Amid all the hysteria over violence in games, it is refreshing to see others taking a more critical/serious look at games as part of pop-culture and art.

Last month, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco announced an art exhibit, titled Bang the Machine, that will “explore the history and influence of computer game culture and the unique relationship between computer games and art”. Exciting. (Slashdot has extra links to some of the exhibits.)

Further on the artful side of things, we have GameGirlAdvance discussing a book of poems inspired wholly by games. And, Mario is now part of Hollywood’s Wax Museum. (Ironically, too bad that game developers are not getting a share of the “fame” in Hollywood circles…)

On the criticism front, we have a call for papers for a conference at Princeton University and GGA pointing to a Manhunt review as a possible step in the right direction. Also, this is a good time to point back to Matteo Bittanti’s rant on game criticism from GDC Europe… He’ll be at the 2004 GDC to do more of the same ;)