Comments on: aarseth on art, joyce on collaboration

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 11 Jun 2005 14:54:35 +0000

To marry the economist with the gamer there is the work of Peter Zachriasson who writes spreadsheet analysis of game play and the only hills are on the graph….

By: scott

scott — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 08:05:12 +0000

I’m not very good at softball, but I’m planning on attending the next DAC, and I’m siding with the artists. I think it’s time to throw down the gauntlet. I’ll play second base. Fuck theory, Noah, you’re pitching.

By: ErikC

ErikC — Wed, 08 Jun 2005 07:58:10 +0000

A prize winning accountant?
Yes Espen, in 1984, http://www.britannica.com/nobel/table/econ.html
Noah you could build a game around Danto’s Institutional theory of art, the Blaxxun-renaissance VRML project was sort of a game where you had to learn Renaissance manners in order for your character to advance..

Accountants change the world..remember MCI WorldCom, IMF and the World Bank..etc etc

On a side note, alien societies in modern sci fi often seem based on a swarming model of forced social inclusion not exclusion -inclusion..

Is art a game? Producing a masterpiece that is promising new and comprehensive rules that yet can never fully categorise the artefact or experience that created them? (very Nietzschean). Perhaps the attempt to challenge and break the labels of art critics while being praised by them at the same time..

By: noah

noah — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 13:21:23 +0000

I was reading Espen pretty literally, and just trying to imagine playing a game based on attempts to advance in the artworld (which could include presenting your work to gallery owners, applying for grants, etc) versus attempting to advance as an astronomer (sorting through data, looking for the clues to that phenomenon that will forever bear your name in the night sky) versus being an accountant (which, after Enron, I think we can all agree has the most potential for an action-packed game of intrigue with mainstream appeal) and so on…

By: Adam Russell

Adam Russell — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 11:31:25 +0000

Noah: “is there something that makes being a professional artist more like a game than being a professional astronomer, accountant, or agronomist?”

Perhaps drawing a connection with Michel de Certeau’s work on everyday life would help? His thought might be turned to describing the professionals as employing strategies to define their own places and their own position of authority, whereas the today’s artist is more like the everyday man, employing tactics to turn places owned by others to their own ends, as artists have no place of their own? Much of de Certeau’s writing likens this use of tactics by the weak to ‘play’ at least, if not ‘game’.

Having said all that, the playfulness of tactics is far removed from the game jokingly suggested for art. Perhaps the artists in Espen’s audience objected to his King of the Hill joke because it sounds more like a strategy than a tactic?

By: Espen

Espen — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 06:37:55 +0000

Winner of both the CPA Australia Prize for Accounting
& the Institute of Chartered Accountants Prize for Accounting

Heh, nice try, but the winner is a 1st year student. You seem to have deleted the rather telling “Year 1″ from both titles. And we all know about the sinister uses of King of the Hill in schools.

By: scott

scott — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 00:26:01 +0000

I hope they have other intramurals at this summer camp too. King of the Hill always seemed so brutal. I wonder if the artists would beat the theorists in, say, softball.

By: d.c. howe

d.c. howe — Tue, 07 Jun 2005 00:01:53 +0000

(Cindy) Kwong Kar Yee:

Winner of both the CPA Australia Prize for Accounting
& the Institute of Chartered Accountants Prize for Accounting

http://www.ufy.unsw.edu.au/popups/cindy.htm

By: Espen Aarseth

Espen Aarseth — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 22:38:53 +0000

Do you know any prize-winning accountants?

By: noah

noah — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 21:32:54 +0000

So, is there something that makes being a professional artist (which sounds like what’s meant in this case, rather than “art” as a creation process or way of viewing the world) more like a game than being a professional astronomer, accountant, or agronomist?

By: Espen

Espen — Mon, 06 Jun 2005 19:35:48 +0000

Thanks, Mary, for the writeup of my talk; just for the record, I was actually attempting the joke that, instead of looking at computer games as a form of art (and thus appropriating them, starting with text adventures in the 80s) we might see art as an advanced type of game, and, if so, what type of game might it be? Joyce may well object, but King of the Hill can be played as a team sport as well as solo.

There is enough competition (and prize-winning) among artists to make me stand by my joke, in poor taste though it may have appeared to be. Too bad none of the dissenting artists voiced their opinions when I was still there, as it would have made for an interesting debate, or, dare I say it, contest…

As for the idea that community building is as much based on exclusion as it is on inclusion, this insight is not an Aarseth original, alas, but, as I mentioned in the talk, belongs to Stuart Hall.