Finding the art in gaming

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Thursday, September 27, 2007
A gaming conference taking place at The University of Western Ontario is not an eyebrow raiser.
Western's Department of Computer Science has been exploring serious gaming for a few years now.
 
The real news about Playing The Gallery: The Art of Games is that it comes to campus via the McIntosh Gallery.
 
“I think we've always gone outside our usual mandate but we've never gone this far in terms of gaming," says Arlene Kennedy, McIntosh director. “We've never really hit it head on like this."
 
Conference coordinator Roger Gustafson says the conference will focus on the impact of gaming through the filter of many different disciplines.
 
“It's a serious investigation of the creative side of the internet as seen through gaming, computer games, video games on the internet and what the implications are for society," he says.
 
Artist Stacey Spiegel is the driving force behind Playing The Gallery and despite spearheading this decidedly modern view of art, his sculpture has been seen in the McIntosh since the 1970s.
 
“He has gotten into the video game field as a way of being creative and learning and cross-disciplinary research," she says.
 
“He started a company that produced Canada's pavilion at the Japan Expo about a year and a half ago. It was a virtual tour of Canada with the visitor creating an avatar and going all over the country. It won best pavilion that year."
 
Kennedy is enthused about Spiegel's role because he will soon be doing for the McIntosh what he did for Canada.
 
“He's looking at how the McIntosh collection and other cultural artifacts can be used in a creative and artistic way," she says. “In a year we're going to create an interactive immersive experience in the gallery. We're going to be testing games that will likely have part of the McIntosh art collection in them."
 
Gustafson says the McIntosh, as part of a virtual world, is a key aspect of the Playing The Gallery, adding that the conference is actually in two parts.
 
“The second part takes place a year from now."
 
“This year there will be reports on this through digital and hard copy, the result of bringing together at the conference these scholars, people from social sciences, arts, science and other areas."
 
The conference combines presentations by worldwide leaders, such as Spiegel with workshops focusing on critical social and technical issues that underline the art of games.
 
“Of particular focus in Playing the Gallery will be the technology-driven environments for co-creative expression, such as online social communities," says Gustafson. 
 
“Through the dialogue and discourse of the symposium, a broader understanding will emerge on whether these and other parallel worlds in fact do represent a unique opportunity for creative expression and social/cultural change."
 
That the conference is not tied to any one discipline is part of the point says Gustafson. “It's not the domain of simply art or philosophy," he says. “It's a consortium of a lot of different people speaking from different vantage points."
 
The agenda for the 2008 portion of the conference will be based on results from this fall's event but with a different slant.
 
“By then we should have the gallery turned into a game itself." The conference has raised quite a bit of interest from the gaming world, prompting a former Visual Arts grad to sponsor $100-conference scholarships to cover registration fees for 25 students. “Dan Miller of the Investors Group wanted to make it a learning experience for students who were interested in the topics," Kennedy says. “For example we've got a medical student who's coming because he's interested in video games and their effect on physical well being." There are still some scholarships available for students.
 
More information on the conference can be found at www.playingthegallery.ca.
 

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