If you had told me a week ago that I was gonna have to read nearly 30 pages having to do with the creation of some of the first video games ever made, I would have been skeptical, but at the same time intrigued. “I’m a fan of video games and technology,” I’d have said to myself, “so even if it’s a rather hefty load of reading, it can’t be that bad, right?” Well my friend, never judge a book by its cover, and never assume that just because someone says you’ll enjoy reading something, you will. I won’t act like there wasn’t anything interesting at all that I read about in this section, but at the end of the day, it’s still just another boring assigned reading. The Art and Technology intro mentioned a couple cool things like robots and lasers, but for the most part it just talked about history I didn’t care about and names of artists that are impossible to pronounce like every other intro.
There was some nut job named Jean Tinguely that’s apparently obsessed with the term “static,” perhaps even to an unhealthy degree. He insists that ultimately the only thing that matters in the end is “movement” and evolution, and that nothing else matters, not even death. He’s what we Christians call a false prophet. Not to get preachy or anything, but it’s incredibly important that we acknowledge death and what comes afterwards, not because of fear, but because it’s ultimately the fate of every person on this planet. To disregard it as nothing more than a result of fear is naive, especially if your justification for doing so is for the supposed betterment of mankind.
But enough about Sir Static, let’s talk about what I perhaps consider the most disappointing of all the sections, Myron Krueger’s Responsive Environments. The concept of his works is what I found the most interesting about this section: finding new ways for people to interact with not only themselves, but with others, as well as with the programs themselves. It’s the beginning of modern video games as we know them, but the reason it’s not half as interesting to me as it should be is because Krueger spends so much time explaining the “how”, the “why” becomes less and less interesting as time goes on. It starts sounding more like a psychology lesson rather than an artist talking about his work.
And last, but certainly not least we have Jeffrey Shaw, who, in my honest opinion had the most interesting of all the readings this week. It’s also what I think Krueger’s section should have been more like. Shaw effectively summarizes what his work is and how it works in no more than a page’s worth of text. It’s a bike. You ride it through a virtual city. The city is made of words. Shaw also takes the time to explain the technology that allows his to operate, but unlike Krueger, he doesn’t take 10 pages to do so. In the end, the book doesn’t do either of their works justice. The type of artwork they make is really the kind that one has to experience for themselves, not just read about. To even attempt to summarize it in a book is a mockery to the art itself. Thankfully, because of people like Shaw and Krueger, we have things like video games today that truly allow us to immerse ourselves.
Jonathan Robinson