The WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon exhibit, which runs from now until October 4th at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California, explores different forms of cultural production (read: art) that have been influenced by video games in general, with a strong focus on World of Warcraft. The exhibit uses work by Blizzard artists Chris Metzen, Sam Didier, Chris Robinson, Justin Thavirat, and Roman Kenney, along with work from nineteen other artists from around the globe, exploring themes of desire, the collapse of fantasy, medievalism, creative critiques, and public intervention.

It all sounds rather deep, but that's the world of art for you. Throughout the exhibition, various artists will be lecturing and performing, integrating the World of Warcraft into their work. Visitors will have a chance to actively participate in collaborative art, or simply listen to someone explore the fantasy religious themes in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch to the imagery found in World of Warcraft.

It actually sounds fascinating. Perhaps I will get a chance to make it out there during this year's trip to BlizzCon.

WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon [Laguna Art Museum - Thanks Steven]

The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, has finally given video games their due, establishing a separate section of the museum for our favorite pastime. The National Center for the History of Electronic Games houses a console collection that puts even the most stalwart fan's collection to shame, with every gaming console from the Magnavox Odyssey to the Nintendo Wii represented, along with more than 100 examples of handheld gaming systems, more than 10,000 individual game titles, and an extensive collection of electronic toys, such as Simon and Tamagotchi.

The center will encompass all areas of gaming, from packaging and marketing to news publications and private documents on the subject.

http://kotaku.com/320756/atari-2600-gets-in-toy-hall-of-fame

"Electronic games are not only changing the way we play; they are having a profound effect on the way we learn and the way we interact with each other. Because Strong National Museum of Play is dedicated to exploring the role of play in American life, we are especially interested in the growing impact that electronic games have on it," said G. Rollie Adams, president and CEO of Strong National Museum of Play.

The collection is completely open to researches on the site, with several exhibits open for visitors to fool about with. They're also working on an exhibit called "The Revolutionary World of Electronic Games", which looks at the growing impact gaming has on the way people play.

The Strong Museum is currently working on cataloging their entire gaming collection of more than 15,000 items in order to make it accessible online.

While most gamers (myself included) are too busy gaming to go on a pilgrimage, it certainly sounds like Rochester would be a lovely place to make one, were we so inclined.

Strong Museum adds video games [Playthings]

The footage of the game will be shown as part of the museum's exhibit on freedom of speech: Freedom of Speech: How Free is Free?

Game developer Running with Scissors says they were contacted by the museum's curator to ask if they could use footage of gameplay.

The exhibition, which was originally produced by the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, contains, according to Mr. Skog, “a part that deals with censorship in games. In it we would like to use the game ”POSTAL 2” as an example. First of all; the game was on trial in Swedish court, but was acquitted a couple of years ago. For the trial a DVD with gameplay was prepared and shown in court. We would like to use footage from that DVD in our exhibition.”

According to the museum's website, the exhibit will delver into the some of the more complex questions of freedom of expression, like what happens when it is used as a protection to spread prejudices and messages of hate.

The exhibit will include history and modern examples of how freedom of expression has been stopped in films, photos, texts, sound and interactive games.

Hopefully, they will include more than just Postal 2. A few Rockstar titles pop to mind, as does Mortal Kombat.

POSTAL 2 Showcased in Swedish Museum Exhibit!

Dr James Newman, from Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play, said: “The National Videogame Archive is an important resource for preserving elements of our national cultural heritage. We don’t just want to create a virtual museum full of code or screenshots that you could see online. The archive will really get to grips with what is a very creative, social and productive culture.”

The National Videogame Archive will be housed at the National Media Museum in Bradford, and will be launched at this year's GameCity 3 festival in Nottingham.

UK's First Official National Videogame Archive Launched

The UK’s first official National Videogame Archive is being launched in a bid to preserve the history of a global industry now worth an estimated £22bn. Formed by academics at Nottingham Trent University and working in partnership with the National Media Museum in Bradford, the archive will recognise the significant contributions made by videogames to the diversity of popular culture across the globe - from the humble beginnings of 1972’s ‘Pong’, to the blockbusters of the 21st Century.

The new archive will be housed at the National Media Museum and will be managed, steered and researched in collaboration with Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play. The Centre draws on academic strengths across a range of disciplines, including psychology, cultural studies, art and design and computer science. In return, the Museum will provide the best levels of care and stewardship for the archive.

