Feedback, feedback, feedback

     From the history that FEEDBACK, the exhibition, has show to the audience, feedback, as an important element of digital art. As Norbert Wiener implied in 1940s using “cybernetics” that feedback plays an important role in a communication system. While, at this stage, digital art could be a branch of communication system since a crucial part of digital media is to either take feedback of itself (earlier approaching by pioneer artists) or the feedback from the audiences (later approaching). Wiener also summarized that the three central concepts that were crucial were communication, control and feedback. According to the projects that have been mentioned, all of them could be take down to these three main parts that take information out of messages that are been passed through the open system.

    The article has given a brief idea of how each project in the history had been constructed which is very helpful to build our own project. The projects that are related to mixture of video and real time video taping of the audiences were pretty inspiring. It showed we could not only use the connect as the port that takes the feedback of the people, but also a camera that can combine the feedback and make the project more interesting.

    Also from the article we know that as well as any other forms of art, digital art is also connected to almost any aspects of contemporary social life and that made the digital art itself more thoughtful and added more value to the project itself. The relationship between the art and technology is also tight. As a matter of fact, it is the technology that brings the possibilities to the artists that let them do whatever they wanted to do, and I do believe that in the near future, with more developed technologies we could expect more diverse that the unknown (for now) technology could bring to the artists.  

Can video games ever be art, or say Art?

      In Brian Moriarty’s article he argued that whether video game could be art or say sublime art.  

Video game is different to any other medias: video games emphasizes the interactive between the game itself and the player, while other type of medias that are already regarded as sublime arts are medias that do not have such properties. And because of these specific properties, video game has been pushed to the debate of being art. Video game is also different from other new media arts. Although they both emphasize the importance of interactive, they interactive in different ways, as Brian has mentioned, “… Games as a series of interesting choices…”, and the choices made by player made the video game a whole piece. The thing that Jason VandenBerghe pointed out is very interesting and convincing, “… Our performance of play is the sublime art… The game remains a game”. For video games, the players are a counted and significant part of the video game itself, and I can’t agree more that it is the player that made the video game a sublime art. But for video game itself, I think video game could be art, but sublime art? Maybe not yet. Although video games are made by piles of great art works, 2D and 3D, as well as coding and design, as a whole piece it could not be called as a sublime art while missing the player. How could we appreciate a video game without playing or watching people playing it? A video game could not be literally watched or read, so it could hardly be showcased in art galleries or any other museums for people to appreciate the artistic factors that video games have been inspiring people. For the moment, video game, as pointed out by Brian, is kitsch art, not sublime, and with the player playing it, it is so called a sublime art, and form a new kind of sublime art.

     Hope that in the near future, we could have a gallery especially for video game showcasing, since video game, from the day the name appears, a great many of crews has devoted themselves to make video game artistic.