In this original Digital Art and Philosophy class, we will become familiar with different forms of digital art and related philosophical issues. Digital art is anything related to computers and art such as using a computer to create art or an art display that is digitized. Philosophical aspects arise regarding art, identity, performance, interactivity, and the process of creation. Students may respond to the material in essay, performance, or digital art work (optional). Instructor: Melanie Swan. Syllabus: www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA

1. Image: Emese
Szorenyi
Digital Art and Philosophy #3
Play, Performance, and Virtual Reality
Melanie Swan
University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Gallery
Syllabus: http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA

2. Digital Art is anything involving
computers and art
2

3. Sub-categories of Digital Art
Information Visualization Virtual Reality, Gaming
BioArt, Generative Art Identity, the Future 3

4. Review: Philosophy of Digital Art
1. Intro to Digital Art: Interactivity
gives more direct access to the
perception process
2. Information visualization: visual
representation of abstract data
– Aesthetic qualities: beauty, the
sublime (vastness), mimesis
(mimicry), and the uncanny (our
deepest fears); differend
– Digital art like conceptual art
– Authenticity in art: evoke emotion
and communicate experience
– The Diagram: allow interactions
within data before abstraction 4

5. Play and Digital Art
5

6. Play, Performance & Virtual Reality
Play IRL – In Real Life AR – Augmented Reality
Performance Virtual Reality: Video Games and Virtual Worlds
6

7. What is Play?
“Do we play play or does play play us?”
(Gadamer 1960)
• Play is
– Engaging in activity for enjoyment and recreation
rather than a serious or practical purpose
– A free and meaningful activity
– Creating novelty from the commonplace
– Linked to imagination and creativity – imagining
and enacting possibilities
• Ludic (ludere - Latin: to play): of or relating to
play or playfulness
• Claim: Play is a vital component of the social
life and well-being of both children and adults
• Future: societal quality of life indices:
happiness, creativity, playfulness quotients
7

8. History of Play: the Apollonian and
the Dionysian
• Sons of Zeus
– Apollo: god of the Sun, dreams,
fine arts, reason [contemplation]
– Dionysus (Bacchus): god of wine,
agriculture, ecstasy, play [action]
• Analysis of comedy and tragedy
• Fusion necessary to form
dramatic acts, tragedies - The
Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche,
1872)
• Contrast and unification of
opposites needed for highest
artistic expression
8

9. History of Play
• A Philosophy of Play (Luther Gulick, 1920)
– “Play up! Play up! Play the game!” (1891)
– “The individual is more completely revealed in play
than in any one other way, and play has a greater
shaping power over the character and nature of
man than has any one other activity.”
• Homo Ludens (Johan Huizinga, 1938)
– Importance of play in culture and society
– Play is necessary to generate culture (play is older
than culture; animals play)
– Characteristics of play: free, not ‘real-life,’ no
material interest, creates order
• The Philosophy of Play (Emily Ryall ed., 2013)
– Education, playwork, leisure studies, applied
ethics, the philosophy of sport 9

10. Workplay
• History of Play in Work
– Egyptian pyramid-building work gangs: team names
(Friends of Khufu, Endurance, Perfection), carving and
stone-hauling competitions, rewards: beer and bread1
• Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds
to Change the Way People Work and Businesses
Compete (Byron Reeves, 2009)
– Use avatars to increase engagement and productivity
– Allow points, +1 feedback, leveling up, real-time
communication
– Design games to address work pain points
– Employ virtual currencies to set priorities and allocate
resources
– Collaborate in game-like environments
1How Play and Games Transform the Culture of Work, An Interview with Ross Smith, American Jrl
Play, Vol 5(1), Fall 2012; per www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/who-built-the-pyramids.html 10

11. Fun and Fulfillment: Monster 2.0
11

12. Behavior in General
• Behaviorism (Pavlov, Skinner): stimulus and
external actions not internal mental activity
• (Fogg) General principles of behavior
design: a simultaneous sense of
– Sufficient motivation
– Ability to perform the behavior
– Trigger
• Permissibility of play
Fogg BJ. A Behavior Model for Persuasive Design. Persuasive Technology Lab, Stanford University. 2009.
http://bjfogg.com/fbm_files/page4_1.pdf
12

