The game:
Super-Mario Clouds is, according to the
producer Cory Arcangel: "an old Mario Brothers cartridge which I
modified to erase everything but the clouds." The ‘game’ left only
with the blue sky and clouds, moving slowly from right to left. He
believed that people who are familiar to the original game would have the total
image in their minds.
Is Super-Mario Clouds an art?
I think that Super-Mario Clouds can be partly classified as art.
Being an art, this game is not formulaic, it is innovative and has content in someway. Art should not have formula, and here in the Clouds you can feel it. Unlike other arts we see, this is something new out of the old. You will not imagine the clouds will be the only thing left but not Mario. This is something out of our expectation, and I believe this is why it could be called as an art.
Secondly, having no formula also make this 'game' innovative. Not like other games that you can play with, here you got no characters but the clouds moving nonstop in front of you. This makes a difference between what video games should be, it is a totally new thing. You will never believe that the clouds are the only thing you can see out of the Mario world.
Many people may think that Super-Mario Clouds is boring, however, I think there is something here. Leaving only clouds moving helps make audiences think about what the creator wants to tell. It may not provoke your emotion as Mario should have, like being excited or happy, it does make you feel something or think about what is going on. This also make this 'game' to have some content or message, letting the audiences to think about it when seeing the clouds move.
However, Super-Mario Clouds in someways make it not so an art. Without the participation of audiences and somehow it is boring, this cannot help to link the artist and audience. With no interactions and boring, I believe this 'game' won't be long lasting, which an art should be. And, aesthetic qualities are lacked, it is simply clouds and a blue background cutting out from the original version.
All in all, I would say Super-Mario Clouds contains some properties to be called an art.
Leung Kam Chung ELBE:
回覆刪除Pansy, sometimes simplifying things could help calm people to thing other than playing games. This makes you have the other experience through games.
Karen: It is certainly right that 'Super-Mario Cloud is an art. It breaks a new ground as no one has done it before.
回覆刪除But I believe this work still have aesthetic value and it may not be boring to someone. It's just like some artwork form Andy Warhol, it is full of repetitive patterns but we can still found that is aesthetically pleasing as it is expressing some ideas from the author-------he teased this silly phenomenon (people are very stubborn) through those drawings. Therefore, I believe 'Super-Mario Clouds can express ideas too which may not be boring.