Basquiat meets Mario Brothers? Digital poet Jason Nelson on the meaning of art games
An interview with the self-described digital poet Jason Nelson on the semiotic pleasures of playing and creating "art-games," indie works produced outside corporate game studios, which, Nelson predicts, will eventually be recognized as the most significant art movement of the 21st century. While explaining how he came to be a digital author, Nelson addresses topics such as his continued love of Flash as a production tool, despite its likely obsolesence, his appreciation for gamescapes that allow for aimless wandering, and the intense reactions his art-games provoke in players. Alluding to the fact that Digital Poet is not the most lucrative of professions, Nelson signals his desire to design "big budget console games," provided he could do so on his terms.
(Source: Eric Dean Rasmussen)
Art games require your attention, require your brain to be consumed by the screen. I imagine that is why I get such dramatic responses. I am asking the audience to inhabit my creations, asking them to play/exist inside a bizarre, messy and at times highly illogical and abstract artscape.
With little or no funding small teams of indie producers are creating brilliant experiences that make corporate productions look like embarrassing advertisements for video cards. Some future historian will write about the games currently being built by these creators and label them as THE important art movement of the 21st century.
If the abstract artist Basquiat, Mario Brother's creator Miyamoto, and writer James Joyce had a child that grew up in an amusement park and was raised by Steampunk robots, that child would be my art-games.
