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March 30, 2007
Bruce Sterling on computer games as art
What computer entertainment lacks most I think is a sense of mystery. It's too left-brain.... I think there might be real promise in game designs that offer less of a sense of nitpicking mastery and control, and more of a sense of sleaziness and bluesiness and smokiness. Not neat tinkertoy puzzles to be decoded, not "treasure-hunts for assets," but creations with some deeper sense of genuine artistic mystery.
I don't know if you've seen the work of a guy called William Latham.... I got his work on a demo reel from Media Magic. I never buy movies on video, but I really live for raw computer-graphic demo reels. This William Latham is a heavy dude... His tech isn't that impressive, he's got some kind of fairly crude IBM mainframe cad-cam program in Winchester England.... The thing that's most immediately striking about Latham's computer artworks -- ghost sculptures he calls them -- is that the guy really possesses a sense of taste. Fractal art tends to be quite garish. Latham's stuff is very fractally and organic, it's utterly weird, but at the same time it's very accomplished and subtle. There's a quality of ecstasy and dread to it... there's a sense of genuine enchantment there. A lot of computer games are stuffed to the gunwales with enchanters and wizards and so-called magic, but that kind of sci-fi cod mysticism seems very dime-store stuff by comparison with Latham.
Posted by thdyck on March 30, 2007
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