Pure or Applied?

I was listening to the radio in my car yesterday, and there was an interview with composer Alexander Goehr. It's OK, I'm just as much a philistine as you are, and I hadn't heard of him before either. Anyway, during the interview he expressed a view that it's one thing to write music about, say, the Holocaust if you yourself have lived through it and are working your personal experiences; it's another thing altogether if you're attempting through your music to convey how others felt. He called the latter "applied".

I wonder, can such a distinction be made with computer games?

People write computer games for many reasons, among which are:
- To make money.
- To have fun.
- To give the players fun.
- To make a point.
- To explore a technology.
- etc.

Are any of these "pure"? Or are they all "applied"? And if they are all applied, can computer games ever be considered as "art" in their own right?

Richard

PS: For the next week, the full Goehr interview is available on the BBC web site. Warning: they play some of his music...

Comments

[ren reynolds]

1.

Would pure be:
Ludic – to create a game
Naratological – to tell a story

All other motivations would be applied. As there are always other motivations - all games are applied.

If one ranks things like making money as primary and making a political point as secondary then one could say that the games of the likes of Gonzalo Frasca are –more- applied than say EQ, WoW etc.

[Nathan Combs]

2.

Distinctions between a pure science vs. *applied* science vs. engineering might be a useful metaphor... (a little bit tongue-in-cheek):

"pure science" - a game as described by Koster in ToF (pg 166):

"The best test of a game's fun in the strict sense will therefore be playing the game with no graphics, no music, no sound, no story, no nothing. If that is fun, then everything else will serve to focus, refine, empower, and magnify. But all the dressing in the world can't change iceberg lettuce into roast turkey."

"applied science:" with graphics, etc...

"engineering:" replicating the above to create a larger world than the above might suggest.

[Auz]

3.

"if they are all applied, can computer games ever be considered as "art" in their own right?"

In the same way a painting doesn't have be something the artist personally witnessed?

[Cory Ondrejka]

4.

Why are you assuming that Goehr's distinction is correct and valuable? Seems like bunk.

As Auz pointed out, there is the trivial example of paintings. More broadly, one important aspect of any creative process is what the creator(s) bring to the piece. The point of a painting is rarely the literal depiction of the scene. It is, instead a view of a scene through the lens of the artist. Even in photography, arguably one of the most literal art forms, the photographer's skills at composition, lighting, framing, etc, can make the photographed far greater than what was photographed.

[greglas]

5.

Cory> "can make the photograph far greater than what was photographed."

?

[darin]

6.

Interesting comparision, although it seems to smack of high brow snobbery, i.e. I lived the blues, and therefore I'm qualified to sing the blues, while you never been blue and have no right in thinking about blue at all!

On the one hand it seems that one that is inside maybe has a different dataset to operate than one with an external view, I would arge that both views in the end is valid.

Then the remaining question is what do I enjoy more, which is the true measurement of art. For example George Lucas or Tolkein (or Authur C Clarke) never lived in their worlds (except in their head), but managed to create wonderful inspired works. Since by definition these are applied art since there is no real world reality to base this on, these are somehow inferior.

And to nit pick on the definition of applied, what does it mean to live through it, i.e. holacast, does that mean you were in a camp, or had family or friend taken to a camp, or managed to escape from Germany to another country, or run a underground network to help people escape. Are any of these more "Holocaust" pure than the other?

[dmyers]

7.

Kinda about both:

http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2005/05/15_mmog_experim.html#c5393081

[magicback]

8.

Let's look at it from the following perspective:

The fedex quest formula can be considered "pure" while how you implement the formula can be considered "applied".

A new, and perhaps innovative, creation can be considered "pure" while derivative creations can be considered "applied".

Creating an AI for no specific purposes other than to have the AI can be considered "pure" R&D while adapting the AI for a MOB can be considered "applied" R&D.

Sounds pretty straight forward to me based on this perspective.

Thus, to answer Greg, I think Cory meant that the composition of the picture could be greater than what the photographic capture shows because of in what it invokes in the eyes of the beholder.

