A robot cannot create art, real beauty comes from a beautiful soul. Beauty comes from sense experience, irrationality, love, hate, the highest art is the art of life (Adam Muller 1779-1829). Art can never be mass produced, that would defeat the point, the emotions it would evoke would be counterfeit. Everything has to be original and fresh and real.
Where does the beauty of life really come from, can we really be sure of our eyes? Do our eyes see or does our brain see? Is art beautiful in itself or is the beauty in our own minds? Does the beauty come from the mind or the object? Is beauty an actual substance? Can we touch it? Can we taste it? Can we distill it or refine it? Can it be destroyed?
We want to feel in some respect that our lives have meaning and that we are more valid a species than an animal who just lives out it’s life chewing curds in a field. We often cite the great achievements of man like the pyramids or the great wall as something only a human could dream possible is that proof that we’re better than animals or is it a desperate attempt to justify to ourselves that human life has more meaning?
We establish that we have rationality and logic which animals lack and we argue this because we can recognize beauty. So from this conclusion we've established two things; first that art or more importantly the beauty of art may or may not be established through rationality or some sort of logical reasoning.The second point this makes is that animals lack the ability to recognize beauty, but Darwin argues that animals in fact can recognize beauty possibly as some sort of survival instinct, no one really knows the minds of animals, or how they perceive beauty just that Darwin says they can because supposedly certain animals choose mates based on their appearance. If this is the case the logical conclusion is one of two; Either recognizing the beauty of art does not require rationality nor logic, or that animals in fact have rational minds but have yet to make that evidently clear to us. I’m inclined to believe the first statement because we can never truly know what animals think or if they do at all.
If beauty requires neither logic nor reason, then what does it require? Some believe the origin of art is in fact play which would make sense as both humans and animals play as a form socializing and play doesn't necessarily require either logic or reason. (Spencer 1873). Now to bring this back to Video games, they could in fact be the purest form of art because they actually serve their purpose (Kant); they are centered entirely on play, it’s as if art has come full circle.
If you think about cavemen drawing on cave walls for entertainment, not really for record or instruction, they did it because they liked it, but art has become so bastardized that we don't know what it’s for anymore or why we’re supposed to like it.People pay to watch plays where actors take a shit in a bowler hat and they don’t know whether to clap or puke but games are fun and they actually serve that purpose. They are supposed to be fun and they’re supposed to engage your senses and take you on a journey, make you think, and most of them do (although a vast majority of them don’t i.e. COD/Assassins Creed 2/ Any game about football).
You may not a like a game, I hate Call of Duty but I recognize that stupid people and easily impressed morons like it, so it serves its purpose. You don’t necessarily need any prior knowledge of history or politics to enjoy it as I imagine the vast majority of cod fans don’t. It’s just fun and its beauty lies in its simplicity and its play-ability.
Art is about sharing an emotion or a feeling you once had with the populous, infecting others with your experience. It doesn't necessarily matter what that experience was just that it’s shared and felt by other people.
So if the team behind Call of Duty’s intent was to release a series of pointless shooters with no stories or shred of originality, with literally throw away characters (as most of them die within ten seconds of you either meeting them or in fact playing them) each game exactly the same as the one before with only the accents, the scenery and the guns changing pushing the envelope in mediocrity, they have succeeded.
