Aesthetically Speaking

Recently, I've been thinking about the aesthetics of art: visual, auditory, etc. This week on CSI , the team dealt with an artist who killed his victims and posed them as statues. In the criminal's mind, and some other individuals', the victims became artistic expression. However, grotesque, morally objectionable, or downright villainous the process may have been, the "artist" made a work that he would be remembered by. In many ways, this reminds me of Sander Cohen in Bioshock. He does the same thing, creating art out of the dead, and along the way, asking you to assist, in order to produce his magnum opus.
Ultimately, this comparison leads me to the one thing that has started to garner my interest in the past few years: video games as visual art. I will probably post other blogs on their importance their literary merits. One of the new documentaries for Gears of War 2, "Making Gears 2: A Pixel is Worth 1,000 Words," addresses this thought, with the developers comments. Of course, this argument has occurred before, but I believe it's interesting in this case, because of the game. The first Gears looked amazing, creating an atmosphere of "decaying beauty." I don't remember the exact words that Cliff used, but those sum it up. The team wanted the landscape of Sera to carry the weight of an old world and a modern war: diminishing culture. The only difference between Gears and "traditional" visual art arises in the method that one interacts with the work.
A video game gives the gamer (admirer) the ability to interact with the world in full. He or she can delve into the story, overlooking the minute details, like the way the grass sways back and forth in Far Cry 2 or the way the sheep wander aimlessly in Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. The player could also overlook the magnificent effects that encompass the day-night revolutions in Grand Theft Auto IV, along with the spectacular moon. In all honesty, the player can do what he or she wants. Ultimately, in order to appreciate the game as a visual art the player needs to stop, explore, and take in the breadth of the world.
I know that more can be said about this, but I am tapped out at this point. I would just like to leave you with the new trailer for Gears of War 2. It brings to mind the "Mad World" trailer for the first game; however, this one has a more beautiful feel, in my opinion. Here is the "Last Day" trailer.
In closing, the next post will explore this discussion in more detail, based on a thought by Ranier Maria Rilke on art. In his letters on Cezzane, Rilke writes,

Surely all art is the result of one's having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible, and, as nearly as possible, definitive utterance of this singularity. . . Therein lies the enormous aid the work of art brings to the life of the one who must make it,--: that it is his epitome; the knot in the rosary at which his life recites a prayer, the ever-returning proof to himself of his unity and genuineness, which presents itself only to him whil appearing anonymous to the outside, nameless, existing merely as necessity, as reality, as being--.