Yesterday I described the distinction between (i)<\/i> an actual artistic process, and (ii)<\/i> games that create an illusion<\/i> of artistic creation. Whether we’re talking about “Spore” or “Guitar Hero”, essentially it’s the difference between creating a picture and playing color-by-numbers.<\/p>\n
By the way, one of my favorite examples of such an entertaining illusion was one of the very first Java applets to appear on the Web back in 1994, Paul Haeberli’s delightful The Impressionist<\/a>.<\/p>\n But a much more interesting question is how a game might employ such an entertaining illusion as a scaffolding device, to gradually lead the player from mere entertainment to true artistic creation. For example, imagine a game that starts out – in its first levels – as color-by-numbers, and then gradually changes through successive levels, eventually becoming a platform for the true creation of original artistic work.<\/p>\n Similarly, one could imagine a game that starts out guiding its player through simple melody matching challenges on a musical keyboard, and gradually morphs into an experience in which the player is called upon to create truly original music. In any case, we are talking about a sort of “training wheels” for easing the novice artist into a true creative experience.<\/p>\n I could see this general rhetorical device as an approach to learning that could be both fun and effective – if properly designed. Is such a thing really possible? I’ve been trying to think of examples, but so far with little success. One problem is that software designed to entertain and software designed to teach are generally very different. The former promises a maximum of engaging fun, whereas the latter is supposed to be “good for you”. The two agendas are so different that they are rarely if ever combined successfully into a single package.<\/p>\n Maybe we can change that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Yesterday I described the distinction between (i) an actual artistic process, and (ii) games that create an illusion of artistic creation. Whether we’re talking about “Spore” or “Guitar Hero”, essentially it’s the difference between creating a picture and playing color-by-numbers. By the way, one of my favorite examples of such an entertaining illusion was one … Continue reading “Training wheels”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1900"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1907,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions\/1907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}