Can games be art?

Games are for all ages. We play games to discover the rules of everyday life and to loosen the strings of the corset of “normality”. Games are entertainment, but they also have heuristic value, opening doors on other worlds around us and within us – just like art. But can games be art?

That is the question engaging the attention of internet artist duo Jodi, games expert Christian Kittl, philosopher Annette Hilt and director of Kunsthaus Graz, Peter Pakesch. The project forms part of Would you like to comment?, a “game in public space” currently being developed as a co-operation between multi-media artist John Dekron and the Kunsthaus Graz.

Jodi is the internet artists’ collective of Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans, who live and work in Dordrecht (NL). They have been producing works of art on the web since the 1990s. This has expanded to include software art and the artistic modification of computer games, and (since 2002) video works based on screen grabs of computer monitor adverts. They have taken part in numerous international festivals and exhibitions, including documenta X, 1997. Link: Externe Verknüpfung www.jordi.org

Christian Kittl, an expert in the field of serious and mobile games, is head of the firm of KaleidosCon Projektentwicklung, independent adviser and project manager. Until 2009, he was EU project leader for International Programs at the evolaris internet competence centre in Graz. Christian Kittl studied telematics and business administration in Graz, PhD, university lecturer 2001-2008.

Annette Hilt, philosopher at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, focuses on the interpretation of “games” and “play” as part of human evolution as a whole, especially as reflected in the work of German philosopher Eugen Fink. Fink called play one of the five “basic phenomena” of human existence, the other four being work, power, love and death. Annette Hilt did philosophy and cultural/literary studies in Tübingen, New York and Freiburg. Her PhD was about the philosophy of the animate. She currently teaches and researches on the anthropological foundations of self-images and interpretations of the Other.

Friday, August, 28, 2009, 7pm, Space04
Entrance free