Frank Barknecht wrote: Sorry, Frank, but I'll call bull-hockey on this statement. I respect the talents necessary to become a good gamer, but I reject the comparison to instrumental skill, it's simply not on the same order of complexity and intention. Best, dp

On 12/10/06, Frank Barknecht <fbar(a)footils.org> wrote: Fun, but he seems far more like a drummer than a piano player. - Mark

Frank Barknecht wrote: Yes, I've seen that video. Frank, that performance has more to do with playing the bongos than playing a piano. The assumption that playing an instrument is merely a matter of "the right fingers in the right places at the right time" is a little shy of what really goes into the production of timbre, particularly on instruments such as the guitar or the winds. Pianists are also quick to point out that tone is not only a result of the instrument per se but is determined to a great extent by the player's technique (this is profoundly true for classical guitarists). I think we can agree that the issue is one of dexterity. IMO a more apt comparison would be to typewriting. Of course it isn't as impressive or self-congratulatory as a comparison to Svatislov Richter, but I think it's nearer the true point. ;) Best, dp

I have to agree with Orm on this one... sporting has more to do with reflex and muscular response (hand/eye coordination) and music playing uses the same skills for sure but goes to the more deep emotional levels. To play an instrument and play it well, one must become part of the emotions that the composer or player means to place forward. As the old time R&B folks said; "ya gotta have soul son... soul". But what do I know?... I was playing Bluegrass guitar and a Jazz University <heh> 73 ('good wishes' in radio speak) Wado! ('thank you' in Cherokee speak) vince a.k.a. Wesa ka1iic(a)prexar.com

On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 08:48:50AM -0500, Dave Phillips wrote: There is probably no good way to qualitatively prove this either way, but I disagree. It very much depends on the game of course, but some games require a similar level of dexterity, creativity, and subtlety to become truly great and beat other human players. If you can call a virtuoso a genius, I beleive that the people who compete in some games on an international level must be called the same. If you have ever watch a master playing Quake3 you will know that this is true. Sergei Rachmaninoff eat your heart out! Best, Chris. ------------------- chris(a)mccormick.cx http://mccormick.cx

Dave Phillips &lt;dlphillips(a)woh.rr.com&gt; writes: I'm not sure if I understand you correct, but first person action is an art and requires intelligence and the ability to think very quick and structured. Taking down and outsmarting a whole platoon is an art. The way you move and think has artistic value. -- Esben Stien is b0ef@e s a http://www. s t n m irc://irc. b - i . e/%23contact sip:b0ef@ e e jid:b0ef@ n n

On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 05:44:30AM -0500, Dave Phillips wrote: Very true. The only result of trying to dilute or shift the meaning of a word to make it fit your ideas, is that if you succeed, dictionaries will need to be revised. -- FA Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.

On Monday 11 December 2006 13:51, Cesare Marilungo wrote: 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

On Monday 11 December 2006 21:01, Chris McCormick wrote: You can *find* art in any human endeavor, right up to and including war and murder. In some endeavors, though, the primary measure of the result is objective (the score in a football game, the number of kills in a shooter) and in others it's all subjective (like the visual and musical arts.) People may make art on the way to their objective goals, in competitive sports and gaming and feeding their families and love and murder, but the art isn't the point. No doubt sooner or later, to prove me wrong, there'll be a performance artist whose art consists of sitting on a sofa playing Doom 6 or whatever. (For maximum irony, he should actually sit there playing "E.T." on the Atari 2600.) I'll leave the debate over whether it's actually art to the art critics who are around at that time, because I honestly won't care. Rob

On Tuesday 12 December 2006 06:33, Frank Barknecht wrote: Well, that's generating sound from Quake, and I don't see that as really being that different than the "dot matrix printer symphony" and various other kinds of "found music". I'm talking about a performance artist whose art actually consists entirely of sitting on a sofa playing GTA: Dead Horse Town or whatever. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art Rob

