This is a short response to Michael Abbott’s latest post over at the Brainy Gamer, on the topic of understanding video games as artistic works. While I couldn’t possibly put his eloquent words into finer poesy, perhaps the following few points are worth thinking about. I admit that they’re controversial points, but I don’t offer them for the sake of controversy – I simply want to extend the “language” for video games in whatever way I can. The best way to do this, I think, is to make some distinctions between the kinds of language often used in video and computer games, which are often mixed up and conflated with each other. This is my first official crack at it.
1. There is no communicative “medium” to speak of in art. A medium presupposes a message of some kind – a basic, unambiguous code that can be transmitted from point to point. Because artistic works are inherently ambiguous in their meaning, there are no messages in artistic works. Video and computer games are not a communicative medium, and they have no message.
2. The artist has no hidden message for us. Even when an artist deeply desires to communicate, moralize, educate, challenge, or amuse the audience – their artistic creation will always frustrate, deny, and exceed their intentions. Trying to interpret or understand an artistic work by guessing at the artist’s intentions is a blind, endless, alley.
3. What we think of as an artistic “medium” is simply a set of conventions and tools used for artistic expression, bound together in a common style or genre. Painting or drawing media, such as crayons, charcoal, and paper, are tools used for expressive purposes. Computers are the primary medium through which video and computer games are created; games are therefore not a “medium” in the creative, artistic sense. Games are creative expressions brought to life through many kinds of tools.
4. The expressive qualities of a work of art, or video game, come from many different sources. Some of those sources of meaning are bound up with the artistic medium – the fact that a game must proceed in a logical, rule-based, manner. The artistic methods and techniques of the artist also bring a particular personal expression to the work. The cultural and historical context that an artist works in, responds to, lives, contributes to the meanings we find in the work. The emotional and intellectual depth, imaginative capacities, intensity and breadth of feelings, and sensitivity of the reader/viewer/player/audience bring meaning to the art piece. All of these things, bound up together, give us a “sense” of what an artistic work means. Segregating any of these elements (culture, language, artistic method, the artist, the audience, the piece itself) and trying to pin down the source of meaning onto just one thing is a plain mistake. However, contextualizing and interrelating these elements, one to another, gives us the chance to understand what art is about.
So there are a few distinctions: the first (1 & 2) having to do with the confusion over a medium-as-a-means-for-communication, and the second (3 & 4) having to do with the confusion over a game-as-an-artistic-medium.
In the end, games are no different from other symbolic forms insofar as understanding them, what they mean to us and not simply our opinions of them, demands a holistic view of the particular game, the genre, the artist, the artistic method, the culture, and the audience, among many other things. As Michael suggests, sometimes 21st-century Bolivian painters do have much to learn from 18th-century composers, just as game designers have a lot to learn from books, films, music, drama, and fine art. All human expression is a thick jambalaya of influences, and to single any one particular thing out – for instance by claiming that the language for video games should not include the language for film or music – is a mistake, I believe.
And finally, pulling together the roots, similarities, and relationships of meaning in games are not simply “academic” endeavors that only some elite crowd can do. Even being able to say “I’m playing an FPS” is a step in the right direction – of recognizing that this particular game belongs in a long history of first-person shooters. What is tougher is taking those extra few steps, and showing how the particular feelings the game gives you, the other games it plays like, the style of the art or technical direction, or the culture of war or violence that the game was created within – all give a sense to this being a meaningful thing. This is someone everyone is capable of, as long as they’re willing to make a few more connections they weren’t planning to. Like Michael said – this is something worth doing.
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I think you’ve made some very perceptive points, although I dispute these ideas: “there are no messages in artistic works” and “The artist has no hidden message for us”. You even say “Even when an artist deeply desires to communicate”, which implies that they may in fact have a message. Certainly I have tried to communicate messages through my creative works. I’m sure I haven’t been successful, and I fully appreciate that the artist’s message is open to interpretation. I have also indeed made things fully intending the message to be open to multiple interpretations. But that doesn’t mean that there were no messages at all in the author’s mind, no matter how futile the attempt to convey them.
