A semi-circle of projector screens, computer keyboards and wooden chairs are set up inside of Lincoln Park's Buntport Theater for visitors to play with art in the form of video games. With the push of directional arrow keys, spacebars and computer mouse drags, gamers are invited to challenge their perspective on video games as art.
"Game makers of all motivations have asserted that games are art," said exhibition curator Rafael Fajardo. "Plumbers jumping onto platforms is just one of those [examples] and should not be limited to that."
Games are short and offer commentary on topics such as human health, identity and freedom. Some are calm and reflective while others come with trigger warnings for strobe lights, sudden scene changes, loud noises and heavier themes such as gun violence, grief and loss.
As part of this year's inaugural Denver Month of Video, Denverites can check out the video game exhibition, "Short and Sweet" which debuted earlier this month.
It will remain open to the public every Friday and Saturday of the month from 2-8 p.m. until July 22.
The exhibition features nine playable games and was curated by video game project Dizzy Spell, a collective that's dedicated to the expansive idea of games and art.
Through this interactive exhibition, Dizzy Spell curators Rafeal Fajardo, Justin Ankenbauer and Month of Video co-founder Adán De La Garza, intend to challenge the perception of traditional video games.
Fajardo, a professor in the Emergent Digital Practices program at the University of Denver, sets out to experiment with the notion of art, gaming and the emotional responses that are evoked from the medium for the last two decades.
"We are broadening what we think of as a game and trying to explore what is possible with this interaction," Fajardo said.
Each game features the work of solo creators that dip their hand in all aspects of the finished product: visual composition, musical sound design and the game's programming.
Video game creators from as far as Spain, Italy, Australia, France, New Zealand are showcased, including Colorado Springs-based and University of Denver alum André Blyth.
His series, "Patient Rituals" is a set of ten miniature games that were inspired by tarot cards.
"They're small narrative chunks, or vignettes, that have a sense of completeness but they are not big," Fajardo said. "The discovery of the interaction is part of the work. You get that element of surprise even when it's so pared back."
Each game in Blyth's collection is intentionally minimalist in pixel count and field of color, and plays out a seemingly mundane moment in time that's initiated by a singular keyboard command.
One example is a game called "Rain Shrine" that's an interaction between an animated protagonist and a stream of pixelated water.
"The collection invites you and rewards you for slowing down and appreciating something that is quite contradictory to how we might otherwise approach video games," Fajardo said. "He's embedded a critique of commercial, off-the-shelf video games into the decisions he's made as a designer."
Visitors can take as much time as they'd like to play each game inside a space that was intentionally curated for gameplay and for others to bear witness to the complex media artifacts.
Are these still "games" if they're not traditionally fun?
For creators like Ankenbauer, a member of the interactive media art collective BearWarp and someone who dabbles in both commercial and experimental game creation, the idea of "play" and entertainment is more aligned with the personal experience of the gamer.
"For me, as a personal creator, most of the experience is that you don't realize what is going to happen when you sit down at a game," Ankenbauer said. "For me, a more successful game is when it has that unexpectedness."
Each game in the exhibition, however long or short, leaves gamers with contemplative thoughts outside of the gameplay.
For example, in "A Series of Gunshots" gamers must consider the prevalence of gun violence through a simple interaction of sound, pixelated light flashes and the click of a spacebar.
Or in "Mossland" which is the story of a little green bug who lives in a bottle. Its curiosity for the outside world leads the gamer to interact with other bugs in the game.
"This bottle has everything we need. Soil, water, air, light. If we left, could we survive?" one bug asks.
Arrow keys move the protagonist through the bottle world, curious about what's outside of its utopian home.
Or in "Solastalgia" which is a first-person perspective inside of a Lord Of The Rings-esque forest. Angelic reindeer roam the serene field around you but if you get too close to one the sudden flash of fire and chaos engulfs everything in sight.
"Usually games are pretty extended in time whereas these games aren't that," Ankenbauer said. "Part of the curation is how to make a short game go against the grain of normal game making and the addictive quality of games. It allows the player to take away something versus the game taking you away."
Visual poems and art clothed in the costume of gameplay create an unexpected thought-provoking experience.
"The experience is in the hands and the mind of the player," Fajardo said.
"Short and Sweet" will be open this Saturday in conjunction with the screening of nonprofit experimental media arts, Signal Culture at Buntport Theater happening at 7:30 p.m.
