Backlog: Five Years Building the VGA Print Collection 🍵
2018-Sep-29, Saturday 14:06![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Last night it got down to 8°C at night, and when I woke up this morning it was 15°C in my apartment. But that's fine because I own a bunch of blankets. Burrowing under blankets is the superior way to sleep anyway.
Yesterday I finally went to an exhibition at the VGA Gallery, yet another of those things in Chicago I’ve known about for years but have never been to before now. For a while it’s because they didn’t have a permanent exhibit space, but last year they finally settled in a location in Wicker Park and this year they’re holding an exhibit called “Backlog: Five Years Building the VGA Print Collection,” which seemed like the perfect chance to go see what it was like. Last night was the opening reception, so I went.
Here are some examples of the art:
A lot of the art was prints from various games. A couple of these I’ve even played--the cityscape on the lower left and the landscape half-visible on the right are both from Machinarium, and the face at the top that’s obviously David Lynch is from a game called David Lynch Teaches Typing. The others are from games I’ve never heard of--Gardenarium, FOTONICA, Neverending Nightmares (that sounds like my sleep patterns over the last month)--and Ridiiculous Fishing, which I’ve heard of but never played.
I’d hang a larger version of that lower left Machinarium print on my wall. I love cityscapes that look entirely artificial.
The defining characteristic of video games as compared to almost all other forms of art is that they’re interactive, and so there were several playable games at the exhibition. This one is Hidden Folks, and just looking around on the internet now it’s the highest-rated game I’ve ever seen (4.9 on the App Store). I only played one level, where I had to help someone move through a series of buildings in the trees toward the other side of the map, clicking on pulleys, moving walls and branches out of the way, and otherwise just watching the beautiful art and interacting with the landscape. I saw someone else playing a level with identical-looking people everywhere, and there were several art prints of levels that looked similar, like a monochrome Where’s Waldo. It looked like that was the usual way the game was played and I got an odd level out.
One of the people standing nearby mentioned that this was set up just for the reception, so I’m glad I went in and got a chance to play.
This is Samurai Gunn, a game featuring samurai with guns. It’s about jumping around levels and slashing away at each other, or sometimes shooting each other, and avoiding spikes or crushing walls, cutting bamboo, trying to prevent your gun from getting wet, and hoping to be the first to ten kills. Winning by only one kill initiates a sudden death round between the two highest (or three highest if it’s 10-9-9) players. I was only okay at it--I found it particularly difficult to keep track of where I was, especially when a new death spawned me at any of four random spawn points--but [Bad username or site: ”spacedragon” @ ”twitter.com”] was there and said it was her favorite game, which she backed up with repeated wins. We had four players for half an hour with each game lasting maybe two minutes at max, so it has a lot of play value.
I said “This is art” as we were playing and got a general round of agreement.
I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, and “are video games art?” has a lot of baggage attached to it, but I was happy with the mix of traditional art and interactive art. There were even a couple exhibits that I wish I could have played. There was a large one about Sword and Sworcery that looked interesting, but I elected to play a bit of The Shape of the World instead since I thought it looked like Proteus. There was another interactive display of a game whose name I don’t remember that seemed to mostly involve looking out the window of a bus as it drove through night streets, but there was a button to request a stop, so maybe it was possible to change the route.
I was only there for an hour and ran out of time. There’s always more art than you have time to see.
Before I went to the VGA Gallery I ate Thai food and passed by a tea shop, and being me, I looked in to see if they had any matcha. They had a lot of matcha-derived products the same as most places nowadays, lattes and so on, but they had a “Matcha Experience” for $12. When I asked what this was, I got an explanation back of matcha, so even though it was almost three times the price of the “tea and sweet” available so many places in Japan, I ordered it. Here’s the result:
The matcha wasn’t as bitter as I like, though it was smoother because the barista took the time to sift the powder (something you’re supposed to do but I usually don’t). The sweets that came with it were Japanese candy but they were both matcha-flavored, which seemed a bit like overkill to me. I woud have greatly preferred more traditional wagashi, like manjū or monaka, but I’m willing to be lenient because real wagashi goes bad extremely quickly. But maybe chocolate? Vanilla? Something that’s not something I’m already drinking.
It was good, but definitely not $12 worth of good. I’ve gotten a bowl of matcha for ¥200 (~$1.80) before. $12? Hah.
On the way home, I walked along the 606 for a while, which was extremely peaceful. Just me alone except for the occasional runner going the other way. I wish there were something like that further north.
