On Monday 11 December 2006 13:51, Cesare Marilungo wrote: > Actually, the term 'art' has always been used also, and even > more, in the sense of 'skill' or 'craft' for a long time. The > art of making bread, for instance, deserves the same respect > of the art of making music. First of all, making bread is part of the culinary arts, which are widely accepted as such (if you doubt it, just attend a wine tasting and listen to people's critiques. Performing arts critics can only dream of being so vague and effete.) I would argue that art and craft are two complementary concepts which both can be used to describe the same activity, but not all activities. A person's skill at a craft can be measured objectively. "Every loaf of bread he bakes comes out to exactly 500g." "He performs that Rachmaninov piece exactly the same way every time." And on the videogame front, "She took out the entire opposing team in 8 seconds with only 2 grenades." A person's skill at an art can ONLY be measured subjectively. "His bread is always chewy, but tender and flavorful." "He makes me cry with his reading of Rachmaninov every time." And on the videogame front.... what? "She can play blindfolded?" "She can do a little dance while she frags people?" On games like DDR you can add a little flair to your performance because it's meant to be a performance. On games that people play competitively, like first person shooters.... I'm not so sure what the artistic component would be. Regardless, DDR's existence demonstrates that there can be an artistic component to videogame playing. But it's a different art than music performance (or composition, or arrangement, or engineering) just as all those musical activities are a different art than bread baking. Well, maybe music engineering is pretty close to bread baking. Rob