13. Ethics and Ethical Models
• Act-based (right act with right motive)
– Categorical Imperative (always right/wrong) (Kant)
– Utilitarianism (outcome maximization) and
Consequentialism (end justifies means) (Bentham, Mill,
Sidgwick)
• Agent-based
– Virtue ethics: role of character (Aristotle, Aquinas)
– Dispositionism: individual traits can be used to predict
and explain behavior
• Situation, context, and ecosystem-based
– Situationism: social context creates potent forces
producing or constraining behavior (1968)
– Ethics of care (Carol Gilligan): morality arises from
experiences of empathy and compassion;
interrelationships
13

14. What is Philosophy?
• ‘Philia’ (love )and ‘sophia’ (wisdom)
– Pursuit of wisdom, search for meaning
• Metaphysics (the fundamental nature of being
and the world) Who
am I?
– Ontology (nature of being, existence, reality)
– Cosmology (study of the universe)
– Teleology (purpose and ends) How
• Epistemology (the nature of knowledge) do I
– Logic (formal system for reasoning) know?
– Scope and limitations of knowledge
• Axiology (the nature of values) What
should
– Aesthetics (perception and sensation) I do?
– Ethics, economic systems, political theory
14

15. What is Performance?
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts”
- from “As You Like It” (William Shakespeare, 1600)
• Performance is (traditional)
– An act of staging or presenting a
play, concert, or other form of
entertainment
– A person's rendering of a dramatic
role, song, or piece of music
• Performance is (expanded)
– Doing something
– Translating ideas into action
– A continuous creative process
15

16. Levels of Performance
• Theater actors in a play
• You IRL (in real life) all the time (“All
the world’s a stage”)
– “We are still and are always
performing; life is constantly a
performance; we are, in fact, only
performing from moment to moment”
– (Dzifa Benson)
• Everyone to you IRL all the time
(Truman Show)
• Audience required?
• If you don’t think you are performing,
are you? Consciousness of
performance required?
16

17. What are we continuously performing?
• All dimensions of Identity and Sociality
– Species, gender, geography, affiliation, role
• Butler: Identity and Performativity
– Identity is an illusion retroactively created by our
performances
– Identity is real only to the extent that it is performed
– Identity is soley and completely a social construction
– We engage in acts that constitute our identity: the body
becomes its identity through a series of acts which are
renewed, revised, and consolidated through time
– We perform our identities in constructed social reality
• Sociality: we are individuals and social beings oriented
to the world collectively through culture
Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory."
17
Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre. Ed. SE Case. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990.

18. Reading: Performance is the Thing
(Dzifa Benson, 2006)
• Personal philosophies of performance
– Developed through the act of performing
• Romanticism
– Art/performance: heightened expression of human emotion
– Great performer is someone embodying their dream
– “How can I transcend myself (words, gestures, non-verbal) to
reach the sublime, to get into the blood-soaked beating
heart of things?” *Performer’s objective is to connect with
the audience on universal truths]
• Stoicism
– Philosophy as a daily disciplined performance
• Practical steps by which one might confront life’s problems
• Daily search for freedom from dependence on anything external
– The attentive gaze of an audience from which one never
escape: one’s self 18

19. Reading: Performance is the Thing
(Dzifa Benson, 2006)
• Existentialism
– Self-definition is a kind of performance “I am a painter”
– Living is performance is existentialism (emphasis on
freedom, action, decision-making)
– We are always “on stage” performing IRL, especially to
ourselves (watching, evaluating ourselves); others
evaluate our performances for authenticity
• Platonism
– Substance must triumph over style
– Consciousness of the value of process “when I am able to
see and experience process, new possibilities emerge”
– Poets/artists banished from the Republic due to
privileging of end and ignoring of process
19

