Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game

Author:   Graeme Kirkpatrick ,  Bethan Hirst
Publisher:   Manchester University Press
ISBN:  

9780719077173


Pages:   256
Publication Date:   31 August 2011
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained


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Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game


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Overview

This book draws on aesthetic theory, including ideas from the history of painting, music and dance, to offer a fresh perspective on the video game as a popular cultural form. It argues that games like Grand Theft Auto and Elektroplankton are aesthetic objects that appeal to players because they offer an experience of form, as this idea was understood by philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Theodor Adorno. Video games are awkward objects that have defied efforts to categorise them within established academic disciplines and intellectual frameworks. Yet no one can deny their importance in re-configuring contemporary culture and their influence can be seen in contemporary film, television, literature, music, dance and advertising. This book argues that their very awkwardness should form the starting point for a proper analysis of what games are and the reasons for their popularity. This book will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in the increasingly playful character of contemporary capitalist culture. -- .

Full Product Details

Author:   Graeme Kirkpatrick ,  Bethan Hirst
Publisher:   Manchester University Press
Imprint:   Manchester University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 12.90cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 19.80cm
Weight:   0.340kg
ISBN:  

9780719077173


ISBN 10:   0719077176
Pages:   256
Publication Date:   31 August 2011
Audience:   Adult education ,  Further / Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Out of Print
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction 1. The Aesthetic Approach Why an aesthetic approach? Play and form Form, taste and society Art and politics Culture industry revisited 2. Ludology, Space and Time From ergodicity to ludology Gameness and its limits Abstraction, virtual space and simulacra The rhythm of suspended time Ludology, narratology and aesthetics 3. Controller, Hand, Screen Form, vision and matter Hands and touch The controller Video game image Embodied activity and culture 4. Games, Dance and Gender Dance and art Habitus and embodied play Choreography in 'Mirror's Edge' A dance aesthetic Choreography and discourse Aesthetics and gender 5. Meaning and Virtual Worlds Fictional worldness Neo-baroque entertainment culture Form and fictional content Death and allegory Play and mourning 6. Political Aesthetics Unit operations Rhetoric and persuasion Badiou's inaesthetics The ludological truth-event Dancing our way to where? Index -- .

Reviews

An established scholar of the sociology of gaming and computers, Kirkpatrick (Univ. of Manchester, UK) argues video games are autonomous cultural forms that should be considered art. -- A. J. Wharton. Choice Kirkpatrick positions the aesthetics of video games in interactivity, outside the traditional realm of formal or literary representation. -- A. J. Wharton. Choice ...adds a distinct, if rather conservative, perspective on video game play to the burgeoning field of game studies. -- A. J. Wharton. Choice


"""An established scholar of the sociology of gaming and computers, Kirkpatrick (Univ. of Manchester, UK) argues video games are autonomous cultural forms that should be considered art."" ""Kirkpatrick positions the aesthetics of video games in interactivity, outside the traditional realm of formal or literary representation."" ""......adds a distinct, if rather conservative, perspective on video game play to the burgeoning field of game studies."" ...Kirkpatrick's book is an illuminating exploration of how a players body and a game intertwine, or how, ""a generation of young men have grown up dancing with their hands."" There is no doubt that this book is important: for the academic theorization of gameplay, aesthetic theory, and cultural studies in its broadest, interdisciplinary or 'indisiciplined' manifestations. Rancière is one of a plethora of writers with whom Kirkpatrick artfully weaves propositions and readings of games to accumulate a coherently mapped theory of gaming as an aesthetic cultural practice... I have yet to encounter a book as extensive and thought provoking as Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game. You'll never look at a controller the same way again after Kirkpatrick explains how we've been conditioned to use carefully designed blobs of plastic to influence an image. -- ."


Author Information

Graeme Kirkpatrick is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester

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