‘What is art?’ may be well trodden ground, but well trodden ground many of us feel excluded from. Is art something about mastery? I don’t think it is; but I think that mastery is one of the major blocks that excludes us from the conversation. An artist is not a master of a single thing, a thing which has been accepted as “being art”. They say that the quartet they saw was absolutely perfect, the only perfect quartet, and they know that because they know of such things; of such things which we don’t. There is a saying that a jack of all trades is a master of none, but the idea that mastery has something to do with specialisation in a certain area is the second block keeping us from the conversation. Mastery is more a sureness of purpose, but then not all artists are sure of what they are doing.
So a while ago I played Gone Home. Some people got angry that it wasn’t a game, some people loved the fact it wasn’t a game. But we all still call it a game. It was reviewed on game sites at the least. ‘Game’ is a limiting a word as ‘Art’, in fact even more so. “Are games art?” may be a fight the video gamers are determined to win, but why are we? Lets break down the barriers to be confronted with more barriers. Gone Home is many things, a story, a challenge, an adventure, interactive. Most of the reviews agree that it hadn’t mastered any of the things it set out to do; but it was sure of it’s purpose.
So the reviews are in two camps; those who gave it a 5 for being art and those who gave it a 1 for not doing game things too well. I was just glad I didn’t pay full price. What should I give it? My heart is telling me that it shouldn’t get a grade, because that is my point! Should I exclude you all, do I know such things? But anyway my brain tells me that my Google rank will be higher if I give it a grade, because a grade is a thing that Google will see in a rich snippet. So that’s what art is. something we can explain with microdata for Google to pick up and pass around.
3.5
As if it knew
and now for the microdata:
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