scholarly journals Opera Scenes in Video Games: Hitmen, Divas and Wagner’s Werewolves

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-286
Author(s):  
Tim Summers

AbstractThis article aims to illuminate the meanings and aesthetic effects generated by scenes of staged opera in video games. It also explores the images of opera transmitted to the huge audiences that games address. Three dimensions of the opera-game encounter are discussed. First,ToscainHitman: Blood MoneyandThe Beggar’s OperainAssassin’s Creed IIIare used to examine the treatment of violence and the discourse of popular appeal in games and opera. Second, the arias sung by women inFinal Fantasy VIandParasite Eveillustrate how a melodramatic mode of expression represents a confluence of the aesthetic priorities of the two media. Finally,The Beast Within’s meditation on Wagner reveals how opera sequences aim to engage players by conjuring phantasmagorias through a unifying and enrapturing spectacle.

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-31
Author(s):  
Daniel Kurniawan Salamoon ◽  
Cindy Muljosumarto

AbstrakVideo game sebagai bentuk media visual di era modern memiliki peranan dalam masyarakat sebagai salah satu bentuk hiburan yang bersifat interaktif. Video game terus berkembang dalam tata visual sebagai bentuk evolusi dari teknologi video game tersebut. Evolusi dalam video game membuat genre dalam video game juga mengalami perkembangan. Salah satu genre yang menjadi tren adalah genre post apocalyptic. Penelitian ini mencoba melihat narasi yang hendak disampaikan lewat tata visual beberapa video game dengan genre post apocalyptic. Metode yang dilakukan adalah dengan mengumpulkan data screen capture dari beberapa judul video game dengan rating yang baik. Dari metode ini, teori yang digunakan untuk melakukan analisa adalah teori semiotika khususnya yang berkaitan dengan tata visual pada video game khususnya elemen warna yang menjadi kunci genre ini dengan menggunakan software Image. Setelah itu data dianalisis lebih lanjut dengan metode AEIOU (Action, Environment, Interaction, Object, User). Studi ini memberi gambaran bagaimana tata visual yang menjadi ciri khas genre game post apocalyptic dan nilai estetis yang bisa dipelajari dari genre tersebut. Pada akhirnya studi ini dapat menjadi pondasi dalam melakukan riset warna khususnya dalam pengembangan sebuah video game Kata kunci : desain game, post apocalyptic, video game, warna AbstractVideo games as a form of visual media in the modern era has a role play in society as one of interactive entertainment form. Video games continue to grow in visual elements as evolution forms from video game technology itself. The evolution of video games also makes the genre of video games experience development. This research attempts to observe the narrative is to be conveyed through the visual elements of several video games with the Post-apocalyptic genre. The method used was to collect screen capture data from several video game titles with good ratings. The theory that used to conduct the analysis is a semiotic theory relate to visual elements, especially the colors element that is the key to this genre. The theory that used to conduct the analysis is a semiotic theory relate to visual elements of the video game, especially the colors element that is the key to this genre. The theory that used to conduct the analysis is a semiotic theory relate to visual elements of the video game, especially the colors element that is the key to this genre using image software. Afterward, data analyzed subsequently with AEIOU's (Action, Environment, Interaction, Object, User) method. This study gives a description of how the visual elements become a characteristic of the Post-apocalyptic genre and the aesthetic value that can be learned from the genre. So eventually these studies can be the foundation in conducting color research especially in the development of a video game. Keywords: color, game design, post apocalyptic, video game


2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (10) ◽  
pp. 1371-1394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Vesala ◽  
Seppo Tuomivaara

Lived experiences in organizational liminal spaces ‘betwixt-and-between’ have begun to attract scholarly attention, but the full potential of liminal spaces in contemporary mobile and fluid working life has remained unexamined. This article contributes to theory by showing how a liminal experience in an alternative work environment is created via three dimensions: the aesthetic experience of a different environment, situated practices, and changes to work and life rhythms. Interview material was gathered from creative professionals working temporarily in a rural archipelago environment. The results suggest that the contrast of working in a calm natural environment supported experimentation with work practices, nurtured the formation of a communitas, and spurred imagination and reflection. The arrangement’s temporary nature heightened the intensity of participants’ experiences. However, this intensity varied depending on work community configurations and participants’ personal needs for change. This study deepens the current understanding of liminal spaces by showing how the nuances of physical and social spaces contribute to liminality and how liminality alters work rhythms. Future research should focus on how liminal workspaces can be created for individuals seeking a change in routine and increased community support.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 418-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Cornfeld ◽  
Victoria Simon ◽  
Jonathan Sterne

