Monday, August 3, 2009

Videogames are the Greatest Art Medium yet to Exist

Following is a hierarchy of artforms from lowest to highest. They're a pyramid based upon what senses the art forms stimulate. This art pyramid's based upon the definition of art as a work successfully attempting to stimulate one or more senses more than normal intake does. The degree of skill shown in the work and stimulation demanded's relative.

1 Sense
Literature (includes poetry, prose, etc.): Visual symbols for auditory stimulation. It could be argued words stimulate all senses but similarly any sensory stimulation evokes other senses (smell muffins>imagine what the muffins look like). This assortment of art forms is based on innate properties not human interpretations. Literature is a visual recorded translation of sounds so it's equivalent w/music. It stiumlates 1 sense and's on the tier of low art.

Music (hearing)

Statues, Paintings, Reliefs, Architecture, etc. (visual)

Cooking (olfactory)

Rollercoasters/Extreme Sports (sense of equilibrium)

2 Senses
Comics (the audio stimulation of words and the visual stimulation of pictures)

Movies, tv shows, webisodes, etc. (realtime comics)

Theatre (live movies)

3 or more Senses

Videogames (so far the only medium in the tier of high art. All that music is movies encompass. Comic's envelope all properties of literature. A movie's movement excludes it from including the medium of literature within itself likewise the stillness of comics exempts music from the low arts it can represent. But in a videogame reality is simulated. Music can play while poetry's read at leisure. Every trait of most low and both medium artforms is incorporated into videogames. What has yet to be but has potential to be included in the medium are senses of taste, touch (rumbling's negligible), smell, etc.