>There is not the slightest doubt that the purpose of art is to give pleasure, and indeed a videogame can even be defined in such terms as "a machine for giving pleasure". Consequently the claims of the indiefags and hipsters, that the issue of pleasure is irrelevant, are preposterous — a game that fails to give pleasure is quite simply a bad game. ... >And this is where the all-too-hidden meanings and the messages come in. It's already an old and tired story: what occurred previously in painting with the gradual shift toward Abstraction, in poetry with the abandonment of rhythmic structure, in the plastic arts with the introduction of the ready-mades, and so on and so forth in every single artform — the same exact process is currently unfolding itself in the world of videogames before our very eyes. ... >As each art degenerates due to the abandonment of laboriously invented and refined conventions (which, contrary to popular belief, do not restrict an art but help it flourish — bunglers find conventions "restrictive" is because they lack the discipline required to adhere to them and creativity to further complexify them), we find regression to previous, primitive critical standards. At the same time the number of aspiring artists increases, whilst the resulting artworks come to increasingly resemble a repulsive junk- and rubbish-soup that no one in their right mind would want to have anything to do with.
The essay does argue that, since it is a popular rather than a modernist art.
>If you are not interested in videogames in the 21st century you are a peasant, plain and simple -- just as those who were not interested in, say, the theatre in the 18th or 19th centuries were peasants, and hence utterly incapable of having any meaningful relationship with people of class -- and no amount of philosophy can change this.
Daniel Smith
>theatre wasnt for the masses
Get a load of this uneducated fuckhead
Leo Mitchell
She should do BLACKED
William Murphy
Is there a way to read the website without paying? I stopped reading it when he introduced the pay wall year ago. I enjoyed his articles and the forrum post where insulted everyone.
Jackson Baker
Learn to read. He is saying that videogames are the popular art of the 21st century, as theatre was the popular art in earlier centuries.
The problem is when art/indie/hipsterfags neglect the strict conventions that produce pleasure, in favour of "artgames" that prioritise more abstract goals like "meaning" or "message". In this they represent the decline from being an art that produces pleasure, to being an abstracted, free-form/indie art that only serves virtue-signalling.
Brandon Cox
DELETE THIS
Asher Green
>I usually approach these kinds of sequels with unlimited enthusiasm despite everything, and always hope, and to a degree even expect, nothing less than a stunning return to form -- but not so with GTAIV. What bothered me right away about this game, from the very first trailer, was the protagonist: an ugly East European thug with a disgusting accent. I just could not see myself spending 20+ hours controlling him. I am physically unable to play videogames as an ugly character (and this includes fighting games, something which puts me at an immediate disadvantage, since half the character roster in the typical fighting game is usually beyond repulsive). It's not just the fact that I am good-looking and would therefore have trouble identifying with an ugly character -- even if I were ugly I'd want to control handsome characters (or at least I think I would -- do ugly people identify better with ugly characters? -- a question for the artfags.) For isn't all this supposed to be, to a great extent at least, about escapism? One would think that people would want to escape to something better and better-looking, not to something worse and uglier. TopKek
is this guy serious?
Jonathan Jones
>her body language conveys a sense of body shaming >she covers her breasts seeing how inadequate they are to the model >why is the doll so tall compared to me? I don't have that butt.
Juan Parker
this bitch would've hated Picasso
Evan Anderson
Do you know how to ctrl+f ? >And finally, to wrap up this mind-bewildering litany of wretchedness and perversion, in the plastic arts there is no longer anyone who has the skill (or who can be bothered to attempt to acquire it —) to painstakingly carve out of blocks of pure marble anything even remotely resembling the statues of the Greeks, the Romans, or the masters of the Renaissance; consequently, what passes itself off as "plastic art" today are the descendants of Picasso's metal monstrosities, Duchamp's urinals and Manzoni's crocks of shit — meaning whatever piece of junk modern "artists" might care to randomly slap together. — In short, while older artists throughout entire millennia created, elevated and refined the arts, giving pleasure to innumerable human beings, indeed practically inventing entire new worlds of pleasure — modern ones seem hell-bent on remaining entangled in a debased, pretentious, hypocritical pseudo-artistic process of "creation" which culminates with "the non-exhibition of non-works in non-galleries — the apotheosis of art as a non-event. As a corollary, the consumer circulates in all this in order to experience his non-enjoyment of the works."
Thomas Murphy
>wah why is joyce so hard to read >Pollock? more like Poll-fuckhead amiright :)
Michael Hall
>There is not the slightest doubt that the purpose of art is to give pleasure
No. Not even close.
Noah Hill
Then what is its purpose?
