Please quit yanking your joystick and give a round of applause to the newest batch of video game alumni, now dubbed “art” by the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design department senior curator Paola Antonelli! Joining, are the newly MoMA-acquired…
Magnavox Odyssey (1972)
Pong (1972)
Space Invaders (1978)
Asteroids (1979)
Tempest (1981)
Yar’s Revenge (1982)
Minecraft (2011)
Also, this lovely vintage gaming console.
There are fourteen out games at the MoMA’s current “Applied Design” exhibit, which include classic video games and stirring minimal pieces that incorporate gameplay and sound art and YOU KNOW WHAT, I DON’T HAVE TO EXPLAIN MYSELF TO YOU, THE “video games are not art” GUARDIAN, you stale-souled philistines, but Antonelli does, as quoted by ARTinfo.
The games are selected as outstanding examples of interaction design — a field that MoMA has already explored and collected extensively, and one of the most important and oft-discussed expressions of contemporary design creativity… the programming language takes the place of the wood or plastics, and the quality of the interaction translates in the digital world what the synthesis of form and function represent in the physical one.
