'Games As Art' VS 'Games After Art': NYU's Frank Lantz Speaks
Posted by Joshua_Kopstein on Friday, Oct 01, 2010
Sure, we could continue having the “are games art?” debate from now until doomsday. But NYU’s Frank Lantz has a different take on the role of games — video or otherwise — in our culture as human beings. Rather than drawing parallels in order to artificially place games within familiar contexts we can understand, Frank probes the depths of the human psyche to reveal the unique role that games play in our existence; a role that goes far beyond the ideas of ‘art’ and ‘entertainment.’
“Aesthetic activities are things you do when your work is done. Playing games — like telling stories, making pictures and singing songs — is something we do when the harvest is in; when the hunt is over and the wolves have been chased away and the dishes are washed. But the status of games relative to work is much less clear, much more complicated and ambiguous.
Stories are about remembering and explaining. Pictures are about looking and interpreting. Games are about doing; Games are about solving problems and accomplishing goals."
To Lantz, our attempts to fit games into familiar categories like ‘art’ are shortsighted and unnatural, like a child futilely trying to connect two similar-looking puzzle pieces together. “But what if instead of twisting and squeezing games we could break open this category,” he asks, commenting on the discomfort we feel when talking about games, searching for the niche they fit into within the realm of aesthetics. “Instead we should make the effort to see them for what are, with all their incomprehensible and uncomfortable wildness. Let them break that category of human activity and make it ‘strange’ again.”
Regarding the “games as art” debate, it’s interesting to see why videogames in particular have been singled out as the main proponent. As Frank points out, the single-player videogame is commonly the poster boy for this argument because it possesses all of the qualities that we normally look for when discussing works of art. And that’s valid, because many single-player videogames can produce the same effects as a painting or an opera or what have you.
But think about it: All this gives us is a way to talk about videogames within the context of other aesthetic forms. It’s the equivalent of saying, “I am considering this apple by discussing it’s structural integrity, because conceivably, you could build something with apples.” — That statement’s only purpose is to artificially create a place for apples within the language of construction and engineering. Thinking about games in this way is just another way to relieve the “pain” of confronting their ambiguous nature.
And what about non-video games, like Chess, Backgammon and Go? Where do these games fit in? Why are these games pushed aside in lieu of their videogame counterparts in these conversations? Are games like Golf excluded from this conversation merely because I can point to my SNES copy of Super Metroid on my shelf, but not to Golf?
These are some of the questions Frank explores in his talk on “Games After Art,” many of which he will be addressing tomorrow during the latest DIY exhibition at NYC indie arcade Babycastles. Frank will speak alongside NYU Poly’s Katherine Isbister and the realspace/virtualspace game designers of the Copenhagen Game Collective in an attempt to shed light on the mysteries behind our relationships with aesthetic form.
Filed under:
About the author
Electronic musician and computer culture journalist. Contact: josh ◢at◣ motherboard ◐dot◑ tv
