{"59028":{"#nid":"59028","#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\u0027s 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, School of Literature, Communication, and Culture (LCC) associate professor and event co-organizer Ian Bogost said it was time to move beyond the question, \u0022Are games art?\u0022 \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022It\u0027s interesting that we have to justify this question in the first place,\u0022  Bogost said.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003ELCC 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\u0022Games are a dynamic and alive form of art,\u0022  Nitsche said. \u0022We 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.\u0022 \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\u0027s keynote speech focused on the lessons designers can learn from past game creators. He explained how the earliest systems gave way to genres \u0022\u0022 like the first-person shooter games Romero helped popularize \u0022\u0022 and that developers have become entrenched in those genres.\u003Cbr \/\u003E\n\u0022Our masters worked within a lot of constraints,\u0022  Romero said. \u0022The Atari 2600 was created to play just two games. However, designers today are more constrained.\u0022 \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. LCC professor Jay David Bolter and postdoctoral researcher Brian Schrank include Jodi\u0027s games in their research on avant garde video games.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022It forces you to become conscious of the game\u0027s conventions,\u0022  Schrank said of such games. \u0022They make the familiar unfamiliar.\u0022 \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EIn a line that was repeated by several presenters, Celia Pierce, an LCC assistant professor and director of the Experimental Game Lab and the Emergent Game Group, credited painter Marcel DuChamp as \u0022the patron saint of gamers.\u0022 \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\u0027s a criticism familiar to those who love video games.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EPierce praised DuChamp\u0027s creativity in art and in gaming and called for that spirit to continue. In her role as festival chair for IndieCade, Pierce said, \u0022We like to throw out every boundary.\u0022 \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\u0027s \u002230 To Watch.\u0022  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\u0022The fact that everybody played the games in the gallery and was somehow united in that excitement helped,\u0022  he said. \u0022I really hope that this momentum carries on beyond the conference itself.\u0022 \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 \u0022a distanced view of history and art theory to the excitement of game as art practice.\u0022 \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\u0022Instead of formalizing them, we should embrace games as weird,\u0022  he said. \u0022Games are like an art form for Asperberger sufferers.\u0022 \n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EWritten by Van Jensen, Georgia Tech Alumni Association\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"Leading game theorists and historians from around the world gathered in Atlanta in February for the Art History of Games symposium, organized by Georgia Tech\u0027s 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.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Conference traced history of artistic influences on games"}],"uid":"27167","created_gmt":"2010-02-17 01:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:06:50","author":"Rebecca Keane","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":{"59029":{"id":"59029","type":"image","title":"John Romero","body":null,"created":"1449176211","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 20:56:51","changed":"1475894515","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:41:55","alt":"John Romero","file":{"fid":"190819","name":"txs25582.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/txs25582.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/txs25582.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":72150,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/txs25582.jpg?itok=Nm1bndmW"}}},"media_ids":["59029"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.iac.gatech.edu\/news-and-events\/story?id=4170","title":"Read more about the conference"},{"url":"http:\/\/digitallounge.gatech.edu\/","title":"Georgia Tech Digital Lounge"},{"url":"http:\/\/lcc.gatech.edu\/","title":"School of Literature, Communication, and Culture"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.arthistoryofgames.com\/","title":"Art History of Games"}],"groups":[{"id":"1281","name":"Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts"}],"categories":[{"id":"129","name":"Institute and Campus"},{"id":"133","name":"Special Events and Guest Speakers"},{"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":"\u003Cstrong\u003ERebecca Keane\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EIvan Allen Colege\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:rebecca.keane@iac.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EContact Rebecca Keane\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E4048941720\u003C\/strong\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["rebecca.keane@iac.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}