Orbs of orange paint suggested the light of the lamps past midnight in Vincent van Gogh’s 1888 “Le Café de nuit” (The Night Café) and in a new virtual reality take on his painting of the Café de la Gare in Arles, France, they come to life with radiating colors.
gaming
Posted inIn Brief
A Card Game to Debate the Absurd Extremes of Cultural Opinions
A new card game throws together the highs and lows of culture, from Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the video game Doom, asking players to debate essential questions like, “Which is a sign of the Apocalypse?” or “Which expresses the inexpressible?”
Posted inNews
Video Games on Smallpox and Thoreau’s Walden Get Government Funding
A 19th-century Philadelphia smallpox epidemic and Henry David Thoreau’s transcendental retreat into the woods are the subjects of two video games awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) this Monday.
Posted inArt
Giving Indigenous Stories a Voice Against Stereotypes in Video Games
From inhumanly buff, tribally vague warriors in combat games to targets in cowboys- versus-Indians epics, video game representations of indigenous people have been spotty at best.
Posted inArt
Festival Promotes Socially Engaged Video Games
Games about border crossing, American Indian relocation, and exploring identity are leading the way for the medium as a social tool. Using narrative and interaction, gaming is continuing to provide a level of emotional engagement with societal issues.
Posted inArt
Using Biofeedback Technology for a Game That Knows Your Fear
A game currently under development uses your own anxiety to make its play increasingly horrifying as you get more scared, and it also aims to help people confront their fear.
Posted inBooks
New Journal Pushes the Dialogue of Video Games and Art
There are a multitude of publications out there covering video games, from reviewing play to industry news, but a new journal is aiming to fill a void in the discussion of experimental games and art.
Posted inOpinion
Why Would a Museum Bother With Gaming?
There’s only so much the brain can absorb in a museum, and for the 2012 Brains: The Mind as Matter exhibition at Wellcome Collection in London, the museum created an online game to keep their visitors’ brains thinking about the anatomy of their own skulls. Called AXON, it’s a surprisingly fast-pace neuron-creation game, mixed in with visually interesting science information. It’s just one of the many games that Wellcome Collection has created, and recently they addressed why exactly they are so interested in involving gaming in their programming.
Posted inArt
The Art of Gaming in the Context of Contemporary Art
LOS ANGELES — Games are everywhere these days. We keep them in our phones, our computers, our television sets. Where once we could content ourselves with a small selection of board games and a pack of cards, we now have a myriad of games at our fingertips, ready to download or purchase at a moment’s notice.