selectparks - SP critique of the RealTime Art Manifesto: The authors respond.

Michael and Auriea respond to my critique of their Realtime Art Manifesto presentation, in Athens at Mediaterra06.

Read their response here.

Thanks guys for getting back in touch. Keep up the good work.

Tale of Tales write

Thank you for reviewing our presentation. I would like to point out, though, that our "simplistic, periodic and idealogically grounded construction of what constitutes 'beauty 'in the context of 'Art'" is entirely on purpose. People sometimes think that we are naive but I assure you that our convictions regarding this topic are the result of a lot of research, both theoretical and practical. In times when innovative and subversive are the norm, a traditional and respectful attitude like ours tends to seem abnormal (or worse: old fashioned or even politically suspect). But this is only the case if one limits their scope to the domain of high culture (i.e. "museum-quality artworks" as one SFMOMA curator once put it). The "complex and (supposedly) not ideologically grounded constructions" of modernism never really meant much for other forms of art that are often more popular (literature, cinema, music, etc).

To be informed only by traditions "prior to the Rennaissance" is a bit of an overstatement. Though we may have said it, mistakenly. To be correct, our real problem starts with modernism and the 20th century. The thing that José Ortega y Gasset has called "The Dehumanisation of Art". This dehumanisation is, perhaps ironically, rooted in the ideologies of humanism that started in the renaissance but only really flowered as of World War I.

And please don't mistake our manifesto for a fear of diversification. If anything, it is quite the opposite. We advocate a wider approach to both art and games. Our manifesto testifies of one way of going about this. There may be others. The more, the merrier -and the more diversification. Also, we consider a pre-modern approach to art creation and opening up game design to include non-competitive concepts, as widening the potential of both art and games, not a narrowing down. We feel that both are stuck in a rut. Art is stuck in the modernist relativist rut and games are stuck in their own definition.

But more than anything, our Realtime Art Manifesto is intended as a call to arms for artists and designers to seize control of this medium and create beautiful new artworks, instead of wallowing in their self-chosen underdog position, as many seem to do now.