Abstract Since the 19th century, Shakespeare references have recurred with surprising consistency in experimental forms of media. This article considers the role of references to and adaptations of Shakespeare texts when a media form takes on a new valence for a set of users in a particular time and place. We consider two different moments at length: a commercial interactive game from 1984 that made novel use of cassettes and sound, and the production and reception of early Twitter adaptations of Shakespeare in 2010. By standing in for the aesthetic possibilities and limits of a changing media space, Shakespearean references and deviations from them serve a key role for artists and critics in debates over the legitimacy and significance of creative work in emergent media. Thus, cultural producers, critics and audiences thus use these sometimes-awkward appearances of Shakespeare as a means of describing their aesthetic potentials and limits.


2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 459-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Kelly

This article examines the game Papers, Please to demonstrate how the aesthetic experience of gameplay resonates with the cultural logic of contemporary globalist paradigms. The author demonstrates how video games make their players undertake a synthesis of work and play via a process of psychological and physical self-modification. This interrelation between work, play, and subjectivity modification within gameplay experiences embodies the same ideological framework that governs many knowledge-based economies which thrive off of user-generated content. In using the work/play/subjectivity connection to locate similarities between video games and the logic of globalist paradigms, the author presents a revised understanding of what constitutes the political dimensions of video games and the experiences they elicit in their players. This article concludes with an analysis of how the mechanics and narrative of Papers, Please embodies the cultural mind-set of work-as-play while simultaneously challenging the discourses often applied to user-focused information technologies.


Author(s):  
Sergio Espinosa Proa

Las obras de arte son objetos materiales que al mismo tiempo y de modos misteriosos son objetos espirituales (a saber: inmateriales). Utilizando a Kant y a Schiller, en este artículo se opone a la calificación platónica y aristotélica una concepción distinta del arte, que sería una manufactura humana no sometida a la lógica de la apropiación, sino de su contraria. El hombre es un ser racional, pero Kant le otorgó tres dimensiones a esta idea: la razón es conocimiento, mas también compasión y contemplación. Un ser humano tiene intereses teóricos, intereses prácticos... y desintereses múltiples. El "temple estético" al que Schiller hace referencia apunta a esta facultad de no hacer nada, a este aflojamiento de las tensiones, ocupaciones y preocupaciones, al puro deleite (o pavor) de estar meramente en el mundo. La experiencia o la emoción estética aflora cuando no esperamos nada —ni bueno ni malo— de las cosas. Es paradójico que una dimensión de nuestra racionalidad sea la facultad de no esperar, de no buscar, de no modificar o sustituir, de no mover un dedo, de simple y llanamente no hacer nada: es la facultad de dejar llegar, de dejar aparecer (y desaparecer), de dejar ser a las cosas; es la facultad de desactivar —momentáneamente— nuestras otras facultades. Works of art are material objects that at the same time and in mysterious ways are spiritual objects (i. e. immaterial). Using Kant and Schiller, this article opposes the Platonic and Aristotelian qualification with a different conception of art, which would be a human manufacture not subject to the logic of appropriation, but of its opposite. Man is a rational being, but Kant gave this idea three dimensions: reason is knowledge, but also compassion and contemplation. A human being has theoretical interests, practical interests… and multiple interests. The “aesthetic temper" to which Schiller refers points to this faculty of doing nothing, to this loosening of tensions, occupations and worries, to the pure delight (or dread) of being merely in the world. Aesthetic experience or emotion comes to the surface when we expect nothing —neither good nor bad— from things. It is paradoxical that one dimension of our rationality is the faculty of not waiting, of not seeking, of not modifying or substituting, of not moving a finger, of simply doing nothing: it is the faculty of letting come, of letting appear (and disappear), of letting things be; it is the faculty of deactivating —momentarily— our other faculties.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Reay