On Monday 11 December 2006 17:12, Fons Adriaensen wrote: I dunno about books, but I've had some bread at restaurants that definitely dated back to the Renaissance, if not the Mesozoic. Rob

Chris McCormick wrote: Which is more musical, 4 minutes and 33 seconds silence or 4 minutes and 33 seconds of any sound what-so-ever? -- peace, love & harmony Atte http://www.atte.dk | quintet: http://www.anagrammer.dk | compositions: http://www.atte.dk/compositions

Cesare Marilungo wrote: I understand that. It's just not music (at least to me)... Ok... -- peace, love & harmony Atte http://www.atte.dk | quintet: http://www.anagrammer.dk | compositions: http://www.atte.dk/compositions

Cesare Marilungo wrote: I'd put this too on the mp3 player, since I'm learning Ruby: http://odeo.com/show/120299/view -- http://www.cesaremarilungo.com

On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 03:47:11PM -0500, Rob wrote: Well I guess I should plug my project 'ergates' which is at a pretty early (but playable) stage. It's a game-like audiovisual synthesiser created in Puredata, using Gem. http://mccormick.cx/projects/ergates/ Basically you use a USB gamepad to jam weird noises and visuals. If anyone wants to contribute instruments to this project I would be really happy! Best, Chris. ------------------- chris(a)mccormick.cx http://mccormick.cx

Rob wrote: That sounds totally cool! The interesting thing about the Wiimote is that its motion sensitivity is not new. 20+ years ago, there was a game controller that looked like a fat cigar, with a cable coming out the bottom (remote stuff wasn't commercially viable back then). You held it in your hand and tilted forward, backward, sideways, could swing it around, etc. It was fully motion sensitive. Worked with Commodore, Atari, Apple (I think) home computers plus some video game consoles of the time. -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 03:09:33AM +0100, Esben Stien wrote: Mmmm. Virtuosity is more than speed, reflexes, and acrobatics. Playing an instrument involves more than virtuosity. Music is about more than knowing how to play an instrument. To stay with pianists, just listen to Radu Lupu playing Schubert, e.g. the Moments Musicaux. Not very difficult technically, when compared to some other piano music. Then listen how each and every note is carefully controlled and phrased. It gives me the shivers when I hear this. To compare this to the skills of a gamer seems a joke to me. -- FA Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.

Esben Stien wrote: Gee, I clearly don't want to discount the skills of a gamer. I've been in the business of video game development since 1982, I know the business and those who play games. I also went to music school and am classically trained. I won't elaborate any more on my background, it sounds too crass ;-) I'm sure you'll all agree that there is quite a bit of skill to learning a musical instrument. There's no argument here, right. But, the art of expressing a piece of music with the skills one has toiled many years to acquire is clearly not the same as the skills acquired playing a video game(s) and the act of playing the game. Perhaps people are mixing the definition of "skills" with the true meaning of "art". They are not the same. Then I ask: what art are you expressing when playing a game? -- brad fuller http://www.Sonaural.com/ +1 (408) 799-6124

On Mon, Dec 11, 2006 at 04:28:32AM +0100, Esben Stien wrote: Concerning the game playing, I'd agree that there may be more involved than the ability to push buttons. But assuming for a moment there is something in there that is a bonus to humanity, as art is, I wonder why it can apparently be expressed only in a context of violence and killing, and in a simplistic mindset consisting of 'good' and 'evil'. You don't find this lack of subtlety in oriental martial arts - they are about more than the technicalities of hurting someone efficiently. They also train your mind and personality, and teach restraint rather than indiscriminate violence. Here again we have two things that can't be compared. IMHO, all art, using the word in the usual sense, touches on ambiguity, the complexities of the human condition, and things that escape the framework of rational thinking. Not that it's supposed to express any of these in any way - certainly music isn't, even if it is often interpreted as such. -- FA Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa.

