Fine Art #6 on RPGnet: Uncertainty

[Jonathan Walton]

The new article is up now, though it hasn't yet been announced to the masses.  Definitely connected with some of the ideas that have been bouncing around the theory forum of late.  Also, I think it reflects a growing maturity on my part, at least as far as articulating the relationship between roleplaying and art goes...

http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/fineart22mar04.html

Feel free to post comments in this thread or in the column forum.  I'm trying out a new footnote system too, so you can comment on that if you like.

Onwards and upwards.

[Tomas HVM]

The article has several nice points. Thank you!

You conclude the article like this: If I take Anderson's word for it, that struggle is validated, not out of anxiety or confusion, but because struggling with issues of definition and identification help us understand roleplaying more thoroughly. The struggle doesn't end, but now it has a clear purpose.

I've never doubted the validity in struggling with identification and definitions of roleplaying concepts. It has never given me any anxiety, but has often revealed the confusion of me and others. Such revelations have strenghtened my resolve to continue the process. They have strenghtened my belief in the necessity of doing it. To reveal another layer of confusion, in myself or others, have always hightened my expectations of the insights to be won, and wetted my appetite for new achievements.

As you writes a whole article, presenting detailed arguments to reach this conclusion, it makes me think I might be a bit odd, in this respect. So I have to ask: Does anyone really have any doubts on the rich harvest yielded by this struggle?

[Ian Charvill]

As an aside, I think you're misparsing the first quote:

I think there are always folks who don't quite get what we're putting across. You know what? That's fine. The important thing is that they play games and have fun with them. It's when you get too serious about making gaming "art" that it starts to become not-fun.

That doesn't say "art is not fun" it says "getting too serious about making gaming "art"" makes it non-fun.  Getting too serious.   The quote in unsupportive of the inference.

Another aside:

Kendall Walton has recently provided an account of a family of aesthetic concepts including aesthetic pleasure [and] aesthetic appreciation... t should be noted that the definitions offered by Walton do not sufficiently distinguish aesthetic pleasure from aesthetic appreciation... [A]esthetic appreciation need not involve pleasure at all. One can aesthetically appreciate Mozart's Requiem while feeling sad, and, more important, because one is saddened by it. ...We can, thus, define aesthetic appreciation as believing the experience of the properties of an object to be intrinsically valuable.

I can remember having this argument while I was training to be an adult ed tutor.  Except I was referencing Neil Young rather than Mozart.  My argument was that listening to sad music was pleasurable.  It's a good sadness.  It's mingled with a feeling of fraternity, of shared sadness, of sadness elevated by beauty, and that overall is pleasurable.  I think that the reponse that the Requiem is sad, and makes you feel sad, and why would you want to feel sad, is an insufficiently complex account of the feelings involved.

Two asides do not, I know, constitute a systematic response, but I hope they are in some way useful.

[Tomas HVM]

In the article Jonathan Walton quoted this: It's when you get too serious about making gaming "art" that it starts to become not-fun.

That doesn't say "art is not fun" it says "getting too serious about making gaming "art"" makes it non-fun.  Getting too serious.   The quote in unsupportive of the inference.

The gist of the quote is that making game "arty" is wrong. "Too serious" is too vague an expression to seriously point at any other interpretation. The quote points to "art" as some serious threath to the fun of the game. It is not so. The fun is threathened in a multitude of other ways more serious and widespread than "arty" attitudes.

To elaborate; in my experience many players claiming to be "into gaming for the fun of it", often play games with little fun and many frustrations. This is mainly due to their inability to seriously consider how to make a fun game. The quote on "too serious" and "not-fun" is an excellent example of how such players may be "helped" to fortify a hopeless position, and "helped" to prolong their misuse of the roleplaying game.

I prefer to tell such players that they have no legitimate claim to "fun" as their ruling principle, when so closed to new thoughts, so estranged to positive exploration of the medium, and so full of prejudice on the possible development and content of a roleplaying game. I try to tell them the fun is in the possibilities.

New thoughts, positive exploration and open development of the drama, is some of the most important basics to the roleplaying game. No individual maintaining a negative attitude towards these basics, may seriously claim to be advocates for the fun of roleplaying games.

There is only one way to advocate fun in roleplaying games, and that is by being deadly serious about how to create it! Look to Chaplin; he did it with his movies. He created some of the most hilarious funny films ever made, and he did it with great artistic intergrity, with a seriousness lots of moviemakers today certainly admire him for, and always with a will to let the serious themes shine through the gales of laughter. He made us cry for the clown! That is serious fun.

