Haven’t played much of these, but a friend tweeted about this not too long ago, and I just got around to looking at the list. I’d be interested to hear what others think, and if they have played any of these (or would think to add to this list in some way shape/form).
http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.org/blog/2009/50-serious-games-for-social-change/
<3z
Jason Salavon is a GREAT reviewer for IAM students!!
Show Off: Jason Salavon
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM October 8, 2009
New Media artist – to review new media and interactive art (including
gamers)
Jason Salavon is October’s featured artist for Chicago Artist Month and his work is part of the re:Figure show at Glass Curtain Gallery
(other artists from show who are conducting show offs are: Edna Dapo and Stacia Yeapanis
–
bio:
Working around art, information technology, and daily life.
Using software processes of his own design, Jason Salavon generates and reconfigures masses of communal material to present new perspectives on the familiar. Though formally varied, his projects frequently manipulate the roles of individual elements arranged in diverse visual populations. This often unearths unexpected pattern as the relationship between the part and the whole, the individual and the group, is explored. Reflecting a natural attraction to popular culture and the day-to-day, his work regularly incorporates the use of common references and source material. The final compositions are exhibited as art objects, such as photographic prints and
video installations, while others exist in a real-time software context.
Born in Indiana, raised in Texas, and based in Chicago, Salavon earned his MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his BA from The University of Texas at Austin. His work has been shown in museums and galleries around the world. Reviews of his exhibitions have been included in such publications as Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Examples of his artwork are included in a number of prominent public and private collections. He has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was employed for numerous years as an artist and programmer in the video game industry. He is currently assistant professor in the Department of Visual Arts and the Computation Institute at the University of Chicago.
The Department of Exhibition and Performance Spaces (DEPS) is seeking student proposals for an exhibition project.
EXHIBITION INFO
“Dis/Believer: Intersections of Science and Religion in Contemporary Art,” Glass Curtain Gallery, November 16 – February 13, 2010. This exhibition presents the work of national and international artists who address the reconciliation and/or conflict between science and religion in visual arts. The wide-ranging media includes painting/drawing, photography, site-specific installation, sculpture, video and multimedia work.
PROJECT
Interactive tool that can capture guest responses and create a virtual, online source for dialogue to exist beyond the exhibition. Exhibitions traditionally have comment books or even online guest books to record viewer responses, but we seek a tool that goes beyond convention and lives in the world of “new media,” and which encourages the audience to engage with the subject matter and with other viewers’ comments or questions.
PROPOSAL CRITERIA
1. Names and contact info for individual(s) on project
2. 250 word description of project
3. A detailed, visual mock-up
4. List of equipment and materials needed
5. At least one example of past work, which can be presented through a
link to portfolio site / external website, or digital documentation can be attached with email or enclosed cd or dvd.
DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS
October 2, 2009. Email proposals to deps@colum.edu, with subject line: “Dis/Believer IAM Proposal” or drop off at the Glass Curtain Gallery office suite, 1104 S. Wabash, 1st floor.
FINAL PROJECT
One project will be chosen for production. Project will need to be completed by November 6 for installation in exhibition. Student(s) will be expected to be available for any technical needs for the upkeep of the project for the duration of the exhibition. Student(s) will be credited in the exhibition and in the exhibition catalogue.
YOU EARN
Creative experience, professional project for portfolio, 7 weeks of exposure in professional gallery setting, $250 stipend for completion of project.
For the second year, Americans for the Arts is cosponsoring the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) Foundation College Scholarship Award: Americans for the Arts Recipient to encourage the integration of the arts into economic education.
Two $5,000 scholarships will be awarded to college level students or students entering college, who come from an economic disadvantaged household, have attended a public school, can demonstrate a long term participation in the study of, creation in and/or performance in one or more art forms, including dance, music, theatre, literary, visual/media arts), excelled academically, and have formally declared the intent to study and apply economics in their pursuit of higher education and professional career.
Applications are due at close of business on Monday, September 14th, emailed or faxed to:
Marete Wester, M.S., Director of Arts Policy
Americans for the Arts
One East 53rd. Street, 2nd. Floor, New York, NY 10022
T 212 223 2787, ext. 1105
F 212 980 4857
Main Line 202 371 2830
Email mwester@artsusa.org
The final candidates will be selected by a scholarship sub-committee of the NABE Foundation Board and notified by end of September. Winner are announced publicly at the NABE Annual Meeting in October.
With questions, please contact mwester@artsusa.org.
