Video game art
Video game art is a form of computer art that takes the video game as its medium: artists modify existing games, intervene inside online play, build art games from scratch, or borrow game engines for animation and installation. The practice took off in the 1990s as consoles and the web spread, and its best-known landmark arrived when Cory Arcangel stripped a Super Mario Bros. cartridge down to drifting clouds for Super Mario Clouds (2002). Other strands include machinima - animation rendered inside game engines - in-game performance such as anti-war graffiti in first-person shooters, and politically charged art games like Paolo Pedercini's. The field sits deliberately between the gallery and the games industry, asking what games can say when freed from entertainment's demands.
Defining characteristics
- Existing commercial games modified, stripped down or re-skinned as the artwork
- In-game intervention: performances staged inside online multiplayer worlds
- Machinima - animation rendered in real time with game engines
- Gameplay itself carries meaning: art games built from mechanics rather than cutscenes
- Glitch, low-poly and pixel aesthetics embraced as a deliberate visual language
- Distribution outside the gallery: downloadable files, mods, browsers and game platforms
Key figures
- Cory Arcangel (b. 1978) — Post-conceptual artist best known for cartridge hacks like Super Mario Clouds (2002)
- Rod Humble (b. 1966) — Designer of The Marriage (2007), an art game expressed purely through game mechanics
- Anne-Marie Schleiner (b. 1970) — Theorist-artist behind Velvet-Strike, anti-war graffiti interventions inside first-person shooters
- Paolo Pedercini (b. 1981) — Game designer (Molleindustria) making political art games such as Every Day the Same Dream
Example works
- Super Mario Clouds — Cory Arcangel (2002)
- The Marriage — Rod Humble (2007)
Sources
- Video game art - Wikipedia encyclopedia
- Art game - Wikipedia encyclopedia