I remember I was a kid and the first game I remember making my father purchase was TIE Fighter for our PC. It never installed. it never worked. It was brought about from playing TIE fighter at The Firke House. Then Came the N64 and Shadows of the Empire. i could never get to the second level. I was so bad at that game. It was terrifying how uncoordinated I was. I remember after that I got the gameboy. And videogaming exploded with an obsession with Pokemon. And Ben Vonstein. Tons of video game playing but not as much as I loved toys. i loved the physical object and its play with my imagination. So I didn't play as much as I thought I would. I was obsessed with N64 but successive failure with the platform made be disregard it. Then Came goldeneye. Man I got it late. Everyone talked about it. But i think my father banned me from it. Eventually I got a copy to play the Vonstein's and I played that Obsessively. and it was a ingenious game. It was utter wish fulfillment. I was the spy that I saw on Tv. Kick asses and taking names. And that is a reoccuring theme. my life in video games allowed me to be what I could Not An ass kicker. After that Mark came in and we just played more and more. With some Mario Kart. Much later. I received the much coveted and accessible PS from cousins. It was good because I had many bootleg games. But the King was the streetfighter. More ass kicking. I played so much my hands blistered. Vonstein, Firke, and Mark all indulged. There was also coolboarders and Syphon Filter. Jesus what terrible names. These games made me something powerful. Also Starcraft came in. I never played online. i cheated in game. In order to feel like a god. and I never built up the much coveted coordination that Video games promised. This and other teenage media like Dragonballz Gundam and Neon Genesis Evangelion dominated my consciousness. It was escapism before I understood what escapism. i wanted to leave my normal life and become so sort of god. i wanted to be a destroyer more than a maker. I was frustrated and It was a negative feedback cycle of frustration. This shit was a trap and game. But I don't regret it. I did have the constructive act of building Gundams. Those model kits may have kept me from the deep end because it brought the screen based fiction in a small artifact in to reality. The coup de gras of course the receiving even for me unexpectedly of the Xbox and Halo 2. Halo and Halo 2 I had encoutered before and brought more people to my home to play video games. Was a mad craze insane to the most maximal point. it was pure hero wish fufillment. The summation of ass kicking. The high water mark of destruction made easy. and i basked in it. Then came Fable and Knights of the old republic. God That indulged my star wars fantasy. I could be it. I dreamed. These games conquered my imagination. and They became inescapable to my reality. But the last three games for the original Xbox really bought it all together. All single player experiences. Hitman, Doom3, and Half Life2 were incredible. Half life2 obviously stands above them by an entire head so i will talk about it last. Hitman was an incredibly flexible experience of pure murder. You could be the psychopath that I felt I was or could be. you could take innocent life. How rewarding. Never before could I be in a mirror of my reality (oh how distorted) with full destructive capablity. How empowering and Also very defeating. Sometimes after mass murder I would feel empty-This ran concurrent to paly Grand Theft Auto Vice City with mark.... With similar feelings on the emptiness of the destructive urge. Now Doom3 however was not particularly innovative but I played it at night in the dark near midnight during schoolnights. Which allowed me to see my addiction. I suppose addiction. But also the fact I could brave doom3 where my friends could not. i could chase the terror away. Was empowering. none of my other friends could play it. I could not be afraid. It was rewarding and Like half life 2 basically offered a blank slate to play as.
Half Life 2 IS A work of Art. It sucks one in with an engaging experience that is more than gratifying wish fulfillment. It was amusing and experiential. it is the only video game I have encountered that comes to frontier of art because of its natural fluid exploration of space. The graphic qualities and aesthetic power of the game and the formation of world that was not just what you wanted to be but rather something crafted with thought care and the power of crazed thinking really did it for me. This is not what I want to make but it made me appreciate the work that was made. The mystery that still shrouds it. In the end you did something meaningful but it has to personalized to you and not the avatar.
What i have learned and what i should avoid. For future LED paintings I cannot be egoistic and call it art above video games first and foremost. I shall not say media makes art. No. J'refuse. But the avatarizing of people and the nature of objectiveness and objectives. All of these games created a persona of varying degrees of being like a character. And instead of being oneself in the game you are the persona...This avatarization limits the experience and deforms it. The clear objectives and linear meaning without the multi-valence of subjective interpretation of these games also limits itself as a work of art. It makes a game to be completed as a opposed to something to be experienced. It a mimic of plato's cave. More advanced arts refuse objective meaning or at least all a broad interpretaiton. Half Life 2 comes to cusp of this by destroying objective completed screens and mostly removing the aspects of Gordon Freeman character. So that the player is there. The lack of cinematics also helps. It is quite like being Henri in John Hawkes' Travesty.
I.E. the problem with the game being the game is that it does not allow the audience to make their own meaning. To be constructive themselves. Or it limits their constructiveness too much.
These LED paintings have many points of approach and I shall invent them but I cannot forsake real painting or my past in Video games. perhaps I may need to help certain designers.
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