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Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art (Playful Thinking series) by Sharp, John (2015) Hardcover
Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth century, as can be seen in the Surrealists' use of Exquisite Corpse and other games, Duchamp's obsession with Chess, and Fluxus event scores and boxes -- to name just a few examples. Over the past fifteen years, the synthesis of art and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers. Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players focus on the innate properties of games and the experiences they provide, giving little attention to what it means to create and evaluate fine art. In "Works of Game," John Sharp bridges this gap, offering a formal aesthetics of games that encompasses the commonalities and the differences between games and art.Sharp describes three communities of practice and offers case studies for each. "Game Art," which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter, tools, and processes. "Artgames," created by gamemakers including Jason Rohrer, Brenda Romero, and Jonathan Blow, explore territory usually occupied by poetry, painting, literature, or film. Finally, "Artists' Games" -- with artists including Blast Theory, Mary Flanagan, and the collaboration of Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman -- represents a more synthetic conception of games as an artistic medium. The work of these gamemakers, Sharp suggests, shows that it is possible to create game-based artworks that satisfy the aesthetic and critical values of both the contemporary art and game communities.
Hardcover
First published February 13, 2015
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About the author
John Sharp
305 books4 followersLibrarian Note: There are more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
John R. Sharp worked as a linguist and analyst for the U.S. Government for over 40 years, teaching and writing curricula for Modern Standard Arabic and several Arabic dialects. During his studies in Cairo, he became fascinated with Egyptology and the ancient Egyptian language, but was frustrated at not finding a good, searchable index of pharaohs' cartouches (name rings), so he decided to make one himself, a project that took several decades. He lives in Hawaii.
John R. Sharp worked as a linguist and analyst for the U.S. Government for over 40 years, teaching and writing curricula for Modern Standard Arabic and several Arabic dialects. During his studies in Cairo, he became fascinated with Egyptology and the ancient Egyptian language, but was frustrated at not finding a good, searchable index of pharaohs' cartouches (name rings), so he decided to make one himself, a project that took several decades. He lives in Hawaii.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 23, 2018
must-read !
March 9, 2016
Although there is a long tradition of accounting for and recognising play as a feature of (high) art, and some degree of recognition of digital and other games as having artistic characteristics, John Sharp has ventured into a less common relationship in this short but extremely stimulating book. His focus here is on artists, not gamers as such, to consider the ways that what is conventionally seen as the (low) art of gaming and (high) art practice interrelate in work typically carried out those we would consider ‘artists’. It’s the sneer marks throughout those sentences that suggest just how problematic these distinctions are.
The impressive thing is just how rich and sophisticated Sharp’s discussion of the ‘art’/‘games’ dynamic is, with its theoretical bases that combine the notion of ‘affordances’ (so widely used in technology studies but also in play studies) with contemporary work on participatory art. When woven together through a series of case studies of the ‘games’/‘art’ interface the result is a piece of work that challenges us to look more carefully at ideas of aesthetics, of play, of games and of art.
Sharp is working with two theoretical triads. In the first, the notion of affordances as the aspects of a thing that suggest its meaning is applied to the way think about cultural forms and practices through the use of conceptual, formal and experiential affordances: these are different aspects of what we might think of the ontological characteristics of a thing or practice (in a sense, its ‘thing-ness’). This triad of ways of doing affordances is put alongside a second triad, in this case where games, game art and art games to allow Sharp to deploy different aspects of the ‘games’/‘art’ relationship. The really impressive thing is that these ideas are complex, but Sharp deals with them all in a brief (17 page) introduction.
The substance of the book is three chapters of three case studies each. In the first, ‘Game Art’ Sharp explores the ways artists make use of game imagery and technology in making art considering those who ‘paint’ with game, those who appropriate games and most delightfully for me those who disrupt games. ‘Artgames’ are where gamers engage with and build ‘artistic’ games (‘Pong’ is a classic artgame). It is here that Sharp’s experience in art history and curatorship has a specific analytical impact, as he ties many of these pieces (again, there are three case studies) to conceptual art (a movement focussing on ideas). Despite the political or cultural power of some of these pieces (Brenda Romero’s games of complicity being the most obviously so), Sharp notes that they are relatively naïve in art terms. In doing so, he highlights for me the most obvious limitation of these two sets of games considered to this stage: they are made by people who are appropriating or borrowing from traditions and techniques, practices and discourses from outside their areas of expertise, so in either game/play terms of art terms the pieces themselves are limited; this is not to say they do not pack a punch, but to suggest (this is not necessarily Sharp’s case) that these works lack a degree of multi-vocality or complexity.
Sharp’s category ‘Artists’ Games’ takes on a different dimension, in part because this includes a return of art to its more comfortable domain of playfulness and disruption, where a degree of surrender is required for the viewer (or player) to engage with the art works. Some of the pieces explored – such as Blast Theory’s ‘Uncle Roy All Around You’ require a fairly complex set up, while others – by both Mary Flanagan and by Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman can be site specific. It might be that I am more comfortable with the ideas here, but this section encapsulated a more rewarding set of ideas about art, play and playfulness. They are similar to those discussed by Liesbeth Huybrechts in some of her work on participatory art, although she is less explicit about playfulness. There are also some great ideas here that link to pieces in two recent collections I have had a hand in – Catherine Homan’s essay on playful spectatorship in art setting and Tim Stott’s art installations designed to be played on. (From the sections I have read, Stott’s recent Play and Participation in Contemporary Arts Practices is also valuable.)