To admonish gamesmiths on the danger of becoming "too serious", is misplaced in a design atmosphere dominated by these "fun"-attitudes. We need more seriousness, not less.

[Sean]

Aesthetic theories of art were actually in good shape in early-mid century, being allied with formalism and with modernism in painting and sculpture. The critics Clive Bell and (in a more interesting way) Clement Greenberg were canonical defenders of this approach to art, but they have their precursors: Edouard Hanslick in music criticism, not to mention numerous Russian formalist critics.

Such theories have hit bad problems in recent years though. The most devastating set of attacks to my mind can be found in a number of writings by Arthur Danto: see The Transfiguration of the Commonplace and the often-read and often-misinterpreted essay "The Artworld". The basic idea is that aesthetic features depend on physical ones, but that other essential features of art (what artworks mean, e.g.) which can't, so aesthetic theories must miss something (it is argued) basic about the nature of art. George Dickie takes Danto's (I would argue essentially) conceptual observations and tries to recast the theory of art in institutional terms, work which has a certain broad resonance with the entirely sociological reinterpretation of art appreciation offered by Pierre Bourdieu. (Gaming culture is ripe for Bourdieu's style of analysis - we do construct our identities as gamers around certain games in certain ways - but such a theory in general does nothing whatsoever to explain any important aesthetic phenomenon. Defenders of sociological theories of art would counter that that is because there are no important aesthetic phenomena that do not reduce to institutional ones. But I digress.)

Another direction of attack on aesthetic understandings of the arts has come from conceptual artists themselves, e.g. Joseph Kosuth.

An interesting, aesthetically alive but philosophically somewhat shallow attempt to work out a synthesis between formalist and conceptual approaches to art may be found in Thierry de Duve's book Kant after Duchamp. De Duve's project is even more Hegelian in spirit than he seems aware, and I plan to publish a paper eventually exploring these resonances in relation to the development of art through the twentieth century.

In the meantime, though, I have to get back to preparing class.

[Ian Charvill]

In the article Jonathan Walton quoted this: It's when you get too serious about making gaming "art" that it starts to become not-fun.

That doesn't say "art is not fun" it says "getting too serious about making gaming "art"" makes it non-fun.  Getting too serious.   The quote in unsupportive of the inference.

The gist of the quote is that making game "arty" is wrong. "Too serious" is too vague an expression to seriously point at any other interpretation. The quote points to "art" as some serious threath to the fun of the game. It is not so. The fun is threathened in a multitude of other ways more serious and widespread than "arty" attitudes.

You can argue that the presence of the word "too" makes the statement a truism.  You can argue that the quotes around the word art are ambiguous.  You can argue that many people have a knee-jerk reaction against taking their fun seriously, that closes them off from a lot of fun that they could be having.  I would agree with you on all three counts.  I agree with most of your post.  But the literal meaning of the quote given is not as you argue that it is.


The meaning of the quote - the actual, simple, literal meaning of the quote in the sense of these words of English in this specific order interpreted according to the meanings of English words and English grammar - indicates it is not making gaming "art" that that causes gaming to be "not-fun" but being too serious about making gaming art.

[Jonathan Walton]

...indicates it is not making gaming "art" that that causes gaming to be "not-fun" but being too serious about making gaming art.

Come on, Ian.  Let's not turn discussion of this topic into an argument about semantics.  I interpreted the quote in the way I did.  You disagree.  Fine.  We don't need to argue this back and forth.  The quote wasn't even closely related to the topic of the article.  

Besides, I even think the idea that "being too serious about making gaming into art is not-fun" does a massive disservice to both gaming and art.  What the hell does that mean, anyway?  We should be less serious about making gaming art?  It might be the literal sense of the phrase, but it still doesn't mean much to me.  I would have no idea how to want to make gaming into art, but do it in a less serious way.  Just doesn't work for me.

Sean, thanks for a breakdown of the philosophical background issues.  The Carroll book that I'm pulling several articles from is structured as a series of reactions to Dickie and Danto.  Basically, it's a group of philosophers insisting that there are important factors to consider that aren't just institutional properties, hence Margolis' focus on cultural entities embedded in physical ones and Anderson's focus on aesthetic appreciation (which is partially institutionalized, but not necessarily so).

Ian, I understand why you'd argue that enjoying sadness is still pleasure, but I find those kinds of arguments to be pretty circular.  Assumedly, you can enjoy experiencing any kind of emotion, but pleasure also exists seperate from emotions (indulging in the senses, etc.), so I think conflating them in talk about aesthetics is dangerous.  I find Anderson's argument for "considering an experience to be intrisically valuable" to be much more persuasive, plus I think it adds a needed degree of clarity to the situation, while I find continued focus on pleasure to be distracting and muddling.

