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RPG Evolution: Are RPGs Art?
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<blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9018125" data-attributes="member: 7035894"><p>The status of essay-style writing as "not art" is, historically, very much a question of taste and cultural fashion - living the wake of the Romantic Movement, we tend to easily acknowledge forms of art that are more or less made in that image, and relegate other forms of creative expression to the not-art pile. Yet I point out that essays and scholarly articles were once the epitome of art.</p><p></p><p>I too am a teacher - Theory of Knowledge, Language and Literature, and Creative Writing. In L&L particularly, we study both traditional literary texts (novels, poems, etc.) and non-literary texts (advertisements, essays, etc.). The distinction between the two categories has mostly to do with convention and intention. Studying a commercial, for example, is really not a lot different than studying a short film, until it comes to discussing context and purpose. Is a poem written to sell canned beans not art, but a poem written to celebrate the joys of canned beans, art? Is the line between art and not-art reducible to a question of context?</p><p></p><p>Yet even there I think your argument is sort of untenable in the way that you break apart an unquestioned work of art to deem parts of it art, and parts of it, not. JRRT imagined that timeline and presented it in a style meant to emulate an academic history. These were intentional choices presumably made to achieve a particular audience effect - to give the entire work a sense of alternate history. To then claim that this particular part of the work is not art because of its style is, to me, like claiming that the painting is art but the brushstrokes are not.</p><p></p><p>Ultimately, this is a subjective argument. But when I think back to my thirteen year old self lost for ages in my Monster Manual, that was for me unquestionably an artistic experience. The descriptions, the numbers, the illustrations, the layout all combined to fill me with imaginative wonder. As I read through it, I was not simply experiencing an instruction manual, I was engrossed in an aesthetic experience, entirely switched on, every bit as much as listening to a great song or reading a cherished novel. If that is not art, then what is?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Clint_L, post: 9018125, member: 7035894"] The status of essay-style writing as "not art" is, historically, very much a question of taste and cultural fashion - living the wake of the Romantic Movement, we tend to easily acknowledge forms of art that are more or less made in that image, and relegate other forms of creative expression to the not-art pile. Yet I point out that essays and scholarly articles were once the epitome of art. I too am a teacher - Theory of Knowledge, Language and Literature, and Creative Writing. In L&L particularly, we study both traditional literary texts (novels, poems, etc.) and non-literary texts (advertisements, essays, etc.). The distinction between the two categories has mostly to do with convention and intention. Studying a commercial, for example, is really not a lot different than studying a short film, until it comes to discussing context and purpose. Is a poem written to sell canned beans not art, but a poem written to celebrate the joys of canned beans, art? Is the line between art and not-art reducible to a question of context? Yet even there I think your argument is sort of untenable in the way that you break apart an unquestioned work of art to deem parts of it art, and parts of it, not. JRRT imagined that timeline and presented it in a style meant to emulate an academic history. These were intentional choices presumably made to achieve a particular audience effect - to give the entire work a sense of alternate history. To then claim that this particular part of the work is not art because of its style is, to me, like claiming that the painting is art but the brushstrokes are not. Ultimately, this is a subjective argument. But when I think back to my thirteen year old self lost for ages in my Monster Manual, that was for me unquestionably an artistic experience. The descriptions, the numbers, the illustrations, the layout all combined to fill me with imaginative wonder. As I read through it, I was not simply experiencing an instruction manual, I was engrossed in an aesthetic experience, entirely switched on, every bit as much as listening to a great song or reading a cherished novel. If that is not art, then what is? [/QUOTE]
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