Is D&D Art?

[Beginning of the End]

I think anyone arguing that those participating in an RPG session are not creating art would, by necessity, need to explain why improv theater is art (since it is widely considered so), but playing an RPG would not be.

Is it the audience? So that RPGs become art as soon as someone walks through the room who isn't playing? It seems problematic that D&D's status as art suffers from some sort of Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Is it the dice? But plenty of improv theater games feature randomizers. And would that mean that diceless RPGs are art?

 

[gamerprinter]

Don't have the link anymore, used to be a link on my old MySpace page, there's an actor/director from Los Angelos that runs weekend games, then actors portraying the characters - act out the sessioin live on stage with a paying audience... seems to be as both a D&D session and a performance art. (I am sure no one else is doing this, but in this frame of reference, its D&D emulating a theater production).

 

[Janx]

I'm trying to Camel-Tent-Nose DA here. If under certain conditions poo can be art, then under those same conditions other things can be art.

I'd like to get him to sigh exasperatively and say "fine, under certain conditions a session of D&D can be Art..."

The study about humans reaction to being told something was an original piece of famous art is interesting. To me, it means if Somebody tells YOU that Someting is Art, then it is Art.

I've seen this effect with my own work. I showed some pics of a piece I was working on, and everybody was asking me what it would take to get one of their own. i told them $500. They all of course were dismayed, but it did not stop their appreciation of the piece. The barrier for them appeared to be, they don't spend $500 on art (think $20). My high price put my work higher in their mind of its value. meanwhile, my wife (who is a trained artist) has put her work in local craft sales, and had trouble selling $60 items. Now I could be misreading their thinking of my price, but I feel certain that I manipulated their appraisal of the piece by maintaining the air of "This I$ Art."

Back on to more ridiculous examples:
If you take a photo of the sunset, and it wins a prize at an art show, it's art. yet you didn't make anything, you just clicked a button.

As I thought I said before, the Mona Lisa was a portrait. The Renaisance equivalent of a Polaroid. It was considered Art because that's what they called paintings back then. But it's still just a photo made by hand. And it is Art.

On the glass flower thing, do you really think a guy would go through such painstaking work (and that kind of work would be done by a glass artist NOT just a scientist) and not see it for a work of art.

If its man-made and beautiful to behold, it's probably art. Man wouldn't have taken the time to carefully refine its appearance if he didn't consider it art. This is why a lot of old antiques are very fancy looking. Because it was meant to be functional and artful.

Up until some point in the art world, art was beautiful and had craftsmanship. Then, art people got wierd ideas and it became OK for art to be wierd looking (impressionism, abstract, etc).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Wikipedia's definition of "art": Art

Note: the very first sentence includes the concept of intent.

I think anything creative... which is intended to evoke an emotional reaction is art.

Again, the mere intent to evoke an emotional response is insufficient to create art. Hate speech provides prime examples. Hitler had some awesome rhetoricians at his disposal and delivered speeches that moved his nation to commit genocide. Despite the reprehensible nature therof, those speeches could be considered prime examples of the art of rhetoric...albeit applied to hellish ends.

OTOH, calling me a N-word- or some of the other, more *ahem* colorful epithets for my race(s) is pretty much just...ignorant.

Both will result in emotional reactions, though.

Is Danny trying to wrangle a definition to include paintings as art, but D&D session is not art? Akin to some new state law saying gay people can't vote? (a fictional example, but not an unheard of concept in US history).

I think once the door is opened past stuff on walls and sculptures to include the 'arts" as singing, dancing, performing, storytelling, etc, then the bar has hung low enough that anything creative is probably art. maybe with a lowecase a, instead of an A for the good stuff.

My definition of art does not by necessity preclude a session of D&D- and most other human creative processes- from being art, but the definition's inclusion of intent to creat art in particular (as opposed to creating a campaign that is fun & entertaining) keeps the bar set relatively high.

And to reiterate: with gaming in particular, despite the creativity I have seen involved on both sides of the screen, I've not personally seen one player express a desire to transcend the boundaries of merely playing a game in the interests of art. I've heard people express that the RPG hobby is like therapy for them, but- this thread aside- never an expression that the playing the game is art.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think anyone arguing that those participating in an RPG session are not creating art would, by necessity, need to explain why improv theater is art (since it is widely considered so), but playing an RPG would not be.

Intent.

The improvisational thespians are setting it to perform theater to an audience of (usually) willing theater patrons.

The gamers are (usually) sitting down to play a game.

Let me ask the reciprocal question: if playing D&D is art, then why isn't playing Monopoly art? Especially for those among us who use funky voices in the manner of out playing pieces, or who go all "Snidely Whiplash" when someone lands on Boardwalk with a hotel on it...

 

[nedjer]

If its man-made and beautiful to behold, it's probably art.

If it's say Panda made and beautiful to behold, is it probably art?

 

[Janx]

If it's say Panda made and beautiful to behold, is it probably art?

As a programmer, the logic of my statement doesn't prevent your statement also from being true.

I would guess that non-man made, yet "made" things would be equivalent to random event generated things.

Some non-beautiful things are known to count as art, and my statement does not reject those either.

If such a thing is beautiful, I bet it could be framed and sold as art.