One would be hard pressed to find a person who does not enjoy games. As stated by philosopher Martha Nussbaum in her book Sex and Social Justice, games and play are part of the human identity. We have a psychological need for recreational activities. Video games are simply a new way to do old things, things that are indispensible to human nature. However, there are ongoing questions regarding the “purpose” of video games; if they are mindless diversion or high art. Through an examination of aesthetics, the branch of philosophy concerned with art and beauty, the question becomes more clear-cut. Games, due to their ability to affect emotions into those who experience them, are most certainly an artistic medium.
Many authors seem to use the term game to mean both things like “Chess,” “Backgammon,” and “Legend of Zelda.” This is detrimental to the “games as art” argument as a whole. Equating “Dungeons and Dragons,” the table-top role-playing game, to “Super Mario Brothers” would be the same as equating a stage play with a movie. They have many similarities, to be sure, and plays can be made in movies the same way in which “Dungeons and Dragons” has had many video games over the years. Similarly, many film practices have evolved from those taken from theater. However, in both examples, they are entirely different things, with different histories, and require different mindsets both from the creators and by the consumers.
This difference becomes more pronounced when one wishes to discuss whether or not video games should be considered art. To my knowledge, no one has ever had to persuade a parent into allowing the purchase of “Battleship” by talking about its artistic merits, or similarly, by reminding said parent that the fleet combat is “just a game,” and not indicative of the emotional and psychological state of the players. The uproar the news media likes to raise on the issue of game violence and its effect on children (when will someone think of the poor children?) seems to imply one thing: that video games have the ability to affect people emotionally in ways “Yahtzee” cannot.
An entire branch of philosophy, aesthetics, exists to discuss the nature and importance of art. The field is still open, so I guess aesthetic philosophers have not come close to any sort of conclusion as of yet. In his 1896 article “What is Art,” Leo Tolstoy attempts to create a working definition for what art is: “Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications.” Art “happens” when the artist wishes to express a particular feeling or emotion. He goes on to say that “the chief peculiarity… is that the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work was his own… If a man is infected by the author’s condition of the soul… then the object which has affected this is art. The stronger the infection, the better is the art as art, speaking now apart from the subject matter, i.e., not considering the quality of the feeling it transmits.”
What sets Tolstoy’s theory on art apart from others is his idea of infection. An object is art when it causes someone to have such an emotional response that they feel united with the work, the creator, and those who have also experienced it. He makes sure to point out the fact that this says nothing on the quality of the particular art, only that it is art. I remember a time playing “The Hobbit” on Playstation 2, and, after leaving the goblin tunnel in the Misty Mountains, looking out the long valley below, and having my breath taken away from the sheer beauty of it. In the game “EvE Online,” the player is the pilot of an interstellar space ship. To traverse the vast distances, the player often has to travel at faster-than-light speeds. Ignoring the scientific impossibility of actually seeing things at that speed, the player cannot help but feel a sense of wonder at the heavenly bodies speeding across the game screen around them.
Even when the game involves adolescent power fantasies, or promotes the so-called military-entertainment complex, the works’ existence as art is hard to dispute. If the designers intend to show the thrills of blowing away aliens with a laser assault rifle, and the player feels that particular emotion as they do as such, then the work is art. Even if it perceived immaturity, it has the power to reveal something about human nature. Their popularity, combined with the knee-jerk reaction from those outside the subculture of gaming, stands as testament to this fact.
The idea of infection becomes more interesting when one takes into account the burgeoning field of online game-play, especially in regards to massively multiplayer online games. The player creates a custom avatar that is “theirs,” a block of programming using the game’s framework that is unique to the player creating it, yet still not really created by the player. They did not, most of the time, code this avatar, and the options available to them are only those allotted by the developers. However, the avatar is undoubted the creation of the player, and there exists definite feelings of ownership. This is Tolstoy’s definition of art in the purest sense. The line between creator and consumer is blurred. A player enters these worlds, controls something he has “created,” and interacts in a virtual world he feels he is a part of, and can sometimes make drastic and lasting changes. Many of these games allow players to “own” property, furthering their connection with the work of art.
These games are also social; if they do not require players to team with other players, then the players at least interact on the most basic levels. These games have many people experiencing the same work at the same time, and possibly sharing the same emotional response. I know that when I down a raid boss in “World of Warcraft,” my team and I share our exuberance; we celebrate in a feeling of shared accomplishment.
Through all these reasons, games are indisputably works of art. One can certainly call into the question the societal value of such art. Players and critics can certainly ask that games become better art, more able to convey particular emotions to their players. However, it is impossible to contend that games contain no artistic value.
