Actually, the art world is reknown with thieves who were very good at
copying great works of art, and selling them for a price. I don't
think we can take "skill of duplication" as the measure of art. It
also wouldn't explain Conceptual art or Dadaism terribly well. The
verdict of art historians is that a bicycle wheel turned upside down
and embedded into a stool is, indeed, "Art."
BTW, that's Picasso's "Three Musicians," not Van Gogh. :-)
We need to be careful in how we label Art. Just because someone
splashes paint on the wall does not necessarily make it expressive art. Whom-
ever throws that paint must understand the theories and thoughts that went
into that genre of painting.
Then what of the people who pioneered such techniques? Surely there
was no previous body of "theory" with which to legitimize their work.
And despite the sheer brilliance of his technique, Jackson Pollack is
widely regarded by the masses as "merely throwing paint upon a wall."
This would suggest that art has more to do with audience perception,
than any hard and fast absolute mechanism for defining a work as "Art."
So too must the programmer/graphics person understand the concepts
of "Art". A Game as Art? Maybe as a pop art, maybe if it reflects our
culture and ways to repair the damage we have inflicted..
There's an entire fine arts movement called Pop Art. Andy Warhol,
Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, etc. All these folks are in
museums nowadays, although of course they were controversial at the
time. No doubt about their work being Art, historically speaking.
Given the complexity of art history, and the number of things that have
passed for "Art," I don't think we should get too bogged down in
definitional arguments. A VR world may indeed have game-like
qualities, and still be Art. If we can just manage to have our
discussion focus on somthing that is "more than a game" in some sense,
then I think we'll be fine.
Cheers,
Brandon