In addition to a treasure trove of consoles and cartridges, the archive will collect and gather a broad range of items from across the industry. It will encompass the wider cultural phenomenon of videogames by documenting advertising campaigns, magazine reviews, artwork and the communities that sustain them - the overall aim being to collect, celebrate and preserve this vital cultural form for future generations.

Dr James Newman, from Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play, said: “The National Videogame Archive is an important resource for preserving elements of our national cultural heritage. We don’t just want to create a virtual museum full of code or screenshots that you could see online. The archive will really get to grips with what is a very creative, social and productive culture.”

He added: “It will not only be a vital academic resource to support growing disciplines in videogame studies but will also be something that the general public can fully engage with.”

With popular new videogame releases already resembling Hollywood blockbusters, videogame buffs are keen to avoid the mistakes of their counterparts in the film industry where countless pieces of historically significant material have been lost forever. Procedures and practices are now being carefully developed to deal with the collection of materials and artefacts for this new archive.

Paul Goodman, Head of Collections & Knowledge at the National Media Museum, said: “The archiving of these important artefacts presents us with some real challenges, not least in the area of preservation. We must balance the necessary conservation requirements of these materials, with the need to allow the public to understand and interact with them both now and in the future, which is really the cornerstone of what we are trying to do.”

The National Videogame Archive will be launched at this year’s GameCity 3 festival in Nottingham, for which Nottingham Trent University is the lead partner. The three day event is set to attract videogame enthusiasts, developers and publishers to a range of activities taking place across the city and at the main festival venue, Gatecrasher nightclub.

Iain Simons, Director of GameCity at Nottingham Trent University, said: “This year’s festival is going to be huge. We’ll be opening up the world of videogames for everybody to experience and the launch of the new National Videogame Archive will be an important feature for this year’s event. We’ll have special guests from the industry with us, along with world-record breaking attempts, keynote speeches and lots, lots more.”

To find out more about GameCity 3, go to www.gamecity.org

One corner of the show floor was devoted to a Video Games Museum, made up of playable version of past "game of show" winners. Pretty much every version of the Final Fantasy series (FFVII on) was on display, and I have to say that the guy who was playing through parts of FFX deserves a few devotion points. What, did he really need to re-live one single moment of that 40-hour storyline — one that almost every Japanese gamer has experienced — that one extra time?

Jean Snow

Halo 3 Advert - Consolevania [youtube]

Teaser of the Halo 3 TV Ad [gamersyde]

In every Japanese museum, there are women who sit in chairs in the corner. Sit and just sit. What they are doing is beyond me. Keeping watch, I guess. On you. And me. Here's something a little easier to grapple with. The National Western Fine Arts Museum in Tokyo is providing visitors with a DS Lite to guide them around. There's a special cartridge that provide details on all the art. Each gallery is outfitted with a special access point that funnels the relevant info to your screen. Browse away via the touch screen. There's even a print function, enabling visitors to select art they like, print it out and collect it before they leave the museum. Brian Ashcraft

Museum Guide DS Lite [New Launches]

Besides being dorky, the worst thing about the guided museum tour headset they pass out is that all you do is listen. Enter the DS Lite. From this November, the handheld will be distributed at a Tokyo art exhibition to help visitors understand art. Each work will be reproduced in the DS thanks to special software. By using the touch pen and listening to the audio track, visitors can gain a deeper appreciation of the piece of art. Carrying that DS around the museum, you'll still feel like a dork, but less of one. Brian Ashcraft

Museum Tour Guide [Nikkei]

Some people collect cats. Other people collect bottles of their own excretions. Others start hostels in Romania and collect disemboweled backpackers. All these people are crazy.

Less crazy, but still disconcertingly gung-ho, is Brett Martin. Brett collects pieces of video game memorabilia... over 15,000 of them. That's over 1.6 items a day.

Brett is married to an extremely tolerant woman who apparently indulges him 'investing' the entirety of his income as a games tester into gaming ephemera.

We're a little creeped out by Brett, but also a little bit jealous. He's the ultimate, stone-cold crazy gamer, but ultimately, we love him for it. It's hard not to love a guy who says shit like this:

It was inevitable based on my passion for games. I play them, listen to their music, dream them, have a job testing them, collect their merchandise, and want to design them someday. Oh, and I also ate them in the eighties when Mario had ice cream sandwiches and cereal out. I live them.

Florian Eckhardt

The Land of 10,000 Plastic Marios [Vintage Computing and Gaming]