High Art is the art I like, because I'm hoi polloi.

And no, nobody with more than 32 active synapses buys that line.

Quote from: J ArcaneSocrates was a man.
Socrates was the name of my pet fish.
Therefore, all men are fish.

:rolleyes:

Quote from: JongWK:rolleyes:

What?  I thought we were playing the spurious logic game?

Or was I making too much sense compared to that drivel you spouted?

I lose again I guess.  I suck at broken logic.

Quote from: J ArcaneI suck at broken logic.

J.A.,

The problem is that you seem to believe that I am the one who follows the line of thought presented in my post, or at least that's how I'm reading you right now. Care to clarify?

Quote from: Thanatos02For those still following along, what the fuck is 'high art'?

Very simple.

In the year 2007, high the fuck art is stuff made by experts, i.e. by people with MFAs from a dozen or so art schools: CalArts, Yale, Columbia, RISDI, Pasadena, Otis, CCA and a few others. Mind you, there are always exceptions, but that covers about 80% of it.

Score one for the Pundit! From his most recent reply (post #14):

Quote from: The Pundit, in the Pistols ThreadWhat I'm talking about is pretentiousness. It is actually the pseudo-artistry and pseudo-intellectualism of claiming that you are an artist or an intellectual just because you say you are.

To which I say "amen, brother". Someone who sits down and says "OK, now I am going to create ART!!!" is deeply unlikely to produce something which is actually of artistic value, in my thinking. Great art happens almost accidentally; the likes of Da Vinci and Michaelangelo were more often more concerned with earning their bread and perhaps making something which people would appreciate than making Great Art That Resounds Through The Ages.

The most ridiculous aspect of the idea of RPGs as art, to me, is that an RPG session is transient and irreproducible. You can say that a movie or a portrait or a statue musical performance is Art because you can get a permanent record of that work. You can say that something like a symphony or a play is a work of art, because you can get people together and perform it according to the score/script and get something like what the original author intended.

RPG sessions, on the other hand, tend to be of interest only to the participants, and leave behind only memories and character sheets.

Quote from: James McMurrayIf people had trestred the brain damage comment like the crackpot rant it was instead of holding onto it for years as a symbolic representation of The War it would have faded away like it should have.

1) There is no "war"

2) What there is, is a bunch of people being rude -- by saying that traditional games suck, traditional GM's are abusive, and games they don't like cause brain damage.

Why was the Damage so interesting?

Because -- for a *long* time -- the indie crew would claim that they weren't being rude; they were just misunderstood by sensitive traditional gamers who were "projecting" when they read theory or theorists as rude.

Of course that wasn't true -- these people were showing up on boards where traditional gamers hang out and being poor guests... but B.B.D. (Before Brain Damage), you had to go and pull quotes from The Forge to show people what the theory really said and how goofy and offensive it really was.

The Brain Damage changed all that -- it was clear, honest, and out-in-the-open. You didn't need to go through hundreds of posts of theory to understand it. You didn't need to even pay close attention.

The Brain Damage was the greatest gift to theory dialog ever: it made the position of the theorists unambiguously clear.

It also threw the apologism into a new light: there are still people who defend the Brain Damage (amazingly), either by saying that -- once again -- traditional gamers "misunderstood" or by claiming it was a metaphor or something. This gets increasingly surreal (it's easy to understand; the author himself says it's not a metaphor) and it points out that most of the defense is agenda-driven.

Another fun game: ask a theorist if he agrees with the Brain Damage -- some will say, "No. It's bone headed." but many will say "Yes" or they'll claim to disagree with some mild technical aspect of it (e.g. the claim that people are born with an ability to tell stories). There are several reasons I can think of why someone might agree with such non-sense -- none of them flattering.

I think the Brain Damage really says it all: it is indicative of the whole of Forge theory.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.1) There is no "war"

2) What there is, is a bunch of people being rude -- by saying that traditional games suck, traditional GM's are abusive, and games they don't like cause brain damage.

Why was the Damage so interesting?

Because -- for a *long* time -- the indie crew would claim that they weren't being rude; they were just misunderstood by sensitive traditional gamers who were "projecting" when they read theory or theorists as rude.

Of course that wasn't true -- these people were showing up on boards where traditional gamers hang out and being poor guests... but B.B.D. (Before Brain Damage), you had to go and pull quotes from The Forge to show people what the theory really said and how goofy and offensive it really was.

The Brain Damage changed all that -- it was clear, honest, and out-in-the-open. You didn't need to go through hundreds of posts of theory to understand it. You didn't need to even pay close attention.