There is, therefore, a powerful set of ideas and rewarding analysis in this open, engaging and accessible text. It could have been stronger had Sharp done two things better. First, I would have liked better signposting to affordances throughout. The opening discussion was really clear and explicit, but the idea of the affordance is a difficult one at the best of times, let along in a multi-practice discussion such as this one applying the idea in a fairly new arena. Second, the conclusion did not clearly link back to these ideas from the introduction, so I was left with bit of a so-where’s-the-coherence question. It is there, but for a text that is seeking to address two audiences not used to talking with each other I would have liked it to be clearer.
That said, there are some fabulously rich ideas here that I’ll be developing (read: appropriating) for use in my own teaching, and if nothing else I am grateful to have been reminded of the usefulness of ‘Exquisite Corpse’ as a teaching and critical engagement tool. This is a great argument for taking playfulness seriously, and for treating games as much more sophisticated than the image of spotty boys with first person shooters allows.
The impressive thing is just how rich and sophisticated Sharp’s discussion of the ‘art’/‘games’ dynamic is, with its theoretical bases that combine the notion of ‘affordances’ (so widely used in technology studies but also in play studies) with contemporary work on participatory art. When woven together through a series of case studies of the ‘games’/‘art’ interface the result is a piece of work that challenges us to look more carefully at ideas of aesthetics, of play, of games and of art.
Sharp is working with two theoretical triads. In the first, the notion of affordances as the aspects of a thing that suggest its meaning is applied to the way think about cultural forms and practices through the use of conceptual, formal and experiential affordances: these are different aspects of what we might think of the ontological characteristics of a thing or practice (in a sense, its ‘thing-ness’). This triad of ways of doing affordances is put alongside a second triad, in this case where games, game art and art games to allow Sharp to deploy different aspects of the ‘games’/‘art’ relationship. The really impressive thing is that these ideas are complex, but Sharp deals with them all in a brief (17 page) introduction.
The substance of the book is three chapters of three case studies each. In the first, ‘Game Art’ Sharp explores the ways artists make use of game imagery and technology in making art considering those who ‘paint’ with game, those who appropriate games and most delightfully for me those who disrupt games. ‘Artgames’ are where gamers engage with and build ‘artistic’ games (‘Pong’ is a classic artgame). It is here that Sharp’s experience in art history and curatorship has a specific analytical impact, as he ties many of these pieces (again, there are three case studies) to conceptual art (a movement focussing on ideas). Despite the political or cultural power of some of these pieces (Brenda Romero’s games of complicity being the most obviously so), Sharp notes that they are relatively naïve in art terms. In doing so, he highlights for me the most obvious limitation of these two sets of games considered to this stage: they are made by people who are appropriating or borrowing from traditions and techniques, practices and discourses from outside their areas of expertise, so in either game/play terms of art terms the pieces themselves are limited; this is not to say they do not pack a punch, but to suggest (this is not necessarily Sharp’s case) that these works lack a degree of multi-vocality or complexity.
Sharp’s category ‘Artists’ Games’ takes on a different dimension, in part because this includes a return of art to its more comfortable domain of playfulness and disruption, where a degree of surrender is required for the viewer (or player) to engage with the art works. Some of the pieces explored – such as Blast Theory’s ‘Uncle Roy All Around You’ require a fairly complex set up, while others – by both Mary Flanagan and by Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman can be site specific. It might be that I am more comfortable with the ideas here, but this section encapsulated a more rewarding set of ideas about art, play and playfulness. They are similar to those discussed by Liesbeth Huybrechts in some of her work on participatory art, although she is less explicit about playfulness. There are also some great ideas here that link to pieces in two recent collections I have had a hand in – Catherine Homan’s essay on playful spectatorship in art setting and Tim Stott’s art installations designed to be played on. (From the sections I have read, Stott’s recent Play and Participation in Contemporary Arts Practices is also valuable.)
There is, therefore, a powerful set of ideas and rewarding analysis in this open, engaging and accessible text. It could have been stronger had Sharp done two things better. First, I would have liked better signposting to affordances throughout. The opening discussion was really clear and explicit, but the idea of the affordance is a difficult one at the best of times, let along in a multi-practice discussion such as this one applying the idea in a fairly new arena. Second, the conclusion did not clearly link back to these ideas from the introduction, so I was left with bit of a so-where’s-the-coherence question. It is there, but for a text that is seeking to address two audiences not used to talking with each other I would have liked it to be clearer.
That said, there are some fabulously rich ideas here that I’ll be developing (read: appropriating) for use in my own teaching, and if nothing else I am grateful to have been reminded of the usefulness of ‘Exquisite Corpse’ as a teaching and critical engagement tool. This is a great argument for taking playfulness seriously, and for treating games as much more sophisticated than the image of spotty boys with first person shooters allows.
October 22, 2020
Interesting read, basically a long essay on how games interact with art as a concept.
March 13, 2016
This an easy-to-pick up slice of cheesecake on games and art that leaves me feeling happy and full (at least for the time being).
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews