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The games artists play
Sally O’Reilly pursues the free-for-all ethos of gaming.
Play and making art have often been compared, as both possess abstract qualities and ambiguous outcomes that are rich fodder for analysis. Art's moot relationship to utility in a capitalist society, and the artist's typically solitary working processes offer ready parallels to the child in the sandpit. In Homo Ludens (1938), the psychologist Johan Huizinga described play as "a voluntary activity executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted, absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is different from ordinary life". This certainly sounds like making art, but then it also has much in common with, say, the work of a stockbroker or a vet. Huizinga's point was that work and play are not distinct and that recreation is not trivial, but interpenetrates daily life. Games, as a refined form of play, follow certain characteristics that might also be useful for formulating art. Adult games, which tend to eschew the free-form element of fantasy, could be divided into those that hinge on chance, strategy or dexterity. But whichever way you carve them up, games are a way...
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