Links: Game Art around the web
- Must see: Brilliant doc from Nicolas Tilly (Ecriture Videoludique). Full post here.
- Must read: Brandon Boyer on Vimeo's idiotic policy on videogame footage (any kind of video game footage). Here's an excerpt:
"Beyond that, though, it's just the simple capriciousness and inconsistency of how they deign what's acceptable and what's not, either by ignorance or by choice. I obviously don't want to list out by name the number of indie game developers that they've apparently overlooked or chosen to ignore because it doesn't, what, feel as videogame-y as the rest? But, by taking a quick stroll through their staff picks, you can spot just how ridiculous their singling-out is." (Brandon Boyer, Kotaku)
Brandon is not the only one complaining about Vimeo's overt cultural racism. Remember Marquee Cornblatt's article "Censorship as Criticism: Performance Art and Fair Use in Virtual Territory" published on the Journal of Visual Culture April 2011vol. 10 no. 1 74-79? Here's the abstract
"The author discusses the removal of his machinima-based performance artwork from the popular online video sharing site Vimeo, based on the accusation that it violated the service’s terms of use. The artist challenged the validity of Vimeo’s administrators via a series of emails, without much success. By examining this particular case, the author raises a series of important questions related to copyright, e.g. who owns virtual space and who is responsible for policing it? Are multi-user games a territory or a tool? Can a creative act transform a videogame from private property into a public art site? And perhaps most appropriate in the author’s situation: can copyright censors distinguish their personal criticism of an artwork from that work’s legal status?"
- "But is it art?": "The organisers of a new competition for games - the Gamecity prize - are calling for video games to be embraced as an art form. Charlie Higson, the writer of the Young James Bond books who was on the panel, and the writer Ekow Eshun, former director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, discuss the merits of computer art." (BBC, Audio)
Submitted by Matteo Bittanti