Yeah, but is it "Art?"

In Mitchell's Video Games and Art, Jane Pincard interviews the curators of an art gallery. This art gallery is much like other art galleries in some ways, but unique in one particular way - the gallery is located with the world of "The Sims Online." The curators comment on what I call a "Baudrillardian mapping" of the offline world - and express an interesting connection with the "domesticity" of the Sims approach. (My thoughts here go back to the earlier post on Omnitopia.)

Art exists as/in/via/about video games in a number of iterations, but this article raises interesting questions about art qua art when displayed in virtual worlds.

And The Sims are not the only "other world" to put art on display. Second Life also has art galleries! New World Notes offered a "Top Ten" list of art installations within Second Life. You can see their list here.

As is the case with the ever changing landscape of Second Life, many of these art galleries are no longer at the SLurls given, so, if you have Second Life installed, begin your visit at The JOB ARt Inspiration. Click here for the SLurl.

Seems that Second Life art imitates First Life imitating displays of art imitating life.

Knock the Vote!

The voting is over, and a new president has been elected! Many people found the election process to be engaging, exciting and interesting. Record numbers turned out. But, not everyone voted. Why?

There are some people who abstain from voting based, not on inconvenience or forgetfulness or sloth, but on conscience. In an October 31 article in the Pahrump, Nevada Times, Glen Tenney describes this voter as follows:

The principled non-voter is likely influenced by the great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer who made himself famous by, among other things, pointing out the reality that there are two fundamentally conflicting ways by which men obtain the necessary means for satisfying their wants and needs in life.

Oppenheimer suggested men could obtain goods either by economic means or by political means. According to Oppenheimer, the economic means involves production and exchange, and the political means involves expropriation of the resources of others.

This stark conceptual differentiation between the economic means and the political means is important for the principled non-voter because he understands when the political means are used, there is necessarily a victim involved.

While the economic means are characterized by mutually beneficial exchanges where both parties benefit, the political means is characterized by fundamentally coercive exchanges where one party (or group) benefits at the expense of another.

In Chapter 11 of his Persuasive Games, Ian Bogost points out that some "players" may abstain from a persuasive game, similarly, out of conviction - but not convictions on the topic/subject. Rather, abstention from the rhetorical situation is based on objections to the rhetoric itself. When a group conscientiously "opts out" of, say, an election or a trial by jury:

In such a case, the group is no longer commenting on the persuasiveness of a candidate or a defendant, but on some inherent problem in the method by which they have been asked to judge him. (p. 318)

How often does a serious/persuasive game fail, not because of the weakness of its argument, or of an objectionable claim, but because they have "given up" on the game itself. If a player feels the game "doesn't matter," then the player is apt to quit playing. Not unlike the voter who concludes that elections/government/the political system "doesn't matter," then he is apt to quit voting.