Noah Fisher
so he's retard? Duchamp is about as close to a Da Vinci as someone can get (just replace making contraptions with becoming a grandmaster in chess)
Nicholas Lewis
To give a different perspective. That's it. You will never find anywhere, or anything, that states art has to result in pleasure. That is a ludicrous notion, and fails to recognize art like the film like First Blood, which examines the psychology of a Vietnam War veteran and how Americans treated such veterans.
Noah Hill
'properly reading' Joyce is the literary equivalent of metagaming
I mean look at this tripe being passed of ass writing:
>Consequently the claims of the indiefags and hipsters, that the issue of pleasure is irrelevant
Indiefags and hipsters are the people who are saying art doesn't have to be pleasurable? As if The Lost Generation of post-WW1 poets have no merit? What about post-WW2 paintings? What a stupid fucking assertion.
Kevin Robinson
Didn't die like two years ago? The illegal street race in Sweden thing?
Nicholas Flores
Making useless crap and revolting art is a lot different than attempting to invent futuristic technologies and making beautiful, desired visual art. Goethe is closer to Da Vinci than Duchamp.
Jordan Ortiz
this dude calls other people aspies? he's straight up retarded, and Joyce can be read without annotations. Not everything is FW you illiterate.
Jack Lewis
>That is a ludicrous notion, and fails to recognize art like the film like First Blood, which examines the psychology of a Vietnam War veteran and how Americans treated such veterans. History and psychology are different fields from art.
Jack Wood
It's literally Sup Forums post, who else uses the word "indiefag"
Easton Murphy
>Joyce can be read without annotations In which case you're missing out on a major part of his virtuosity.
Harold Bloom said that that if Ulysses is a masterwork, then it is a masterwork only for a selected few who can read it that way.
Jason Anderson
There is no document anywhere in existence that stipulates video games have to provide pleasure.
First Blood is a film. It falls under the umbrella of "art." When Johnny breaks down in front of his former CO, my pleasure centers didn't fire like they do when I play DMC3. And that's okay.
Let's not get into useless semantics right now.
Jack James
Duchamp has plenty of pretty paintings. Just because you fetishize a type of portraiture that was made obsolete by technology, doesn't mean that 'art is so bad ughhh'
Yes, the old masters are great and have lovely works
No, art is not in a degenrate state, because of realism's lack of prominence
Evan Cook
>As if The Lost Generation of post-WW1 poets have no merit? What about post-WW2 paintings? He covers the decline within the fields of poetry and painting in the essay. Both your examples are chronologically located after the 'emancipation of the masses' into those disciplines.
ctrl+f "It's already an old and tired story" if you want to skip up to that part.
Tyler Morales
>>And this is where the all-too-hidden meanings and the messages come in. It's already an old and tired story: what occurred previously in painting with the gradual shift toward Abstraction, in poetry with the abandonment of rhythmic structure, in the plastic arts with the introduction of the ready-mades, and so on and so forth in every single artform — the same exact process is currently unfolding itself in the world of videogames before our very eyes. >>As each art degenerates due to the abandonment of laboriously invented and refined conventions (which, contrary to popular belief, do not restrict an art but help it flourish — bunglers find conventions "restrictive" is because they lack the discipline required to adhere to them and creativity to further complexify them), we find regression to previous, primitive critical standards. At the same time the number of aspiring artists increases, whilst the resulting artworks come to increasingly resemble a repulsive junk- and rubbish-soup that no one in their right mind would want to have anything to do with. Hear hear. Purge the normalfags and those who would degrade our art. As a poet understanding the history of poetry I am filled with rage at much of modern poetry and "Poets". There is no honor of the past, there is no nod to convention, there is no understanding of mechanics. Its disgusting, and I see the same thing happening to vidya, and it pains me greatly. So we who see this trend have a duty to fight it. We must continue to make ourselves heard and produce our own art which strives to stand among the greats and classics.
Lucas Brooks
People said that but it seems to have been just a rumour; his site suddenly became active again this year.
If anyone has access to his forum perhaps he explains the hiatus there.
Angel Hughes
People really take that Icycalm fraudster seriously?
Isaiah Diaz
>as a poet heh >I am filled with rage at much of modern poetry and "Poets" so you don't like Kaur and Mira? maybe try to find poets you'll like instead
Jaxson Lee
Go home Alex, you're drunk
Jayden Fisher
>There is no document anywhere in existence that stipulates video games have to provide pleasure. a videogame can even be defined in such terms as "a machine for giving pleasure"
>First Blood is a film. It falls under the umbrella of "art." When Johnny breaks down in front of his former CO, my pleasure centers didn't fire like they do when I play DMC3. And that's okay. Then it's a bad film.