I also posit that if it can be sold as art, it is art. That's mostly a variant of the theme that if somebody claims it is art, it must be art.

I think that my qualifiers of 'man-made' and 'beautiful' are equivalent to Intent that Danny speaks of.

BTW, thanks Danny for continuing to play along with this debate. As a lawyer, I assume he's better at this than I am...

On to Danny's question. Can a session of Monopoly (which is a Game) also be art. If played strictly as a Game (goal being to produce a winner and losers), then probably not. Once the experience starts stretching beyond mere game play, than there is Intent to make it more than just a Game. At some point, I suspect it would pass a threshold and become and Art performance.

It might also be possible that a person's playing of the game is especially artful (though the word art in this case might share meaning with skill).

If one player showed up to the game dressed to the nines as the game piece they are playing, they are sort of making an Artistic statement. There's definitely Intent to put on a show(I mean performance, not PowerPoint)

It's also possible somebody could remake the Monopoly board and pieces, making them a work of Art. Suddenly, the game itself is Art. If the board was made human scale and everybody dressed up as their piece, there is further Intent to make the experience more than just a Game.

So yes, under certain conditions, a session of Monopoly could be art.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If one player showed up to the game dressed to the nines as the game piece they are playing, they are sort of making an Artistic statement.

Certainly, as long as you keep in mind that an artistic/aesthetic statement is not inherently "Art"- it could also be "Design."

It's also possible somebody could remake the Monopoly board and pieces, making them a work of Art.

If he weren't dead, I'd say that's a job for Andy Warhol.

 

[Janx]

I understand your definition and position. I personally disagree that art can be made accidentally. A sunset is pretty -- it's not art. But I also understand the issues with trying to discern intent.

I'm using 2 techniques here in my debate (and i am not a debate expert person).

CamelTentNosing. Once a camel's nose is in the tent, the whole thing is in the tent. So once you agree part of it is true, there's more that truth applies to.

Group Replacement. Some recently dead philospher guy taught that for any law about a social group, if you shuffle up all the social groups and your own social group was in the list and COULD be in that list, and you would not like your group to be drawn, then you had a bad and biased law.

If Danny and I go back in time when people didn't think much of what black people could accomplish, and he wrote all my papers with my name on them, and everyone thought they were great. i've misrepresented his work, and gotten a relatively unbiased response (because they were comparing my papers to my similarly colored peers).

If I revealed that Danny was writing my work all along, and aside from their anger at being duped, they then said all my work was crap, they are being disingenuous. The work was good on its own merit, regardless of the source. you can't say X is good because of the source. X is good on its own merit.

So, if my dog spills some paint and it results in a pretty cool looking painting, and I misrepresent how it was generated, but simply display it, promote it, sell it as a work of art, if you accept it as art, then it must be art.

If I dig up some gold, steal some gold, or recombine protons, neutrons and electrons from lead to make gold, it still sells for the same value in the market. It still makes the same prety jewelry.

The means of generation can be detached from the value intrinsic in the object itself.

My theory then, is if I trick you into liking it as art, you can't take it back. It's art. therefore, the source of the art isn't a factor in its determination.

If this theory is true, it would modify my logic statment to:
If it is artificially generated and beautiful, it must be art.

artificially generated still being a imprecise term. A truly natural event like a flower or sunset directly viewed wouldn't count, but a photo or painting would.
What your dog does naturally in the backyard probably wouldn't count (maybe she could dig a really cool looking hole...) but what your dog does while interacting with unnatural elements might count (rolling in paint on my drop cloth).

the beautiful clause is also odd. Obviously we allow for the beholder's eye, but in my original concept, beauty was intentionally added as part of the man-made nature of the obhect. Whereas, obviously, my dog doesn't care about that.

That can mean that beauty really means "appeal" rather than intent. The dog-made painting that I said i made appeals to you, therefore it is art because I am lying. at most, there's my Intent to present this as art rather than a big splotchy mess.

So human intent to apply value to the object and human appeal for the object are probably required components to qualifying as art.

 

[RainOfSteel]

I didn't say I didn't like them.

I thought the "trash" comment meant you did not like them. My apologies.

I said that the painstakingly exact reproduction of a flower in glass (for purposes of scientific study) is not art.

If someone looked at them and thought they were, they would be.

Is a wild flower art?

A wild flower is not a product of skill, not if it grew up in the wild, anyway.

Cultivated flower beds and all arrangements are examples of art.

Is Half Dome art?

It's not a product of skill, although any scene including it might be called artistic just because it is so beautiful. This can include references to flowers growing in the wild, too; they're certainly beautiful.

Art to me has to be the deliberate creation of something new as art.

Art is not narrowly defined, it is broadly defined.

But paint splatter isn't. I aesthetically appreciated the board, but it was the result of random action, not deliberate creation.

I don't know the specifics of the example in question. I had thought you were referring to a paint-splatter example created by a person and then put up for display (on the side of the road).

If you were bringing up an item created through random inadvertent acts, people accidentally getting pain on it, then I normally wouldn't include it as art. However, if someone came along and looked at it, and thought it was art, it would be.

Accident can, I think, create art. Just as it can create other things.