University of Gothenburg
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Arne Kjell Vikhagen

Senior Lecturer

The Crafts and Fine Art
Unit
Mail
arne.vikhagen@akademinvaland.gu.se
Visiting address
Vasagatan 50
41137 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 131
40530 Göteborg

About Arne Kjell Vikhagen

As Senior Lecturer, I currently teach art theory for our first-year fine art students. I'm currently teaching a coding for artists course as an elective for our BA programmes, where we study how to use microcontrollers for artistic purposes.

I have been teaching at HDK-Valand since 2000, and throughout the years I have worked in many different constellations and on many subjects, such as art theory, media art, technology and art, ludic art, artistic research and physical computing. I enjoy teaching art immensely, and even though I consider myself a practitioner I am a teacher at heart.

I defended my PhD thesis in 2017 on the relation between art, play and games:

When Art Is Put Into Play: A Practice-based Research Project on Game Art is a practice-based research project that aims to contribute to the understanding of the relation between play and art from the specific perspective of computer-based Game Art.

This is done firstly through the production of nine works of art that through their means of production all relate to Game Art as it has come to be known in the last twenty years or so. Secondly, the relation between games, play and art is discussed from a Game Art perspective.

This project as a whole aims to map and exemplify cases where Game Art successfully inherits rule-systems, aesthetics, spatial and temporal aspects from computer games.

This work has in turn resulted in a provisional response to the question of the possibility for Game Art to successfully create a state of play, whilst still maintain agency as a work of art. The claim is that the friction between art and play makes it doubtful that art can maintain its agency as art through play. This claim is made as a result of the artistic process leading up to the works of art that were made as a part of the thesis. It has been strengthened through the study of the concept of play and how it relates to artistic practice.

I have a Cand.Mag. degree in philosophical aesthetics from NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. My 1996 Cand.Mag. thesis was on Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetic theory, particularly on his notion of the aesthetic materials and its developments.

I have a BA degree in photography from School of Photography and Film, University of Gothenburg (1999).

Artistically, I work within the media art field, more specifically with ludic art. Here is a list of exhibitions since 2006:

  • April 2016 "The Research Show", A-venue, Göteborg.
  • April 2011 “Too Close for Comfort”, Retro Video Games, Stockholm.
  • Oct 2010 “You Flee From Combat”, Hey it's Enrico Pallazzo, Göteborg.
  • Sept 2010 OEI Release - “You Flee From Combat”, Galleri BOX, Göteborg.
  • March 2010 OEI (publication) - “You Flee From Combat”
  • March 2008 300m3 Art Space, Göteborg Group Exhibition - MyComputer.
  • Sept 2006 300m3 Art Space, Göteborg – separate.