Heterotopias
Heterotopias of the game have never been of much interest to theory, but to gamer theory they may be a key precursor to gamespace. Among them are separate worlds pitting different attributes of body and mind into contests of skill or luck, from badminton to backgammon. Every way of measuring what one body does against another — each finds its own special heterotopia, its field, its court, its track, its pitch, its arena. Says defrocked Situationist Ralph Rumney: “It is now sport, not painting or sculpture, which defines the limits of the human, which offers a sense or image of wholeness, of a physical idea, which no honest art can now repeat.” Nor, need one add, can writing.
If aesthetic play suffers from enclosure within heterotopian margins; the agon of games is leeched out of its pure domains. Rumney didn’t count on 24 hour sports channels, internet gambling, reality TV game shows, or the subtle, corrosive imposition of the digital gamespace on every aspect of life. Conceptual art is no match for conceptual sport, with its fantasy baseball teams and its perpetual pep talks urging everyone always to just do it! — where ‘it’ is stripped of any possibility not marked and measured in advance. Not only was aesthetic play no match for the game, it ends up playing a subordinate role within the expansion of the game beyond a mere heterotopia. Art provides the images and stories for mediating between the gamer and gamespace. Rather than actual games played in actual arenas, art expands the reach of the game to imaginary games played in a purely digital realm, anywhere and everywhere, on every desktop and cellphone.
Notes:
Not distopias or utopias, but an "otherness" form or world.
Folksonomies: gamespace heterotopia
Taxonomies:
/style and fashion/body art (0.730867)
/art and entertainment/visual art and design/art and craft supplies (0.679516)
/technology and computing/internet technology/web clip art (0.673866)
Concepts:
Conceptual art (0.981975): dbpedia_resource
Baseball (0.958152): dbpedia_resource
Sport (0.899510): dbpedia_resource
Gambling (0.895582): dbpedia_resource
Game (0.867974): dbpedia_resource
Backgammon (0.860188): dbpedia_resource
Internet (0.851332): dbpedia_resource
Painting (0.814035): dbpedia_resource