On Monday 11 December 2006 20:48, Chris McCormick wrote: This is another common misconception; the existence of games like Splinter Cell and Resident Evil for Nintendo's consoles doesn't get a lot of notice because Nintendo's own games never go above a T rating, but they're there. But yeah, it's been a while since I played a straight-up good vs. evil game. I bet I've played Animal Crossing (a game with a higher-than-average musical component, actually) more this past year than any other game. Assuming that videogames all have the same shallow theme is kind of like assuming that all "Heavy Metal, New Age" music will cause you "to lose the only way to Salvation." It contributes nothing to the debate and it makes the holder of the assumption look like a loon. Rob

I've been following this thread, and thought I would add some comments. Defining High Art is always personal. It has a lot to do with upbringing and (sometimes) luck. Sports-lovers often beget sports-lovers; music lovers often beget music lovers. I have read so many interviews with great musicians who speak of growing up in a musical household. This is not universal, but its very, very common. My parents weren't big Shakespeare fans, but they memorized and recitied poems that are hundreds of lines long (like "Horatius at the Bridge". So maybe it's not surprising that I ended up admiring Shakespeare. It usually takes time and effort to begin to appreciate high art, and before we make that effort, the stuff we do appreicate may turn out to be 'low art' (once we are able to really compare things). It also requires intelligence and sensitivity. Not everybody will be able to 'get it'. And nobody has the time, energy, and intelligence to get all of it (fine art, music, theatre, literature, sculpture, philosophy, the elegence and art of scientific discovery, etc.) By the way, the highest art often includes violence, even extreme violence; check out Shakespeare's "MacBeth" or "Hamlet" or the Illiad, or Dante's "Inferno". Man, there's hardly anyone stnding by the end. Yet, our best and brightest affirm, generation after generation, that these are examples of High Art. Often over the past thirty years, I have ended up investigating different pieces of music or literature, because tradition holds that they are great art. I can't honestly say I like all of it, or that it all moves me, but I can say that I agree with most of what our culture says is high art. And I'm sure we all have 'guilty pleasures', things we enjoy which nobody would call 'high art'. For me, growing up in the age of comic books (I was born in 1947), Carl Barks 'Uncle Scrooge' comics were 'good beyond hope'. (I found out later that they actually outsold everything, and kids would write in and ask Walt Disney (who always put his name on his comics) for more stories by 'the good artist'. Wonderful). This subject is so important! It's not easy deciding what is really valuable in our lives, but the struggle is so rewarding. It is enriching to discover our heroes, the people who 'did it right', who set examples of the best way to live and be creative. It's practical too, because we only have a limited amount of time and energy, so why waste it learning 'low art'. I think it's important to diffentialte personally, high art from low art and guilty pleasures. I suspect that there is (or can be) high art in almost anything: the Zen of drinking beer, for example, or fishing, or tennis, or golf, or yes, even game playing. But each of us has to decide where our loyalties lie. For me, jazz music, and bebop, is about as good as it gets. Listening to Charlie Parker is humbling and inspiring. He was one of a kind. I used to pity him as a junkie who died too young. Now, all I can hear is the beauty of his spirit in his music, his kindness, his supremem effort to bring something new to the world of music. He is a hero. I have to admit, though that for thirty years, I thought of bebop as a kind of noise, and I used to make fun of it, and parody it by playing a flurry of notes that didn't make much sense. I was wrong. Boy, was I wrong! Come to think of it, every form of 'high art' that I most admire and appreciate today, took a long time to grow into, and very little of what I liked as a kid counts as high art today. Except fishing, hiking, and wilderness camping. I'm not sure that I'd call them high art, but they take me to a place that is every bit as enriching and rewarding as exporsure to high art. So, whatever you call it, they're important. (Actually wilderness camping and High Art do the same thing: they take me to a place that is rare, unspoiled, and clean, hard to get to, and a source of many new and creative ideas. And it's just plain fun to climb a mountain). jl

Rob wrote: I think it's in Twelfth Night when one of the players remarks re: the groundlings (i.e. the cheap seats) : "Give them a jig or a tale of bawdry, else they sleep." He knew his audience. :) Best, dp