I submitted Gaming the Network Poetic to the Prospectives.09 International Digital Arts Festival call earlier this week. Part of the submission process was putting together the Flickr gallery linked above for documentation. I wanted to post it here for those interested in the project, as it shows the progress of the project from concept to (near) completion.

people rate pictures as more aesthetically pleasing (and actually experience more pleasure while viewing them) if they believe they come from art galleries.

Because I have not paid to access the full study, some of this will be conjecture, but I’d like to use it to begin a discussion of interested to my research on the presentation of videogames in artistic contexts. I first wondered what an art historian might think of this study so I asked Professor Scott Montgomery in the art department at the University of Denver and found him skeptical but interested in the results:

I think that the physical/scientific evidence is really really interesting and does shed light on HOW we physiologically engage with visuals and concepts (for what is art?), but have never felt that we can fully understand art with purely logical/cerebral means.  Emotions and their manifold variations/expressions play a huge role in the varying perceptions of art.

I share some of his skepticism, especially when I wonder why this study might have been undertaken. What were the assumptions about the subjects? What seems most significant about the study is that it is the mere semantics of context, and not actually seeing a given work presented in multiple contexts, that adjust the brain’s expectations. One doesn’t have to make much of a jump to envision context as a brand that sets a consumer’s expectations for the coming experience. 

I also wonder about the negative results, if there were any. Had those individuals had a bad experience within a gallery context? Were the subjects screened to ensure that they had had a gallery experience? How would such a study run in a cultural group without a solid concept of galleries?

One more possible takeaway from the study is that this group abhors viewing artworks on a computer, and thus their negative associations with the computer overwhelmed their sense of appreciation of the work - the context overwhelmed the work. How can we know that the subjects rated the work and not the context when the two intertwine?

Before I wondered what this study says for videogames in art galleries. For my purposes it is simply a reminder that some viewers will not be interested in engaging with computers in a gallery space, but also that creating a considered environment for presentation of videogame works can possibly defeat aversions to genre - context beats content. Then they can intertwine like they’re supposed to.

More stuff to chew on relating to neuroaesthetics: http://www.lonegunman.co.uk/2009/08/24/art-and-the-brain/

Machinima artist Paolo Pedercini turns the tables on the U.S. Defense Department’s controversial America’s Army recruiting game in Welcome to the desert of the real.

The 6:37 video uses footage from America’s Army to highlight symptions of post-traumatic stress disorder, an increasingly prevalent condition among U.S. service personnel returning from combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you’re expecting action, however, this is not the machinima for you. Pedercini’s work is low-key, almost ponderous. The artist seems to want to capture the feeling of detachment that is typical of those suffering from PTSD.