[haze]

[Balzac]

[option]

[remote]

So this discussion gets rehashed in a major way at least once every year, then, huh?

[Predator Goose]

[haze]

[Shapermc]

The Watchmen relies too heavily on standard text (lit format) as a crutch.

Watchmen fails!

(From Hell is a much better book by Moore)
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The bad sleep well at The Gamer's Quarter

[Gin]

[Balzac]

[haze]

[Balzac]

[Predator Goose]

I'm tempted to defend those as I do respect GitS and Eva, but instead I'll just suggest that we get back on topic.
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I can no longer shop happily.

[remote]

Mind Game.

Post-Eva anime, sure, but stoner babble? Have a soul.

(That is not directed at you specifically, Balzac.)

haze, Mind Game was a lot more tastefully artful than Eva, in my opinion, as well as a lot more fun. I mean, if you really think having too much fun is antithesis to "art". Then I disagree? However, if you were to say that Eva's fan-pandering giant robots 'n' cute girls 'n' apocalyptic angst geekfest moments undermined its more serious messages and made them seem all the more overwrought, well, yeah — then I'd agree.

If we really must make the argument that anime can be artistic and profound, outside of Miyazaki I'd say Mind Game is probably the most earnest example.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[SplashBeats]

Antitype, you should watch Kemonozume. It tells a very heart-felt story about love in the strangest way Yuasa could muster. It seems to be his forte.

I can't tell if the "high art isn't fun" people are trolling are not. High art, low art, or anything else is about as fun as the viewer finds it!

Games are about as artful as you can expect a thirty year old medium to be. You don't see Picasso on those old cave walls, no sir. You see a lot of violence!

[Predator Goose]

For the record, my question was "can high art be funny?" And it was meant in all seriousness.
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I can no longer shop happily.

[remote]

I did watch Kemonozume! You even commented in the LJ entry in which I discussed it!

Fucking best anime series I've seen, probably.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[remote]

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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Zebadayus]

This is all the worst crap I've ever read.

You all should be ashamed of yourselves for what you've said in this thread.

Art? ART? Who gives a damn! Geez.

[Martial Loh]

wow. i've forgotten what my original point, or lack of point, was now.. anyway, I'll stick with whoever's answer of "posting on forums is the biggest waste of time". And here we are.

Kemonozume was probably the best animated series I saw in 2006. I quite enjoyed finally finishing Planetes too.

Predator Goose- isn't funny also personal/subjective? I'd say yes to your question. Whether it stops being "high" as a result, I don't know.

[Talbain]

[SplashBeats]

[Predator Goose]

Talbain, what I was going for was that if something has constraints, then it must be definable even if only in broad terms. I attempted to point that out by saying that nature is not art, and that we reserve that term for man made creations. But even if we accept nature as art, I still believe there is a constraint that it must be viewed by man, or more generally, an intellect. And since it has a constraint, it must be definable.

[SplashBeats]

I meant the pisser, sir.

[Talbain]

[SplashBeats]

A miserable pile of secrets?

[Predator Goose]

[Talbain]

I'm curious, but is a sticking point for my definition that if man were to be art, he might be likened to God?
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[Ebrey]

[Predator Goose]

[Predator Goose]

[haze]

I wasn't really trolling, I was being completely serious. and completely cynical.

I'm not even arguing what is or isn't art, so maybe people misunderstood me. I think it's a bit pointless anyway, so I don't find it very fun to argue on that. what I'm going at here is how do you get something to be publicly accepted as an "art"

okay yeah that has a billion definitions i know, but i mean it in some general sense. look at movies, this culture kind of absorbs them as an art form. 95% of movie-watchers don't really care, they just want to have fun. it's something to do while on a date. and on the other side are all the artsy critics and film makers and whatever. both sides hate each other. I already forgot where I'm going with this analogy.

even if they won't stamp their feet and defend moving pictures as an art form, most people seem to accept it as one. aren't the Academy Awards a pretty big deal? they think it's something worth judging. just like popular music, or TV shows (and to a lesser extent these days, books!)

imagine a hypothetical award for "best fast food franchise kid's meal toy of the year" and how everyone would go "big deal. what's the difference?"

