystery added by small details in the game. The multiple, divergent ways one can finish a 'day' are also interesting. Apparently there is a way to actually finish the game, but I haven't found it yet. Made by the prominent, popular, and political flash game group, Molleindustria.


Love

Whereas the last two games rely heavily on image, music, and somewhat traditional narrative elements to create a sense of the central theme and game story, this game uses purely mechanics. The game designer has obviously thought to death about a mechanic that would systematically represent the vaugaries, triumphs, and pitfalls of this most central and confounding aspect of the human condition. And he or she seems to have found something close. By Contrebasse.

Simulation and Simulacra

The simulacrum is never what hides the truth - it is truth that hides the fact that there is 
none. The simulacrum is true. 
-Ecclesiaste


The entire Treatise of Baudrillard's Simulation and Simulacra can be found here, very interesting stuff.

A few classes ago we discussed Baudrillard's well-studied article, 'The Precession of Simulacra' about the nature of reality, the image, and the imitation of reality. As we talked, Manuel charted out the relationship between the three core ideas of the 'representation', 'simulation', and 'reality'.

(note: I'm missing the bottom part if anyone knows it)

Such would be the successive phases of the image: 


it is the reflection of a profound reality; 
it masks and denatures a profound reality; 
it masks the absence of a profound reality; 
it has no relation to any reality whatsoever; 
it is its own pure simulacrum

The above quote essentially describes how and image becomes a Simulacra. Throughout the class we tried to delve further into this concept with the help of the above diagram. I'll try to explain my understanding of the diagram as follows:

In one cycle of the image, 'representation' was created during the medieval times in an attempt to depict, and thereby honour, the sublime beauty of 'the idea' (the idea being the inconceivable beauty of 'god'). However it was the concern of the iconoclasts that this representation would so seed itself in the minds of the masses that they would eventually come to revere the images themselves, rather than inconcevable 'idea' they were based upon, without even realizing they were doing so. This was in defence of what they believed to be 'reality'. 

In a way, the iconoclasts were predicting the inevitable evolution of the 'representation' into the 'simulation': the point at which an image begins to replace reality in the mind of the consumer. The distinction between what used to be considered reality from what is now considered simulation becomes successively blurrier. At this point one begins to question whether an objective reality truly exists or not!

When you take subjectivity into account, it seems to me that reality exists somewhere within the intermediary space between 'the Simulation' and 'Reality'. Though life as we live it now is mediated beyond recall, we still exist tangibly within this largely simulated reality, so this is still reality to us. The fakeness of this part of our reality is still loosely related to the 'beauty' of the original idea, and as such can come to represent a purpose for the individual. However the simulation is also created, through time, by the reigning social order. The social order itself acts a mass simulation, or simulacra self-perpetuating and evolving through the new minds it envelopes.

At this point the question of power becomes apparent. Those with power within the simulation matrix reinforce the simulation as icons, but those with true power likely exist beyond the bounds of the simulacra itself. To segue, Kanye West is one icon within this matrix who seems self-reflexively aware of his iconic status and role. His latest efforts have affected a sort of artist merit by expressing this self-reflexivity.

The video itself is very symbolically simulacranal in content, bringing forth ideas of the holy, the icon, and western art historical tradition. It's very similar to another art piece brought to my attention by people who have visited New York (edit: it's because they're both by the same artist, Marco Brambilla). Within the elevator of the Standard building in New York, as one ascends, one finds oneself travelling through the successive layers of hell, purgatory, and heaven. Only the iconography used is strangely familiar, and quite obviously fake, though still strangely enticing. Kind of like the simulacra itself.

Marco Brambilla's Civilization
 

What is 'the Image'?

Delving the Space Between Image and Reality

This blog has been created as a forum for students of the Advanced Special Studies course taught by Manuel Pina. The point of the Simulacranaut is to posit, discuss, and evolve our ideas with regard to "what the image is." We are exploring the nature of the image, why the image was created in the first place, how it has iteratively evolved over the centuries, and what it has come to mean to us today. In our current epoch, the nature of the image has evolved to more extreme . Of course what is reality itself but an image in our mind? It is our job as artists to ask these questions, and see what meaning we gain in ourselves as we navigate the space between our question and the answer, between the image and reality.

As we explore this intermediary space, we will raise deeper and more disquieting questions, and come to our own personal conclusions about the nature of both the image and reality. These inquiries and revelations can be shared here so that fellow artists may benefit from, and elucidate further upon, any interesting threads of thought. As well our own minds, we must also take into account the global mind, which today is conveniently situated right in front of our faces, at our fingertips. Therefore it is also cool to post various points of interest we may find in our various adventures upon the internets. 
Simply put, use this blog to post any thoughts, articles, websites, or videos that stimulates you in relation to art, the image, and the class. If it's a link or a video, try to include a short written description of your thoughts on the subject. Don't worry about being incendiary, controversial, or downright crazy. The moreso the better. Discuss, debate and comment. And remember...