20. What is Video Gaming?
• A video game is an electronic game that
involves human interaction
• Game Studies and Game Design Principles
• Jane McGonigal (TED talks 2010, 2012)
– Cognitive and emotional ability to aspire to
extraordinary things and strive until achieved
• Gamer traits: natural ability to be more determined,
optimistic, cooperative, persistent, goal-oriented, not
give up in the case of failure, try to achieve something
extraordinary, reach out to others for help
– Trust-building, communication, socialization
– 10,000 hours (school-parallel & expertise)
– Challenge: translation to real-life problems
20

21. Video Game Genres
• Action (FPS, etc.)
and Strategy
• Adventure
• Role-play
– MMO, LARP
• Augmented Reality
• Serious games
– Education
– Social change
21

22. Psychology of Killing
• Contexts for killing
– Day-to-day real life, war, video games
– War: indoctrination process required for killing1
• Wolfenstein 3D - the first major “first-person
shooter” game (1992): a new paradigm of
realism2
– Viewing perspective seen through the eyes of
the character rather than from afar
– Shot enemies fall and bleed rather than
disappear
• Behavior: permissibility, ethics, normativity
– Is it ok to kill in video games?
– Is video game killing different?
1On Killing : The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society
2http://www.journal.au.edu/abac_journal/2010/may2010/article6.pdf
22

23. Video Gaming Statistics
ZNGA ($2.8b)
http://www.examiner.com/article/mlg-spring-championship-sunday-surpasses-rose-bowl-18-24-
aged-male-viewers 23

24. Major League Gaming Championship
24

25. World of Warcraft
http://www.statista.com/statistics/208146/number-of-subscribers-of-world-of-warcraft/
25

26. Virtual World: Second Life
• 1 million residents (July 2012)
• $700 m annual economy for virtual goods
and services
• Aesthetics ideals: avatars and objects
http://pandodaily.com/2012/07/06/philip-rosedale-the-media-is-wrong-secondlife-didnt-fail/
26

27. Augmented Reality Gaming
I Love Bees (2004, to promote Halo2 launch)
27

28. Augmented Reality Gaming
LARP (live-action role play): TwinKomplex, Spooks (Halting State)
http://www.ludicphilosophy.com/
28

29. Augmented Reality Gaming
Ingress, launched Nov 2012
29

30. What is Virtual Reality?
• (Webster) An artificial environment
– Experienced through sensory stimuli
(sights and sounds)
– Provided by a computer
– One's actions partially determine what
happens in the environment
• Online persistent 3D world with a
sense of presence and experience in
context
• Are immersive environments real?
– Levels of Realism: underlying world,
player actions, biophysical and affect
reactions, social interaction,
economics 30

31. Video Games (goal-oriented)
31

32. Virtual Worlds (unscripted)
32

33. Gender-bending in Virtual Reality
• Men 3-5 times more likely to gender-bend
• 85% players male; half female avatars
played by men
• Why are men more likely to gender-bend?
– Pragmatic: female avatars are more likely to
be treated better, receive gifts and help
– Aesthetic: male players prefer to look at
female avatars
• Greater understanding of gender roles
through gender-bending
– Men: tension between being treated better
and being treated as inferior
– Women: men socialized not to ask for help or
show weakness
http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/gateway_genderbend.html
33

34. Art imitates Life?
Acting out RL in VR?
• Identity and Authenticity
– Participant responsibilities
– Example: Sandy Stone, Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?
Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael Benedikt (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1991): 81-118
• Death
– Game addiction, exhaust, neglect; external regulation
– Example: A 28-year old Chinese player ‘Snowly’ died after playing the
online game "World of Warcraft" for several continuous days
• Rape
– Community self-regulation
– Julian Dibbell, A Rape in Cyberspace: How an Evil Clown, a Haitian
Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database
Into a Society - The Village Voice, 1993
34

35. What is Philosophy?
• ‘Philia’ (love )and ‘sophia’ (wisdom)
– Pursuit of wisdom, search for meaning
• Metaphysics (the fundamental nature of being
and the world) Who
am I?
– Ontology (nature of being, existence, reality)
– Cosmology (study of the universe)
– Teleology (purpose and ends) How
• Epistemology (the nature of knowledge) do I
– Logic (formal system for reasoning) know?
– Scope and limitations of knowledge
• Axiology (the nature of values) What
should
– Aesthetics (perception and sensation) I do?
– Ethics, economic systems, political theory
35