If this is perspective agreeable, then computer games can be art. Either the creater define the creation as "art" or the user/counterparty define it as "art".

As to what's the group/society concensus of what is or is not "art", that's another issue. We can leave to art critics :)

[Cory Ondrejka]

9.

Greg,
What magicback said. For example, an Ansel Adams photograph of a river can be (in many ways) more impressive than the river itself (http://www.archives.gov/media_desk/press_kits/picturing_the_century_photo_gallery/tetons_snake_river.jpg)

[greglas]

10.

Cory,

It's true that a river can't be black and white. And plenty of things other than color drop out when you go from 3-D with sound to a 2-D rectangle. And yes, there's technical skill and technical decisions. But I think of Flikr as sharing discoveries as much as anything else.

But whatever -- that's cool. Thanks for the clarification.

[Cory Ondrejka]

11.

Greg, obviously I'm not saying that *every* photograph does this :-)

[Jeff Cole]

12.

Why the focus on the literal? A photograph as an expression of a waterfall is to the waterfall as an apple is to an orange.

Richard has prejudiced the discussion by choosing "pure" as the opposite of "applied" (or, at least I infer it is Richard's choice because he does not attribute "pure" to Goehr), and thereby implying "applied" is somehow "impure." Not to mention the assupmtion that "applied" equates to "not art."

I take Goehr's distinction (I have not listened to the interview) to be personal v. not so.

Certainly, much in the same way that an artist's expressive choices can affect the perception/impression of her work, so too can the artist's personal attachment to the subject expressed in her work.

It is interesting to me that the discussion has focused on visual media, for which the measure of an artist's interpretation is perhaps more easily (and superficially) "measured."

Jeff Cole

[Flatfingers]

13.

I reacted the same way Jeff did: My impression of Goehr's comment was that he was making a distinction between "music I create for myself" and "music I create for others."

Although there's a belief in the West today that "more personal = better," there's really nothing intrinsically better about what might be termed "personal art" versus "impersonal art." Yes, it's true (as Cory pointed out) that these days we tend to analyze and appreciate art by focusing on the artist's intent in addition to (I would say instead of) the artist's expression... but the expression matters, too.

A lot of people like pop music because it's personal. I prefer instrumental music because I think the craftsmanship is often better.

When I visit an art gallery, I prefer naturalistic landscapes and portraits over abstract or "modern" art. I frankly don't care if it was something that Picasso or Pollack emitted; to me it's too much artist and not enough art. It's not (I hope!) an inability to perceive subtle shades of meaning, but simply a preference for world-observation meaning over highly personalized meaning.

To me, this is directly related to what I think Goehr was describing: art as representative of the artist's internal beliefs, or art as representative of the artist's external observations.

How this kind of analysis relates to computer games isn't clear. Art and computer games seem similar in several ways:

* Both serve a function -- art enables "aesthetic experience," while games enable play.
* Both require an audience -- art needs viewers/listeners, and games need players.
* Both can be created to make money, or purely because the creator feels "driven" to create.

So, with all these similarities, what is it that causes us to think that computer games are more unlike art than similar to it?

I'm rambled too long already, so I'll leave the answer to that question to anyone who feels like taking a shot at it. :-)

--Flatfingers

[Richard Bartle]

14.

Flatfingers>My impression of Goehr's comment was that he was making a distinction between "music I create for myself" and "music I create for others."

This is a good way of putting it, although there's an ambiguity when people create music for others, for themselves. Example: if we look at the September 12 game, is that pure or applied? It's pure in that the designer(s) wanted to say something, but it's applied in that they wanted people to hear what they were saying.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

15.

Cory Ondrejka>Why are you assuming that Goehr's distinction is correct and valuable? Seems like bunk.

I wasn't assuming it was necessarily correct, but I was assuming it was valuable (he's Professor of Music at Cambridge, which is not a position you get to without having something valuable to say).

