(Wario paradigm via gamertell.com, money image via asianweek.com)

The National Endowment for the Arts at present funds a hotly-debated course of art: video games. With the newly designated "Arts in Media" program, $ten,000 to $200,000 grants from the arrangement tin can now be used to fund the production of digital games, multimedia art work and interactive applications.

The NEA's previous "Arts on Television and Radio" category has been renamed "Arts in Media," reports Digital Trends. The change in name reflects a modify in direction for the NEA, moving beyond the traditional forms of media frequently associated with public funding into new media territory. Where the earlier "Boob tube and Radio" funding could literally only go to TV and radio programming, the new category applies to content produced for "all bachelor media platforms such as the Internet, interactive and mobile technologies, digital games, arts content delivered via satellite, besides as on radio and television," explains the NEA's updated guidelines.

Would David Hockney'southward iPhone art be NEA fundable? (paradigm via dailymail.co.united kingdom)

What may look like a modest semantic alter is actually a revolutionary redefinition. Video games are now a formally acceptable art medium, in the optics of the United states government'southward largest arts organization. Merely don't just recall of this every bit about public money going to Nintendo; it's non simply handheld Super Mario games that would receive funding. In fact, I would bet that "entertainment" oriented games are the least likely to become a slice of the pie. What I would wait to get the new grants would be interactive, customs projects, games or apps that apply fine art equally a vehicle to communicate and bring users together.

Gamerfeed explains the new guidelines simply: if your video game, or digital projection, is "well-nigh the arts, supports the arts, teaches the arts, or is fine art in itself," then it'south viable to exist funded. The grants would exist as probable to go to a purely artful digital art object than to a digital tool to help high schoolhouse art teachers. The "Arts in Media" grant category further blurs distinctions in the medium of digital media. It doesn't matter if you're making a awe-inspiring digital installation, a playable game or an iPhone app; everything is fair game.

I can't assist simply think that this new designation could prove provocative and ire-inducing for the NEA, though. Conservatives who find funding going to NPR offensive (and going to Mapplethorpe photos unthinkable) won't exist and so jazzed about government money going to the same medium that produced Duke Nukem and M Theft Auto. Merely over again, this isn't about trigger-happy video games or the Farmville obsessions that are keeping kids out of school. It's almost the increasing public presence and artistic viability of new media, and to see that go government back up is a great thing.

Interested in getting some money for your digital work? The application deadline for the "Arts in Media" grant is September 1, 2011, for projects that beginning subsequently May one, 2012.

Astoundingly 90s homepage image for this mail service is courtesy of the NEA itself.

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Kyle Chayka was senior editor at Hyperallergic. He is a cultural critic based in Brooklyn and has contributed to publications including ARTINFO, ARTnews, Modernistic Painters, LA Weekly,... More by Kyle Chayka