Well I've never really understood what the definition of "art" is anyways. The term is so ambiguous as to be almost pointless. Maybe we all have our own ideas as to what "art" is to us and will be different things to different people.
A Miracle Blade infomercial can be art with your argument as it represents the commercial environment and the mindset of those who wish to sell you a Miracle Blade. It also conveys a message that they will cut through anything. What about Andy Warhol's soup cans? They were merely commercial images silkscreened over and over again. In fact, Warhol was so into factory, mass produced art, it's often difficult to find which pieces he actually had a hand in making himself. Byzantine icons were just namelessly copied images of religious figures, and to them, it was just as commonplace and valued as a Wal-mart portrait of Jesus. But now, they're locked away in galleries behind temperature controlled glass and scrutinized by "art historians". I'm not going to disagree with you that art is a form of expression. It can be, and it is. But art is a fairly modern invention. The art gallery didn't exist until somebody decided to start locking away whimsical pictures and sculptures and charging people to see them sometime around the 17-18th century. So, can art be anything? Not quite - perhaps subjectively, yes. But as with anything subjective, something which can be art can just as easily be garbage. You can't say that something mass produced and intended for profit can't be art because it's got capitalist ideals behind it. That would be contradicting your argument that a propaganda poster is art because it's intended to persuade someone to collectivize, unless you hold capitalism as a category distinct from political and social ideologies (which I believe is not). So what is art? I think if enough people consider it art, it's art. How many people is enough? Enough for it to gain the recognition as an artwork. I can piss on a canvas and call it art, but if I'm the only one who says it is, and everybody else disagrees, is it really art? I think that art is whatever the general populace contextualizes as art. Anything can be art. Readymade artists take everyday objects and call it art. You can call it ********, but the galleries are buying it, and so are the art critics and historians.
Everything is and isn't art. It's a pointless arguement. Is every photograph, film, and painting automatically considered to be 'art' because they are established mediums?
Eberts a troll and scared of something thats new that he doesn't understand and threaten his job. Gaming can well and truly be considered art. thats the odd thing about the word is that art to me is different to art to that guy down the street and different to etc.
Another interesting Andy Goldsworthy art piece. He made the entire thing from decaying leaves which he tied together using the leaf stems and then balanced in place. Amazing how he does this stuff and it's so much nicer than his seal blood art. Ahem, so anyway. Street Fighter? Not art, though components could be. Beyond Good and Evil? A work of art. I think games are made of artistic components which can occasionally be bought together into a single, unified and creative form which evokes emotion or reaction in a traditional sense which is art in itself. My favourite piece of art is one, I forget the artist, where it's a massive empty hall and every surface is covered in tiny metal discs. Theres a plinth in the centre of the room, with a plaque on it, but to read it you have to walk to the middle of the room, over the discs. When you get there, the plaque says "Each disc in this room represents 20 people who died in Nazi concentration camps." It's then you realise that you've just walked all over them.
Video games can easily be art: Look at, say, Half Life 2. The story is complex and fairly deep: If it was a novel, rather than a video game, it would certainly be considered "art". The model design is amazing - if they were sculptures of metal and glass rather than ones and zeroes, they would be considered "art". The textures and paintings are also very impressive - if they were ink and canvas rather than pixels and shading, they would be considered "art". If all the components are art, doesn't that make the whole thing art? Or are we so hung up on self-serving tradition that we only consider real things, and not digital ones, "art"?