He illustrated this point about "applied" music when talking about music composed about World War II. He specifically cited Britten's War Requiem as being "grotesque", because Britten was anti-war and had written the piece to express his anti-war views through the eyes of people with whom he could perhaps empathise, but whose experience he had not himself undergone. Goehr contrasted this with the music of another composer, I think Tippett. Tippett was also anti-war, but rather than repairing to America in 1939 as Britten did, he preferred to remain in Britain and be jailed for his beliefs. His music speaks more personally than does Britten's (apparently - I find it too miserable to listen to, myself).

I think that what Goehr was getting at was that music written "first hand" says something about the composer, whereas music written "second hand" says something about the composer's view. For Goehr, the latter is "applied", and the former would therefore (presumably) be "pure".

As Ren points out, all games that are written for profit have some "applied" element, but are any of them "pure" in some sense?

Richard

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

16.

Jeff Minter's games are probably more "pure" than "applied".

And yes, it very much applies to contemporary fine-art music IMO.

[Flatfingers]

17.

Is a distinction between "pure" and "applied" just a question of degree?

In other words, isn't every artifact of conscious creation both pure (in deriving some meaning from the creator's personal needs and experiences) and applied (in deriving some meaning from the experiences of others as perceived by the creator)?

How could any created thing be completely pure unless the creator never had any contact with other humans? In which case, how would we know about that person's creation in order to assess its purity or applicability? (Sort of a "Schroedinger's cat" kind of thing.)

For that matter, where does this distinction leave creations based on subjects that no one has experienced, either first-hand or second-hand? Is Gustav Holst's The Planets "pure" or "applied?" What about creations involving wholly imaginary subjects, such as elves or Wookiees?

Maybe first-hand/second-hand is a kind of distinction we don't want to make. Can creations be judged entirely on their own merits, independent of the creator's intentions and experiences? If so, should they be?

--Flatfingers

[Richard Bartle]

18.

Flatfingers>Is a distinction between "pure" and "applied" just a question of degree?

Degree of what?

>isn't every artifact of conscious creation both pure (in deriving some meaning from the creator's personal needs and experiences) and applied (in deriving some meaning from the experiences of others as perceived by the creator)?

The "applied" part there isn't quite so simple. Yes, "no man is an island", so whatever you think of yourself is in part a reflection of what other think of you, but there is a difference between creating to deal with your own issues and creating to raise issues with other people. If your own issues involve what other people think, then it could still be "pure" while having an "applied" aspect to it at first glance.

Example: Roy Trubshaw and I wrote MUD1 for fun. It was enjoyable to us personally just to program it. I can't speak for Roy, but from my point of view there was more to it than just this, however: I saw it as being a way to give people freedom. This gives it the scent of "applied", except that it doesn't feel that way to me. Personally, I felt that giving freedom was itself an expression of me; in retrospect, I'd say that it was something I had to do to come to understand myself better. I do know that I'd have written that game with Roy even if we had decided that we were never going to open it to players. Clearly, there's a "perceived by others" thing going on here, but it applies to me, not to the work (ie. MUD1). Does that make it "pure"? Or at least not "applied"?

>For that matter, where does this distinction leave creations based on subjects that no one has experienced, either first-hand or second-hand?

Presumably, those would be pure by Goehr's definition because they're expressing some aspect of the artist's soul (that's assuming they're not written for some other reason, eg. to sell).

>Is Gustav Holst's The Planets "pure" or "applied?"

Holst was using myth to inform his suite, taking what each planet represented (basically astrologcally) and trying to work through what that meant to him. The use of planets was a structural device to allow him to frame his own ideas and emotions across a range of topics. I'd suspect that Goehr would say it was, on the whole, pure; even some of the more message-driven pieces aren't as "applied" as they might seem (there's some debate, for example, as to whether Mars refers to the first world war or not).

>What about creations involving wholly imaginary subjects, such as elves or Wookiees?

Tolkien's elves are symbols. I've no idea whether wookies are symbols (and suspect that, if they are, I'd rather not know!)

>Can creations be judged entirely on their own merits, independent of the creator's intentions and experiences? If so, should they be?

