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Description of  Avant-garde Videogames: Playing with Technoculture (The MIT Press)

An exploration of avant-garde games that builds upon the formal and political modes of contemporary and historical art movements. The avant-garde challenges or leads culture it opens up or redefines art forms and our perception of the way the world works. In this book, Brian Schrank describes the ways that the avant-garde emerges through videogames. Just as impressionism or cubism created alternative ways of making and viewing paintings, Schrank argues, avant-garde videogames create alternate ways of making and playing games. A mainstream game channels players into a tightly closed circuit of play an avant-garde game opens up that circuit, revealing (and reveling in) its own nature as a game. Read more