“Petri Purho’s Nordic Game Jam 2009 experiment Four Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness has elicited some interesting and rather strong reactions among gamers who have found themselves mystified by his creation. Some seem compelled to continue “playing” it over and over in a desperate bid to “win,” while others, including The Escapist’s own Julianne Greer, have asserted that it’s not a game at all but merely an application, and a broken one at that. Regardless of what it is, Purho appears to have accomplished what he set out to do: Push boundaries and get people talking about what a game can actually be.”
-Andy Dell, “Can Art Be Games?”
That’s in reference to “Four Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness”, a quote on quote “game” that as mentioned in the article is arguably not a game. If you haven’t played it yet, I’d suggest you do. It’s not exactly the most exciting game, but it’s only four minutes and 33 seconds, that is, if you’re lucky and last the whole game (you probably won’t).
“Four Minutes and 33 seconds of Uniqueness” is essentially a loading bar and a program that search’s the internet to see if anyone else is playing. If any is, the program closes down. If there isn’t it loads for, well, four Minutes and 33 seconds.
I’ll admit it is hard to classify that as a game, but the thing is, it is possible to do so, despite it’s complete lack of of interaction on it’s interface. It’s similar to a Nomic or many other games in that it requires the player to bring a lot to it: including the illusion of interaction. The way I see it, the game is a player versus a world. Sure the goal requires you to be the only person in the whole world to be playing, making any victories a really hard one, but getting that little bar is a hell of an achievement after all failures. For some reason I can actually see this game being imported to XBLA, and having one achievement worth 200 points: “World Beater: Survive Four Minutes and 33 seconds”. But then again, that requires a specific mindset. Hence why I think the concept of this “game” is genius.
A lot of the other games mentioned in the game are really hard to define as games, though. While it would be hard to argue something such as “Flower” isn’t a game, the arguments about “September 12″ and “The Cemetery” not being real games are tangible, admittedly. Still, I guess the arguments for why they should be considered games exist also. Furthermore, I guess you could go as far to say things we’d define as games, Mario, Halo, etc, are not games, from a certain point of view, if one chooses not to play them for example.
zeFrank has a cool new voice-drawing toy on his blog. You raise and lower the notes you’re sing/humming to turn the drawing line. Check it out.
Saturdays & Sundays, November 1 & 2, 8 & 9
Olivia Block, Shawn Decker, Ryan Ingebritsen, Lou Mallozzi: Train Time
A stunning sound portrait incorporating the clank of wheels over rail ties, the hiss of boilers, the roar of diesels, the call of train whistles, the whoosh of tomorrow’s super-fast trains–a rhythmic reminder that today’s downtown path was once a huge rail yard extending to the water’s edge.
Presented at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park
10 AM – 10 PM.
Free.
Commissioned by and co-presented with the 2008 Chicago Humanities Festival.
Projection works by Jenny Holzer
For the first time in Chicago, artist Jenny Holzer presents a series of temporary outdoor projection works in conjunction with the exhibition Jenny Holzer: PROTECT PROTECT. Texts selected by Holzer, who is renowned for her compelling use of language in public space, will be projected on the facade of the MCA on three nights: Wednesday – Friday, October 29–31. Projections will begin after dark and will conclude before midnight. There will also be three projections on public buildings around Chicago:
Saturday, Nov 1: Lyric Opera and Riverside Plaza
Sunday, Nov 2: Tribune Tower
Monday, Nov 3: Merchandise Mart
For more than thirty years, Jenny Holzer’s work has paired text and installation to examine emotional and societal realities. Her choice of forms and media brings a sensate experience to the contradictory voices, opinions, and attitudes that shape everyday life. The 1990s heralded a turn in Holzer’s practice toward greater visual and environmental presence. In this exhibition, which centers on her work from the mid-1990s to the present, Holzer joins political bravura with formal beauty, sensitivity, and power.
The exhibition is curated by Elizabeth Smith, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Programs at the MCA. It is accompanied by a publication with essays by Smith and other authors and will tour the United States and Europe.
“There’s nothing in the city’s mainstream-performance scene with which to compare it. Inducing the kind of double-takes reserved for Pixar movies – the actors and puppets against a black background resemble high-res animation – the bold, optically startling Dr. Egg… is the first Redmoon show I’ve seen that left me not satisfied but craving more…. Creatively, it’s a treat. Visually, it’s a new standard.” (Chris Piatt, Time Out Chicago)
“What’s so exciting about the show’s marriage of physical objects with ghostly projections is that the combination enhances the emotional heft of the story being told.” (Leon Hilton, Centerstage)
There are only three weeks left to catch the show called “provocative and creative” by the Tribune, and “ingeniously directed” by the Sun-Times!
Performances are selling out fast, so buy your tickets today!
Visit us at www.redmoon.tix.com, or call 312-850-8440 x111.
