This document discusses various topics related to art and videogames, including: 1) It provides an overview of the Dada art movement and its rejection of standards and emphasis on chance and randomness. 2) It then discusses the demoscene movement, where programmers and artists create real-time graphics and music displays, seeing their work as a type of performance art. 3) The document debates whether demos should be considered a form of art and discusses their influence and role in art contexts. It suggests they comment on society through technological engagement.

1. GDCV1845/GDSS1845 – Videogames and arts
Class 05
Art Game
Game Art

2. Class 05
Schedule
Art History
Demoscene
Art game
Game art
Game proposal continued

3. Art in a brief review
What is Art or an art piece?

4. Dada
Chance must be recognized as a new stimulus to
artistic creation.
Dada

5. Dada
Dadaism (1916-1924)
Post first world war cultural movement in visual arts,
literature, theatre and graphic design.

6. Dadaism
Anti-art, non-art movement by artists
The works were characterized by a deliberate
irrationality and the rejection of any prevailing
standards of art.
They believed in nonsense.

7. Dadaism
Dadaists created art in which chance and
randomness formed the basis of creation.
The “law of chance” can be experienced only in a
total surrender to unconscious.
Hans Arp

8. Hans Arp

9. Dada typography

10. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)

11. Portrait of chess players, Marcel Duchamp, 1911

12. Reunion, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, 1968

13. Reunion, John Cage, Marcel Duchamp, 1968, recreated 2010

14. Fluxus movement
“Fluxus artists did not agree with the authority of
museums to determine the value of art, nor did
they believe that one must be educated to view
and understand a piece of art”
https://www.theartstory.org/movement-fluxus.htm

15. George Maciunas

16. Fluxus Kits

17. Nam June Paik, Participation TV

18. Art in a brief review
What is Art or an art piece?
• An object created by a skillful craftsman or artist
• Determine by a group of authority
• Collect and exhibit in a museum
• Appreciation mainly on its beauty and fineness
• The value is judged by its rareness and price
What is Art (in contemporary extend)?
• available to the mass
• everyone may produce art all the time
• destroy boundary of art (or even boundary of the world)
• emphasis the process more than the product
• social value is also considered

19. Demoscene
Demoscene in early videogames

20. Demoscene: the Art of Real-time

21. Sceen magazine

22. Demoscene
The demoscene is an international collective of
programmers, graphics artists and musicians who
create real-time audio-visual presentations with
home computers.
Rhizome.org

23. Commodore 64

24. Commodore Amiga

25. Tape player

26. Game cassette

27. Piracy
Crackers dug up the part of program code that
contained the copy protection and disable it. The
altered program was saved, copied and
distributed among friends.

28. Piracy
The original motive was not money. It was about
testing one’s skills and overcoming a challenge.
It was also a chance to gain credibility with their
peer group.

29. Suppliers
The ones who bought the game for cracking.
They can also be game developers themselves.

30. Cracker
Modify the games
Insert short-cuts that made playing easier
Increase the demand for new games
Fix bugs that developers had neglected
Anti-game experience

31. Cracker’s intro
Signature
Logo
Animated text
Computer graphics
Background music

32. Cracker’s intro

33. Swappers
The ones who represent a cracking team and
possess contact lists of crackers all over the world,
and trade cracked games within the network.
Cracks may release before the formal publication
date of the game.

34. Demos
The cracker’s intros are now circulated without
the original games. The content of concern is now
the intro, not the cracked game.

35. Approaches
It can be studied as an artistic activity.
It can also be approached as counter-culture,
hacker activity or participatory media.
Rhizome.org

36. Demo
In computer industries, a demo is a simple
prototype shows off what a computer system can
do.
In demoscene, a demo is a series of computer
graphic effects with a music soundtrack.

37. Demo

38. Demo

39. Animation
Demos are different from animations in a way that
they have to be generated real-time in the
computers where the original games play.
Animations can be prepared beforehand.

40. Interactivity
In a demo, the user is just a viewer. We are talking
about a kind of ‘interpassive’ work, which could,
as far as technology goes, contain interactive
elements, but the choice not to include them has
been made.

41. Performance
Demos are more like theatre performances than
movies, videos or animations.
“It’s all happening here and now”
Programmer’s art

42. Demoscene

43. Demoscene

44. Postal network

45. Zines culture – diskmag

46. Bulletin board system for demoscene

47. Internet
The whole demo scene moved on to the
Internet…
Many old skool crackers and swappers feel that
this is when the underground values and spirit of
honorable competition disappeared.

48. Is demo art?

49. Is demo art?
Avoided any attempts to attach what they do to
any existing artistic paradigm…
The technological challenge, competing with
your peers, plays a central role in developing their
own forms of expression.
The aim is to outdo others.

50. Influence
Demos were influenced by the aesthetics of sci-fi,
heavy metal record covers, MTV, advertisements,
fantasy and pornography.

51. Is demo digital graffiti?

52. Demoscene in art context
Encouragement and criticism from one’s peers
and respected members of the community is a lot
more important than widespread fame in artistic
world.

53. Demoscene in art context
Commenting on society via technology and
software just by engaging in the act of producing
demos.
The people who make demos are not so much
wandering conceptual artists, but the master
clock-smiths of real-time digital media art.

54. Demoscene in art context

55. Game and art
A videogame “artist” is not the one who creates a
videogame, but someone who “copies” it.
A videogame “artist’ doesn’t even play a
videogame but he just extracts stuff from it.

56. Artgames
A term used by independent game developer –
Jason Rohrer
Games created with artistic intentions to expand
the expressive possibilities of games, to create
revealing and reflective play experience…

57. Artgames – Braid, Jonathan Blow

58. Game art
Game art is art made of games.
Games are a means of questioning, critiquing, and
exploring unexpected potentials…

59. Game art – Mario Trilogy. Myfanwy Ashmore

60. Columbine High School, 1999

61. Jon Haddock – Screenshots

62. Jon Haddock – Screenshots

63. Jon Haddock – Screenshots

64. Invader

65. Game and code
A new, powerful form of Pop Art
Artists can actually create videogames or modify
the software of existing games.
To protest against its ideology; or to deconstruct
its interface, revealing the structure and
conventions it is based on…

66. Brody Condon

67. Brody Condon

68. Anne-Marie Schleiner – Velvet Strike

69. Realism in game
Interactivity or photo-realism

70. JODI – SOD, Wolfenstein 3D

71. Palle Torsson – Evil Interior, Unreal Tournament

72. Feng Mengbo

73. ZKM Gameplay Exhibition

74. ZKM Gameplay Exhibition

75. ZKM Gameplay Exhibition