36. Reading: Videogames and Aesthetics
(Grant Tavinor, 2010)
• Philosophical issues related to video
games when considered as a form of art
• “Videogames are one of the most
striking developments in recent popular
arts”
• Are videogames art?
– Apply theories of art
– Criteria: direct pleasure, display of
virtuosity, representation, criticism,
emotional impact, imaginative experience,
audience involvement 36

37. Reading: Videogames and Aesthetics
Pong
Fallout 3
37

38. Reading: Videogames and Aesthetics
(Grant Tavinor, 2010)
• Interactivity: theories of player and
artwork identity
– Media demanding non-trivial
reader/participant effort to traverse
the text/narrative (Aarseth)
– Strongly interactive if interactor’s
choices impact the artistic structure of
the work (Lopes)
– Modifiable artistic structure especially
by using fictive props; explode the
bomb or not? (Walton)
38

39. Reading: Videogames and Aesthetics
(Grant Tavinor, 2010)
• Relationship between fiction and
virtutality, example: gameworld dragon
– Fictive dragon in books/movies: watch it
– Virtual dragon in gameworld: play with it,
act upon it, interact with it (simulated for
this purpose)
• Ontological (existence) paradox1
– The apparent physical reality makes the
virtual object seem real but …
– How can you battle a gameworld dragon
that does not exist?
1Michael Heim, The Metaphysics of Virtual Reality
39

40. Reading: Videogames and Aesthetics
(Grant Tavinor, 2010)
• Role of player
– First person, third person
– Degree of player-character
backstory
– Affordances (player actions)
• Player psychology
– Controlling character actions
engage decision-making which
triggers emotional attitudes and
accountability
– Cognitive and emotional response
to character actions and inactions
(e.g.; guilt at exploding a bomb)
40

41. Reading: Videogames and Aesthetics
(Grant Tavinor, 2010)
• How is the ontology (existence) of
video game artworks defined
• Multiple instancing in artworks
– Software versions
– Shards
– Player modding
– Player playing
• Performer or player: intentionality
– Video games
– Jazz improvisation
– Traditional performance
41

42. Summary: Philosophical Issues in Play,
Performance, and Virtual Reality
• Gamer mindset
– Urgent optimism, extreme self-motivation, ability to
act immediately, tight social fabric creation
• Behavior: permissibility, etiquette, normativity
– Ethics: act-based -> agent-based -> situation-based
• Continuously performing identity and sociality
– Identity plurality (avatars), identity play, authenticity
• Objects and existence: fictive vs. virtual
– How do objects and identities exist in virtual reality?
– What does it mean for a virtual reality artwork to exist?
42

43. Player Score:
Philosophia Digitale
Learning Points +50
Fun Points +100
Team-participation +75
43

44. Agenda and Upcoming Sessions
2/12 - Introduction "What is digital art?" and what philosophers say about it.
2/19 - The Design Aesthetics of Meaning-Making: Information Visualization.
2/26 - Democratized Creativity: Performance, Music, Virtual Reality, Gaming.
3/5 - Natural Aesthetics: BioArt, GenArt, SynBio, Biomimicry, CrowdArt.
“What is Generative Art? (Margaret Boden, 2009, Sectn I & V)
“The Further Exploits of AARON, [the artificial intelligence] Painter"
(Harold Cohen, 1995)
Experiential project and essay question: What is the experience of
performing identity differently in virtual reality?
3/12 - Portable ArtTech: Identity, Fashion, Wearable Electronics, the Future.
Comments and Feedback:
m@MelanieSwan.com
44

45. The Bay Lights
• World’s largest LED display, Grand Lighting
Tues 3/5 at 9 pm
http://thebaylights.org/ 45

46. Thank you!
Image: Emese
Szorenyi
Digital Art and Philosophy
Melanie Swan
University of the Commons and the Emerald Tablet Gallery
http://www.MelanieSwan.com/PCA
http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga