The grand entrance of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London recently hosted an unlikely pairing: glitching electronic music composed live by a programmer/DJ, and a vibrant showcase of independent video games. The event, part of the museum’s ongoing “Friday Late” series and a collaboration with the London Games Festival, signaled a deliberate shift – a return, perhaps – to recognizing video games not just as entertainment, but as a significant cultural force worthy of museum space and critical examination. It’s a move that challenges traditional perceptions of both art and play, and invites a new audience to consider the creative potential within interactive digital experiences.
The convergence of code, music, and gameplay wasn’t simply about novelty. It was about performance, participation, and the blurring of lines between creator and audience. Visitors navigated the V&A’s historic halls, map in hand, discovering installations tucked between Renaissance paintings and baroque silverware. They could play the BAFTA-winning comedy game Thank Goodness You’re Here! beneath a 13th-century spiral staircase, or encounter the playfully provocative physics puzzler Sex With Friends, where ragdoll characters navigate consensual encounters to the amusement (and occasional surprise) of onlookers. This deliberate juxtaposition, curators say, is key to unlocking a deeper understanding of the medium.
Susie Buchan, a co-curator of the event, explained the intention behind this immersive approach. “I was really interested in how playing a game within a gallery setting, particularly when it’s on a large scale and you have an audience, turns the players into performers of sorts,” she said. “A highlight for me was seeing the camaraderie of the audience playing Sex With Friends. You would not expect a group of people in the V&A on a Friday night shouting sex positions at a screen to feel so weirdly wholesome.”
A Re-Emergence of Games at the V&A
This isn’t the first time the V&A has explored the world of video games. In 2018, the museum hosted Design/Play/Disrupt, an exhibition curated by Marie Foulston and Kristian Volsing that examined the cultural impact of game design. Though, there was a period of relative quiet on the games front at the museum until recently. Kristian Volsing, now a senior curator at the V&A, spearheaded the effort to bring games back into the museum’s programming.
“It’s incredibly essential to present and critique video games as a major, serious part of our culture,” Volsing stated, “and putting them in a museum context does exactly that, with an emphasis on a communal experience. It fundamentally changes the way we encounter these artefacts, by asking visitors to consider them alongside historic valuable items, and to share these experiences and encounters with other members of the public.” The return of games to the V&A isn’t simply about acknowledging their popularity; it’s about elevating them to the level of artistic and cultural significance traditionally reserved for more established mediums.
Beyond the Screen: Performance and Participation
The event extended beyond simply displaying games; it actively encouraged participation and creativity. Comedian and writer Jamie Brew led a performance project called Robot Karaoke, which generated new lyrics for classic pop songs using algorithms and unexpected data sets – at one point, the audience found themselves singing along to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” with lyrics sourced from negative Glassdoor reviews. Artist Fredde Lanka facilitated the creation of video game fanzines in the learning center, while Jana Romanova’s “lite-LARP” experience, The Line is the Game, invited participants to join an unruly queue and embody a character for as long as they wished.
Holly Gramazio, an author and game designer who has curated numerous video game events internationally, including the now-concluded Now Play This festival at Somerset House, emphasized the unique synergy between gallery spaces, gaming, and performance. “There’s something special about the way that both video games and exhibitions draw on so many other different modes of expression,” she explained. “They often have at their heart the experience of someone moving through some sort of space and responding to it. It makes exhibitions a very expressive and complex way of sharing games and their contexts and histories with an audience.”
A Growing Network of Art and Games
The V&A’s initiative is part of a broader global movement recognizing the artistic merit of video games. The London Games Festival, which collaborated on the V&A event, will continue to showcase interactive experiences throughout the city in April. Buchan highlighted other noteworthy events, including the Overkill festival in the Netherlands and A MAZE in Berlin. The New York-based art games collective Babycastles also received a mention, as did the Game Arts International Network, which maintains a directory of organizations involved in art games events and installations.
Veteran event curator and game designer V Buckenham, involved in the “Car Boot Casino” installation – a collection of new card-based bluffing games – described these spaces as fostering a “virtuous circle,” where players reimagine games, non-gamers challenge their preconceptions, and developers gain valuable insights. “There’s an inherent excitement in running your stupid game about sausages next to a hand-carved mantelpiece that’s hundreds of years old,” Buckenham said. “Or improvising algorave music and visuals under a Chihuly [sculpture].”
The current moment, Buckenham and others suggest, demands a shift in perspective. It’s straightforward to view video games solely through the lens of the multi-billion dollar industry – focusing on the successes of titles like Fortnite and Roblox, and the ongoing consolidation of power within the sector. But events like the V&A’s “Friday Late” offer a crucial counterpoint, allowing for a re-evaluation of games as cultural artifacts, artistic expressions, and shared experiences.
As Volsing concluded, “Video games can bridge the gap between the past of the museum’s collections and the present. You can certainly relate the inspiration of real historic materials on display to how they have been reimagined in a digital world. And navigating the five levels and seven miles of galleries around the V&A is so much like an open-world game!”
The London Games Festival will continue throughout April, bringing further opportunities to explore the intersection of games and culture to venues across the city. Further details on events and participating organizations can be found on the London Games Festival website.
What do you think about the increasing recognition of video games as art? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