I agree in all other respects. People often place too much emphasis on the ‘message’ in an artistic work, as though art is just a way of making clever ciphers for the author’s thoughts.
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Movies seamlessly blend photography, theater and music all at the same time. You’re a passive observer of such beauty, as with all art forms so far but in primitive cultures where art is participative, such as dance and music.
Games bring back interaction by the observer: the fact that he can explore the environment, unfold secrets and even believe he is actually influencing the plot (actually pre-scripted branches). This is all very nice, specially in the face of ever better and more smoothly blended cutscenes which give away the main narrative points.
The only problem for games to be considered art — or at least narrative art as many want — is that the bit which makes games unique, the interaction bit, is not as well developed as the audio-visual artistry it employs, nor as engaging as the literary plots conveyed in the non-interactive cutscenes.
Graphical action games ever since Spacewar has consistently been all about just moving objects around and exploring the virtual space, not truly moving or influencing the plot in meaninful ways.
The closest I see to true interactive narrative — complete with player-directed branching plots and NPCs reacting to it (and possibly showing emotional growth) — are modern interactive fiction games such as Varicella:
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/vgame.z8.js -
@Justin, glad you wrote in!
I’ll try to clear up the confusion with that statement. What I meant was that the artist both has no final say on what the ‘message’ of the work is, because there really isn’t a single message in an artistic work. (Something you seem to agree with). An artistic work has meanings, and although an artist (as you’ve said) can even try communicating a single clear message through it, in the end there is always the interpretation of the audience that makes the work meaningful.
I certainly agree that the artist can attempt to craft something with a message in it, ie. “Eat at Joe’s”, but the meaning of that message is always left up grabs. Is the message an instruction? Is it the thoughts or feelings of the artist? Is it an ironic statement? Is it a moralism? etc etc..
Perceiving the creator’s intent is possible, but only by asking him/her directly – and that removes the art piece from the picture and replaces it with the artist’s intentions or opinions.Thinking of art as a ‘message’ to be decrypted, as a kind of communication between the artist and audience, has to be dispensed with because it presupposes that there can be one unambiguous message at all. Messages can and must be unambiguous if they’re to be used for communication – there is no interpreting them. That’s why I’m trying to get away from the language of communication – because it gives us the feeling that there is some ultimate single meaning to a piece of work that just needs to be decompiled and figured out… and that’s now how art works, that’s how computers work.
Thanks for writing in. I’m glad that this brought up a bit of dispute – because in many ways I share in your feeling that art *can* have a message. But in your sense, the word “message” needs to mean a “moral”, “social commentary”, or personal statement. It’s just the language of ‘messaging’ that needs to go because it confuses the world of communication with the world of meaning.
Jeez, sorry I went on for so long. I guess I wasn’t as clear as I should have been in the article
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@namekuseijin -
Those are some very insightful points. Indeed, I don’t believe that computer and video games have exploited their interactive possibilities in unique and timeless ways, such as we’ve seen in other forms of symbolic art.
In terms of narrative expression, I agree that Interactive Fiction has made some positive steps toward integrating moving stories with interaction – especially using creative imagery. I’m looking forward to trying out Varicella – but it doesn’t like Safari, so I’m going to have to try it out on my other computer.
But in many ways I wonder how interactive narratives are just another attempt at “mimesis” – at representing the interactivity of the ‘real world’ through the computer medium. Branching narratives, emotive and transformable NPCs, and emergent plots are all interesting, but these are simply attempts at representing real-world interpersonal interaction with algorithms. That’s not to say that these games aren’t fun, entertaining, or emotionally moving – as they obviously might be. But it’s easy to lose sight of the aesthetic and imaginative possibilities that computer and video games have when we’re attempting to represent things.
I think the biggest challenge that games will have in the future is moving from being an representative art, to being a more expressive art. The move from interactivity-with-objects to interactivity-through-symbolism. Games as interactive poetry.
This, I feel, is the direction that games like The Endless Forest are starting to go in.
Thanks again for your comment – this is of course a very difficult issue to tackle, and your thoughts are appreciated!
