The National Endowment for the Arts let us know that it will host a webinar on Thursday, May 30 ( 3:00-4:00 p.m. EDT) to help applicants understand the application process for securing a media arts projects grant. The NEA's Media Arts Director Alyce Myatt will conduct the webinar, which will offer an overview of guidelines, information on selecting work samples, and advice on preparing a strong application. All of this will be followed by a brief question and answer session.

The iam8bit Entertainment System, a videogame-themed art exhibit, is set to launch in Los Angeles on June 7. Organizers of the iam8bit Entertainment System promise the debut of an international showcase featuring the work of a variety of returning and first-time artists, all inspired by classic 1980s videogames.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) has opened submissions for the 2013 Into the Pixel art exhibit and the 2013 Randy Pausch and Mark Beaumont Scholarships. The Into the Pixel art exhibit features digital game art from developers around the world. Submissions for that close on April 17, with those selected being on display in a special gallery at the E3 Expo on June 11-13, followed by worldwide tours thereafter.

CCP Games passed along a note to proudly proclaim that its flagship title, the space-themed MMO EVE Online, is part of the Applied Design exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. EVE Online is one of the first fourteen video games to enter its MOMA's permanent collection.

Gallery Nucleus announced that its very first event for 2013 will be an awesome showcase of Blizzard's art from various games. On January 12 and running until February 3, Gallery Nexus will host "The Art of Blizzard Entertainment Book Launch and Art Exhibition." The opening reception will be held on Saturday, January 12, 2013 from 7:00pm – 11:00pm. The Nucleus exhibition will feature over 50 pieces of artwork from various Blizzard game universes such as Diablo, StarCraft, and Warcraft.

CCP Games has revealed its plans to explain a typical day in the life of someone in the EVE Online universe as part of being included in The Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. EVE Online was one of several games selected by MOMA to be on display for most of next year as part of an exhibit the explores and celebrates the history of gaming (more details here).

The Museum of Modern Art has selected 40 video games that will be displayed in New York soon. The games being put on display date as far back as 1962's Spacewar! and stretch forth all the way to 2011's Minecraft. The museum says that it chose the games it did based on visual quality, aesthetic experience, the elegance of the code, and the games' impact on the culture and industry. Fourteen titles have already been acquired and will be on display March 2013.

I’ve got a fun one for you this week, GPers!

“Are Video Games Art?”

Yes, it’s that oft-debated and extremely polarizing question that can make proponents on both sides of the issue soil their shorts in an enthusiastic tizzy.  Opinions are hot on this one.  Blogs have been written, names have been called, blood has been spilled.

The Art of Video Games exhibit from the Smithsonian American Art Museum is invading the Boca Raton Museum in Boca Raton, Florida on October 24. In fact, the Boca Raton Museum of Art will be the first museum in the nation to host the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s exhibition following its successful run in Washington, D.C. The exhibit will run from October 24 to January 13, 2013, and is being sponsored by FMSbonds, Inc.

The U.S. National Endowment for the Arts will fund four games that explore climate change and literature. This will be the first time the NEA funds video games since it changed its policy in May 2011 to include the category.

Nintendo has begun providing the Louvre art museum in Paris, France with Nintendo 3DS systems that offer an exclusive audio guide. The Audioguide Louvre Nintendo 3DS will become available at the Louvre for visitors beginning today. The audio guide will provide audio and visual tools to the 8.9 million annual visitors which will help them learn more about all the exhibits on display.

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) announced the finalists for the 15th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards (IAAs). For 2012, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (Sony Computer Entertainment Company) leads the field with a total of twelve nominations. Several titles earned multiple nominations including ten nominations for Portal 2 (Valve Corporation), nine nominations for L.A. Noire (Rockstar Games), and six nominations each for Batman: Arkham City (Warner Bros.

Agence France-Presse (AFP) is reporting that, beginning in March of 2012, the Louvre in Paris, France will use 5,000 3DS hand-helds to guide its 8.5 million annual visitors through the 35,000 art objects on display. The hand-helds are being supplied by Nintendo as part of a new partnership between the company and the iconic museum.

The 3DS systems the museum will use let visitors locate themselves on the museum's grounds, select from themed tours tailored to both adults and children, and listen to commentary about exhibits in seven different languages.

