ConfigSys.boy wanted me to respond to his essay Arts and Electronic Entertainment.
Sigh. Electronic Entertainment is Art.
I have more to write but basically I think that you are being to hard with unreasonable expectations of the medium. I could go on for hours but I will try to be brief.
Let me ask you this. Who was the greatest artist of the Twentieth century? But before you respond to that you have to consider what makes an artist great. I think the definition of what that makes an artist great is that if they are recognized by the average people and touch the lives of the masses and population. So how many people in the world can recognize the works of Picasso verses how many people can recognize the work of Walt Disney. So who is the greater artist Picasso or Walt Disney?
The entire concept of "Fine art" has been dead for decades. And artistic intelectuailism is both elitist and irevilant. Allow me to illustrate this. Name me the top five greatest oil paintings of the last decade? What were the top five greatest pieces of classical music in the past decade? Who is the Picasso of today? Who is the Shakespeare?
Digital interactive entertainment games are only twenty five years into the mass consumer media sphere. Movies first started to become a form of entertainment in the 1890s and so it is still 1920 for videogames. In it's brief history digital interactive entertainment has surpassed the amount of money spent on the cinema in the US. In the same time frame the medium of film was only able to produce a Birth of a Nation. Fritz Lang's Metropolis and even the Jazz Singer were not created by 1920. The ability to make games is more accessible to a high school student of today than a teenager in 1920 could make a feature movie.
Citizen Kane took was made in 1941 a full forty six years after film first came into the public mind. Digital interactive entertainment has twenty one years to produce a similar moving work of art. I am a big fan of Yu Suzuki's Shenmue and the possibilities of videogames already being a meaning full form of artistic expression is already here in the works of Rez, Ico, Final Fantasy.
The goal of digital entertainment is not to replace the cinema but to evolve into it's own means.
The future is now. The future is tomorrow. Insert coin. Press Start to Play. A Winner is You.
there is a new picasso Jakemiester!
God timing is everything.
Man that was wierd because i didnt know you were going to post that on the article! WE ROCK!
here are my 2000 yen.......
I say niether. Picasso
was great in his own right (for the period in question but was an egomaniac
and an abusive bastard....like Frank Loyd Wright) but nobody had a bigger
impact on pop culture than Walt Disney. Did you know that old Walt was
dishonorably discharged from the Marines? He kept 2 guns at his desk at all
times. A .45 auto and a .38 special in a lower drawer. If you watch Walt
Disney Presents you can see his dishonorable discharge hanging on the wall
behind him UPSIDE DOWN! Of course you cant read it...but you can tell it is
upside down. WOOT! he was too much of a free thinker and was drummed out of
the "corps". The army isnt really like that. From everything i have seen they cherish creativity....well at least to some degree.
Jake is right about this...."Fine art" is DEAD! good riddance to those elitist bastards.
JAKE SAID:"Digital interactive entertainment games are only twenty five years into the mass consumer media sphere. Movies first started to become a form of entertainment in the 1890s and so it is still 1920 for videogames."
I think this is absolutely true. Give it time. It will become the new mass medium for home entertainment. Although i think that hybrid entertainment will replace videoganes as a more "legitimate" medium.
Stop spreading lies, myths and urban legends. Walt Disney was an ambulance driver for the Red Cross in WWI, and not in the Marines as you have mistakenly fallen for and spread here. He did get in some trouble, but was proven innocent and later "released" from service with the Red Cross. His so called "office" that his dishonorable discharge hung upside down in was really a sound stage, not his real office. Would the Marine Corps waste paper on a dishonorable discharge? No, and what is more rediculous is that somebody would prominently display it, upside down nonetheless. Give the man credit for the great things he did accomplish. He was a forward thinking entrepreneur with an artistic talent that made him a worldwide household name.
Semper Fi
Yeah it looks like he was in the Red Cross ( http://www.snopes.com/disney/waltdisn/discharg.htm )