Jillian Werner - October 6th, 2008

E for All 2008: Interview with Joseph Olin, President of The AIAS

One of the most prominently displayed and immediately visible aspects of E for All this year was the Into the Pixel gallery set up near the entrance of the expo. Organized and brought to the expo by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, Into the Pixel aims to offer video game artists the same recognition and higher art standing that traditional works are automatically afforded. Removed from immediate game notation and treated as such, it was easy to see why the AIAS, (and co-hosts ESA and PDC of LACMA), felt such an urge to promote these artists’ works. They are breathtaking, enthralling, and technically sound. It is in addition to their already impressive accomplishments as artists that they are also storytellers of video games. President of the AIAS, Joseph Olin, graciously sat down to chat about Into the Pixel and art in games with Joey and myself during the expo.

Jillian Werner: What exactly is your role with the gallery and the images on display?
Joseph Olin: Well the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences is the largest organization that represents game makers, publishers, technology companies, platform companies and independent game makers. As a way to help celebrate the 10th anniversary of E3, the ESA, which operates E3 and the Academy, and we’re trying to figure out a way to celebrate the great work of game makers in terms of the artists who basically power today’s games and are basically why we’re so compelled to be involved in these universes. And it was done as a one-off, but to make it different we would engage some of the curators of local museums that were reputed, La Getty and LACMA and the Hammer Museum. It was so successful and so popular that it’s been going on ever since, this is our sixth year. It is the only professionally curated exhibition of game makers’ art in the world and we get anywhere from 300-400 submissions from around the world. Our rotating panel of jurors takes a look at this and every year we take the best 16 as voted on by jury of the year and turn them into the fine art prints that are downstairs. They’re not being shown as nicely as I would hope at E for All, relative to what we do at E3, but tomorrow when they move those curtains, there’ll be a little more light on them.

Joey Samaniego: They look great. Did you have a hard time convincing the museums to get involved? Like you said, I had never heard of anything like this before.
JO: Actually, some of the people on the Princeton Drawings Council at LACMA were game makers. On the business side of the game publishing/game making community and they helped push them a little more and we donate money to them based on what we’re able to raise through Into the Pixel. So we do some public good and in the meantime it gives game artists a forum to show their wares in terms of their artistic chops. For the museum curators, they were blown away because they had no context, they don’t play games. I’m trying to teach these people about games and what makes games special and it’s like “What do you show these people?” so it was an educational process for them and certainly for our professional game makers who fill out the jury, they’re learning about art history. Some of the pieces that are selected are based on technique that goes back to the 1500s from artist such-and-such and it’s like “Who knows this stuff?” And they get to meet the artist for the first time after the selection is done and it’s like “Did you study so-and-so in art school?” and they respond “No,I didn’t go to art school” and it’s like “Oh.”