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Hi Chris,
From your initial article, I was pretty geared up for an argument!
But then I read your comments, and saw, I guess, your deeper meaning, and think that maybe some of it got lost from the original post. I guess my only qualm with your ideas in the post (particularly in regards to the first point of not having a message in an artwork) is that what then becomes the point of Artwork, if authorial intent/message is removed? What separates the Mona Lisa or the Sistine Chapel from a piece of bubble gum that I scrape off my shoe? (Other than the fact that the creators of the two former works spent a lot longer making them than the bubble-gum chewer) I’d contend that it is the authors intention, which, then imbues the work with a certain kind of message. (It’s obviously a much more complicated process than simply “intending” something and then “realising” something, but for the sake of brevity lets just pretend Michelangelo was pretty capable of rendering in paint whatever he wanted.)
I agree with you that the artist has no final, complete or objective say in *how* the artwork is received – but to remove the importance of its inclusion just strikes me as rather perverse. I also disagree that the authors intention is only attainable through “asking him/her directly”, what I’d suggest happens instead is that we most often find facets of the artists intention in the work – not the whole, or the complete message.
For instance with “Eat at Joes” – someone may discover in the artwork “Eat”, and others may instead focus on “Joe”. To write off the whole, complicated, messy and interesting area of intention/reception seems like a grave error to me – and certainly there is a HUGE interest in the academic world (as I’m sure you’ll probably be aware) in researching just exactly how intention/reception functions.
I guess what I’m saying is that I am uncomfortable with saying “the authors intention doesn’t have any bearing on how we receive the artwork” which was kind of the impression I got. Perhaps I misread you, if I have, I apologise. Thanks for starting an interesting discussion. =)
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Thanks for such an insightful post and for your kind remarks about my essay, Chris.
You have me thinking about my liberal use of the term “medium” to differentiate games from film, novels, etc.. I think I’ve relied on it rather unconsciously, simply to make certain distinctions, but your piece has me thinking this is probably a mistake. A medium is like a tunnel that channels a certain kind of traffic in a specific way. Radio and newspapers can be seen in this regard in terms of the ways they deliver news or other content. Considered in this light, I too am uncomfortable with the notion of art being defined solely by its delivery mechanism.
Now I need a better way to delineate among these, uh, modes of expression? Art forms? I’m open to suggestions.
As for the question of the artist’s intentions, I’m definitely in the camp which says once the art is released into our hands, the artist’s intentions have almost no bearing on the meaning of a piece of art. In fact, I think an artist’s protestations about intent can sometimes work to limit the wide range of receptions good art is bound to provoke. Once it’s out there, nobody owns it anymore. I’m very interested in what artists have to say about their work, and I love listening to them discuss their process…but I also take it with a big grain of salt.
Audiences often tell me the craziest things they see in my own work in the theater. I always say I intended whatever they saw.
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@Ben – I’m glad that I inspired at least a bit of disagreement!
Perhaps I need to edit the post in light of the comments afterwards – not everyone will spend the time reading through these. You bring up a VERY important point though – and I’d like to offer a different account.(and bear with me here, we’re trudging through deeper brush now) -
The most important reason I want to get away from intentionalizing art is because once we treat an artistic work as only the expression of the artist (ie, the outer manifestations of their inner psychological states), we lose a grip on the work of art itself. That’s what I’m interested in. I’m not interested in the artist’s personal life, or their inner states – I’m interested in a work of art as something being both a personal expression (the artist still absolutely matters!), a cultural expression, a historical expression, and a symbolic form. There’s another good reason too: on what basis would we guess correctly at the artist’s inner psychological state? When we look at the figure of David, do we say, ‘Look at the way David’s body is posed towards us, yet the head faces away from us. Michelangelo must have wanted us to see David as an emotionally distant person.’ Another person will say, ‘No, I think that Michelangelo wanted us to see how David both desires us with his body, and is intellectually disgusted with us.’