John Flores
>He covers the decline within the fields of poetry and painting in the essay
That's not what I'm talking about. Have you even read a poem by The Lost Generation? Here,
Soldiers never do die well; Crosses mark the places, Wooden crosses where they fell; Stuck above their faces. Soldiers pitch and cough and twitch;
All the world roars red and black, Soldiers smother in a ditch; Choking through the whole attack.
Oh man, REALLY fires my pleasure centers. He doesn't get to define art as something solely to give pleasure. It is to give us different perspectives.
Hah, smartass. Nice try.
>Then it's a bad film. Not falling for it.
Levi Miller
>Duchamp has plenty of pretty paintings. But his pretty paintings aren't up to the standard of the old masters, that's why he is famous for his abortions instead.
>Just because you fetishize a type of portraiture that was made obsolete by technology, doesn't mean that 'art is so bad ughhh' The essay explicitly says that more technologically-advanced artforms will be more pleasurable when pursued by masters of the conventions. Duchamp and artgamefags use the same technologies as the old-masters and AAA-devs respectively, but they fail at the conventions and so resort to hidden-meanings/messages.
>No, art is not in a degenrate state, because of realism's lack of prominence If anything realism is an excuse for those who can't obey the idealising conventions of good art.
The essay isn't claiming all art is in a degenerative state. Popular/AAA arts are doing fine, it's the modernist arts that are decadent and anti-pleasure.
Lucas Watson
>heh This is the correct response. Maybe I should've said consumer of poetry as well. >so you don't like Kaur and Mira? Kaur has some ok stuff, but its all so formless. All of it. It doesn't feel like experimentation or exploration at that point, it feels like you threw up on paper and gave it a snappy title. Who is Mira? >maybe try to find poets you'll like instead I'm fucking working on it. There are a small handful of small time, unpublished writers I enjoy. But the majority of popular/modern shit is shit, nothing changes that. >Oh man, REALLY fires my pleasure centers. He doesn't get to define art as something solely to give pleasure. It is to give us different perspectives. Not that user, but I find pleasure in melancholy things.
Carson Fisher
Why does his personal reputation matter if his arguments are sound?
Anthony Watson
The answer is yes. He is ahead of his time, and some decades from now there will eventually be frequent discussions of him and his immense contribution.
Dominic Roberts
>but I find pleasure in melancholy things
That's not the same pleasure in completing a level in Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels and you know it.
Check out Aceyalone's - A Book Of Human Language. Some of the finest work ever written.
>Oh man, REALLY fires my pleasure centers It doesn't do so because it's bad art. Not surprising since the moralising theme behind it is a vindictive attitude towards one of the core characteristics of life itself: War.
Camden White
>>but I find pleasure in melancholy things >That's not the same pleasure in completing a level in Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels and you know it.
This is ALSO covered in the essay: >In summa: The purpose of art is to give pleasure, full stop — and this applies even to the tragedy, the most extreme seemingly "pessimistic" artform. Tragedy gives pleasure, first: to strong and fearless natures (including the tragic artist himself) by challenging them to imagine themselves in situations they could barely deal with (in which all of their "dammed-up strength", as it were, i.e. all of their energy, could be discharged — energy discharge being quite simply the essence of pleasure). Then, it gives pleasure to the lower species, to the weak, the sick and the suffering, by giving them an opportunity to invent for themselves a noble interpretation of their condition, thereby offering them a measure of relief in the form of an invitation to "resignation" (to their fate, as it were, in the manner of the doomed characters in the tragic play). And finally, to the physiologically and/or spiritually exhausted it provides a much-needed stimulus for their frayed and diseased nerves — an artificial path to psychological excitation, to rare and elevated feelings, which, being exhausted, they could not have achieved by natural (i.e. non-artistic) means. — Conclusion: There is, therefore, not the slightest doubt that the purpose of art is to give pleasure, and indeed a videogame can even be defined in such terms as "a machine for giving pleasure" (a definition that should be kept in mind, for we shall be returning to it). Consequently the claims of the artfags and the pseudo-intellectuals that as regards their "artistic games" the issue of pleasure is irrelevant, are naive, idiotic and preposterous — a game that fails to give pleasure is quite simply a bad game.
Isaac Moore
As if war doesn't deserve to have a vindictive attitude toward it?
>It doesn't do so because it's bad art
See, now you're venturing into a territory that doesn't matter in the least. You, and many others, hold this terrible attitude instead of simply moving on or creating your OWN art; you look at a work, and decide whether or not it is good or bad instead of asking yourself what it means to YOU, and what it makes YOU think about in relation to your mind and the world you live in. If it doesn't make you think about anything? Move on to the next piece, or make your own piece in response. Anything less is boring and less than trite.