To date, most studies of video games by children's literature scholars have been ‘child-oriented’ rather than ‘text-oriented’, focusing on the needs and capabilities of child-players rather than on the literary and artistic potential of the games themselves. This essay proposes that in-depth textual analyses of children's video games will not only illuminate the aesthetic value of specific texts, but also refashion and redirect scholarly debate about the medium itself. What is more, an open dialogue between games scholarship and children's literature scholarship is likely to yield the kind of rich, flexible and nuanced critical discourse necessary to navigate a rapidly evolving, increasingly diverse children's media ecology. Here the case is made for both a strong interdisciplinary alliance between children's literature scholarship and games scholarship, and for modelling a style of close reading that attends specifically to the visual, auditory, tactile and performative elements of children's video games. This method of close reading is called ‘critical ekphrasis’, where ‘ekphrasis’ denotes the careful and creative transcription of the supralinguistic, non-verbal signifiers of video games for the purpose of critical analysis. Critical ekphrasis is offered as a bridge between disciplines that enables children's literature scholars to bring their unique expertise to bear on the complex, varied and exciting body of texts that constitutes ‘children's video games’.


2016 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Martin Feige

Abstract The paper aims to clarify the aesthetic as well as artistic status of videogames by placing it in a broader context of considerations in philosophical aesthetics. It develops those perspectives in three steps. The first step (i) aims to show that, contrary to what one might think, it is not possible to classically define videogames in terms of solely necessary and jointly sufficient conditions, because such a definition treats singular videogames as mere cases of the general concept of video games and thus abandons a genuinely aesthetic perspective. The second step (ii) analyses the aesthetics of videogames in terms of its complex relation to other aesthetic mediums and shows how aesthetically significant videogames negotiate what it means to be a videogame at all. The third step (iii) finally discusses the possibility of videogames being works of art and argues that some video games are works of art by affording a reflection on ourselves in and through the process of playing such a videogame.


2020 ◽  
pp. 99-168
Author(s):  
Mike Goode

The chapter analyzes how the nineteenth century’s two most significant immersive media—panoramas and stereoscopic photographs—comment on and draw attention to their differences as media through their respective uses of Walter Scott’s novels and poems, and, in turn, how these medial differences bring into relief the aesthetic and philosophical novelty of Scott’s own efforts to write visually. To make its argument, the chapter draws on a wide variety of archives and forms of evidence, including: period guidebooks to panoramas; the histories of media technologies like camera obscuras, linear perspective, and stereoscopes; Victorian stereographs of Scotland, especially by George Washington Wilson; readings of visually evocative passages in Scott’s Waverley, Ivanhoe, and The Fair Maid of Perth; Eugène Delacroix’s painting Rebecca and the Wounded Ivanhoe; and Romantic writings on optics and vision, including Scott’s Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft and his friend David Brewster’s scientific treatises on monocular and binocular vision.


Author(s):  
Gina Cima Vallarino ◽  
Juan C. González González

Este trabajo atañe a la experiencia teatral desde la estética y las ciencias cognitivas. Se defiende la idea de que la actuación estética puede ser entendida como actuación verosímil. Si la experiencia estética posee tres dimensiones –sensorial, conceptual y hedonista–, la verosimilitud en la actuación se lograría en términos de una estrecha y apropiada relación entre ellas. La experiencia estética del espectador sería, pues, una consecuencia de lo que éste percibe, piensa y siente. A su vez, los estudios empíricos permiten establecer criterios objetivos de evaluación para juzgar una actuación como verosímil, tanto por parte del actor como del espectador. In Defense of the Concept of “Aesthetic Performance” as Truthful Theatrical PerformanceThis work concerns Aesthetics and Cognitive Science. Furthermore, deals with theatrical issues, defending the idea that an aesthetic performance can be understood as a truthful performance. If the aesthetic experience has three dimensions –sensory, conceptual and hedonistic–, the truthfulness of the performance would be achieved thanks to a close and appropriate relationship between them. The aesthetic experience of the spectator would thus be a consequence of what he/she perceives, thinks and feels. At the same time, empirical studies allow to establish objective criteria of evaluation for judging the truthfulness of a performance, by both the actor and the spectator. Recibido: 03 de agosto de 2020Aceptado: 14 de diciembre de 2020


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