Indie game studio Size Five Games has won a BAFTA for controversial sex education game, Privates. The game won the Learning Secondary BAFTA.

"It’s a complete honor and a total shock,” Size Five’s Dan Marshall said about receiving the coveted award that honors the best and brightest entertainment that the United Kingdom has to offer. "I was excited enough about being able to start all my Press Releases from now on with the words ‘BAFTA-nominated’, but winning one is a whole other level."

Have you ever wanted to play a game about waiting in line at a museum? No? Well maybe you should. Video game research professor and author of the upcoming book How To Play A Video Game, Pippin Barr has made what Slate describes as "a subversively boring game" called The Artist is Present.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum's "The Art of Video Games" exhibit selections have been chosen, with some familiar titles making the cut. Chosen by an online vote, the community chose such titles as The Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear Solid, BioShock, Uncharted, and Shadow of the Colossus. Five games will be playable at the exhibition which will run through September 30 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

The exhibits will be divided up by eras. The full list can be found below:

Era 1: Start!

• Atari VCS: Pac-Man, Pitfall, Space Invaders, Combat
• Colecovision: Donkey Kong, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns, Zaxxon, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
• Mattel Intellivision, Tron: Maze-Atron, Advanced Dungons and Dragons, Star Strike, Utopia

Era 2: 8-Bit

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser weighed in on whether games are art and if the studio responsible for Grand Theft Auto will ever switch gears and create movies instead of games. The question is a viable one as more details emerge about its latest project LA Noire. Frankly, LA Noire is as close to being a movie production as you can get the way Houser describes it:

"The game, like many of our recent games, has been an absolutely enormous production," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "With 'L.A. Noire,' we employed a massive number of actors in the game – over 400 – along with hair and make-up artists, a great television director, and as the game is set in the golden era of Hollywood, a lot of original costumes, props and other research from the studios themselves."

After what organizers call "a wildly successful run and standing-room-only opening night," the Games We Play Art Exhibit In San Francisco finally comes to a close on March 30.

Organizers Present Creative (a casual and social game company), and Nieto Fine Art (a contemporary art gallery in the heart of San Francisco) will celebrate the conclusion of the game-related art exhibit with a closing reception on March 25. Organizers say that the first annual Games We Play exhibit was so successful that the opening party during GDC week exceeded capacity and left patrons waiting to get inside for a look at unique pieces from both established and new artists who have worked on a multitude of infamous video game titles from the industry's leading game companies.

Cuba, already angry at a mission in Call of Duty: Black Ops which has players attempt to assassinate a young Fidel Castro, might not be so pleased with an artist’s videogame-based commentary on the Caribbean island.

Some of the recently published WikiLeaks documents have become part of a work of art. Created by Josh Bricker, "Post Newtonianism," was selected as one of the top 25 videos in the Guggenheim Museum's YouTube Play competition. The competition saw more than 23,000 submissions.

Bricker's art is a two-channel video that uses audio from a WikiLeaks video released earlier this year documenting a U.S. military offensive in Iraq.

"Post Newtonianism" features two panels featuring actual war footage on one side, and recreated scenes from "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare." The video is further complimented with audio from the WikiLeaks video that is gradually merged with audio from the video game. The title was inspired by the writings of Edward Said.

NYC playwright Leegrid Stevens is working on a play that uses 8-bit game aesthetics and chip tune music to create a unique play about an imaginary classic 8-bit videogame about the trials and travails of life. Working with the Theater for New City and manager Danielle Karliner, Stevens is creating a play called The Dudleys! to begin in August at the Joyce and Seward Johnson Theater.

According to the description of the play on Leegrid Stevens' website, "THE DUDLEYS! takes the adolescent memories of a man and translates them into a malfunctioning 8-bit video game, the kind he used to play as a young adult." But instead of imagining some classic game, the man plays "The Dudleys," a game about the man's family of fifteen years ago, during the aftermath of his father’s death and funeral. Besides the trippy setting, the play will be complimented with original music composed on vintage video game systems - Atari, Gameboy, Commodore 64 - and 8-bit video .

The play will have a run time of 1hr., 40 minutes. Tickets are available at the aformentioned link for $15.

A piece of Tokyo legislation that would forbid visual depictions of sexually stimulating characters—who appear to be under 18 years of age—has been put on hold.