so I guess I'm saying that you've somehow got to appeal to old college professors and Time magazine writers who've never had any interest in _______ medium because they think it's a waste of time and nothing serious. they don't want something fun and whimsical, a good way to spend some time, they want something serious and pretentious. (I'm not even using 'pretentious' as an insult here, it's rather neutral to me) want to convince the elite of society that comic books can have artistic merit? BUST OUT THE WATCHMEN. and um..... Maus... (Maus is not at all pretentious, but it certainly is more serious than about having fun). they'll champion these examples and the word will spread, and everyone can feel confident about calling their comics an "art" instead of shunning their hobby. "here read Watchmen" and if they didn't like it and still don't think of comics as an art, well they're just a big doo-doo head! millions of fans say so!

you can't really do that with videogames right now. there's nothing quite good enough (pretentious enough) that everyone can rally behind with confidence to prove something to the rest of the world. maybe soon! it would get low ratings for not being that much fun to play. it'll probably be a jRPG, like by someone who played too much Xenogears.


I guess the stupid point I'm trying to make here is that the only difference between movies and videogames is that "serious" aspect of it. how much of it there is, how well known it is. only a handful of videogame fans consider it an art, and almost all of them are critics instead of creators.

It'll get to a ridiculous point where the serious stuff will still be celebrated as art while the fun stuff will be considered a crude watered-down form of art intended for mass consumption. man I hate that.

anyway, that's why I hate Watchmen! not that I actually hate it. just the part how being more wordy and pretentious than anything else is widely considered the acme of the comics species. yech. it gathered more attention than anything made for fun. the same thing will happen to videogames, I swear.


I'm just being way too cynical because I have a nihilistic view on talking about art, and so I think it's really pointless and doesn't matter what I say. On the other hand, I'm very optimistic about games themselves! Honest, I'm not pessimistic about them at all. I believe they'll only get better in the future. it won't matter what's called art and what isn't, who cares what will be popular. the game designers will do what they believe. their actions speak louder than words.

(I don't really hate Watchmen or anything else I call pretentious, I actually love them for what they are. Except GitS, I really do hate that crap. I'm glad it's been largely forgotten today.)

[aderack]

Art is a means of communication through implicit, rather than explicit, symbolism and meant to appeal to the subconscious and intuition, rather than to the conscious and reason.

This communication can be conducted through any medium. The fun part about it: intent needn't even be a factor; merely communication. So if the recipient of a manmade work reads in it something that was not consciously intended by its creator, that reading (presuming it's genuine) is as legitimate an interpretation as any based upon a deliberate message. Perhaps more so.

As regards non-manmade works -- a sunset, a rainbow, an orangutan; whatever natural beauty you might appreciate -- that's somewhat different in the sense that, provided you aren't subscribing to a supernatural interpretation of artist (say, God), it truly is a one-sided conversation.

I suppose the act of receiving an artistic message would best be described as inspiration. One may be inspired by anything, of course; art is simply a manufactured way of appealing to that impulse.

So, as I've said again and again, videogames cannot be art in the sense that nothing can be art; they're simply an artistic medium, in the sense that any medium may be artistic. All they do is communicate the art with which they are designed.

[JamesE]

[JamesE]

[diplo]

[remote]

I would like to know what you think of things like improvisation (e.g. free jazz) and generative art (e.g. Spore and its soundtrack, provided by Brian Eno's Shuffler program), which are largely based on chance.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Gin]

Guys, art is the desperate human activity of trying to give meaning to the universe, which is essentially an unimaginably huge structure of meaningless data otherwise. A sunset doesn't really mean anything, it's just there, a pattern of photons refracting through our atmosphere. Art is when we apply abstraction to create meaning out of our very coincidental existence.

Well you could also have nihilistic art to prove that our existence doesn't have meaning.

Anyway, every bit of human experience then is art, what we actually call art, would be that which holds a greater individual meaning.


I don't know if that makes sense because I just woke up and now I am going back to sleep.

[Talbain]

Somehow I feel this argument of what art "is" has been done before. Probably by better minds than any of us as well, though I'm sure the results were similar, which is to say, disparities on the concept, as well as the application.

Defining art really does seem much like defining love to me. There are parameters, sure, but what they are? Damned if I know.
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[aderack]

[JamesE]

[aderack]

I've got two degrees. How many do you have?