And now, off to the Japanese Matsuri. It was supposed to be during the summer originally and now it’s on a cold and rainy day
, but it’ll still have yatai with karaage and really, that’s the important part.
Yesterday I finally went to an exhibition at the VGA Gallery, yet another of those things in Chicago I’ve known about for years but have never been to before now. For a while it’s because they didn’t have a permanent exhibit space, but last year they finally settled in a location in Wicker Park and this year they’re holding an exhibit called “Backlog: Five Years Building the VGA Print Collection,” which seemed like the perfect chance to go see what it was like. Last night was the opening reception, so I went.
Here are some examples of the art:
A lot of the art was prints from various games. A couple of these I’ve even played--the cityscape on the lower left and the landscape half-visible on the right are both from Machinarium, and the face at the top that’s obviously David Lynch is from a game called David Lynch Teaches Typing. The others are from games I’ve never heard of--Gardenarium, FOTONICA, Neverending Nightmares (that sounds like my sleep patterns over the last month)--and Ridiiculous Fishing, which I’ve heard of but never played.
I’d hang a larger version of that lower left Machinarium print on my wall. I love cityscapes that look entirely artificial.
The defining characteristic of video games as compared to almost all other forms of art is that they’re interactive, and so there were several playable games at the exhibition. This one is Hidden Folks, and just looking around on the internet now it’s the highest-rated game I’ve ever seen (4.9 on the App Store). I only played one level, where I had to help someone move through a series of buildings in the trees toward the other side of the map, clicking on pulleys, moving walls and branches out of the way, and otherwise just watching the beautiful art and interacting with the landscape. I saw someone else playing a level with identical-looking people everywhere, and there were several art prints of levels that looked similar, like a monochrome Where’s Waldo. It looked like that was the usual way the game was played and I got an odd level out.
One of the people standing nearby mentioned that this was set up just for the reception, so I’m glad I went in and got a chance to play.
This is Samurai Gunn, a game featuring samurai with guns. It’s about jumping around levels and slashing away at each other, or sometimes shooting each other, and avoiding spikes or crushing walls, cutting bamboo, trying to prevent your gun from getting wet, and hoping to be the first to ten kills. Winning by only one kill initiates a sudden death round between the two highest (or three highest if it’s 10-9-9) players. I was only okay at it--I found it particularly difficult to keep track of where I was, especially when a new death spawned me at any of four random spawn points--but [Bad username or site: ”spacedragon” @ ”twitter.com”] was there and said it was her favorite game, which she backed up with repeated wins. We had four players for half an hour with each game lasting maybe two minutes at max, so it has a lot of play value.
I said “This is art” as we were playing and got a general round of agreement.
I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, and “are video games art?” has a lot of baggage attached to it, but I was happy with the mix of traditional art and interactive art. There were even a couple exhibits that I wish I could have played. There was a large one about Sword and Sworcery that looked interesting, but I elected to play a bit of The Shape of the World instead since I thought it looked like Proteus. There was another interactive display of a game whose name I don’t remember that seemed to mostly involve looking out the window of a bus as it drove through night streets, but there was a button to request a stop, so maybe it was possible to change the route.
I was only there for an hour and ran out of time. There’s always more art than you have time to see.
Before I went to the VGA Gallery I ate Thai food and passed by a tea shop, and being me, I looked in to see if they had any matcha. They had a lot of matcha-derived products the same as most places nowadays, lattes and so on, but they had a “Matcha Experience” for $12. When I asked what this was, I got an explanation back of matcha, so even though it was almost three times the price of the “tea and sweet” available so many places in Japan, I ordered it. Here’s the result:
The matcha wasn’t as bitter as I like, though it was smoother because the barista took the time to sift the powder (something you’re supposed to do but I usually don’t). The sweets that came with it were Japanese candy but they were both matcha-flavored, which seemed a bit like overkill to me. I woud have greatly preferred more traditional wagashi, like manjū or monaka, but I’m willing to be lenient because real wagashi goes bad extremely quickly. But maybe chocolate? Vanilla? Something that’s not something I’m already drinking.
It was good, but definitely not $12 worth of good. I’ve gotten a bowl of matcha for ¥200 (~$1.80) before. $12? Hah.
On the way home, I walked along the 606 for a while, which was extremely peaceful. Just me alone except for the occasional runner going the other way. I wish there were something like that further north.
And now, off to the Japanese Matsuri. It was supposed to be during the summer originally and now it’s on a cold and rainy day
, but it’ll still have yatai with karaage and really, that’s the important part.
