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Elisa Schönberger
As I walked through the exhibition Differential Machines: Technology and Identity in Contemporary Art, I felt like I had been struck by several blows of love at first sight. This exhibition, recently at Wrightwood Gallery 659 in Chicago, features the paintings of 17 artists who have been running in virtual spaces for decades, focusing on the effect of the virtual world on our collective sense of identity, from race and gender to the surveillance state.
But what struck me were the artists using video games in their work. For decades, debates have raged over the role of video games in society: Are they art? Are they dangerous? Meanwhile, artists have been using video games in their work. Some artists create actual video games; others record films within a video game, creating movies called machinima.
Several artists have made artistic interventions within the games, and others have used references to video games in their art. And then the whole genre of fan art. And of course, there are video games that are art in themselves.
However, it took some time for the art network to catch up. Tina Rivers Ryan, curator of the exhibition and the AKG Museum of Art in Buffalo, explains via email that, for both virtual art and video game art, “global art continues to struggle to localize aesthetic or cultural price (not to mention market price) in virtual art more broadly. Exhibiting video game art presents challenges, because “you have to think about questions that don’t confront the classical arts: what’s the right scale for the work. “? “Should the experience be individual or collective, personal or public,” Ryan said.
Little by little, some establishments are beginning to recognize the artistic value of video games. Notably, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has organized at least two exhibitions (including the Never Alone 2022-2023 exhibition) on video games and has begun acquiring games. in his collection in 2012, focusing on the design aspect. He has 36 video games in his archives and is aiming for 40.
So the jury is here. Video games can be art. The question now is how new artists can and do use video games in their work.
AM. Darke, an artist and associate professor of art and design for games and playable media at UC Santa Cruz, says one of the tricky facets of video games is that “they involve you as a player and an agent in those stories. “Not only do you watch or consume games, especially interactive ones, but you actively create possible options in the game.
Darke plays with the “magic circle” of games in his art. The magic circle is a safe container where “certain things can happen that do not impact you.” For instance, if you see a friend play Grand Theft Auto, you don’t assume they will kill people and steal cars in the real world. “But I design pieces that intentionally break the magic circles, so that the actions you take in the game, the experiences, [the knowledge and perspectives] you’re confronted with, is something that remains with you.”
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Darke created the two-player online game called Ye or Nay, which takes a page from the board game Guess Who, but where all the cards are black male celebrities (including several other photographs of Kanye West in his career). in-game chat to ask questions. Darke sought to explore Black masculinity and Black celebrities, as well as force players to describe and categorize Black celebrities in a way “that parallels the way databases and algorithms identify, track, and discriminate against other Black people. “and other marginalized groups. “
Still from “Ye or Nay?” by Darke.
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