Video game art
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Video game art involves the use of patched or modified computer and video games or the repurposing of existing games or game structures. Often this modification is through the use of level editors, though other techniques exist. Some artists make use of machinima applications to produce non-interactive animated artworks, though it is a mistake, however, to regard artistic modification as being synonymous with machinima as these form only a small proportion of artistic modifications.
Videogame art relies on a broader range of artistic techniques and outcomes than artistic modification. These can include painting, sculpture, appropriation, in-game intervention and performance, sampling, etc. Video game art also includes creating art games from scratch, rather than by modifying existing games. It is useful to regard these as distinct from art mods as they rely on different tools, though naturally there are many similarities with some art mods.
Like games, artistic game modifications may be single-player or multiplayer. Multiplayer works make use of networked environments to develop new models of interactivity and collaborative production.
Techniques
Machinima
Machinima is the use of pre-existing real-time three-dimensional graphics rendering engines, often from video games. Genres of work include narrative works and non-narrative, abstract machinima.
In-game intervention and performance
Artistic interventions in online games, often designed to disrupt in-game norms in order to expose the underlying conventions and functions of game play. Well-known examples of this include Velvet-Strike and Dead in Iraq.
Site-specific installations site-relative mods
Site-specific Installations and site-relative gaming modifications, or mods, replicate real-world places (often the gallery they are in) to explore similarities and differences between real and virtual worlds.
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. 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. 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
- Digital art
- Electronic art
- Internet art
- Software art
- Computer and video game genres
- gameplay
- Modding
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
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