Anime News Network reports that the legislation was first proposed on February 24. In a later post on the subject, the site stated that the Democratic Party of Japan indicated that it would postpone a vote on the measure until at least June.

Kotaku reported that several well-known Japanese manga creators appeared at the Tokyo Government Office to voice their displeasure with the proposed legislation. Kotaku interpreted the legislation as blanketing all virtual characters, including those in videogames.

An academic artist, who previously used America’s Army to make a political statement about the Iraqi war and recreated Gandhi’s Salt March in Second Life, has another online installation underway which features the Indian peace advocate.

Joseph DeLappe has imprisoned his MGandhi avatar in Second Life as a recreation of Gandhi’s post-Salt March prison term.

In real life, Gandhi was imprisoned by the British from May 5, 1930 through January 26, 1931. In the Second Life reenactment, MGandhi has been in a cell on Odyssey Contemporary Art and Performance Island (link for Second Life denizens) and will be “released” on January 26.

While imprisoned, MGandhi has not been idle; DeLappe’s avatar has been interacting with visitors and performing daily readings from the Bush-era Torture Memos. The readings are being fed to DeLappe’s Facebook account and his Twitter handle.

To celebrate MGandhi’s freedom, DeLappe is organizing a release party, entitled the gg hootenanny, which will feature the ability to sing-along, via voice chat, to protest songs from avatars such as The Beatles, Amy Winehouse, Pope Benedict XVI, Hello Kitty, Jim Morrison, Prince Charles and Spongebob Squarepants. The event will take place at 10AM, 6PM and 11PM SLT (Second Life Time) on January 26.

For gamers not into virtual worlds, fret not. DeLappe is also encouraging non-Second Lifers to pick up a guitar and sing inside their online game of choice on January 26, as he demonstrates in the embedded YouTube video, where he sings Bob Dylan’s Masters of War inside an FPS (America’s Army?)—a performance in and of itself.

Where does art inspired by videogames fall under the fair use doctrine? A U.S. Intellectual Property lawyer takes a look at just such a topic in an interesting entry on his blog.

Ben Manevitz centers his article on three pieces of art from Brock Davis, which show interpreted scenes from Dig Dug, Donkey Kong and Missile Command.

The four factors (for the U.S.) for determining fair use are:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted workas a whole;
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

Manevitz argues that the art in question meets the criteria of points 1 and 4:

The fair use analysis is actually fairly straightforward. You've got a transformative use that will have no impact on the market for the games, or even the potential derivative market for the games. That's factors one and four in favor of fair use.

The author claims that the works do not meet the second factor however:

Admittedly, the game screen is a creative work, which puts factor 2 in the not-fair-use column and it could be argued that the amount taken is substantial - it would depend on the determination of what, exactly, constituted the work; is it the game overall or individual screens.

Manevitz goes on to examine possible trademark implications:

… Atari might be able to argue that a consumer seeing the paintings might be confused as to the source or - in this case the stronger argument - sponsorship of the paintings.

He concludes that game makers might be able to make an “objectively reasonable trademark infringement case against the artist,” before noting that the “saving grace” for the artist might be “the practical factors militating against the manufacturer's bringing suit, to wit, the negative publicity, the paucity of available damages, the relative age (value) of the marks allegedly infringed, etc.”

A vacant storefront in a Glasgow, Scotland shopping mall has been transformed into an art bar, complete with a life-sized, interactive Pong installation.

The TimesOnline details the efforts of the National Theatre of Scotland—in conjunction with local artists—to open the bar, entitled Allotment. The first of two December events, taking place this Saturday, will feature the giant Pong  system as part of an installation examining the theme "gaming and morality."

So, what was the motivation behind the theme? Artist John Houston explained, “There’s a lobbyist in America called Jack Thompson who is basically the Mary Whitehouse of video games. He’s bitterly against violence in video games, even though they are rated for a mature audience and are not meant to be seen by seven-year-olds.”

Houston, also responsible for creating the popular viral video that remixed Radiohead’s Nude with dot matrix printer and hard drive sounds (kind of a modern day version of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music), continued:

With Pong, we wanted to challenge that idea by taking it a stage beyond killing soldiers or stealing cars, like in Grand Theft Auto, and create stripped down games that remove the computer and allow real people to influence the games. In essence, as people walk into the middle of the game, they can control the movement of the graphics in this primitive tennis match.

