Can RP be art?

surreality

Is it by default? No.

Can it be? Yes.

People get confused as fuck-all about what is and isn't art. Even self-professed artists.

It doesn't have to be good for it to be art. There is, obviously, bad art.
Some of what is and isn't good or bad art is subjective. Some isn't. There is objectively good and objectively bad art.
Whether you like it or not doesn't define whether something is good or bad art.
What you like and what you don't like defines your personal taste, which is a trait attached to you, not the art.
The art can be good even if you dislike it. The art can be bad even if you love it.
There is unquestionably artistry involved in the creation of a game, a scene, or a pose.
Some people are objectively better artists than others in this regard.
This will still, going back to the matter of taste, not really mean a hell of a lot in the long run. Good art will be ignored, bad art will be adored, mediocre art will be abhored, and any and all combinations of the above, all at the very same time. Sometimes by the very same person in the same head.

There's a specific artistic principle one of my profs hammered into our heads (or more accurately, tried to hammer into heads but it didn't stick unless people intuitively understood it already) regarding 'level of finish' that I think the hobby could learn a fair bit from. Unfortunately, he was a great teacher, and he couldn't explain it in a way people could understand, and I am a crappy teacher, so I don't think that's a tangent I'm qualified to go off on.

Kanye Qwest

@surreality You don't always have to make masterpieces. "Studies" can be just as impactful as a meticulously finished piece, and are vastly more important for artistic development.

Ide

This all reminded me of an old post on art and RPGs I read a while back that I thought had good things to say, http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2007/02/meeting-and-birth.html

edit: and http://gamingphilosopher.blogspot.com/2006/10/elitism-and-rpgs-as-art.html

mietze

I'm not opposed to it being art. (I don't think of it as art per se, but maybe I attach the wrong label to what 'art' is)

However, if someone were to tell me that their mush writing is 'art', I'd probably be leery that they were kind of a pompous selfish scenehog. Mostly because the only people I've heard describe their play as that tended to be the people who would get very offended at other players interrupting this scene that they already had a vision for, since it was all about them. Luckily those have been few and far between.

But I would worry that they were less a collaborative player, and more one of those tiresome people who really wants for you to shut up and observe them as they write.

Goyim

Speak for yourself. Anything can be art. I personally spend hours, sometimes days on a good meme. A really good meme might even keep me up at night as I hone in on the idea, nay, the ideals that I intend to communicate via this meme. My creative process for memes is no different than that of a recording artist or a poet or a sculptor.

First, the vague outline of an idea forms in my head. I can only describe the sensation as...wispy, or ethereal. Where is this meme going? What is this meme saying? How will this meme change the world? Next, the meme speaks to me. It gives me the top text, but sometimes it gives me the bottom text first. It doesn't matter which comes first, the top text or the bottom text. All that matters is the message as a whole. With memes, the sum truly is greater than its individual parts. After the texts have formulated in my mind, I begin to consider the art upon which this meme will appear.

Sure, you have your standard Scumbag Steves and Sudden Clarity Clarences, but those memes are mainstream now. I have evolved beyond the mainstream meme, and often must seek out the perfect image to convey the meme as forcefully and effectively as I can. This may mean looking through magazines for inspiration, or paging through endless stock photos for the perfect scene. After I have found a suitable image, it is finally time to complete this meme. The message is clear, the illustration is perfect. The top text must be aligned just perfectly, the bottom text must be sized just so for the reader to truly feel that impact in their mind. The image must show just enough- not too much memery, not too little. Just enough. I would say I'm a pretty successful memer, but success is not what drives me to make memes. That drive is deep down within me. It's innate. It's insatiable. Is this not what artists feel when inspiration for a painting strikes them? Is this not what Ernest Hemingway felt when he sat by the sea? So anyone can make art..but not everyone has what it takes to be a true artist like me.

Sunny

See, that's what I mean about entertaining trolling. At least it's something.

surreality

@Sunny It's also accurate, really. It's a hilarious take on it IMHO, but it's pretty fucking accurate.

It's a pretty good example of the difference between 'give a shit about the final result' and 'just tossing whatever crap out there', which is best described as the application of artistry or not.

Sunny

@surreality Yep. I have to agree with you.

lordbelh

Is storytelling an artform? I'd say it is. And roleplay is cooperative storytelling.

But I'll still write off as self deluded, pompous and preposterous, anyone who actually refers to their roleplay as art. The amount of eyerolling I'll be doing behind my computer screen will be impossible to accurately describe. It'll be eyerolling as an artform.

il-volpe

Of course it's art.

Probably it's crappy folk-art, but it's art.

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Tennyson

I saw this topic and wasn't going to reply initially. Then I thought about all of those scenes that when I was done partaking of... I sat back and went 'phew'. They were emotional roller coasters. I felt a high or a low or a rush or just otherwise 'moved'. I felt a connection with the character, the other characters in the scene, and generally the whole experience. And.. isn't that the whole purpose of art? To achieve a connection on some level in some form with the viewer/partaker? So yeah. Not every scene hits that level. But damned if you don't feel it when it does.