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| The "home screen" of the Tate Gallery's Art History Game, Race Against Time app for the smartphone. |
“It should be noted
that children at play are not playing about…their games should be seen as their
most serious-minded activity.”
Montaigne (as quoted
in Wasik’s Grand Theft Education)
Over the last two semesters, I
have been brainstorming new and engaging technologies and avenues for learning
into my virtual classroom. My students are already developing their own
technological fluency and establishing a digital citizenship simply by their
chose of an exclusively online course. However, quite often the course
structure is “limited” by the bounds of Blackboard. Few instructors and students (in my experience) venture
outside of that sphere. When they do, they almost always bring the relevant
information and experience back to the original forum instead of allowing it to
remain in the public domain for others to critic, challenge, or support. In
fact, last semester was my first experience using the blog platform as a means
of interaction for an online course.
As an art history, rather than
art, educator, my course assignments do not include art creation per se. My
students are not creating art pieces as part of their curriculum. However, they
are creating interpretations of the art through broadened perspectives and a
greater understanding of the historical, personal, economical, political, and
social context in which art is created. These understandings are grown and
deepened through information dissemination and dialogue between students and myself.
What other ways can I serve to challenge
my students’ thinking? It seems that creating and participating in
cyber-games serve this purpose quite well. Boyd suggests that I as an “art
educator can quide students in facilitating [the] creation of computer games to
critique cultural myths of gender role expectations, as well as other cultural
narratives that confine individual and community diversity” (Boyd, 2005, p. 3).
In addition to exploring the conflicts that exist in present and past culture,
I would like to suggest that such creations could allow students a safe place
to explore a wide variety of views both supporting and opposing their own. This
space would offer opportunities to engage in “dialogue” with controversial
topics in an effort for participants to be exposed to multiple perspectives of
a certain topic.
When asked to reflect on the
discussion post portion of the course, one of my students commented “I like to
imagine myself sitting in a room with other people having a nice glass of wine
and discussing something in a way that may not have been thought of before.
This keeps the brain working and keeps us from only looking at things in a
single perspective” (Student Interview). Visualizing how this particular scenario could play out in
the virtual sphere (my classroom), I see the great potential of cyber games to
function as reimagines or reinventions of the artists, histories, and cultures
we encounter throughout the art history curriculum. For my student, the act of
discussing conflicting viewpoints is an engaging, somewhat playful, and
challenging conversation that takes place in a familiar environment (to
establish stability for the participant) with individuals who also like to
discuss, test, and push the limits of one another’s opinions, theories, and
practices. The idea of “playing” with the content of the course evokes the
attitude of early 20th century art groups/movements such as Dada,
Surrealism, Fluxus and Situationism (Patton, 2011, p. 20). Video, computer, and
other online games, “teach us how to play
them” (Wasik, 2006, p. 32). As students create spaces in which they feel
comfortable interacting with confrontation as well as exploring spaces in which
they do not, students “play” with the material, “learn by doing” and develop a
“unique and personal set of insights into the ways and means for creating
something in the world “ (Thomas and Brown, 2011, p. 94). By becoming
“creators” themselves and offering up their work for public scrutiny, they also
deepen their understanding of the emotions of the artist in which they are
studying. Thomas and Brown, paraphrasing author Johan Huizinga, go on to state
that “play is not merely central to the human experience, it is part of all
that is meaningful inhuman culture. Culture…does not create play; play creates
culture” (p 97).
The Lesson
Overview: Marcel Duchamp “believed that a work of art is completed
only when the viewer is involved” (Duchamp as quoted by Patton, 2011, p. 20).
In this lesson, the student will research, explore, and critique computer,
video or ios games whose central theme is art historically based. The student
will select an artist, an artwork, or an art period or movement for which
he/she has great interest (negative or positive) and explore this subject and
the possibilities for engaging this material through a personally created game
platform.
Objectives:
- Explore a variety of art or art history based
online games.
- Select a single artist, artwork, or art period
or movement. Build upon your current understanding of the subject through
various methods of research and dialogue.
- Develop a setting, narrative, and concept for a
potential game utilizing and challenging art histories and theories.
- Explore options for bringing your game “to life”
by researching and manipulating free downloadable authoring programs that could
bring your game “to life.”
Activities:
See what’s out there. “How does the learning
process work in games? Games, fundamentally, are models. They’re little toy
simulations of some aspect of reality” (Wasik, 2006, 32). Online games are
being utilized as educational tools throughout all disciplines. Research and
explore existing games that function to articulate some aspect of art and/or
art history. The platform for these games is not limited to your computer.