Jacob Myers
>He doesn't get to define art Why not?
Easton Ortiz
It is never an issue of being "for" or "against" war. For even those who are "against" it have to wage it in order to put an "end" to it! Only a complete idiot would think that war is a problem! One acts here as one acts in a basketball match: one picks a side and plays the game. The game itself is not a "problem" — the game is the whole point!
Space is a million times more peaceful than the jungle. Have you ever wondered why? Because it's such a hostile environment to life, that nothing can survive there. A hint for the pacifists, as to what it would really take to finally achieve "world peace".
War comes from vitality. Anti-war is anti-life. In fact it is plain that there is nothing more human than war, since not even other animals wage it. Humans are the ones who invented war, how could it be inhuman?
>you look at a work, and decide whether or not it is good or bad instead of asking yourself what it means to YOU, and what it makes YOU think about in relation to your mind and the world you live in The latter is exactly how we decide what the former is, though.
Gabriel Scott
Now that is interesting. I'm skimming the essay and trying to find an example of a video game the author would provide that doesn't fit such a definition.
>First part before greentext Not telling me anything I don't already know. People can still be vindictive towards war for all the right reasons.
Here's somethin' for you: If to live life means somebody else will suffer, war ensues, who is to say life should exist at all? It's solipsistic, narcissistic, and perhaps sadistic, to want life to go on; to want suffering to go on that is, just so you yourself can attain pleasure.
>The latter is exactly how we decide what the former is, though. Of course, But the problem is people dwell on it for too long instead of producing a work of art in response or simply moving on to the next piece. Do you have any idea how boring it is to hear some fucking namby pamby whine something like "ohhh the Romans, they built such marvelous, marble, marvels of statues! Today's youth can't even hope to hold a candle! I spit on them!" Goddamn it's fucking boring because nothing is being created or learned.
Angel Thompson
>who is to say life should exist at all? Posing such a question is by-definition decadent, since you aren't affirming life but questioning its right to be.
>If to live life means somebody else will suffer, war ensues, who is to say life should exist at all? It's solipsistic, narcissistic, and perhaps sadistic, to want life to go on; to want suffering to go on that is, just so you yourself can attain pleasure. Perhaps that's why these traits are so common in striving, successful, healthy people. And they have only gained a bad name through the jealousy of those who don't have them to the same extent.
>"ohhh the Romans, they built such marvelous, marble, marvels of statues! Today's youth can't even hope to hold a candle! I spit on them!" Goddamn it's fucking boring because nothing is being created or learned. Well if you listen to those people there is in fact a lesson to be learned. Instead of failing to compete with the masters in fields they already represent the apex (and where the conventions have disappeared) you should instead strive to achieve the great heights of pleasure they achieved, but in more technologically-advanced art forms.
Alexander Thompson
...
Caleb Jenkins
>Check out Aceyalone's - A Book Of Human Language. Some of the finest work ever written. Not bad. Never heard of him before but I could get into this. I like how he stays true to hip-hop conventions but uses them to indicate the deeper meaning in his work. Not unheard of, but well done here and certainly not the norm. Interesting. I'll have to listen more.
I have never read anything more insane, profoundly stupid, and intensely rambling before in my life.
Nolan Hill
What a compelling objection.
Ayden Edwards
His wife is a piece of art because she pleasures me every night
Ryder Martinez
It would help your case my friend, if you were to rebut something,
Ryder Parker
>I literally can't even
Justin Parker
>Posing such a question is by-definition decadent, since you aren't affirming life but questioning its right to be. Yes.
>Perhaps that's why these traits are so common in striving, successful, healthy people. And they have only gained a bad name through the jealousy of those who don't have them to the same extent. Perhaps.
>Instead of failing to compete with the masters in fields they already represent the apex (and where the conventions have disappeared) you should instead strive to achieve the great heights of pleasure they achieved, but in more technologically-advanced art forms.
I don't know about should, but they definitely could try. There's still reason to revisit the guitar despite the past 100 years of various masters. But whining about this subject so overlong is boring. The essay in the OP didn't have to be half as long as it is now.
Isaac Reed
That's not his wife, and never comment on her again!
Jose Thompson
>It would help your case What case? I don't care if you agree with me or not, but that "essay" is not only poorly thought out, but badly written too.
Thomas Wood
If you aren't interested in them at all, you're pretty uncultured and outside of the modern sphere of culture in general. That's basically what being a peasant is.
Aiden Ross
I didn't even read it. I was just offering some friendly advice. You might be right. But people who agree with whatever he's claiming will take issue with the fact that you're not addressing his points, no matter how shitty the writing is. Just a thought.
