The Game Curator

BY: COLIN MIXSON
FEBRUARY 10, 2010

Starting December 18, folks down on Church St. who poked their heads into the Firehouse Gallery were surprised to find not fine art on display, but an array of plasma T.V.'s and video game controllers hanging from the ceiling. The exhibition is sponsored by The communication and Creative Media Division at Champlain College, UVM College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and The Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts. The exhibit features over a dozen games, from nine different artists. It's televesion adorned walls and columns feature an eclectic mix of often unusal, and sometimes downright gorgeous video games. Though many of the games on display were released in the past several years, they represent games ranging from beautiful to blocky, violent to mundane and thought provoking to thoughtless.
"Machinarium is very beautiful to look at," says Chris Thompson, curator and the man behind the Game (Life) exhibit, "it's beautifully painted, but there really is not a lot of critical content, it's just a puzzle game, but people walk up and say, 'oh that's a beautiful game, that looks like a beautiful painting, it must be a piece of art.' There are other games that look very simple, like Passage and Gravity by Jason Rohrer that look like chunky, old 8-bit games. You know, really rough, but are very sophisticated content wise. Jason has a background in computer engineering, but thinks very much like an artist. He thinks in terms of life, and death."
What little space is left inbetween the myriad of games is generally stock full of an audience ranging from the very young to the very old, and everything in between. While the exhibition doesn't charge admission, the Firehouse Gallery has seen twice the average seasonal visitors during Game (Life)'s run. Probably a result of all the fun everyone is having. In one corner of the room a man can be seen laying down on a bench playing Johnathan Blow's Braid, while a group elementary students on a field trip hurry excitedly from game to game. John, a 4th grader at Richmond elementary, had never been to the Firehouse Gallery he seemed to be enjoying his first visit.
"This game's awesome," he said. "It's two player. I'm flying and he shoots lasers, and you collect people's organs!" His friend Mat disagreed.
"It's too hard," he said.
Whatever the Kids thought, the teachers were definitely enjoying themselves. Although a few would occasionally ask insightful questions while the kids played games, usually along the lines of, "How does this make you feel?" or, "Do you understand whats going on here?" Most of the teachers were too busy trying to beat the current level in Machinarium.
While Chris Thompson's background is not in video games, but art, even as a curator of a "game gallery," his work generally keeps him from being able to actually play video games for recreation. However, this didn't keep Chris from asking questions. "Video games are financially the dominant cultural medium in this country," Chris says, "they make more money than film and music, but in the art world there is almost no notice that has been taken of it yet."
Chris also cites the sense of liberation some players experience from the anonymity of online play, or the moral ambiguity present in more violent games as an questionable quality in games. "It changes people's lifestyle, when your playing online games you don't know who you're playing with, or from what country. Games like Grand Theft Auto are very ambiguous morally. These are very important aspects that contemporary art isn't exploring. I saw an article in the New York Times and then I'd say, "Oh, that's an interesting question that isn't being answered lets do a show and try and figure out what's going to happen."
One of these questions Chris is trying to answer is do games reflect the artistic principles that other mediums, like fine art, film and music have been utilizing for decades, if not centuries.
"If you go to most galleries and museums almost everybody, 99% have a masters, or at least an undergraduate degree in art. In the Video Game world, almost nobody does. We called the entire world of video game art producers, and maybe two of them had been to art school and the rest of them all come from a programming, or engineering background. So, it was a very interesting question, because the people who were going to be producing the work don't really know all the rules of the art world and they don't really know what people question, so they ask things that have been figured out in the art world a hundred years ago, and they ask, "is this art?" and if an artist does something and says it's art, it's art."
In and effort to promote questions and awareness about video games as an art form, Chris has been busy working with Amanda Crispel, the director of the game design program at Champlain College, to select artists to speak as part of a lecture series on games. Ultimately they decided on five speakers, Jason Rohrer (Passage) Heather Kelly (Sugar), Jonathan Blow (Braid), Randy Smith (Spider: Secret of Bryce Manor), as well as Paolo Pedercini (Faith Fighter) to talk at the Closing Reception on Feb/13. Thompson cites Champlain College's game design program as one of the major factors of deciding to host the show in Burlington.
"I choose Burlington for a lot of reasons, but specifically, because there were so many resources to draw from Champlain College. Lots of folks helped, but Jeff Rutenbeck (Dean, Division of Communication and Creative Media Champlain College) and Amanda Crispel above all else."
Chris has considered taking Game (Life) to a number of different venues, but at this time isn't sure where he's going to find the finances. However, Chris is already hard at work planing and invitational game art competition, hopes to invite artists from across the nation to submit games and to host a show in order to push artists in the gaming direction and continue to promote questions about games as art.