Game Art

Mejan Labs, the go-getting exhibition space devoted to education, research, and experiments in the visual arts, founded by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, has organized ‘Game Art,’ an exhibition with the auspicious aspiration of mapping the evolving trends and synergies between computer gaming and artistic practice. As certain visual artists and designers attempt to renegotiate their rapport with the world of entertainment, and at a time when every art and design school understands the substance of offering studios within immersive virtual worlds like Second Life, this exhibition is perfectly timed, but the outcome is a blunt disappointment.

It is not that the curators at Mejan Labs fail to feature some of the most celebrated artists in the field, it is that the art, abutting the world of computer gaming, is antediluvian by comparison.

This exhibition is perfectly timed, but the outcome is a blunt disappointment.

The checklist includes John Paul Bichard, Petra Vargova, Natalie Bookchin, Göran Sundqvist, Feng Mengbo, Linda Erceg, Gonzalo Frasca, and Joseph Delappe, and while their work is dedicated to the routine themes of gaming – sex, violence, and war – it is too often insipid in approach and, inevitably, technically immature. Imagine setting The Betrothal (1640-50) from the School of Rembrandt, next to the master’s The Jewish Bride (c.1661) and you have the impression of ‘Game Art’. The poor cousin is simply never as satisfying, and because computer games are so ubiquitous nearly everyone has a solid critical eye for judging advanced gaming content and technique. Then there is the money involved. Today the development costs for an Xbox or PlayStation 2 game can reach $7 million per title. Bracket these two factors into the synergy-equation between art and computer games and it takes no great imagination to accurately anticipate the outcome.

It is perhaps not before the tools for creating advanced computer gaming move from centralized monocultural production to small and domesticated production with do-it-yourself kits (the trend that defined the domestication of high technology and likely will define biotechnology) that we will see an explosion of diversity as computer games become the personal undertaking that these artists aspire to. And perhaps DIY worlds like Second Life represent the first step, but we are still some distance from anything meaningful. Other more promising alternatives than those shown in ‘Game Art’ exist, such as Persuasive Games, a small outfit dedicated (according to their website) to creating games for ‘persuasion, instruction and activism.’ What more could artists want?

Ronald Jones