The Games on Exhibition: Videogames as Contemporary Art

Abstract

The Night Journey (2007–2018) is one of the first experimental art game ever made according to the promotional content description made by its designers. The game directed by video artist Bill Viola who is known with his video installations that question fundamentals of human existence in relation to the nature. The Night Journey frames the similar conception with an unconventional journey to the basis of humane circumstances overwhelmed by a challenging environment. Although there is no narrative path to follow and no goals to achieve, decisions made by the players can create procedural changes in their existence and the world surrounding them. Thus, the game falls apart from the conventional understanding of user experiences and it moves to a conceptual experience that is symbolic and more metaphorical. The game raises an inquiry on being a video game with its mechanics and at the same time being an artwork with its aesthetic, conceptual and artistic qualities. This triggers an outmoded debate on involvement of technologies to art practices. Respectively photography, cinema, video and more recently digital technologies became the subject of the same debate in academic and practical circles. The commercial aspects of the aforementioned technologies have created confusion regarding their regard as art-forms. The position of their aesthetic experiences against being reproducible have remained open to discussion when compared to traditional art practices. When the video game literature today is examined, it is observed that the similar dilemma is a subject of discussion. This article aims to define the relationship between video game and art within the framework of current practices and discussions, and to identify the possibilities and potential boundaries of the video game medium as a contemporary art practice in terms of artist, artwork and audience. In this context, three exhibitions led by Museum of Modern Art Museum of New York, Victoria and Albert Museum and Barbican Center is examined to understand past, present and future of videogame as artwork.