FPS: First Person Scenery

Park, Geoff. “Theatre Country” Theatre Country; Essays on Landscape & Whenua, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006, pp. 113-127.

Lee, Min. “China Limits Teenage Internet Gaming.” 3-RX Health Encyclopedia. 17 July 2007. 21 May 2009.

Geoff Park’s retracing of the birth of Western scenic tourism through New Zealand gives us an interesting historical platform on which to consider the practice of modern tourism but also the way we frame and experience reality. The Claude Glass and its use in particular interest me in relation to the technology of still and video photography as used by tourists but also the widespread playing of video games.

The Claude Glass, a tinted convex mirror named after the painter Claude Lorrain whose paintings the reflected images in the Glass resembled, is the device Park describes as bringing scenic tourism to New Zealand and transforming land into landscape (Park, 113). By turning away from the chosen “scene” the user of the Glass effectively turns away from reality directly and experiences the landscape as reflected light whose characteristics have changed, via the mirror, to resemble a constructed ideal of reality. When put in these terms hints of Baudrillard’s simulacra come to mind which I won’t go into here but do feed into the relationship that the use of the Claude Glass has with video games.

Fundamentally the constructed space of video games, from quite abstract to naturalistic interpretations of space, functions in a similar way to the Claude Glass in that it requires the user to turn away from direct experience and engage with an idealized or constructed image of reality. Our compulsion to frame experience in this manner is interesting to consider.

While the Claude Glass was developed to frame visual phenomena for both artists and travelers providing ideal visual experiences specific to a period of painting, video games offer a similar interpretation of reality but are not an image. Rather they are entirely constructed offering goal based gameplay and deep interactivity. The psychological desires involved in the pleasure seeking of both activities are different but also similar in that they privilege an image or construction of reality over direct experience.

The issue of video game addiction confirms the power of this desire, particularly in the case of MMORPG’s (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games). There are many factors, including social interaction and acceptance, which make the environment and act of online gaming addictive. The recent example of the Chinese government placing restrictions, via compulsory software, on players in MMORPG’s under the age of 18 is interesting to consider in terms of how widespread gaming addiction is in China but also how the implementation works within the rule-set and mechanics of the games. After 3 hours of consecutive play experience points earned in game are halved and after 5 hours they are reduced to zero (http://www.3-rx.com).

Geoff Park quotes Christopher Hussey when he says that the desire for pleasure in the traveler, and I will include the video gamer here, “is in every variety of degree, to satisfy this craving for the ideal, or to drug his craving by the belief that it is being satisfied… It is the expectation of new scenes, perhaps the ideal scene, that sets him off and keeps him going” (Park, 117)

Realism, Value and Money

Lyotard, Jean-François. “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?” The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.

Jean-François Lyotard writes The Postmodern Condition as a philosopher and literary theorist on what he sees as the current state of postmodernism as a theory but also where it becomes evident in culture.

In this particular excerpt Lyotard talks about the function of the avant-garde as questioning the nature of reality, the reality implicated within art (75). So the art object questions it’s own status as art and how we come to value it. The other side of this view comes from a form of realism that Lyotard describes as seeking “unity, simplicity, communicatibility” (75). It frontally attacks experimentation by the avant-garde in the arts and brings a priori criteria for aesthetic judgment to art, ignoring or rejecting that which can’t be subsumed into its accepted structure (75,76).

Here Lyotard describes a struggle that seems well documented in art history e.g. the relationship between the French Academy and Salon and the avant-garde. It’s hard to see an assault on experimentation still existing. Although, a line I can see being drawn here is between a realism which only values accepted aesthetic expressions and a realism of money. In a culture of eclecticism, as Lyotard describes it, the value of artwork can be judged by its value on a capitalism market. I find it interesting how Lyotard then discounts value as defined by individual taste with one sentence (76).

Lyotard seems to prefer a realism that allows marketplace value to reveal the value of art as it “accommodates all tendencies” (76).

This is not a nice thought for the artist, especially when interpretation and individual meaning seem so important. Could the impossibility of reconciling individual tastes and opinions, which only “entertain(s) oneself”, leave profits as the most effective system for evaluating art?

Well, art is an individual experience. This does not mean we can’t agree on the value of an artwork, but the value that defines ones experience of art is what we take away or project on to it. This almost seems a given in a contemporary art school context. The way a large price tag values an artwork, though, is interesting to consider. It is an entirely different system of evaluation that, instead of nodding one’s head in quite appreciation we physically empty large amounts of bank account real estate in appreciation and hope lots of people are looking.

10 most expensive paintings ever sold
http://www.recoveryourlife.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1598426

Most expensive living artists
http://kellydevinethomas.com/2008/12/23/the-most-expensive-living-artists/