{"53815":{"#nid":"53815","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Exploring the Art History of Games","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ELeading game theorists and historians from around the world gathered in Atlanta in February for the Art History of Games symposium, organized by Georgia Tech\u2019s Ivan Allen College and the Savannah College of Art and Design. The event focused not on asking whether games represent an art form, but rather tracing the history of artistic influence on games and the history of games as art. \u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EIn his opening remarks, Tech associate professor and event co-organizer Ian Bogost said it was time to move beyond the question, \u201cAre games art?\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt\u2019s interesting that we have to justify this question in the first place,\u201d Bogost said.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ETech assistant professor Michael Nitsche said the event served as a breaking point from that question into a future of analyzing games as art.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cGames are a dynamic and alive form of art,\u201d Nitsche said. \u201cWe only lose time if we return to a debate on whether they are art or not. As such, this conference was a milestone of the discussion.\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe symposium, which was held at the High Museum of Art, featured video game luminaries such as John Romero, whose 130 credits include iconic works such as Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom and Quake.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ERomero\u2019s keynote speech focused on the lessons designers can learn from past game creators. He explained how the earliest systems gave way to genres \u2014 like the first-person shooter games Romero helped popularize \u2014 and that developers have become entrenched in those genres.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u201cOur masters worked within a lot of constraints,\u201d Romero said. \u201cThe Atari 2600 was created to play just two games. However, designers today are more constrained.\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ESeveral presenters cited the work of the Jodi art collective in taking the code to games such as Doom and stripping them down to almost abstract forms. Tech professor Jay David Bolter and postdoctoral researcher Brian Schrank include Jodi\u2019s games in their research on avant garde video games.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt forces you to become conscious of the game\u2019s conventions,\u201d Schrank said of such games. \u201cThey make the familiar unfamiliar.\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EIn a line that was repeated by several presenters, Celia Pierce, an assistant professor at Tech and director of the Experimental Game Lab and the Emergent Game Group, credited painter Marcel DuChamp as \u201cthe patron saint of gamers.\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EWhile DuChamp was best known as a Dadaist artist, he was passionate about chess. But that passion was criticized by those who viewed chess as a waste of time, Pierce said. That\u2019s a criticism familiar to those who love video games.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EPierce praised DuChamp\u2019s creativity in art and in gaming and called for that spirit to continue. In her role as festival chair for IndieCade, Pierce said, \u201cWe like to throw out every boundary.\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EBeyond presentations, the event also featured three commissioned games. One of those was Sixteen Tons by architect Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman, a game designer who has been named one of Interview magazine\u2019s \u201c30 To Watch.\u201d Essentially a large-scale board game, Sixteen Tons incorporates real money as players pay each other to move their pieces.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ENitsche said organizers hoped the commissioned games would bridge the gap between theory and practice.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe fact that everybody played the games in the gallery and was somehow united in that excitement helped,\u201d he said. \u201cI really hope that this momentum carries on beyond the conference itself.\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe most exciting aspect of the symposium for Nitsche was the passion of the attending artists mixing with the historical perspective provided by researchers, he said. He credited Frank Lantz, a game developer and director of the New York University Game Center, for uniting \u201ca distanced view of history and art theory to the excitement of game as art practice.\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EIn his talk, Lantz called for game theorists and developers to not forcibly group games with other types of art but to embrace the wildness of games.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u201cInstead of formalizing them, we should embrace games as weird,\u201d he said. \u201cGames are like an art form for Asperberger sufferers.\u201d\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EWritten by Van Jensen, Georgia Tech Alumni Association\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"The conference traced the history of artistic influences on games and history of games as art.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Conference traced history of artistic influences on games."}],"uid":"27310","created_gmt":"2010-02-17 01:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:02:55","author":"David Terraso","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2010-02-17T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2010-02-17T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"53816":{"id":"53816","type":"image","title":"John Romero","body":null,"created":"1449175327","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:42:07","changed":"1475894398","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:39:58","alt":"John Romero","file":{"fid":"190077","name":"txs25582.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/txs25582_1.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/txs25582_1.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":72150,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/txs25582_1.jpg?itok=RutxXwKK"}},"53814":{"id":"53814","type":"image","title":"Art History of Games","body":null,"created":"1449175327","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:42:07","changed":"1475894398","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:39:58","alt":"Art History of Games","file":{"fid":"190076","name":"AHoG_ThursdayReception12_DS.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/AHoG_ThursdayReception12_DS_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/AHoG_ThursdayReception12_DS_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":12169399,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/AHoG_ThursdayReception12_DS_0.jpg?itok=J6rwCNcX"}}},"media_ids":["53816","53814"],"groups":[{"id":"1216","name":"Digital Lounge - Gaming"}],"categories":[{"id":"143","name":"Digital Media and Entertainment"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"125","name":"art"},{"id":"315","name":"bogost"},{"id":"2213","name":"Games"},{"id":"1683","name":"history"},{"id":"1274","name":"Nitsche"},{"id":"169274","name":"scad"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EGeorgia Tech Media Relations\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003ELaura Diamond\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:laura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Elaura.diamond@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-894-6016\u003Cbr \/\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E404-660-2926\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["david.terraso@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}