When Art Is Put Into Play: A Practice-based Research Project on Game Art

Abstract

When Art Is Put Into Play: A Practice-based Research Project on Game Art is a practice-based research project that aims to contribute to the understanding of the relation between play and art from the specific perspective of computer-based Game Art.

This is done firstly through the production of nine works of art that through their means of production all relate to Game Art as it has come to be known in the last twenty years or so. Secondly, the relation between games, play and art is discussed from a Game Art perspective.

This project as a whole aims to map and exemplify cases where Game Art successfully inherits rule-systems, aesthetics, spatial and temporal aspects from computer games.

This work has in turn resulted in a provisional response to the question of the possibility for Game Art to successfully create a state of play, whilst still maintain agency as a work of art. The claim is that the friction between art and play makes it doubtful that art can maintain its agency as art through play. This claim is made as a result of the artistic process leading up to the works of art that were made as a part of the thesis. It has been strengthened through the study of the concept of play and how it relates to artistic practice.