Tomas, I think many, many American roleplayers (the average joe on the street) think that the point of roleplaying theory (if they concede to its existence at all) should be to tell us something definitive about roleplaying.  They aren't validating the search and struggle for its own sake.  The want absolutes and practical methods for ensuring certain results.  They aren't interested in relative or conditional answers.  There is, in my experience, anxiety about the fact that "roleplaying" has never been fully defined and that some games claim to be RPGs when it's clear (at least to those players) that they are clearly not RPGs.  Perhaps I'm misreading things, but that's the situation I was responding to (though the point of the article was really aesthetic appreciation and the uncertainty inherant in that kind of approach).

[Ian Charvill]

They aren't validating the search and struggle for its own sake.

Jonathan, it seems I owe you an apology.  Trying to tie things into the concrete world of actual experiences is just the kind of underhand trick an unthinking, anti-intellectual prole like me would try.  In the rarified atmosphere of academia - where, as we know, all the worthwhile work is carried out - the actual meaning of words is less important than the interpretation one places upon them.  There I go again.  Actual meaning of words - as if there could be any such thing!  Words mean precisely what gentlemen of your high intelligence mean them to, neither more nor less, and I'm begging your pardon for suggesting otherwise, sir.

It was utter arrogance to suggest you and the other gentleman you were quoting might be wrong and I only hope you can deign to forgive me.

Yours in humble pardon

[Jonathan Walton]

It was utter arrogance to suggest you and the other gentleman you were quoting might be wrong and I only hope you can deign to forgive me.

Wow.  I think that's the first time I've ever been mocked on the Forge.

Ian, I wasn't trying to belittle your intelligence.  I wasn't talking down to you.  I'm a 21-year-old college student.  There's a hell of a lot I don't know.  Like 99% of the stuff in the world.  If I'm full of shit, then call me on it.  But don't mock me.  That doesn't do anything besides make people upset.  I'm seriously interested in your thoughts on these thorny issues, but I can't communicate with people who are being intentionally antagonistic.  I totally respect you and your opinion.  I wasn't trying to be dismissive of your thoughts.  But if you want to interpret things that way, there's nothing I can do about it.

This is definitely a case of you finding meaning in my words that isn't there.  Talk about semantic issues...

[Ron Edwards]

No sarcasm. Do not be sarcastic at this website.

Ian, or anyone, if you think you're running into a spurious argument or a set of meaningless assumptions, it's your privilege not to participate in the thread. That's your legitimate reply.

And Jonathan, or anyone, when someone posts inappropriately to you, private-message me. Please don't try to moderate when you perceive yourself to be the target.

Best,
Ron

[Ian Charvill]

Ron, you're call here is valid.  My sarcasm has no place here, it is utterly contrary to the standards of discourse here at the Forge.

Jonathan, I'm sorry for the manner of my response to you.  It was unwarranted.

Tomas, too, if I was a little snarky with you, I apologise.

[Tomas HVM]

- the actual, simple, literal meaning of the quote  

Literal meaning may be simple. Reality seldom is.

[Tomas HVM]

... many American roleplayers (the average joe on the street) think that the point of roleplaying theory (if they concede to its existence at all) should be to tell us something definitive about roleplaying.  

So do I, and a lot of Scandinavian roleplayers.

I think theory should strive to investigate and clarify, and in that context it is meant to tell us something definitive. It is meant to be constructive, practical and visionary.

At the same time I think that theory should strive to tear it all down, build it anew (or not), and explore the great unknown. In that context theory is meant to tell us no definitions are trustworthy. It is meant to be destructive, impractical and challenging.

I believe theory should be a continuous process, moving in lots of directions at the same time. I believe theory is behaving exactly like this, all the time, and it is indeed full of beautiful movements!

In my experience players (and other people) may realise that they need a lot more than they are used to ask for. Often players may surprise you (and me) with their sudden ability to grasp the very concepts they fiercely opposed only a week ago. Players are in a continuous process. They are being exposed to observations and theories. They investigate, learn, and try out new concepts all the time. They are bound to do this, considering the exploratory and interactive nature of roleplaying games.

Still; what is known to us, is the basis of our convictions. We know so many different things, on different levels, so we are bound to discuss it, and quarrel about it, and not understand eachother. Understandig may still linger in the near future, when thoughts have matured, ideas have been tested, and reality has been found to support the arguments of the "mad theorist".

The average Joe is never a lost cause. His full name is Joe Hope!