Tag: allographic art

Gaming Machines: Gaming as Allographic Art

(This post concludes the set of examples we began with the Cybernetic Machines and Science Machines over the last few weeks.)

We might call a gaming machine as something where a “game” is a set of instructions written by a “developer (or designer)”* fed into an assemblage (or cybernetic bio-technical machine) called a “studio” that outputs a “program”.

Hmm, that doesn’t quite work.

We need to spend a little more time with our construction here, to figure out what the roots are.

The generic version breaks down to: a Machine is a given Input (written) by a (Creator) fed into an assemblage called a (Mechanism) that produces an (Output).

If we were to extract those terms from the examples in our previous posts, we’d get this:

Machine, Input, Creator, Mechanism, Output
Science, Method, Scientist, Laboratory, Experiment
Game, Game, Developer, Studio, Program
Film, Script, Director, Production Company, Movie
Music, Composition, Composer, Orchestra, Symphony
Building, Blueprint, Architect, Construction Company, Building
AI, Context Model, Prompt Engineer, AI, Virtual World
AI2, Prompt, Prompt Engineer, AI, Experience

So now a gaming machine looks like this:

A “game” is a set of instructions written by a “developer (or designer)” fed into an assemblage (or cybernetic bio-technical machine) called a “studio” that outputs a “program”.

And we can talk about…

Gaming as an Allographic Art

Back when we started with Cybernetic Machines, we brought up the concept of an “allographic art”, from Nelson Goodman (1962). An allographic art is an art that is crafted by others based on a set of instructions. The artist in this case is the creator of the work that is replicated, like a composer or architect.

So by this definition, a game – either tabletop or electronic – would fit as an allographic art form.

Granted TTRPG rules rarely rise to the level of “art”, often seeming content to aim for “technical manual”, but things are improving. A lot of smaller indie games, have been focusing on the presentation and the while package – games like Root, Mork Borg, and others – to say nothing of the beautiful games released within the boardgaming space (Canvas, Sagrada, Azul, Hues and Cues, and a host of others).

But there are competing visions of “art” here, as art in game design may occur irrespective of the aesthetic appeal of the components, and a dry technical manual with pretty pictures may still not make for an engaging or artful design. However, there is no reason why a black and white typed zine might not contain artfully designed gaming systems either.

And while we previously also discussed how a scripted performance like a symphony or ballet would count as an allographic art, gaming as performance – again, either tabletop (e.g. Critical Role, Dimension 20) or electronic (e.g. Twitch, YouTube, etc.) is a different form of art.

To be clear: both design and performance can be art. Both count.

In the same way that Mozart of Composer and the London Symphony Orchestra as Performer are artists, in different ways, of the same work. And while this is commonly accepted in those art forms, in others it rarely occurs.

Take film for example: one of the very instances of this in film is Gus Van Sant’s 1998 shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Here we have the same script, and much of the same direction, attempting to remake a film in much the same way that we would see with other allographic art forms. Psycho (1998) is a performance of Psycho (1960). Or rather, both Psycho (1960) and Psycho (1998) are performances (or interpretations) of the original script. I.e., allographic art.

But it is so rarely done in that medium. What would it look like if it happened more often?

This discussion of film brings us back to gaming, hopefully. Here we can have artistry in the play, of the code or rules created by others for the gamers to showcase their interpretation to the world, and we can have artistry in the design, in the instructions as they are created, with the elegance or aesthetic appeal of the rules and their presentation showcasing that form of art.

Which leads us to the implied question: is gaming art? Of course!

Though there have been many arguments that video games aren’t art (with some stating that they are incapable of becoming so), these arguments have been always been false. Gaming is art.

And gaming machines can make it.

Cybernetic Machines: AI Art and Cultural Form

A “script” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called a “production company” that outputs a “movie”

A “composition” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called an “orchestra” that outputs a “symphony”.

A “blueprint” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called a “construction company” that outputs a “building”.

A “context model” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called an “AI” that outputs a “virtual world”.

Perhaps

Or perhaps all of the above.

These are all examples of “allographic arts” as introduced by Nelson Goodman back in 1962, versions of art that is crafted by others based on a set of instructions provided by the artist. this could be the director, the composer, the architect, as Goodman postulated, or a set of instructions followed by the Generative AI at the direction of the “Prompt Engineer”.

Of course “Prompt Engineer” is at once both too banal and too unrepresentative of what is going on in the artistic process here. The slightly more upscaled “Context Engineer” (for when one prompt isn’t enough) is similarly unsuitable here. Engineering has little to do with it at all, though much like our architect example above, engineering isn’t precluded from being a part of the process.

Perhaps it’s because the Generative AI tools are too new in their development to have a singular title, like composer or architect, or Madonna or Cher, and so we’re left with the dual names to describe them, by defining them as a variation on the thing that they are somewhat akin to. Think “software architect” or “3D modeler”. Too new not quite encapsulated in the name, the way “TV Producer” has collapsed into “showrunner” in the 21st century.

Maybe it’s in the name.

Or maybe it’s in what we make with it. The art form hasn’t coalesced yet. Again too new; too recently pulled from the primordial technocultural stew. In the early days of the form, we are left reproducing the elements of older media, the same way early television and film were often stage plays and vaudeville acts. We’re caught somewhere between Pong and Space Invaders in terms of development, with Elden Ring and GTA VI undreamed of in the distant horizon.

With that in mind, what will AI art actually look like? Once it comes into its own as cultural form? I hinter at it with Virtual Worlds above. These can be produced using traditional methods, of course, but maybe that’s but one way a fed set of prompts, of contexts, of world models can be realized. AI Art will almost assuredly look something barely glimpsed or imagined.

But I want to play in the holodeck for a moment.

Because I think that gets close to what we’re imagining here. The holodeck, famously introduced in the first episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation “Encounter At Farpoint” (airdate 1987-09-28) and subsequently retconned and chronologically re-situated as typical with enduring narratives, would allow for the cast and crew to input a set of commands into the computer and allow it to generate the setting, players, dialogue and the like, along a relatively broad range of possibilities. The computer onboard was massively powerful, and generated these holographic simulations with relative ease, but the show(s) always made that distinction between the computer of the ship, and the AI embodied in more ambulatory agents like Lieutenant Commander Data. It stands to reason that the computer of a faster-than-light starship some 250 years in the future would be more that capable at the task at hand.

So perhaps this is what we’re moving towards, where the cultural form of AI art is more akin to an “experience” crafted by an “Imagineer”, though perhaps not in a way akin to a theme park ride held under copyright by the Disney Corporation.

We’re getting closer.

Perhaps we don’t have the words yet because we don’t know what that cultural form will be. It’s had to tell from our Pong-centered viewpoint here.

So let’s try to re-work our formula from above:

A “prompt” is a set of instructions fed into a cybernetic bio-technical machine called an “AI” that outputs an “experience”.

Not bad, though perhaps a little generic. But what it gains in that genericity is that it is divorced from the digital. No “cyber” or “virtual” prefixes are to be found. And that allows for growth, for change, for possibility – for the cultural form of AI art to transcend the digital / material barrier, to allow for an full environment to be developed like within the holodeck, or for humans to interact with material AI agents, like the hosts within Westworld. We’re still bouncing around that “theme park” model, but there is art within that creation, of the building and shaping of a full sensory experience.

And the play is the thing, a phrase that was uttered in the holodeck on more than one occasion, I’m sure. So let’s leave it there, our recognition of the incipient cultural form of AI art, and go out into the world to hunt for new words, new worlds, and discover what the future might be.