Fellow artist Kieran Hurley added:

There is a moral implication of how much you want to mess up somebody’s game, how much you want to make yourself an obstacle to somebody else. But at the end of the day, it’s just a really cool thing to have in a bar.

There you go. Jack Thompson, muse.


|Image Via Acrosstheboard|

Times are tough, so why not blow your last few bucks on virtual threads for your Xbox Live avatar?

Designer Michael Connell spoke to Kotaku about his new line of fashion for XBL. While some of Connell's designs pay homage to the popular Steampunk style, he also gives a nod to the down economy with "Recessionista" clothing:

I was thinking about making a statement, if you will, that even though this time of global recession, everything isn't bad." Connell said. "And in the 30s, in a time that was really bad, much worse than it is today, it wasn't all bad. There was fashion that was quite interesting. And this fashion wasn't the couture that was happening at the time...

 

[I hope] to kind of show that there are good things and we've been there and we'll get out. Clearly these are subliminal messages, but this is what I was inspired by. If you design a collection I think the most important thing is there needs to be heart and soul and direction.

I just completed an interview on CBC's Q program. Also appearing was Mike Thomsen of IGN.

The show was styled as a debate on sexual violence in games, with a lot of attention paid to RapeLay. I've never held back my contempt for the game and didn't on today's program.

I believe that they archive the previous day's show into a podcast. If you're interested in listening, check out the Q show website.

UPDATE: If you missed the program, CBC has posted the podcast version.

Eurogamer caught up with Take-Two Interactive CEO Ben Feder for a wide-ranging interview which is now available on the site.

While much of the conversation deals with various T2 games, Feder did touch upon the Manhunt 2 controversy and the notion of government censorship of games:

We firmly believe that games are art. A), we have the right to produce art. B), the consumer should have the right to make their own choices, providing the labelling on the package is clear about the content of the game.

Apart from that, I don't think it's the role of governments to determine what you or any of your readers can, or should, buy. They should be able to make their own choices. Government has no role in that at all...

Asked whether the interactive nature of games requires them to be viewed apart from, say, movies, Feder said:

It's not a difference with distinction... It's as if to say art as a painting is different than art as a sculpture. For sure they're different art forms and they use different mediums, but they're art nonetheless - they're forms of expression.

That, at least in the United States, is something that's guaranteed by the constitution, and in democracies in Western Europe there are very similar concepts about the ability for individuals to express themselves. If you stifle that, then society and the economy pay a pretty heavy toll.

Of particular interest given the ongoing RapeLay controversy, Feder was asked whether T2 might theoretically permit edgy developer Rockstar to create a game featuring sexual violence or abuse of children, Feder commented:

Look, I suppose there's a line somewhere. I don't think we've even come close to it. At the end of the day, we're also a commercial enterprise and we do intend to turn a profit with our games. That, in and of itself, provides a certain boundary beyond which we won't go.

I suppose there are more lines [beyond] which we'd be uncomfortable, but I don't think any of our games in the past, or any of our games that I've seen in development, come even close to that.

An artist who creates custom designs for - among other things - motorcycles has sued Activision, The Discovery Channel and two other defendants in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

In the suit filed on May 26th, artist Justin Barnes (left) alleges that he created a number of original designs for motorcycles constructed on The Discovery Channel's American Chopper series. Barnes claims that TDC in turn licensed the use of his work for a variety of merchandise, including video games, without his authorization. Barnes has copyrighted the works in question, according to his complaint.

Although Barnes accuses Activision, he does not mention a specific game. However, Activision has published two games based on the T.V. series, American Chopper in 2004 and American Chopper 2: Full Throttle in 2005; these would appear to be the games at issue in the case. From the complaint:

Defendant Activision has sold without authorization video games incorporating certain of plaintiff's copyrighted designs worldwide, nationwide and in the State of New York.

DOCUMENT DUMP: Grab a copy of the lawsuit here...

Games Radar has served up a series of printable posters depicting familiar game characters in the style of the now-famous Obama campaign theme created by visual artist Shepard Fairey.

The characters span a broad range of games, including:

• Tomb Raider
• Metal Gear Solid
• Katamari Damacy
• Half-Life
• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Thanks to: Sharp-eyed GamePolitics correspondent Andrew Eisen...