They can be, and some artists insist that they are. People attempting to read them will, however, always want to put them in the context of the artist's psyche at the time.

Richard

[Dirk Scheuring]

19.

Richard>

Yes, "no man is an island", so whatever you think of yourself is in part a reflection of what other think of you, but there is a difference between creating to deal with your own issues and creating to raise issues with other people.

I can't say that I feel this distance when I'm creative. I'll try another interpretation: before I publish any creative work of mine - that is, as long as there's an audience of one -, I might call the work "pure", in the sense that the artistic impression it makes on its audience is directly related to the artistic expression the artist captured in the medium (in fact, the developmental process seems to be based on this feedback loop). Then, at one point, I might fell that I have achieved a certain "closure" of the work (not necessarily of the work as a whole, but of the most "subjective", or "pure", work phase), and show it to somebody else. In this case, I might say that I "apply" my artistic expression, to make an impression on the screen of another person.

Let's say that there's a whole new kind of game that only runs on one developer's machine (I assume that it only "runs" on this particular machine because the processor in that developer's head makes it so - it's not yet a releaseable program). That, to me, seems as "pure" as art can get. Once an application is available, it might still be called "pure", but once it is transfered to and executed on another machine and experienced by somebody who is not the artist, that seems like "applied" art to me.

[George]

20.

I think the short answer to Richard's question, about whether there could be games that might be considered 'pure' art, is simply "No". This has nothing to do with profit, it has to do with the fundamental nature of group games.

I find myself wishing that the conversation would focus more on the relationship between online games and art (i.e. in what ways are MMORPGs art?) rather than on "pure vs. applied", since for many reasons (one of which Flatfingers points to above) this seems a fairly pointless question in and of itself. As a way into a discussion of art and games, it works pretty well though.

As a quick brainstorm:
Good art will frequently provoke conjecture and hence discussion about what it represents, the techniques used, its relationship to other art, etc. This discussion is the major way in which art acts into the world as a critical tool. To me, this is what matters about art (I'm an architecture student). With games, conjecture and discussion -- interpretation, really -- has a somewhat different role. There is very little time for interpretation, because you simply go and do what you think you should do. I.e. you react to the game and act into the game itself. You do not act into art. You act "about" art, "because" of art.

I guess a game is a kind of medium. A piece of art, up to this point anyway, is not a medium. It can create (or cause to be created) communities, exchanges, etc. but it cannot in any really serious way 'host' those communities.

Surely this has all been hashed out in some heavy book. It's been interesting to see everybody's opinions on art -- or, rather, on what art is.

One more thing: Goehr's comments really aren't that relevant to games, I don't think (though I haven't listened to his talk, I'm just going by the snippet Richard provided). The reason is simple: with the kind of music he's talking about, it is very hard for the listener to know what the music is "about" without actually being told. In other words, setting context is a real problem, and intent is a major branch of that problem. In games in general, I don't think context or intent are particularly relevant or hard to establish. Games are not particulary abstract these days (though their underlying structures may be).

[Barry Kearns]

21.

George wrote:

One more thing: Goehr's comments really aren't that relevant to games, I don't think (though I haven't listened to his talk, I'm just going by the snippet Richard provided). The reason is simple: with the kind of music he's talking about, it is very hard for the listener to know what the music is "about" without actually being told. In other words, setting context is a real problem, and intent is a major branch of that problem.

Or as Elvis Costello (and Laurie Anderson, and Steve Martin) put it:

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

[Richard Bartle]

22.

Dirk Scheuring>In this case, I might say that I "apply" my artistic expression, to make an impression on the screen of another person.

Ah, now this is a very useful distinction. I think what Goehr was getting at is that in what he calls the "applied" case, there is no expression, just impression. If you create to give an impression, it's applied; if you create as expression, it's pure.

That would mean that computer games could indeed be pure.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

23.

George>Good art will frequently provoke conjecture

So will bad art, of course..!

>With games, conjecture and discussion -- interpretation, really -- has a somewhat different role. There is very little time for interpretation, because you simply go and do what you think you should do.

