Discussing how to define the concept of culture and that of art is something that has continuously interested academics for many decades, without ever arriving at a solution that is fully shared by all.

Like all abstract concepts created by the human being, it changes with the altering of society and of the thought, but if there is one thing on which there is almost total agreement, it is that the history of art and culture proceeds always innovating with respect to the past; to give examples, Caravaggio is in the history of art not because he knew how to paint better than others, but because he brought an explosive innovation to the field compared to what was the experience of his contemporaries, such as the innovative use of shadows and lights, or Jan van Eyck is at the center of the history of art because differently from what happened up to that moment, where the pictorial commissions were either religious or court, he is the first to paint subjects belonging to the mercantile and bourgeois class, testimony of an acquired power of the latter (and obviously through a certain pictorial mastery).

However, if, for example, arts such as painting have a certain codification available now, the result of the work of scholars for centuries, the discourse of artistic recognition becomes increasingly difficult as we approach a recently invented medium, with its own unique characteristics. We are talking about the world of video games, in which the literature that frames it as a product that can also be cultural and artistic, has no more than a couple of decades.

One of the goals that Linea d’Ombra Festival 2022 sets itself in relation to the video game is precisely to try to propose an initial coding of the artistic video game, which in relation to the above, moves around some key concepts:

• innovation in game mechanics,
• innovation in game design,
• innovation in narrative development, authorship (for games that require it).

Sifu mixes strong innovation, precisely in the mechanics of interaction (which draws heavily on the 80s video game, but renewing it in an absolutely innovative contemporary key), and at the same time a great fascination with aesthetics linked, for example, to films by oriental genre of martial arts (which are continually mentioned in the game, like for example “Oldboy” by Park Chan-work).

Gianluca “Ualone” Loggia, content creator and journalist with a long career of militancy in the Italian videogame information, will interact with Jordan Layani on his experience as author and artist, using “Sifu” as a skeleton to talk about the artistic value and culture of the videogame through the creative choices adopted by the author.