Here’s an interesting followup to yesterday’s post on games as an artistic expression.
Kotaku (I must read them more often) is offering up opinion on the controversy surrounding Douglas Edric Stanley’s Invaders!. In what Stanley is calling installation art, players are pitted against the traditional Space Invaders, which are destroying the World Trade Center.
… the exhibit … was also accompanied by video clips of American films and President George W. Bush, additional peripheral elements that let us know we had a nebulous “political message” on our hands.
Politics aside, this could be a good example for my argument. After all, there is a game, and it is sending a Message with a capital “M”.
The more I think about it, however, the less I’m convinced that it is a game. After all, the Space Invaders component has apparently been modified so that it is unbeatable. It’s less an interaction than it is a nihilistic statement of futility. Just because a sculpture allows me to re-orient it, doesn’t make it a game.
I feel like I’m just echoing the original article by expressing dismay that hope for games as a medium for artistic expression has been almost abused by this cutting attempt to rub salt into what is still a raw wound for many.
Perhaps a better example of a game as political art would be 1993′s Cannon Fodder. Check out this music video based on the game’s theme song to get an idea if you missed out on the game:
I really like the idea of the installation at Leipzig. Of particular interest to me is the other Kotaku article where the journalist decries the futility of trying to play it as a game. His very hopes and expectations are thwarted by the inevitability of the Towers’ collapse. He’s not the player of the ‘game’ he is the victim (particularly in the context of his expectations). More information can be found Here.
Leigh Alexander handles the is it art, is it a game discussion admirably otherwise.
And so where do you stand with this installation? Does it fit your definition of a game?
Does it fit your definition of (High) Art?
I can’t reasonably answer either the first or third questions because I haven’t experienced it first hand. Without that personal experience then I’ll just be shooting shit with you.
I don’t really see it as a game. It’s art inspired by the convergence of games and real world events, I suppose. But you don’t get to play it (in the way I believe games are about play) so much as be abused by it, become its victim.
I’m not offended by it and the idea of it provokes thought. I suspect I wouldn’t find it transcendent, but cannot know unless I were to experience it first hand.