For virtual worlds, there's little time for interpretation by the players, I agree, but who says the art has to be accessible to the players? Concealing the art from the players may indeed be part of the art (because of they know it, they may lose appreciation of play).

>I guess a game is a kind of medium.

Well, only in the sense that theatre is a medium. The actors in a play are demonstrating a different art to the director, who is in turn demonstrating a different art to the author. The audience can pick up on any of these interacting art forms.

With virtual worlds, the situation is very unusual. The "audience" for a virtual world "production" is very small, and the "cast" is enormous. I feel there is definite art in virtual world design, but it's not always art that is necessarily appreciated by many players.

>Surely this has all been hashed out in some heavy book.

There's a chapter on this in my own book, where I seek to show that there is indeed art in virtual world design. I don't know any other books that do it, though. Mainly, when people think about art and virtual worlds they think either of artwork (ie. pictures and animation) or art-within-art (machinima, plays, constructions etc.).

>with the kind of music he's talking about, it is very hard for the listener to know what the music is "about" without actually being told.

You can say that again. I could recognise it as notes, but you'd have to send me on a course before I could understand it as music...

>Games are not particulary abstract these days (though their underlying structures may be).

It's in the underlying structures where the art lies.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

24.

Barry Kearns>"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

The first time I heard this, many years ago, I thought, are they suggesting that you can't dance about architecture?.

I still don't see that you can't dance about anything, except, perhaps, dance.

Richard

[Barry Kearns]

25.

Richard wrote:

Barry Kearns>"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

The first time I heard this, many years ago, I thought, are they suggesting that you can't dance about architecture?.

I still don't see that you can't dance about anything, except, perhaps, dance.

My take-away from this had to do with the general ineffectiveness of using a different medium to try to communicate about something that is, at its roots, experiential.

The original Elvis Costello quote actually started as "Writing about music..."

So while, technically, you can dance (or write, or talk) about music and other experiential forms, it's an incredibly blunt and ineffective tool for conveying the power and meaning of the actual experience. There are, of course, a few things things to be gained by activities like this... but I think the main point is that it's a poor substitute for experiencing it yourself.

I've had countless gaming moments like that, where it's simply not possible to effectively convey the root experience through words... you just have to find a friend to experience it too, and then you can both reference it as a common touchstone. The desire to create experiences like that (which others could share) played no small part in my becoming a game developer.

In that sense, I see the experience that I'm wanting to convey as "pure", and the final product as an "applied" tool for the conveyance.

[George]

26.

Richard > So will bad art, of course..!

Well, I suppose I meant _useful_ or meaningful conjecture. I don't think bad art does that, by definition.

> For virtual worlds, there's little time for
> interpretation by the players, I agree, but who
> says the art has to be accessible to the players?
> Concealing the art from the players may indeed be
> part of the art (because of they know it, they may
> lose appreciation of play).
>
> >I guess a game is a kind of medium.
> Well, only in the sense that theatre is a medium.

I think this is one way to frame online game, obviously. In a way, you can take the frame of "work of art" and shift it in scale and find art all over the place in games: at the level you've just mentioned, where you watch the whole thing as theatre; at the level of individual match-ups or small group activities; at the level of the detailing on an old tree stump. But none of these capture the game as a whole, really.

I mean, obviously the players are NOT actors, they are also observers, critics, etc. I.e. they are people, who will take something away from their experiences in the game and could use that to change the world.

> I feel there is definite art in virtual world
> design, but it's not always art that is necessarily
> appreciated by many players.

I think this is one of the great challenges in critical game design: the players tend to be juvenile. Not necessarily physically, but in their ability to make connections between things, to think critically, especially about the boundary of the game itself. And given that most players have this problem, the whole thing DOES take on the air of theatre. But I think game designers should try to help people move beyond this stage.

> There's a chapter on this in my own book

Heh. It's on order; I look forward to reading it.

> where I seek to show that there is indeed art in
> virtual world design. I don't know any other books

While I totally agree that there is art in virtual world design, I think in the end the real value of a game is much bigger than its original design. The most interesting things in online games aren't designed, IMO.

