The accuracy of the vague and the lightness of the weight in VG as a sample of Minor Poetry

Abstract

Maybe we do not assume or assume with some doubt the idea that gaming will save the world, as Asi and Parker suggest referring to social games. But we cannot surely accept the assumption that Video Games cannot be a form of Art (while wondering whether Art can even be defined and also whether its definition is even needed). The famous Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium can offer some strong paradigms to endeavor to outline a first analysis of their poetics. Also Leopardi’s Theory of Poetry offers an interesting element we consider: in his opinion nothing in itself is so poetical as the Vague, not to be confused with vagueness of expression. So, the main idea that permeates these short pages is that Video Games certainly have social, cognitive and many other affordances, but that what justifies the increase in their use could be their ability to generate images from images, and to live even with immersive mode all the elements that make up the material/stuff of poetry from the dawn of time: Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity and Vagueness. The one of them that first sets up images seems to be accurate lightness of software supported by the accurate weight of hardware: it allows her to be not mere surface but deep space affording also the new territories of the digital sublime arousing from two of the four axes on which to place games according to Caillois historical groundwork: ilinx (vertigo) and alea (chance).