A NUMBER OF YEARS AGO, the reporter who covered art and culture scene for the local paper retired and Jenny, the head of the Green Hill, asked me whether she could suggest my name as a replacement. I had written a few reviews for the area’s free weekly and had a working knowledge of most of the art going on at the time so it wasn’t an outlandish proposal. The point of her request was that the area’s arts couldn’t thrive without an educated public. I suppose the fact that the earth didn't shake and mountains didn't crumble when the paper eliminated regular arts coverage was taken as a sign that criticism, even the minor sort one would expect in the pages of a mediocre city newspaper (lots of praise, a few quibbles, and considerable nods to the patrons who attended show openings), wasn’t a big loss to the community. And since the Sunday book page made its exit recently, I suppose the current thinking is that with Borders and Barnes and Noble in town, along with a very good Central Library, area readers really don’t need book reviews either. (The News-Record decided to bring the book page back since this writing.)
Today, shows come and go and only if my wife, who is an artist, and I are on the mailing list, get an email, or notice the occasional poster or paid advertisement do we know that a particular exhibit has come to town or that a certain artist has a new body of work. Our ignorance is not the fault of the newspaper, whose belief in light fare and online “content” resembles more and more a desperate survival strategy. But the disappearance of reviews symbolizes the public's flight from any kind of critical thinking, let alone the hard sort every good artist has been trained with. While most of American society looks for a steady stream of affirmation to buttress its beliefs and maintain its world view — even in the face of near economic collapse — every serious artist pursues his work with a healthy sense of question and doubt (nicely captured in the title of Dore Ashton’s book on the painter Philip Guston, “Yes, but...”). Good art — serious art — does not arise from subsidized studio rents for artists, art classes for elementary school students, or an influx of high end computers to teach the latest gaming technology to high school or community college students. First and foremost, it comes from serious artists talking to one another in the harshest, frankest, and toughest aesthetic terms. The critique, or crit as its known in art schools, is famous for either delivering clarity or a muddied collection of random observations. But is the only formal method, when applied diligently and with expertise, by which artists discover quality.
This is the level of dialog which has been missing from the area, despite good talent, available space, relatively affordable living standards, smallish galleries, and the presence of many university and college art departments. For whatever reasons — political correctness, Southern gentility, job protection, irresponsibility — the absence of critical dialog allows mediocre art to grow and command far more attention than it’s worth. And what’s the point of exposing your kids to mediocre and bad art? Without tough commentary that sets the pace and tone, community boosterism takes over and the argument is no longer about the quality of specific art works but general statements about the importance of art in the public schools or strategies for exploiting art as a public vehicle of entertainment or fun, as a tourist venue or as part of a larger economic revival scheme.
Under these circumstances, preaching and investing in technology seem like the safer bet because technology promises results. Critical dialog — talk — can’t promise anything. Teaching, say, computer technique makes parents happy because it gives the illusion of making their children intelligent and an edge when they go to work or apply for university admission. Often the mere presence of gleaming, new machinery inspires confidence, as if the mere presence of gadgetry could promote innovation and invent jobs. But without a language of criticism, without learning the language of criticism and learning how to practice it, technology is directionless. Its history has shown it is not a particular technology but its particular application that gives meaning and spreads influence. The mental flexibility to grasp one set of circumstances and tools and to reimagine them in another is the heart of the artistic process. And it’s only through the process of thought, argument, and debate that good ideas are winnowed from the mediocre and bad. Because art is about meaning it has the power to give technology direction.
For this reason, I have advocated an understanding and teaching of game technology as if it were an art form much like film, painting, or photography. From that vantage point, the technology could take off in a myriad of directions. It would truly be a wide open field for investigation, development, and entrepreneurship. I believe pursuing such technologies in order to lay the foundations of an eventual game and simulation industry are farfetched. Practically speaking, there is the huge catch-up that area academic programs have barely tackled.
But the current path of game technology, heavily influenced by commercial products, is another obstacle. It is as if the Hollywood formula of storytelling, complete with the car chase, boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl and John Williams soundtrack was the only way of making a film. And indeed, there are other programs in the US which are very good at training young people to recreate big titles such as Grand Theft Auto. As Richard Kristol of NCALTA mentioned in his presentation at PTP’s December game and simulation meeting, the region's colleges and universities should have been teaching these technologies years ago, not just starting out as they are today. It is difficult to explain the delay, but given the popular hoopla surrounding games nowadays it's easy to understand why academia now wants to enter this field.
