Blow Me

by sweep

I went to art college several years ago, in London. Having lived away from home for the majority of my teenage life I found the transition from school to college pretty smooth. Art college, like any other school, suffers from the first day trials of people making first impressions and trying to reinvent themselves into the person they always wished they could be. Considering this was art colleg...

I went to art college

several years ago, in London. Having lived away from home for the majority of my teenage life I found the transition from school to college pretty smooth. Art college, like any other school, suffers from the first day trials of people making first impressions and trying to reinvent themselves into the person they always wished they could be. Considering this was art college this meant that most people tried to prove how "arty" they are. As time did not permit any physical artwork to be created on day one, people found themselves having to express their creativity via more physical means - they way they looked and the way they talked. I arrived in blue jeans and a grey t-shirt. The boy next to me was wearing zebra print dungarees. Both being newcomers I wasn't really able to turn to him and openly mock his ridiculous choice of apparel - which was just as well because the majority of people there were wearing equally bizarre garments. Art college was a haven for free-minded expression, a place where people could go and relax and create their art without fear of the social persecution they received at school. Or, as I myself would explain it, a breeding ground for pretentious cunts. People would mince around essentially being as weird as possible just because, under the exact pretence of being art students, they felt they could get away with it. It was as though their acceptance into art college granted credibility to the complete nonsense they had been spouting their entire lives, and finally they had a forum in which they could flaunt their "art" and, perhaps more importantly, themselves.

Flower

I enjoyed my time at art college.

I spent the majority of it doubting myself, confused by whether I should be smug for not being sucked into the ballet of pretentiousness or angry for not being able to appreciate such artistic honesty. I am by nature a cynic. This prevents me from enjoying all but the most earthen of flamboyant drivel. That does not mean, however, that I don't wish this was not the case. Having spent an entire year in such a mixed community I found a degree of comfort which worked for me, a group of people that had a similarly realistic understanding of how the world worked. This isn't to say I didn't enjoy being surrounded by hipsters, some of them were great people. I just felt that they were acting a certain way because that was what was expected of them in art college, not because they genuinely believed that skinny jeans and a bowler hat made them better artists. A pretentious person can still produce something which can be appreciated on an shallow frequency.

LOVE

The artistic juxtaposition of game development, the theory and execution of mature ideals, leaves much to be desired.

There are people who embrace the medium as an art form and people who oppose it. There are others who believe that the concept of a "game" itself, a medium which has the primary function of entertainment, can never embody artistic purity with such a commercially focussed objective, as though for a videogame to be considered art it must sacrifice it's quality as a "game" - which would in any case contradict the notion of a videogame being applied as art in the first place. As such, people are often quick to dismiss artistically minded games as "pretentious" or overly enthusiastic that they be appreciated solely for their artistic merits.

It's a complex subject, one which everyone has an opinion on. Having read yet another blog on "are games art?" i'm now pretty fucking exhausted of the topic, a sentiment which i'm sure you share. I have decided to adopt the opinion that, art or not, at least they are still games. Whether they embody anything meaningful has and always will be secondary to our enjoyment of them.

Braid
Take Braid for example. You no doubt have an opinion about Braid, it's flouncy music and flowery aesthetic - mixed with a narration expressed as a form of virtual poetry. It can be considered art, or not. What's important is that, despite it's artistic intent, it's still a fucking awesome puzzle game. And that you should go play it.

Thanks For Reading
Love Sweep