Video game art

This article is about creating art from existing video games, and does not deal with game art development or art games.

For other uses, see Art game (disambiguation).

Video game art is a specialized form of computer art employing video games as the artistic medium. Video game art often involves the use of patched or modified video games or the repurposing of existing games or game structures, however it relies on a broader range of artistic techniques and outcomes than artistic modification and it may also include painting, sculpture, appropriation, in-game intervention and performance, sampling, etc.^{[citation needed]} For this reason it may also includes creating art games from scratch, rather than by modifying existing games.

Artistic modifications are frequently made possible through the use of level editors, though other techniques exist. Some artists make use of machinima applications to produce non-interactive animated artworks, however artistic modification is not synonymous with machinima as these form only a small proportion of artistic modifications.^{[citation needed]} Machinima is distinct from art mods as it relies on different tools, though there are many similarities with some art mods.^{[citation needed]}

Like video games, artistic game modifications are often interactive and may allow for single-player or multiplayer experience. Multiplayer works make use of networked environments to develop new kinds of interaction and collaborative art production.

Techniques

Machinima

Main article: Machinima

Machinima is the use of real-time three-dimensional (3-D) graphics rendering engines to generate computer animation. The term also refers to works that incorporate this animation technique.

In-game intervention and performance

Artists may intervene in online games in a non-play manner, often disrupting games in progress in order to challenge or expose underlying conventions and functions of game play. Examples of this include Velvet-Strike (a project designed to allow players of realistic first person shooter games to use anti-war graffiti within the game to make an artistic statement) and Dead in Iraq (an art project created by Joseph DeLappe in which the player character purposely allows himself to be shot and then recites the names of US soldiers who have died in the Iraq War).

Site-specific installations and site-relative mods

Site-specific installations and site-relative gaming modifications ("mods"), replicate real-world places (often the art gallery in which they are displayed) to explore similarities and differences between real and virtual worlds. An example is What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It, where blood from kills in Counterstrike manifests and spills into a real life gallery.

Real-time performance instruments

Video games can be incorporated into live audio and visual performance using a variety of instruments and computers such as keyboards embedded with music chips.^{[citation needed]} See also chiptune and the Fijuu project.

Generative art mods

Generative art mods exploit the real-time capabilities of game technologies to produce ever-renewing autonomous artworks.^{[citation needed]} Examples include Julian Oliver's ioq3apaint, a generative painting system that uses the actions of software agents in combat to drive the painting process, Alison Mealy's UnrealArt which takes the movements of game entities and uses them to control a drawing process in an external program, and RetroYou's R/C Racer a modification of the graphic elements of a racing game which results in rich fields of colour and shape.

See also

• Demoscene
• Digital art
• Electronic art
• Internet art
• Software art
• Video game genres
• Gameplay
• Modding
• Virtual art
• Electronic Language International Festival

References

• GameScenes: Art in the Age of Videogames. (John & Levi, 2006). Edited by Matteo Bittanti and Domenico Quaranta.
• Introduction to artistic computer game modification by Rebecca Cannon (PDF file) Backed up here.
• Videogames and Art Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell (eds)
• Journal of Media Practice vol 7, no. 1 (special edition on videogames and art) Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell (eds)
• Switch, Art & Games issue, 1999, online magazine of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media, San Jose State University
• From "First-Person Shooter" to Multi-User Knowledge Spaces Mathias Fuchs and Sylvia Eckermann
• Konsum Art-Server nTRACKER Margarete Jahrmann and Max Moswitzer
• Messages For A First Person Perspective Maia Engeli
• Smuts, Aaron (2005). "Are Video Games Art?". http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=299. 

External links

• Art Games archive with examples of artistic modifications
• Art Games web site with various examples of artistic modifications
• Another Art Games archive with examples of artistic modifications