# Observations on serious games & complicit formal art: themes & emotions > [!INFO] Overview > **Teacher**: Mark Shannelly > **Art game**: [Redshift & Portalmetal](https://micharoja.itch.io/redshift-and-portalmetal) (2015, micha cárdenas) > **Serious game**: [Everything](https://store.steampowered.com/app/582270/Everything/) (2017, David OReilly) ## Redshift & Portalmetal > "***Complicit formal artists** are mischievously liberal in what they consider to be art, because they have learned from the failures and successes of the historical avant-garde. While committed to form, they are also dedicated to investigating (or demonstrating) the technocultural context that shapes the interpretation of form. They create art games in the loosest possible sense, making use of diverse strategies, such as putting games in traditional gallery spaces, constructing manic cyborgs, and [[Affordance Mining]] (searching for new ways to play with things) household materials for their hidden, playenabling properties" - Schrank "Avant-garde Videogames. Playing with Technoculture" (The MIT Press, 2014) on Drucker's (2005) concept **Redshift & Portalmetal as a complicit formal art piece** means to me that this game investigates new ways to deliver messages and advocate for values. The perspective on R&P to have this theme makes me think and doesn't fail. It says, there are new ways of delivering messages to discover. And I can assume, it is possible to advocate for any values in any possible ways, but I don't believe it would be equally effective each time (to advocate for every value in every possible way). Besides, some new values can require new ways to advocate for them. So I say R&P found a new way to respectfully honour indigenous people. #### Some more thematic impositions - **[[DANCINGSTARS|Dancing stars]] ascend to heavens at birth**. Have you ever tried to escape a dream with some unthinkable value in real hands? As if you dreamt of a #PHYSIS/Ecumene/Virtual/𐀞𐀔𐀒_φάρμακον_mobile that solves all world problems and then you attempted to drive it into my morning routine. In my experience with R&D, that's how the relationship between the avatar and the Portalmetal magic circle felt; and also my attitude towards the reflection of values I saw in virtual game objects. (comp. #CONCEPT/WildGooseChase) - **Gods leave human toy worlds unfinished as players leave computer games unresolved** - **Poetry is shallow sea**. On ["Poets"](http://4umi.com/nietzsche/zarathustra/39), Nietzsche writes something, he cannot agree with himself about: "*They have learned from the sea also its vanity: is not the sea the peacock of peacocks? // Even before the ugliest of all buffaloes doth it spread out its tail; never doth it tire of its lace-fan of silver and silk. // Disdainfully doth the buffalo glance thereat, nigh to the sand with its soul, nigher still to the thicket, nighest, however, to the swamp. // What is beauty and sea and peacock-splendour to it! This parable I speak unto the poets*". - **I have no mouth and I must scream** (compare avatars' bodies without organs) ## Everything Is Everything as serious as Cast Your Vote (about voting) or Antura & The Letters? (teaches Syrian child refugees basic literacy) ![[ATTACHMENTS/REFS/Everything_announce.png]] **THEMES**: 1. Everything there is has one common mechanic, and that is to *exist* (that's relevant both for the game world objects and beyond) 2. Everything that can possible be, already was, is, or will be (comp. Nietzsches' *eternal recurrence*) 3. All or nothing / Pan or nothing -- play as everything; if you can't play it, it's not there (this presupposes that the whole world is potentially gamifiable) **EMOTIONS**: - *Awe*, for I like the idea conceptually. *Curiosity*, for I want to know which other real objects I can play, and what will it feel like to play them. *Drain of interest*, for in actual gameplay most objects have same mechanics, and it feels similar to play a forest and a bird. A bit of *frustration*, for there are discoverable audio-logs in the game with real lectures in some metaphysics-related topics, and I didn't really get where they're were going with that ![[NEPOBJEDIVI/toxicTropics.borders|toxicTropics.borders]]]]