Forget the A Word

Following up on Eric's comment, "about taking a skill or craft to a high level of expression, about inquiring and exploring in original ways and coming to new discoveries." I want to cite a project we at EA sponsored titled, "The Sims In the Hands of Artists" where we provided a video game to 3 art schools to use as a creative tool and the climax was an exhibit of the work held in NYC, SF and LA. We had no idea what to expect but we did know that the students were highly skilled/engaged in playing video games and understood the medium. The end result far exceeded our expectations in terms of interest and creativity. The students not only readily embraced the tool but they also dissected it and came up with inventive ways of redeploying this tool to create films, installations, and traditional objects. As sponsors, we never said, create Art, we just said, here is an amazing tool, see what you come up with. Discovery and expression can of course come from traditional modes but the possibilities in new media are hitting us right in the face and today's students are fearlessly grasping it. If you Google "The Sims In the Hands of Artists," you will get over 4 million links. Talk about scope of interest!
The first link is an article from Art News: http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2316
This link if from USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2007-03-21-ea-contest_N.htm