tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post4260756474917175249..comments2023-11-05T07:27:43.837-05:00Comments on Narrative and Technology: Dear Esther: A Piece of Modern ArtAdamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post-14602251056982868232014-03-01T09:16:56.651-05:002014-03-01T09:16:56.651-05:00Jessica,
You make really great points of why Dear...Jessica, <br />You make really great points of why Dear Esther should be considered art, but most of the points are not interconnected and support why it ISN’T a game. I think you need to make your standing argument clearer by stating that you believe that Dear Esther is an art rather than just a game. As it stands now it just seems to me like you are stating reasons why Dear Esther is artistic, which you could argue for a lot of video games. <br /><br />I think you could delve in deeper into the details of the game, also, to support your argument. <br /><br />In my opinion your best, and my favorite, point that you made was, “Luckily, it was not difficult to view Dear Esther as art because of its strong resemblance to literature.” Unfortunately, though, you only make this connection for a few sentences, but I think this is an interesting point and could make for an entire essay and argument within itself. Compare it to other literature, ghost stories, genres, etc. <br /><br />Overall I see good points, but a lack of coherence throughout your essay. I think had you formulated a more specific thesis/argument that this could have been a stronger essay. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12512473259417472326noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8692381608294018617.post-56489574064443917342014-02-28T20:12:01.188-05:002014-02-28T20:12:01.188-05:00Since you bring up modern art - would most modern ...Since you bring up modern art - would most modern artists, or perhaps your art history professor, agree that art is purely subjective, or that "everything is art"? Note that your reading in Marcuse over the last couple weeks has often returned to this question, in one way or the other.<br /><br />My point isn't that you're *wrong* to have this point of view. But you seem to take it as a given when the story here is really much more complicated (for instance, we might argue that because of "Fountain" and similar works, we are now in a historical moment where we broadly think that art is subjective/contextual rather than be objective).<br /><br />Note that even you retreat from this emphasis on subjectivity, into the more demanding idea that art involves some kind of exploration.<br /><br />I thought your discussion of what a game *is* was both precise and highly relevant. You pick the same foundational rule (the boundaries) as I would have picked, and you also focus on the singularity of the outcome (although it is true that many, many games have a linear path ending in only one good outcome, although we might be able to fail in many ways along the way). But I do think there was an opportunity to push yourself much harder - and also to return less flippantly to the issue/relevance of Modernism - by putting some pieces together. The game strips both rules and outcomes to their absolute formal essentials - and yet there is still *something* there (if only as pure form). What I'm trying to point out is that tendency of the game to strip out the content of the forms as much as possible, while retaining a ghost of the forms themselves, is a potentially very useful way of thinking about modernism (I'm thinking of Kandinsky, for instance, as a good reference point).<br /><br />I'm wandering a little, so let me summarize. You introduce a great way of thinking about Dear Esther in the beginning, but don't follow through on it. You move intelligently to the topic of form at the end, but in many ways that's where you should have begun. In the middle you argue that it's basically a book - which isn't a bad argument, but it's one that should be made in detail, through examples (to me, that's like arguing that films are books - you are separating the screen play from its context and elevating the importance of the words over the visuals, without explaining why).<br /><br />There's a lot of good material here, but you're not making the connections you could be between your own introduction and conclusion.Adamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16302919444091859459noreply@blogger.com