The Brain Damage was the greatest gift to theory dialog ever: it made the position of the theorists unambiguously clear.

It also threw the apologism into a new light: there are still people who defend the Brain Damage (amazingly), either by saying that -- once again -- traditional gamers "misunderstood" or by claiming it was a metaphor or something. This gets increasingly surreal (it's easy to understand; the author himself says it's not a metaphor) and it points out that most of the defense is agenda-driven.

Another fun game: ask a theorist if he agrees with the Brain Damage -- some will say, "No. It's bone headed." but many will say "Yes" or they'll claim to disagree with some mild technical aspect of it (e.g. the claim that people are born with an ability to tell stories). There are several reasons I can think of why someone might agree with such non-sense -- none of them flattering.

I think the Brain Damage really says it all: it is indicative of the whole of Forge theory.

Cheers,
-E.

To paraphrase Warthur - Preach it, Brother!

Quote from: -E.1) There is no "war"

Never said there was.

Quote2) What there is, is a bunch of people being rude -- by saying that traditional games suck, traditional GM's are abusive, and games they don't like cause brain damage.

I agree.

Quotethe rest

Well put.

All I'm saying is that the Brain Damage type comments are exactly as meaningless as the rollplayer vs. roleplayer debates, the wargames vs. RPG debates, or all the other back and forth ranting that this hobby (and probably all hobbies) have seen through the years. You can get pissed about them and turn paranoid and abusive, or you can snicker at the fools that think their opinions matter.

Hell, there's probably two little old ladies over at crossstitch.com wishing they could jam sewing needles into each others' eyes because of insults that were thrown during a aida vs. linen flame war.

Assholes will be assholes, and they only have as much power as you give them, no matter what their ego says.

Quote from: James McMurrayNever said there was.



I agree.



Well put.

All I'm saying is that the Brain Damage type comments are exactly as meaningless as the rollplayer vs. roleplayer debates, the wargames vs. RPG debates, or all the other back and forth ranting that this hobby (and probably all hobbies) have seen through the years. You can get pissed about them and turn paranoid and abusive, or you can snicker at the fools that think their opinions matter.

Hell, there's probably two little old ladies over at crossstitch.com wishing they could jam sewing needles into each others' eyes because of insults that were thrown during a aida vs. linen flame war.

Assholes will be assholes, and they only have as much power as you give them, no matter what their ego says.

We appear to be completely aligned

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: -E.We appear to be completely aligned

Cheers,
-E.

Its like you are... Clones.



:what:

Quote from: JongWKJ.A.,

The problem is that you seem to believe that I am the one who follows the line of thought presented in my post, or at least that's how I'm reading you right now. Care to clarify?

The problem is that your statement was utterly irrelevant.  

It doesn't matter if the logic presented was flawless, because it was the initial premise that was being questioned.  

As a comparison, consider the schizophrenic who believes he hears voices from the TV set, and so responds by smashing the thing in front of your relatives in the middle of watching the Superbowl.  To him, this action makes perfect sense, he's jsut trying to make the bad voices go away.  That doesn't mean the voices even existed in the first place, and saying "well it makes perfect sense to him" is going to be a bit hollow, especially to your Uncle Ted who just bought that HDTV last week.

None of it makes sense, nor can you justify it at all, because the base idea that there's somehow some "gang" of individuals putting a gun to his head and forcing him to play any other way than he desires is a load of bullshit.

It was a meaningless statement, and hence I made fun of you for it.  That's how it works here, I thought.

Quote from: WarthurThe most ridiculous aspect of the idea of RPGs as art, to me, is that an RPG session is transient and irreproducible. You can say that a movie or a portrait or a statue musical performance is Art because you can get a permanent record of that work. You can say that something like a symphony or a play is a work of art, because you can get people together and perform it according to the score/script and get something like what the original author intended.

Well, obviously this is a question of clashing definitions.  A lot of people feel that transient, irreproducible performances can still be art -- like jazz musicians, dancers, stage actors, stage directors, improv troupes, and so forth.  

I'm not saying that your definition of art is wrong -- just that the clash is clearly just a semantic one over what you mean by the term "art".

Having seen how that thread is going, i think that Tony's sole purpose in the opening salvos is to make Pundit slip up so that Tony can 'prove' that Pundit is a swine by his own definitions. Which was to be expected, i suppose, but slightly disappointing in its transparency.

Eh, I don't know.  I don't know Tony personally, but he's always seemed to me, here, to be the kind of guy who is truly interested in other people's answers/thoughts/etc. When he asks, I'm pretty sure he's sincere.

He's much better at it than I am. So I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.