#ctec602

[creatingcharlottepj]

27.10.17

[ncyrocks]

Video games are a really private form of art, which is weird

I’ve been thinking about digital interactive exhibitions recently, as a result of being enrolled in ITS, and I got thinking - is there anywhere where people are just exhibiting games? Like, just a dedicated gaming station in a library or a museum or art gallery or something?

I think it would work really well. But I haven’t found any examples yet. Then again, I’m crap at finding that kind of thing.

Searching for video game museums or exhibits or something like that just gives me museums showing off old video game consoles, or exhibits showing the early history of arcade games and stuff. Any games available to play are mostly old arcade ones - nothing against those, in fact, they definitely belong in a museum for everyone to be able to witness. But alone, they’re a little limited.

What I’d love to see is a dedicated gallery or museum exhibit that happens to be a game, with controllers custom made to control the game as easily as possible, a custom display to fit the game’s aesthetic (and maybe even enhance it), so any member of the public can enjoy that kind of art they way they enjoy other art forms that exist in museums and galleries.

Another thing I’d like to see: video game libraries. Like, libraries where you can check out a copy of Halo or Super Mario 64 or something, and you have to return it in X amount of days. I know regular libraries have these, but you have to pay for them, which almost defeats the point of libraries. But maybe I’m just an entitled millennial who just wants free stuff.

I just think it’s weird how the only way we can really play video games is by buying them from a physical or digital shop. Some are available for free online in various forms, but most games force you to pay money - often a lot of it. Then again, they’re a lot cheaper than a movie ticket, per hour of enjoyment.

I guess we have set ways of enjoying certain art media - we get books from a library or from Amazon or something, we buy personal copies of games, we use subscription services for music and TV shows, we see movies in theatres, etc. Then there’s art we see in person, like live theatre and art exhibits.

There’s a lot of overlap, of course - I could buy a DVD of a movie easily or see my favourite band perform live, and subscription services for games are being experimented with (which is great). But I think games are being a bit shorthanded by this system, probably more than the others - but all other media are too, to some degree.

Copies of video games shouldn’t be owned by individuals by default, is what I’m trying to say. If we make them more communal and public, maybe they’ll be seen more legitimately as art and appreciated more in the public consciousness.

[creatingcharlottepj]

Really nice to see a fun interactive environment, no one was too shy to get involved with this one! Huge contrast to the last interactive piece I saw at the Art Gallery were the dramatics piece was intimidating and asked a lot of the audience all at once. Great to see work that slowly lets the magic of the work unfold while the audience is able to create and become comfortable (at Aotea Square)

[timbct2]

Complete view of how my visualizer patch works

[timbct2]

Near-complete state of my artist visualiser

[timbct2]

A short video demonstrating the current state of my live visualization project. The values still need to be tweaked for volume/light as you can see the screen goes black when I face the camera away from my window, but this serves as proof of the basic interaction.

[lightsbct]

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[lightsbct]

13#ITS - Final Thoughts

It's fair enough to say that this paper was not really what I actually expected it to be. For a paper all about interaction technology, I’d say there wasn’t a lot of ‘interaction’ to be done. My initial impression of this paper was how we were to physically explore different forms of interaction technologies and the cultural or historical significance of it. This may include games, various forms of immersion technologies or perhaps some physical part of a project that was brought in and we can interact and discuss in depth. Basically, I thought this paper was a good opportunity to get some hands-on experience in experiencing various forms of interaction. Though I’m quite sad to say that was not the case. Having class discussions isn’t bad at all, though some hands-on activities would have been nice.  

However I can’t only have criticisms about this paper, there were definitely some positives. It definitely felt freeing in the sense that we were open and constantly encouraged to express our own opinion. As opposed to someone telling you that ‘this way’ is the ‘right way’, I liked how we were told by the lecturer that we were free to criticize anything, even this paper. There is barely any ‘yes or no’ in this class, an example being the definition for ITS when I initially thought there was one definition but it truly depends on the context.

I’ll be a bit sad if this paper won’t be around in the future, there is definitely value in what you learn here. It opened my eyes to a lot of possibilities.