Shop > Artists' Books

Out of Stock
#11913

Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art

Writer
John Sharp
Date
2015
Publisher
MIT Press
Format
Artists' Books
Description

Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth century, as can be seen in the Surrealists’ use of Exquisite Corpse and other games, Duchamp’s obsession with Chess, and Fluxus event scores and boxes—to name just a few examples. Over the past fifteen years, the synthesis of art and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers. Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players focus on the innate properties of games and the experiences they provide, giving little attention to what it means to create and evaluate fine art. In Works of Game, John Sharp bridges this gap, offering a formal aesthetics of games that encompasses the commonalities and the differences between games and art.

Sharp describes three communities of practice and offers case studies for each. “Game Art,” which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter, tools, and processes. “Artgames,” created by gamemakers including Jason Rohrer, Brenda Romero, and Jonathan Blow, explore territory usually occupied by poetry, painting, literature, or film. Finally, “Artists’ Games”—with artists including Blast Theory, Mary Flanagan, and the collaboration of Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman—represents a more synthetic conception of games as an artistic medium. The work of these gamemakers, Sharp suggests, shows that it is possible to create game-based artworks that satisfy the aesthetic and critical values of both the contemporary art and game communities.

John Sharp is Associate Professor of Games and Learning at Parsons the New School for Design and a member of the game design collective Local No. 12.

  1. Works of Game
 

Related Items

  1. The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds
  2. Robin Cameron and Rochelle Goldberg: Moves 2
  3. Jo Cook, Wesley Mulvin, and Petra Poldlahova: Czech Birds, Sileni Lovci, Wild Hunters
  4. Douglas Gordon
  5. Olafur Eliasson: Surroundings Surrounded: Essays on Space and Science
  6. Keiichi Tanaami: No More War
  7. Anna Dezeuze: Thomas Hirschhorn: Deleuze Monument (Hardcover)
  8. John Bride: Illusory Self #5
  9.  Larissa Hjorth, Sarah Pink, Kristen Sharp, and Linda Williams: Screen Ecologies
  10. Amanda Boetzkes: Plastic Capitalism
  11. Kodwo Eshun: Dan Graham: Rock My Religion
  12. Gwen Allen: The Magazine
  13. Neil M. Hennessy, Ian Hooper, Jason Le Heup, and Prize Budget for Boys: The Prize Budget for Boys Present : The Spectacular Vernacular Revue
  14. Rohan Hutchinson: Elemental
  15. Robin Cameron and Rochelle Goldberg: Moves 1
  16. Derek Sullivan: Robert Smithson, Third Edition
  17. Martine Derks and Xavier Fernandez: Everybody’s Card
  18. Sylvie Fleury 49000
  19. Reto Pulfer: Der Themenkatalog
  20. Amit Middel: Almut Middel: Consumidor
  21. Ann Weathersby: Reliquaries
  22. Michael Snow: October 114
  23. October 145: Summer 2013
  24. OCTOBER 146 - Fall 2013
  25. OCTOBER 147 - Winter 2014
  26. October 148
  27. October Magazine Issue 149
  28. October Magazine Issue 151
  29. October Magazine Issue 152
  30. October Magazine Issue 153
  31. October Magazine Issue 154
  32. Jonas Staal: Propaganda Art in the 21st Century
  33. Susan Schuppli: Material Witness: Media, Forensics, Evidence
  34. Claire Bishop: Participation
  35. Stefanie Hessler: Prospecting Ocean
  36. On the Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1957-1972
  37. William Mitchell: The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era
  38. Richard Bolton: The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography
  39. Dan Graham: Nuggets: New and Old Writing on Art, Architecture, and Culture