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Of course not. (Gaming)

by Robot Chickens, Saturday, August 13, 2016, 20:10 (3033 days ago) @ Cody Miller

All art is commentary on the context in which it was written. Some art just has a longer period of resonance or the thing that made it special gets changed and produces new meaning in a different time period.

Halo CE was groundbreaking because of the way it combined technology to tell a story on a consol. Halo is still a fun game today (maybe my favorite) but kids today just see it as a fun game. Nothing earth-shattering.

The Beatles invented a lot of the sounds we are accustomed to hearing today but Seargent Pepper doesn't sound groundbreaking anymore- just a great collection of songs.

The first preserved art we have on cave walls served a functional and aesthetic purpose, but it had nothing to do with why we appreciate it today.

Also, I'm pretty skeptical about this notion of progressive evolution for a medium. This idea of pushing something forward feels a bit naive. Art has served purposes I will never understand in the past because I'm not acquainted with the context. Moving forward suggests that what was that in the past is somehow lesser. Early art may have been better at conveying meaning to a culture than I could ever hope to assess due to my unfamiliarity with the context. What I'm saying is that I don't trust your premise of moving the medium forward as something that can be adequately measured in any meaningful way.

I do get your point about being wowed by something because of the process of creation vs the final disconnected product. I'm just not sure I care what a kid 20 years from now will think of no mans sky. It was not written for him or her. We can't judge art by how we think it will be interpreted in the future because of the same limitations that prevent us from adequately analyzing historic art.


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