A New Medium?

I desire to discover a new medium of artistic outlet.

...not because I feel as if I've mastered all other mediums.

I've learned from video games the power of interactivity. I can enter a completely new world and explore, if the game allows me to do so. There something so powerful about this. We has human beings have a passion for discovery and exploration.

We want to know whats around the next corner, under that rock, hiding in those trees. We want to know how something functions over time. How does each organism survive? What does this landscape look like at night? I believe as our world becomes smaller, the virtual world will expand. I think this is why our video game worlds are becoming massive. We have less to discover on this world (or atleast that's what we are telling ourselves). Until we push deeper into space, I believe this will continue.

What if we took this interactive nature of video games and applied to to traditional art. Or film. Or comic books. I feel as if now we have mediums trying to do the job of other mediums. Take motion comics for example. Motion comics are one of the worst ideas I could imagine. Why would you want to "watch" a comic? A comic book is for reading and taking time to observe each panel's artistry. Adding motion to the comic doesn't help tell the story. I doesn't help to engage the viewer either. If anything I think that motion comics hurt the original intention of the art.

In many ways, I think 3D movies are trying to do what I'm describing, although they are unaware of it. They are trying to immerse the audience in the world. The problem is that film is intended to be 2D by nature. It's not designed to let the audience meander.

I'm not suggesting that artists just move directly into a 3D worlds to tell their story. I'm saying that we have some deep thinking to do. I think both video games (and theme parks, for that matter) have something to teach us about our human desire to explore and interact and that should be applied to art. There just might be a new medium here.