Museums are filled with objects that have no inherent value as a commodity outside of the rarefied art world. When we go to a museum, we’re essentially paying a curator for introducing us to objects that we wouldn’t normally consider valuable. The curator provides context to allow us to grasp the cultural significance of the objects exhibited. (Which also leads to another conclusion: people who pay for art games are NOT gamers — they’re collectors.)

Of course there’s a distinction between high and low in games, but I think it’s more useful to think of it in terms of economics rather than loaded analogies to rock ‘n’ roll.

I know that you’re implying that it should be ok for Doom to be “just” rock ‘n’ roll. And I totally agree. But still I hope that one day, we get serious critics who can tell us why Doom is so much better than any first person shooter that was made after it. That would be very helpful too.

This was, I suppose, somewhat what I was asking when I brought up arcades at the end of the keynote panel, though I think it was misconstrued a little.

What i was trying to get at that I don’t think quite got across to the panel as well as I’d have liked, is that perhaps much like Rock ‘n Roll has its own museums to showcase the work, perhaps fine art museums are just the wrong place for anything other than a so-termed “art game”.

I think that it’s been well-proven that the art world doesn’t really handle games that aren’t obviously trying to be art well. So in term of curating games, of exhibiting Doom or Zelda or Street Fighter, I think we have to make our own form of the Rock ‘n Roll museums. And I think a good model to build such a thing from is going to be those areas where the games in question were originally exhibited– such an institution would likely have to (to a degree) pattern itself on arcades and living rooms.

During the panel you were participating, Frank, there was a mention of XBox Live and other online multiplayer and the idea was floated that we don’t teach a culture of behavior and games. It had me thinking, because we *did* have a culture, but I think it died out to an extent when we shifted from multiplayer in arcades and at home to multiplayer in the impersonal online space.

Perhaps we need arcades back in some form, not just to exhibit these great works, but also to help teach that culture that has fallen by the wayside. I just don’t see it happening in “proper” museums. New media requires new institutions.

Question mark instead full stop.

I think Doom DOES belong (also) in a museum!!

Sorry for the typo.

I could go on and on – I won’t. Doom does not belong to a museum because it’s Rock’n'Roll.

Please don’t let me remind you of all the Modern Art that is documented and was/is on exhibition in Museums.

What is a museum? Well, go and visit one to see that they are not what you might think they are. Museums ‘preserve’ our cultural achievements – they document snapshots in our history for future generations.

It does not matter if you or me wants to see Doom in a museum.

If we manage to survive the next couple hundert years as a species without turning the world into a Mad Max 2 scenario, museums will remind us of the things and times our ancestors created such amazing things like the Guttenberg press, the frist telegraph, the first CMOS-chip, the first … videogames that one day turned into holodecks.

Museums have a purpose, Art history has a purpose. You have to think bigger, leave room for future generations. I beg you.

twitter: @buckybit

(sorry for spelling-errors – English is the 4th lingo I failed to manage to this day :)

So then it comes down to a matter of archiving and placing it into a larger narrative. And yeah DOOM belongs there, but experiencing it in that context would require a different sort of museum. Like a history museum. Or a Hard Rock Cafe, to return to the rock & roll analogy. And we all know how wonderful the aesthetic experience of the Hard Rock Cafe is.

p.s. heavy metal is alive and well in the museum. My ears were bleeding last weekend at PS1 (A Museum of Modern Art, NYC affiliate) when intermittent live thrash metal sets drowned out the performance art retrospective show. I think it was part of… the art?

Anyway, my main argument is that “art museums” are a node in the art market and the work they usually show is part of that market as well. Genius works like Star Wars and Doom weren’t created in that market. They’re part of a different system, right? That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be shown in an art museum, but if they are, it will be interpreted to make sense in that (market) context.

Games are getting in (if “in” is the art market, which is how most of these institutions/museums survive), and I’m sure more will over time. Perhaps someday the discussion at the Art History of Games Conference will be how to get games out as well.

That will be fun :)

But as Frank says, we need both. And I think we’re there – almost.

And I wish I was there, there! but I’ll be seeing you at the big capitalist conference in a month…

(P2) Though do John Romero, Harvey Smith, and Richard Lemarchand want their work in museums? Their opinions – and of course those of the other creative professionals involved – seem relevant.

Though what would John Romero, Harvey Smith, and Richard Lemarchand want their game in a museum? There opinions (and of course those of the other creative professionals involved) seem relevant.

The time/length argument is what settled it for me though. The use of video in museums, for example, often seems to be only short clips prepared to loop, sometimes projected on multiple walls as part of a room-sized exhibit – thus The Godfather and Star Wars haven’t found their way into any fine arts museum that I’ve encountered. An exhibit for these, like an exhibit for Doom 2, seems like it could be about the work at best, but without the work itself in the most important sense. (Unlike, say, how we are able to see a painting or photo all at once, or walk around a statue to view it from every angle.)