Video Games and Art, How do They Interact?

"x is art if and only if x is a, or x is b" - Grant Tavinor

What is art? Take a look at the Oxford Dictionary definition below:

art

NOUN

• The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

Personally, I think it is an accurate definition. What I am interested in is the types of visual forms that art can take, and if they are merely meant to look at or if they can be interacted with.

With the current artistic climate that we are in, it isn't unusual to find works that are interactive such as the One Minute Sculptures by Erwin Wurm.

These sculptures are created with the help of the viewer, who in this case is an active participant in the work, a prompt created by Wurm asking the participants to perform a certain task with a set of supplies, and then they are often commemorated with a picture showing the resulting sculpture. In this instance, the viewer becomes part of the art work and is interacting in the fullest sense of the word.

There are other artists who create installations that the viewer is welcomed to enter and view, thus forming an interaction. My particular inquiry revolves around digital interactive artworks. In other words, video games.

The very first video game, Tennis for Two, was created by William Higinbotham in 1958 and simulated the game of tennis.

Talk about graphics! Very simplistic, but is served as a launching point for video games, and in the process, digital art. Or is it reversed? Did advancements in art- both digital and physical* help advance video games?

* I use the term physical instead of traditional because traditional is associated with the fine art paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Physical is the opposite of digital, and therefore encompasses every other type of art without a more limiting connotation.

It is my belief that not only are some video games a work of contemporary art, but that some works of art can be considered video games. Take a moment to digest that statement. Am I saying the same thing twice or are there some subtle differences between the two?

The relation between art and video games is a complex one and I can't entirely tell if it is a type of consensual affiliation power or if it a transformative power, or if it is both. While the exact nature of the interactions between the two is unclear, it is clear that they play off of each other and push one another in new directions.

Below is an interactive story that I have created to give you more insight about the correlation between the two worlds.

http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/8jf9

The game raises many points about the artistic nature of video games and how they relate to other media, most notably film and novels. Video games do draw on visual art as a means to better express their stories and enhance the experience for the player. In other words, art empowers the gaming community to create better games!

Lets explore together how art takes from the world of video games!

There are some artists who have started to openly use video games as their artistic medium. I highly encourage clicking this link here to further explore artists using video games as art. Please leave a comment with your thoughts.