Explore apps designed for a variety of smart devices. You should find a minimum
of five different games.
Play them! Have fun. Play. Note how
successfully or unsuccessfully the game articulates the subject matter. Was it
challenging? Was it fun? Did it draw you in and create a desire to play again
and again? Were you bored? What benefits do you see in playing this game? What
did you like best? What would you change if you were the designer? (These are questions to prompt your
thinking about the effectiveness of the game. Feel free to elaborate and/or
discuss questions outside of this scope).
Create your own. Here is where the fun
begins. Select a painting, an artist, or an art period or movement in which you
are interested (negative or positive). Research the chosen subject noting key
facts, figures, theories, points of controversy, etc. Use a variety of sources
to broaden your understanding and knowledge of the subject (documentaries,
dialogue/conversations, articles, journals, personal commentary by the artist,
etc). Using text or image “sketch” out a space in which you would feel most
comfortable discussing the chosen subject. This could be in front of the fire
over a glass of wine with friends or an art gallery in front of your favorite
sculpture or a city park in the middle of the summer wildflowers (These are
just ideas. Be creative and honest and let your spaces reflect you). Think
about how would you interact with this subject in this space. Imagine yourself in dialogue – have a
real life conversation – with someone about the topic you have selected. (record
it). Record possible conversation trends. Where do you differ? Where do you
agree? How can you expand upon the discussion? How can you challenge one
another to explore a different perspective? This exercise will get you thinking
and deepen your knowledge of the subject you have chosen. Furthermore, it will
aid you in creating a narrative for your game.
Using the
previous exercise and your experience with existing games as a starting point,
answer the following questions: how might I take this information and develop
it into an interactive game? What would my narrative/story be? Would the game
be narrative based? What concept/theory/idea would it aim to articulate? What
would be the goal of the game: to win, to accumulate points, etc? You can
record and explore your thoughts as sketches, journals, scrapbooking, digital
imagery, photography, text, etc. What will be the backdrop for your game?
Place? Time period? Who will the key figures be? As you begin to develop the
narrative that will guide your game, consider this idea articulated by artist
and game aficionado Marcel Duchamp: “art is a game between all people of all
periods” (Cited in Patton, (2011), p 20).
Explore
options for bringing your game to life. Once you have a rough draft of your
game, research free downloadable authoring programs that could help make your
game a reality. If you have no experience with programming (like myself), look
for platforms that require no programming experience. Here are a few sites to
get you started: GameEditor, GameDevelop, GameSalad, and MyDoodleGame. Record
your experience through screen shots of your explorations. Select one program
that you feel most familiar with or that seems to be easiest for you to
manipulate. Explore the following questions as you interact with the authoring
programs: based on my current level of programming experience (or lack of) is
the program the right one for me? Will I be able to successfully execute my
idea through this program? If so, how? If not, what alterations should/can I make
in order to create using this software. Try to create your game (however, the
completion of your game is not a requirement of this assignment…so enjoy! Have fun.)
Your
finished project is a “write-up” of your game concept. You can present your
findings and experiences through journals, storyboards, text, video, etc. Be
creative and have fun. Be sure to include all of the information listed above.
If you see that something seems irrelevant to your topic, please give an
explanation of why you left out the information. You will graded on how well
you present the following information:
1) the games you
initially explored with critiques
2.) the subject
you selected to research and explore as a basis for your own game (include
notes, sources, key facts, dialogue, etc)
3.) your game’s
basic concept complete with setting, narrative, and map of how the game would
ideally function.
4.) the goal of
your game
5.) ideas for
bringing your game to life
Resources:
Keifer-Boyd, K. (2005). Children teaching children with their computer game creations. Visual Arts Research, 60(1), 117-128.
Patton, R. (2011). A Brief Art History of Games. (4 pages from his dissertation).
Thomas,
D. and Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture
of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a
world of constant change. Douglas
Thomas and John Seely Brown.
Wasik, B. (2006). Grand Theft Education: Literacy in the age of video games. Harper's Magazine, September, 31-39.
Here are a few websites that offer a variety of art history online gaming options. The only one in the "video game" format was the Tate's Race Against Time for iOS and must be downloaded (for free) for the appropriate device.
http://www.sporcle.com/games/tags/arthistory
https://www.artsology.com/arts-games.php
http://www.matthewclarksmith.com/artgame.htm
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/01/10/tate-gallerys-ios-art-history-game-is-a-race-against-time-to-defeat-dr-greyscale/#!A474L
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