Game designer Jonathan Blow talks about meaning in art and the book Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Tip me: ko-fi.com/blowfan Clipped from a Twitch stream and: • IGDA San Francisco Eve... Jon's Twitch: / j_blow
As a person interested in art it took me a while to figure this out by myself, and I believe most people never do. This is where this image of "serious" art being pretentious, boring or confusing comes from. This is something that should be explained to every high schooler in an art class.
Artists are depictiors - they try to show you a thing. Philosophers are the people who try and figure out what they're seeing. Good artists aren't bothered about the meaning of something, but just inscribing it somewhere that everyone can see it. The meaning of whatever's written might be confusing, but it should be confusing because it's real, not because the artist has injected their own complications into their work.
I love how much the YT algorithm has been recommending this channel and more about Jonathan Blow. He's so fun to listen to. I don't understand why, but at this point I just like to listen to rants and abstract design talks. It almost feels like a daily dose of enjoyment
I too missed Pointsman's Nobel prize fantasy the first time I read Gravity's Rainbow... but not the second time I read it, because of this video. Thanks Blow Fan!
The secret to understanding these spook-baby authors is to realize they're not actually saying anything real, but referring to each others' projects that are being sold as real historical events and giving each other signs of recognition. R. A. Wilson is another one I thought of immediately when I looked into Gravity's Rainbow. In their job to sell certain events, dangers, ideologies and factions as real, obscure and multi-layered humor and absurd thought experiments are just one tool among many. I have seen the fnords. The purpose of art, according to Aristotle, is the formation of character. The meaning of the words is "skill at crafting things". So good art that makes one meditate on things that build character. Puzzles and problem solving and multi-dimensional thinking, yes. Virtues, yes. Invented people giving each other glory for invented events and ideas that may be fascinating and elicit a chuckle but carry no weight, not so much. I really like Jon's views on the current state of computing, so I don't habitually disagree with him, but in this case I do.
Earlier in the last clip, he objected to my characterisation of Gravity's Rainbow as "postmodern", right? If I remember that conversation correctly :D. Anyway thanks for uploading these as always, I really appreciate you taking the time! (and I'm especially a fan of this topic, I'm reading V at the moment)
I watched Upstream Color, partly because Primer was such an indie movie masterpiece with zero budget. Upstream Color was really confusing. I imagine it was good on some abstract level.
Goal of Art is Revelation of Truth So, the best a game can do is reveal Truth, in the best way the medium can do, which is interaction with "true" systems In other words, the more complex and interesting the "system" you try to solve is in a game, the more meaning it has
How do you differentiate meaningful art that you don't understand at all (like Upstream Color ) from random bullshit that never meant anything in the first place?
I think you start gravitating (pun kind of intended) toward the one that...well the one that pulls you... Even if you do not think you understand, but you feel like, man if you had to take one movie to a deserted island, which would be more valuable to have... Which is the way I feel about a game like 'Braid' or 'Witness'.
@@Shofixi, of course it depends entirely on the content of those ideas. The books and movies discussed here seem to rather bring into mind random thought experiments that lead nowhere and exist for the sake of existing. This is strange, because Jon's games have real virtues these other things actually do not.
