The Art of Video Games: A Smithsonian Art Exhibition

[Ragefighter]

http://americanart.si.edu/exhibition...ve/2012/games/

Found out about this a few months ago and thought it was pretty cool.

I know that a lot of games are not featured in it that people would have liked to see, but I think it is more important than seeing your games in a museum. What is awesome is that they are showing Video Games in the American Art Museum!!

This can be a big step for Gamers and Game Devs/Artists, I hope this helps make video games more "accepted" as a form of Art like movies and music are.

To me it is a no brainer that video games should be seen just as films are but that day is probably years away if not never...

Anyway just thought I would put this on the forums for anyone who was interested in going to this unique exhibit.

It is going on at the American Art Museum in Washington DC (The Smithsonian), AFAIK admission to this is Free (as it is in all Smithsonian's) and it will be held from March 16 - September 30, 2012.

here is another link to some videos about it:
http://americanart.si.edu/exhibition...games/artists/

[Graywolves]

I was talking to some friends not long ago about the general under-appreciation of art in video games.

Good to see we're finally getting in the right direction.

It's interesting how views on video games have changed in the past ten years among the general populace.

[Ait'al]

That is directly correlated to the intelligence of the people playing in the games in the last 10 years. 8p

10 years prior to that they were a lot more engineers and mathematicians(or up and coming ones) who could play them to their fullest and design a game personally if they wanted to. Now it's very different. Though technically it gives them less reason to complain since that means it IS now the general populace playing video games. They are a self loathing bunch. I'm not referring to arcade and console games in this either. I just mean old PC/mud gaming. You notice the arcade and console games had low opinions too. Unless they became infused with some real creativity for a short while like some did during the SNES era for a bit. It's about how creative they are relativistically to what else exist at the time. People respect those who are doing it on the cutting edge and put work into it and display and create ability. They do not mindless game play.

Games are a pure math field though. It's not like there's nothing in them.

Edit: Oh, god. Don't tell me they are only displaying the visual art and not the game play/mathematical realities of the games. 8p The visuals are absurdly disproportionate to the need and other design considerations today. If you took a game that could focus on design over visuals the visuals would be just as nice in a different way. They would be deeper and greater considerations and Inspiration.

Saw the first video. I'm a little depressed. It looks like it's going to be dumbed down and silly. The real value of video games only comes out when you put a pure hard edged mathematician in front of a computer and let him be creative. You can't display that visually or design wise without a high degree of math skills. That sadly doesn't exist anymore like it once did. That is what made games to good once. It's not a true creative field. It's an ametuer art field today.

Whether anyone get it or not, game design is a math field. You are literally measured by your math skills in it whether you think or understand you are or not in every way. And the math field ain't thriving right now.

[Ragefighter]

Originally Posted by Ait'al

Saw the first video. I'm a little depressed. It looks like it's going to be dumbed down and silly. The real value of video games only comes out when you put a pure hard edged mathematician in front of a computer and let him be creative. You can't display that visually or design wise without a high degree of math skills. That sadly doesn't exist anymore like it once did. That is what made games to good once. It's not a true creative field. It's an ametuer art field today.

Whether anyone get it or not, game design is a math field. You are literally measured by your math skills in it whether you think or understand you are or not in every way. And the math field ain't thriving right now.

It is in an Art Museum not a Science/Math one so I can understand why they would not focus on the code and math stuff. I think this is more along the lines of how the game artists and programmers put the work together to build a memorable story or experience.

I totally agree that if a game is flawed at the code level it can ruin it. But you just don't go to an Art Museum to look at large panels of code/math problems, YET anyway! lol

I would like to see a Science of Videogames (would basically be Math but not many would go to an exhibit on math lol) also could be the way science plays a role in games. Like how Physics and stuff effects it. (gravity, and other forces). I mean look at a simple game like Angry Birds is kinda showing the average person more about basic physics. The new Space one is pretty cool with the orbits and what not. But im getting off topic again. lol

Plus a lot of company's would never give their code to be put on display because someone would just copy it or something. Art can be copied and still make a shitty game IMO.

I always wanted to be a Game Programmer but there are not many places in the North East USA that are not very expensive that offer a game dev specific degree.

[Vash02]

Originally Posted by Graywolves

I was talking to some friends not long ago about the general under-appreciation of art in video games.

Good to see we're finally getting in the right direction.

It's interesting how views on video games have changed in the past ten years among the general populace.

It's because we've come from mario/sonic to mass effect/deus ex in the last tne or fifteen years.

Plus the gaming generation has grown up.

[Arby]

Yea I saw this late last year, and I picked up tickets for me and some cohorts to goto the May 5th concert and attend the exhibit... Cool stuff..