Video games as fine art?
Chinese artist Feng Mengbo has apparently for some time been taking video games, replacing some of the graphics with other graphics (such as replacing Mario with Mao Zedong in a Nintendo game), and displaying the game as art. (Apparently even the choice of medium is a political commentary: he sees various ideologies as video-game-like in their limitations.) Now, according to a University of Chicago press release, he's releasing/showing/performing his newest interactive digital artwork: Q4U, a live online game of Quake with a picture of the artist as one of the characters. Today only, at the U. Chicago servers; see press release for details.
Among other things, this is yet another interesting take on the kind of art that uses appropriation and collage and other forms of reusing other art. I wonder if Nintendo tried to sue (for copyright infringement) over the reinterpretation of Mario Brothers.
I also think it's interesting that something that hackers have done for years (and that some game companies have gone out of their way to make possible)—changing the graphics in a game—becomes legitimate art when done with political motivation by a legitimate artist. (I do not mean to imply that it's not legitimate art; I'm just saying I think that this kind of thing makes it hard to argue that the artist's intention is irrelevant to art.)