1. Video game or art?

    Do video games belong in museums? Today, the Museum of Modern Art in New York said yes.

    MoMA just announced the acquisition of 14 games, ranging from arcade classics like Pac-Man (1980) to Canabalt (2009), an indie game released online for free.

    With Kickstarter experiencing the Year of the Game — 259 game projects have been successfully funded in 2012 so far — it seems like a perfect moment to ask a couple big questions:

    What makes a game art?

    Which games should MoMA add to the collection next?

    Let us know what you think.

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    Image credits (clockwise from top-left): Faster Than Light, Johann Sebastian Joust, Against the Wall, God of Blades, Blindside, A House in California.


  3. KSR IRL: Tomorrow, 10/19 @ 11:30a, Hip Hop Word Count’s Tahir Hemphill speaks with Jake Barton (of Local Projects) as part of MoMA’s Talk to Me symposium. At the presentation, Hempill will debut his Champagne Always Stains My Silk Datavis! From MoMA: Panel discussions will be moderated by Paola Antonell; Adam Bly, founder and CEO, Seed Media Group; Majora Carter, President, Majora Carter Group; and Jamer Hunt, Director, MFA in Transdisciplinary Design program, Parsons The New School for Design. Can’t make it? Watch the live stream!

    KSR IRL: Tomorrow, 10/19 @ 11:30a, Hip Hop Word Count’s Tahir Hemphill speaks with Jake Barton (of Local Projects) as part of MoMA’s Talk to Me symposium.

    At the presentation, Hempill will debut his Champagne Always Stains My Silk Datavis!

    From MoMA: Panel discussions will be moderated by Paola Antonell; Adam Bly, founder and CEO, Seed Media Group; Majora Carter, President, Majora Carter Group; and Jamer Hunt, Director, MFA in Transdisciplinary Design program, Parsons The New School for Design.

    Can’t make it? Watch the live stream!

  4. KSR IRL: This past Sunday, July 24th kicked off the Museum of Modern Art’s Talk To Me exhibition which explores—as articulated by the New York Times—”how innovations in communication design are transforming our lives. The premise of the show is simple: that communication is now the dominant force in design.” MoMA cites 21st-century culture as being “centered on interaction,” and well—living and breathing Kickstarter creations all day ever day—we tend to agree. We’re proud to see two amazing KSR projects, EyeWriter and Hip-Hop Word Count, featured in Talk To Me as exciting and innovative cultural markers of “contemporary existence.” Hailed by Time as one of the 50 Best Inventions of 2010, EyeWriter uses eye-tracking glasses and open-source software to translate eye movements into writings and drawings on a screen. Raising nearly $18,000 on Kickstarter this past fall, ALS-riddled L.A. graffitier TEMPT1 created a collection of original artwork and merchandise using EyeWriter technologies. Also drawing lines, Hip-Hop Word Count seeks to “chart the migration of ideas and build a geography of language.” Raising over $8,000 on Kickstarter to create “a searchable ethnographic database built from the lyrics of over 40,000 Hip-Hop songs from 1979 to present day,” the database is “the heart of an online analysis tool that generates textual and quantified reports on searched phrases, syntax, memes and socio-political ideas.” On display through November 7th, 2011, Talk To Me features a grand array of designs that combine the standard “form, function, and meaning…with a focus on the exchange of information and even emotion.” Exhibiting projects that “enhance communicative possibilities and embody a new balance between technology and people,” this show is all about how design enriches our lives “with emotion, motion, direction, depth, and freedom,” and we’re so thrilled MoMa included EyeWriter and Hip-Hop Word Count in the new frontier.

    KSR IRL: This past Sunday, July 24th kicked off the Museum of Modern Art’s Talk To Me exhibition which explores—as articulated by the New York Times—”how innovations in communication design are transforming our lives. The premise of the show is simple: that communication is now the dominant force in design.”

    MoMA cites 21st-century culture as being “centered on interaction,” and well—living and breathing Kickstarter creations all day ever day—we tend to agree. We’re proud to see two amazing KSR projects, EyeWriter and Hip-Hop Word Count, featured in Talk To Me as exciting and innovative cultural markers of “contemporary existence.”

    Hailed by Time as one of the 50 Best Inventions of 2010, EyeWriter uses eye-tracking glasses and open-source software to translate eye movements into writings and drawings on a screen. Raising nearly $18,000 on Kickstarter this past fall, ALS-riddled L.A. graffitier TEMPT1 created a collection of original artwork and merchandise using EyeWriter technologies.

    Also drawing lines, Hip-Hop Word Count seeks to “chart the migration of ideas and build a geography of language.” Raising over $8,000 on Kickstarter to create “a searchable ethnographic database built from the lyrics of over 40,000 Hip-Hop songs from 1979 to present day,” the database is “the heart of an online analysis tool that generates textual and quantified reports on searched phrases, syntax, memes and socio-political ideas.”

    On display through November 7th, 2011, Talk To Me features a grand array of designs that combine the standard “form, function, and meaning…with a focus on the exchange of information and even emotion.” Exhibiting projects that “enhance communicative possibilities and embody a new balance between technology and people,” this show is all about how design enriches our lives “with emotion, motion, direction, depth, and freedom,” and we’re so thrilled MoMa included EyeWriter and Hip-Hop Word Count in the new frontier.