Domenico Quaranta

Viviamo in un mondo connesso da reti di comunicazione e voli low cost, dove la politica parla attraverso i social media, la guerra si fa con i droni, l’economia si fonda su processi smaterializzati. Ed è per questo motivo che una produzione artistica non può prescinderne...

Along the last years, the debate around videogames as art got momentum. Unsurprisingly, this debate included many misunderstandings and cross wires, usually related to the meaning and the cultural dignity (or lack thereof) one applies to the key words of this discussion: “art”, “game”, and “videogame”. Most of these misunderstandings are not new, but resurfaced any time Western culture had to face the problem of accepting the artistic nature of a given new medium, from photography to cinema and video. After briefly considering the legitimization dynamics of these media, the author discusses the definition – now widely accepted – of “art games”, suggesting a distinction between videogames as an autonomous artistic medium and “art world”, and the use of videogame as a medium in the field of contemporary art.