In both of those (bad) examples, I really think the words “Michelangelo wanted us to see…” doesn’t add anything to the viewer’s sense of the painting. They feel the painting in terms of its presence to them, the embodied experience that it carries for them. And the same goes for video games. When I play Monkey Island and enjoy the humor, I don’t need to guess at the author’s intentions. It just makes me laugh. I don’t have to scrutinize the work and ask myself if Ron Gilbert meant something as a joke, it’s just funny to me. And if we’re going to appreciate video games, as we appreciate art, one of the ways we can do that is by understanding how Ron Gilbert’s particular artistic works, his hilarious games, are both unique in themselves and share something with an entire history of video games.yikes! again I managed to blather on. But in the end, I do think your point has a lot of merit to it. After all, these hard and fast distinctions were made to generate some discussion – in reality they’re a lot more complicated to adjudicate.
Thanks again Ben.
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@Michael,
Although the post wasn’t directed at you, I did notice that some of the debates re: MGS4, which I found fruitful, were becoming enmired in the swamp of “medium”. Your characterization of a medium is exactly the one I was thinking of – radio and newspaper, and the human social sciences, typically depend upon this kind of medium in order to deliver “objective” and “unambiguous” messages.
As for another word for it – I really don’t know
I’ve tried a few different ones out, and nothing seems to fit the bill. I like “symbolic form” – it’s a phrase I picked up from the philosopher Ernst Cassirer, in a beautiful little book called “Language and Myth”.I absolutely agree with you that an artist claiming to have the final say on a work of art is nonsense. I’m almost gleaming that you picked up on the point that I was haphazardly trying to get to: once rendered or performed, an artistic piece is a public artifact that’s outside of the artist’s hands. I too love listening to artists talk about their work, but only as “spectators” of their own work. I also *love* to hear about their methods, which very much matter also.
That reminds me of the horrible act of narcissism that J.K. Rowling managed to do when she unambiguously stated during a press conference that one of the characters in her Harry Potter series was gay. She stated it as if she were the ultimate authority on Harry Potter – as if the books just existed within her mind alone, and people should come begging at the Well of Knowledge for a taste. I’ve personally never seen an author make such a dictatorial, and foolish, move.
Good to hear from you Michael!
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Thanks for the reply Chris,
I totally agree with both you and Michael that “once rendered or performed, an artistic piece is a public artifact that’s outside of the artist’s hands.” Never was a truer word spoke, as any aspiring artist can attest.
I guess I’m probably just wary of ignoring the artists contribution to the artwork. I mean, it’d just seems to make no sense to me to pretend that this /thing/ that has become an artwork just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It came from someone/somewhere, and even though the audience brings arguably a lot more with them than the artwork itself ever possibly could (I’m talking about a whole lifetime of experience in the person compared to whatever went into the artwork, be it though, blood sweat and tears, or a certain designed process).
I guess I probably think of an artwork as a Catalyst for whatever springs forth from the audience – granted much of it does come down to interpretation and reception , but it remains that without the artwork, there would BE no reception. And that artwork was created, and chances are good that there was some kind of rhyme or reason to the creation.
Does that maybe explain my crazed concentration on the need to account for artistic… er… authorship?
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I think I understand your position Ben – and I don’t think it’s at odds with mine, as far as I can tell. I too believe that the artist’s contribution is absolutely important – I just want to leave behind the idea that some people have that when we engage with a piece, we are engaging with its author.
I like the idea of art as a “catalyst” – I’d also like to think of it as creating a “public space” where ideas and interpretations can come alive.
I suspect that I misunderstood you in the first place – I got the sense that saw the artist as somehow being ‘inside of’ the art piece, and that we could interact with him/her by engaging with the piece.
Thanks again for the reply – this has been a very enlightening discussion. Enough to write a whole paper out of!
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Hi, I’m a newcomer to the comments, (been reading for a while though!)
I have to disagree with your statements about the usage of the word “medium,” however (although I know most of this is an argument about semantics.)
Certainly the discussion so far about the disparity in an artist’s intent, and an audience’s perception, is great and inevitable, and in fact is one of the phenomena worth celebrating about art. And when “analyzing,” “evaluating,” or “observing” (choose your favorite) a work as art, we acknowledge that work’s ability to make us feel certain ways and think certain things, taking into account its context – which may or may not include prior knowledge of the artist and his/her “intent.”
