Video game art is a form of computer art employing

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

s as the

artistic medium Media, or mediums, are the core types of material (or related other tools) used by an artist, composer, designer, etc. to create a work of art. For example, a visual artist may broadly use the media of painting or sculpting, which themselves have ...

. Video game art often involves the use of patched or modified video games or the repurposing of existing games or game structures, however it relies on a broader range of artistic techniques and outcomes than artistic modification and it may also include painting, sculpture, appropriation, in-game intervention and performance, sampling, etc. It may also include the creation of

art game An art game (or arthouse game) is a work of Interactive art, interactive new media art, new media digital art, digital software art as well as a member of the "art game" subgenre of the serious game, serious video game. The term "art game" was ...

s either from scratch or by modifying existing games. Notable examples of video game art include

Cory Arcangel Cory Arcangel (born May 25, 1978) is an American post-conceptual artist who makes work in many different media, including drawing, music, video, performance art, and video game modifications, for which he is best known. Arcangel often uses th ...

's '' Super Mario Clouds'' and '' I Shot Andy Warhol'',Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell (eds.),''Videogames and Art'' (Intellect Books, 2006). Joseph Delappe's projects including "Dead in Iraq" and the "Salt Satyagraha Online: Gandhi's March to Dandi in Second Life," the 2004-2005 Rhizome Commissions "relating to the theme of games," Paolo Pedercini's Molleindustria games such as "Unmanned" and " Every Day the Same Dream", and Ian Bogost's " Cowclicker." Artistic modifications are frequently made possible through the use of level editors, though other techniques exist. Some artists make use of

machinima Machinima () is the use of Real-time computing, real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. The word "Machinima" is a portmanteau of the words ''machine'' and ''Film, cinema''. According to Guinness World Records, ma ...

applications to produce non-interactive animated artworks, however artistic modification is not synonymous with machinima as these form only a small proportion of artistic modifications. Machinima is distinct from art mods as it relies on different tools, though there are many similarities with some art mods. Like video games, artistic game modifications are often interactive and may allow for single-player or multiplayer experience. Multiplayer works make use of networked environments to develop new kinds of interaction and collaborative art production.

Techniques

Machinima

Machinima is the use of real-time

three-dimensional In geometry, a three-dimensional space (3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a mathematical space in which three values (''coordinates'') are required to determine the position (geometry), position of a point (geometry), poi ...

(3-D) graphics rendering engines to generate

computer animation Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating Film, moving images. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both still images and moving images, while computer animation refers to moving images. Virtu ...

. The term also refers to works that incorporate this animation technique.

In-game intervention and performance

Artists may intervene in online games in a non-play manner, often disrupting games in progress in order to challenge or expose underlying conventions and functions of game play. Examples of this include Anne Marie Schleiner's ''Velvet-Strike'' (a project designed to allow players of realistic first person shooter games to use anti-war graffiti within the game to make an artistic statement) and ''Dead in Iraq'' (an art project created by Joseph DeLappe in which the player character purposely allows himself to be shot and then recites the names of US soldiers who have died in the Iraq War).

Site-specific installations and site-relative mods

Site-specific installations and site-relative gaming modifications ("mods"), replicate real-world places (often the art gallery in which they are displayed) to explore similarities and differences between real and virtual worlds. An example is ''What It Is Without the Hand That Wields It'', where blood from kills in Counterstrike manifests and spills into a real life gallery.

Real-time performance instruments

Video games can be incorporated into live audio and visual performance using a variety of instruments and computers such as electronic keyboards embedded with music chips. See also chiptune and the Fijuu project.

Generative art mods

Generative art Generative art is post-conceptual art that has been created (in whole or in part) with the use of an autonomous system. An ''autonomous system'' in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an ...

mods exploit the real-time capabilities of game technologies to produce ever-renewing autonomous artworks. Examples include Julian Oliver's '' ioq3apaint'', a generative painting system that uses the actions of software agents in combat to drive the painting process, Alison Mealy's '' UnrealArt'' which takes the movements of game entities and uses them to control a drawing process in an external program, Kent Sheely's "Cities in Flux," a '' Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas'' mod that glitches and distorts the game's world in real-time, and RetroYou's '' R/C Racer'' a modification of the graphic elements of a racing game which results in rich fields of colour and shape.

Notes

Sources

''GameScenes: Art in the Age of Videogames''.
(Johan & Levi, 2006). Edited by Matteo Bittanti and Domenico Quaranta. *
''Videogames and Art''
by Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell (eds.)
Journal of Media Practice vol 7, no. 1
(special edition on videogames and art) by Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell (eds.)

, online magazine of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media,

San Jose State University San José State University (San Jose State or SJSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Jose, California. Established in 1857, SJSU is the List of oldest schools in California, oldest public university on the West Coast of ...

From "First-Person Shooter" to Multi-User Knowledge Spaces
Mathias Fuchs and Sylvia Eckermann
Konsum Art-Server nTRACKER
Margarete Jahrmann and Max Moswitzer
Messages For A First Person Perspective
Maia Engeli *

External links

* ttp://maia.enge.li/gamezone/taxonomy.html Art games archive with examples of artistic modifications {{DEFAULTSORT:Video Game Art Visual arts genres Digital art Works based on video games Modern art