> It's in the underlying structures where the art
> lies.

I agree this is where the most interesting art lies in game design, but the best thing about a game is not the art behind it. It's a crucial part, but then the game grows to be something way beyond art.

I realize just now that I'm thinking and speaking of games that are trying furtively to become virtual worlds. For some very closed games, I think the "art as theatre" can be a very strong framework for designing and evaluating them. But as soon as there's social interaction in the game through language (which invades your rule-set with its own), a micro-world starts to emerge.

[Barry Kearns]

27.

Virtual worlds as "emergent performance art", perhaps?

[Richard Bartle]

28.

Barry Kearns>So while, technically, you can dance (or write, or talk) about music and other experiential forms, it's an incredibly blunt and ineffective tool for conveying the power and meaning of the actual experience.

Dance, music, words etc. are languages that can be used to describe and communicate. Some are more general-purpose than others, but all have areas that are very difficult to convert into other languages. That doesn't mean it's impossible, of course, but it does mean that you need to find some overlapping vocabulary.

So I agree that it's a blunt tool, but I wouldn't say it was necessarily ineffective. If you are sufficiently accomplished in one means of communication, you can use that to convey experiences and understanding from another means of communication. However, this does imply that you're fluent in both forms of communication.

Thus, the reason dancing about architecture is uncommon is because too few dancers know enough about architecture. I don't think there's anything intrinsic about dancing or architecture that means you can only be literate in one if you're not literate in the other.

Richard

[Richard Bartle]

29.

George>In a way, you can take the frame of "work of art" and shift it in scale and find art all over the place in games: at the level you've just mentioned, where you watch the whole thing as theatre; at the level of individual match-ups or small group activities; at the level of the detailing on an old tree stump. But none of these capture the game as a whole, really.

Those, I would classify as "art-within-art". They are all art in their own right, but in virtual worlds are collectively enabled by the art of the designer. This is the art I'm interested in (being a designer), which I see as analogous to the role of movie director (albeit one who writes their own scripts).

>I think this is one of the great challenges in critical game design: the players tend to be juvenile. Not necessarily physically, but in their ability to make connections between things, to think critically, especially about the boundary of the game itself.

It's not just in game design, it's everywhere. during the recent UK general election campaign, for example, I listened to a group of trainee teachers deciding how they would vote. One said she wouldn't vote Liberal Democrat because their policy on funding local councils through having local income tax would cost her more than the current method of charging a flat tax based on property occupancy. She shared a building with others, therefore she would pay more if there was a local income tax. Well yes, she would - for about a year. Then, when she wasn't a trainee teacher sharing a house, she'd spend less for pretty well the rest of her life. She didn't think of it that way, though.

So it is with many players. Often, they look at how things affect them right now, and don't look to the future at all.

>But I think game designers should try to help people move beyond this stage.

I agree. Of course, this assumes that designers themselves have moved beyond this stage, which is not always the case. Some still see the virtual world as players, others see it only as theatre, and others see it as a testbed for cool ideas.

>> There's a chapter on this in my own book
>Heh. It's on order; I look forward to reading it.

Argh! You called my bluff!

>While I totally agree that there is art in virtual world design, I think in the end the real value of a game is much bigger than its original design. The most interesting things in online games aren't designed, IMO.

It depends what you mean by "designed". The design may intentionally be such that interesting things are seeded to happen. The actual interesting things themselves may not necessarily be predictable, nor need they ever happen, but the space of potential interesting things is shaped by the design, and designers can and do frame their design to promote or demote certain types of interaction.

As a (poor) analogy, it's as if the players are a thunderstorm and the designer sets up the terrain beneath the clouds. Where the lightning will actually strike is unpredictable, but nevertheless some places are more likely than others (eg. tall buildings or trees). The designer creates the system, but has no control over it beyond that. Nevertheless, that is a powerful form of control.

>the best thing about a game is not the art behind it. It's a crucial part, but then the game grows to be something way beyond art.

That's what makes the art behind it art.

Richard