However, when analyzing/evaluating/observing a work as a communication – an *attempt* at relaying a message from A to B without any corruption of the original message, we critique the creator’s ability to make that message reach his intended audience.
But these things aren’t completely separate. If a photographer’s photo from the battlefield in Iraq is published on the front page of the newspaper, clearly it is a communication. The viewer receives the information that there are soldiers, in the dry heat of a desert town, and they’re yelling and there’s a lot of chaos (sorry for the stereotype of an example). But it’s also not hard for us to view the photo as art (and certainly no photographer would be stranger to this mindset) – the photograph has an ability to fill us with a sense of patriotism, or pity for the homeowners victimized by living on a battlefield, or a reminder of that roadtrip we took through similarly arid Arizona desert, etc.
The point is, even while viewing the photo as art, it still has a medium – and even if the artist is not strictly attempting to control the message conveyed – they still convey *a message* through that medium.
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Hi Vin,
Thanks for your contribution. I like your analysis, because it does something I failed to do in the article (I think) – point out how different perspectives give the reader/viewer/player a different sense for meaning. So to sum it up – if we treat it as art, we see it as an artifact that evokes something in us despite not having a ‘message’; if we treat it as a communication it is ‘information’ that is ‘sent’ to us from the author that we must decoded to ‘get it right’. Here’s something worth considering however – when art is treated as a message, it often becomes dogmatic or didactic .. it instructs us to view the world only in one unambiguous way. The other sense of art, art as a dialogue between the viewer and the artifact, is the radical opposite – it has no message for us other than the feelings we bring to it (and it helps shape in response), and in doing so opens us up to a larger world of feeling and belief. You’re right that both forms still fill us with feelings – but art-as-message instructs us to feel a certain way (which I believe is morally/ethically questionable) and art-as-dialogue frees us to feel.
These perspectives, I think, are mutually incompatible, and represent the last 400 years (since Descartes, let’s say) worth of tension between sciences and the arts.The only difficulty I have with your conception of messaging is that how can something be a message if someone else didn’t intend to send one? It would be like receiving an unaddressed letter one day, walking over to your neighbor’s home, and thanking them (as they stand there completely baffled) for their nice note. They didn’t send it, or mean to send it, but you thank them for their communique? This is why getting away from the language of messaging is so important: unaddressed letters are meaningful, and they are like messages (ie. ‘a message or sign from god’), but ultimately break down when the analogy is worked out.
Either way, thanks for extending the quality of the discussion – your comment reminds me that there are so many facets worth exploring here! And of course, thanks for reading these somewhat irregular articles.
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A little petty but to clear something up J. K. Rowling didn’t explicitly state Dumbledore was gay, she said: “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay”. She was merely stating a personal opinion on a character if that was treated as an absolute that’s as much a fault of the audience as her. Is she not, just like us, allowed to have opinions about her characters?
But what if the matter of his sexuality had been explicitly mentioned in the books? Would that have been just as narcissist on the part of the author? Or what that have been treated as simply another facet of his character?
I might be losing myself here but I’ve always struggled with understanding art.
My personal problem is that I find it difficult to accept art as something devoid of the explicit meaning of the creator. I’m only really able to appreciate it as a lens by which I can view the mind of the creator. Everything that exists within the creation is there for a reason, a reason decided upon by the creator therefore I have to take it as a whole, in terms of the language, structure and the cultural background in which it appears. Even the time at which it is created is decided upon by the creator, they choose to creator it at this time.
What I take from any work of art is clearly as closely bound to my own beliefs and prejudices as it is to those of its creator. But surely without some explicit intent on the part of the creator I merely seeing what I want to see, might I not just as well be looking in a mirror?
This is why I’ve never understood some of the readings of Portal as a message of feminism, all such interpretations seem to have much more to do with agenda of the audience as that of the creator.
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Read “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” by Marshall McLuhan. I think everything in your list is covered in it.
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