Video games and art

Screenshot from the game Celestial Impact.

Ever since Cao Fei began to make waves with RMB City, the art world's attention has quickly moved to the world of video games. I'll be posting an interview soon with Calum Stevenson, who recently completed a degree in Games Art and Design at Norwich University College of the Arts, about video games and art. In the meantime, here's a roundup of relevant links:

• Jason Rohrer has blazed a trail in making interactive, game-based art. I recommend playing Passage.
• BLDGBLOG's interview with games critic Jim Rossignol. Highlight: 

For instance, at what point might architects stop putting out $100 coffee-table books that are only bought by libraries, and instead commission someone to design a game environment that features all of their buildings? It’d be a new kind of monograph. You buy the new Grand Theft Auto—but all the buildings are designed by Richard Rogers. It seems like you’ve got incredibly imaginative and very passionate people playing those games, so why not present your buildings to that audience?

• Another BLDGBLOG article, this one on "tactical landscaping and terrain deformation" in the game Fracture, which discusses the weaponization of the earth and the politicization of terrain creation.
• An interview with John Sharp, who teaches art history at Savannah College of Art and Design.
• Artist Paul Clay utilizes elements of video games in his installations and music videos.
• Roger Ebert thinks video games can never be art.