Friday, 2 March 2012

Chris Crawford - Dragon Speech




Click here for a link to a Section of Chris Crawford's famous dragon speech at the Game Developers Conference 1992. He begins by talking about language and how it is used to teach people, and the concept of mass media, a way to teach many people, and that this is the genesis of art. "Because art really is just a way of communicating ideas." He says. He refers to Michelangelo's statue "pieta" that shows mary cradling the crucified body of her son (Jesus Christ) and that the statue he says "Conveys to you, the audience the message of motherly love with tremendous power, it is compelling, it is clear, it is powerful and because of these things, it is so great, we call it beautiful." He later talks about the mind being an active agent and not a passive receptacle and if art puts us as an audience in a passive role then it is in conflict with "The basic structure of the human mind." To explain this further he talks about effectiveness over efficiency if he were to convey his views in this lecture on a one to one basis with someone then they would interact bouncing back and forth with conversation and it would be different, that person would learn more, the one to one conversation is an active audience and the lecture is a passive audience. Though the lecture is more efficient. He explains this problem has been with us for centuries "Every artist, communicator... has been forced to sacrifice effectiveness over efficiency.Until now." He says this problem has been solved because now with floppy disks and computers we can convey our ideas in games and these games can be mass-produced and then the ideas are interacted with, with effectiveness. This says to me the potential of games as a artistic expressive medium.

No comments:

Post a Comment