I was listening slash watching the ABC news podcast on itunes the other day and there was a brief segment about a photographer by the name of Philip Toledano.

Toledano, an artist out of New York City has recently completed a series of photos taken of people playing video games. Being a huge gamer himself, Toledano said he had noticed that while people are playing video games, they display these extraordinary emotions and reactions that you don't normally see. In addition, some people exhibit these somewhat abnormal ticks when they become completely immersed in a video game.

As he so appropriately says on his website, "I wanted to take portraits of people that would reveal a hidden part of their character. So I had them play video games."

Has anyone tried out this new flash game called "Line Rider"? My friend introduced me to the game for the first time yesterday, and it is a remarkable game because it is so simple and yet the most complex game I've ever played. The site is at:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/40255643/

The point of this game is to draw the course of a "line rider" who will follow the path you draw. The thing is it follows certain laws of physics, and so the course has to be drawn intentionally. Once you play this game, you'll begin to understand just what can be done because the sky's the limit. Check out this site for what can be done

i found this reading particularly impossible to wrap my head around, as i kept coming back to the basic thought that video games and narratives are not so easily combined, and for good reason. i can understand a desire to look at narratives in a critical context, and for game studies/ludology to develop as a theoretical approach to a growing medium... but after a while, i realized that this need to combine digital/video games with a narrative was like having your cake and eating it, too.
so it was interesting to see where the class discussion led to tonight, but at the same time i feel like there is this obvious disconnect between computer studies and narratiology, and that this gray area was exactly what "First Person" focused a lot of energy on (or at least the parts I managed to plow through...)

After watching the clip where the stationary bicyclist navigates throughout the city, I began to wonder, if this is art, why don't I think of video games as art? I'm sure a lot of people already do assign (at least certain) videogames as pieces of art but the idea that they would be put in this category has actually never occurred to me. Admittedly, I'm a bit prejudiced against video games and this has probably colored my perception of them as art or non-art pieces. How could Doom possibly be put in the same category as a David or Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Seeing how similar the look of the letter city world we saw in the stationary bicycle piece was to certain video games, however, I was forced to reevaluate.

I know this is going back a bit, but this comment refers to the Scott McCloud discussion. Towards the end of class, we were talking a lot of about what art is. McCloud says, "Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn't grow out of either of our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction!" (164). This brought so much controversy because artists work to survive, and normal ways of survival, such as preparing food, have an art or technique to them. We gave tons of other great examples, too (like that unexpected one about the guy who cooked and ate his own fat, that was taken from him through liposuction, and called that art.)

This is just to say props to Christy for pointing out in class that we have to decide what we want from a definition before we can all agree on one for “art.” It’s funny that we started out this class talking about the subjectivity of meaning in words, and now we spend half an hour trying to pin down the universal meaning of “art.” Maybe I’m completely missing the point but I’m happy with defining art as creativity and leaving it at that. Creativity meaning, basically, what Prof. Fitzpatrick threw out in class – that which goes beyond the necessary. Mario pointed out earlier that these types of debates are what we have adjectives for – there’s good art and bad art, but clearly a whole class of people is never going to agree what falls into each category.

Just to begin, everyone should find and listen to the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola's newest film, Marie Antoinette. I have this really great affection for Sofia Coppola--The Virgin Suicides was one of my first favorite movies (the book, incidentally, is also really beautiful). When I heard a year ago that she was working on a new movie, I was ecstatic--but less enthused when I learned that not only was her movie going to be a historical film [ugh], but it would be based on Marie Antoinette [oh no], and set to an 80's soundtrack [dear Lord]. I thought I was about to witness the end of Sofia's young career.

And it's not something people should spend much time discussing. Just stop thinking of art as a noun, because it's really not. Think of it as an adjective, like "useful." Different things are useful to different people. Pants are only useful to people with legs. Computers are only useful to people under 30. Art really makes a great adjective. Try it - it's easy! Think of all the fine new applications: "art exhibit," "art film," "art critic," "art kids." It really slips off the tongue.

From this day forth, "art" shall be an adjective, "problematic" shall be a noun, and "problematize" shall be a word.

So, I was thinking about this art/not-art debate. I actually really like McCloud's definition even thought I think it goes overboard. actually, over-broad. It encompasses too much, but in my opinion, it's better to call too many things art than not enough. Calling things aren't that weren't intended to be is fine, but telling someone who thinks they've created art that they actually haven't is communist.

I came up with a possible solution to this question. It harkens back to science class, which I did pretty well in. So follow this if you can:

Two of the types of energy are kinetic and potential. If a rock is rolling down a hill, that is kinetic energy. If that same rock is sitting at the top of a hill not moving, we say it has potential energy because of the energy that it could possess if prompted.

Speaking of off the topic, let me waste 30 seconds of your time.

In my sculpture class last week, we were looking at some slides of some famous "art" pieces. We were looking at the work of some guy who's name i can't remember who chiseled these incredibly detailed marble sculptures. We were comparing this to the work of some other guy I can't remember whose sculptures were essentially just things he found that he modified slightly. For example, one of his pieces of "art" was a urinal that he painted some very small letters on, and set on its back.
By taking an object that he did not create, and altering it ever so slightly, yet calling it his work, he is raising many questions of authorship. Is he still the "author" of this work, even though he didn't really create it? Does his style of "art" make him any less of an "artist" than the first guy who does something that people consider more legitimate.