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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tav_Behemoth" data-source="post: 5366857" data-attributes="member: 18017">I'm moderating a panel on the interactions between <a href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120508808010219" target="_blank">Dungeons & Dragons in Contemporary Art</a>, and am hoping to get some suggestions for stuff that would be interesting to explore with a bunch of artists whose work is exhibited in galleries & informed by their experience playing RPGs. Some of the topics that have come up so far:- How do artists see the way they express their creativity through roleplaying as similar or different from its expression through art?- Richard Schechner wrote "Art and ritual, especially performance, are the homeground of playing. This is because the process of making performances does not so much imitate playing as epitomize it." Is making art like playing a game? What does the history of artists' interest in other games, like Marcel Duchamp and Gabriel Orozco, tell us?- Zak Smith says "I think the fact that half the decent artists working today know what a beholder is as relevant as the fact that half the artists in Beckmann's time painted Pierrot." Why is this, and what does it mean about D&D's place in the culture? Do RPGs have a special appeal to artists?- Another question raised by Zak: "Why is the alleged difference between commercial artists: Dave Trampier, Ian Miller, Gary Gygax et al. and gallery artists taken seriously at all by anyone--ESPECIALLY now that pretty much any gallery in New York will show a picture of a 3-headed dragon eating a spaceman with a laser gun if its presented properly and any game company is capable of producing trendy, self-aware, post-human Ballardian sci-fi or whatever? Is this merely a commercial reality or does it point to fundamentally different aims?"- What's the difference between artists whose work is genuinely engaged with roleplaying games, and those who are just hipster slumming and appropriating the imagery of a subculture and childhood nostalgia? Does it matter?- Why does it matter whether artists play the games whose imagery and themes they use in their work - is this just an issue of authenticity cred?Some background for the panel is <a href="http://en.wordpress.com/tag/dungeons-dragons-and-contemporary-art/" target="_blank">here</a>, and the <a href="http://www.allegralaviola.com/Shows-Detail.cfm?ShowsID=27" target="_blank">Doomslangers exhibition</a> that two of the panelists were part of is also worth checking out.</blockquote>

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