I don't want to get into the tiring 'videogames as art' debate, but as an occasional art writer, I do try to keep up to date with interesting exhibitions and have blogged about artists who, I feel, explore and interrogate the depiction of landscapes in a similar way to game designers.
The above work is a good example. Suzanne Moxhay is a young British artist whose first solo exhibition, Borderlands, can currently be seen at the Tricycle Gallery in Kilburn. Not only does the event share its name with Gearbox's forthcoming shooter, but Moxhay has a game designer's eye for apocalyptic environments, scale and drama. From the press release:
Using a process of re-photographing collected imagery, the borderland refers equally to the physical boundaries of a landscape as it could to an uncertain psychological state. Her work delves between the 'reality' of the photograph and the illusory staged nature of the theatrical or cinematic. Imagery selected references film genre iconography such as the Western, Sci-fi or Horror, finding parallels between the world of National Geographic and the fictionalised worlds depicted in film. Using these filmic conventions, Moxhay conflates the boundaries between 'real' and psychological space.
These boundaries are a huge part of game design - lots of modern titles seek not to replicate 'real-life' but to enhance it, mostly though post-processing effects that add stylised tints and other lighting tricks to each frame (see Race Driver GRID for example). We're also seeing games like Resident Evil 5 which exaggerate phenomena like sun glare for dramatic effect.
The exhibition runs until August 16 and is well worth a look. Here's another example of Moxhay's work, plus a full version of the above image:
