Art and Games
Dear Reality/WDR, Thierry Fournier, Galactic CafÉ, Playdead, Lea Schönfelder/Peter Lu, thatgamecompany, The Chinese Room, Bill Viola/USC Game Innovation Lab
thatgamecompany, „Journey“, 2012 © Sony Computer Entertainment Deutschland
To date, narrative structures are frequently linear and concentrate on a central protagonist: a legacy of 19th-century literature. This formal conservatism is being broken down more and more by two artistic forms that seem incompatible only at first glance. The first of these forms is narrative multi-channel installations; the second is video games for Xbox, Playstation, Wii or computer – which are increasingly replacing cinema and television for the younger generation in particular.
The exhibition is dedicated to the mutual relationship between art and games: On the one hand, we have artists who invent games, like Thierry Fournier or the video art pioneer Bill Viola in cooperation with the USC Game Innovation Lab. On the other hand, there are developers such as The Chinese Room or Playdead, which are oriented less to the goals of classical games such as attaining the highest score possible, than to artistic and design aspects as well as the stories themselves.
In contrast to the USA, where games are included in the collection of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, an artistic evaluation of video games in Europe – except by a few future-oriented institutions such as the Hartware MedienKunstVerein e.V. in Dortmund or the ZKM in Karlsruhe – still seems taboo. This is why KINO DER KUNST is presenting some of the most innovative games as examples of new artistic forms of storytelling