I typically don't find artists' statements that interesting, and I typically haven't seen a point in writing one myself. It's hard to sum up The Whole Of Your Passions in a single paragraph, and I figured: why constrain myself unnecessarily?
But I tried to write one, once, at the very start of what's turned into a very longform—potentially lifelong—project. And I found, in my struggle to articulate myself, something parallel to my struggle to articulate my project, because my project wound up being deeper and broader and more personal than I realized it would be at the time.
I haven't been looking to produce an artist's statement in the stretch of time since, but I've accidentally stumbled upon one anyway, and am delighted enough by it to share. Don't take it too seriously, but it feels like a nice strange pointer amidst a vast and dark field.
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I have a passion for devising mechanical systems that reveal illuminating things about the ways that people work. Specifically, I'm interested in devising systems that meet the following three criteria:
- They must be interesting, colorful, and thought-provoking in and of themselves: the very idea of these mechanics should be delicious to contemplate, and should stir up some amount of curiosity, wonder, and epiphany.
- They must be concrete enough, and simple enough, that they can serve as the foundation for creative work: they are so mechanical that you can build contraptions out of them, whether those contraptions are games or stories or simulators or something else entirely.
- Because 1 and 2 both hold true, these systems allow for a new kind of social fabric, one that's collaborative, conversational, and curious all at once. Separately and together, they create a medium that allows for imagination, invention, and introspection: one that can be playful or personal or both at once. The line between creating and consuming, or between taking things seriously and taking them playfully, blurs; intimacy and silliness are allowed to coexist with one another, joined by a mutual tongue that not only connects them but allows each to evolve the other.
I think of all this as a game designer and a player; as someone who wants to find ways to tell meaningful stories, but who also wants to invent stories of his own; as someone who is simultaneously deeply curious about other people and who wants to find ways of helping people be as deeply curious about me. I'm not just interested in the gearworks of it all, or in the deepest and "profoundest" parts of this work; I'm interested in the deep shit because of how dear all the shallow shit is to me too.
I don't think of myself in terms of game design, community formation, storytelling, or playing; the thing I care about is all of these things at once, with each being a facet of the whole. The loftier way of putting it is that I have a passion for language, for translation, for perception, for expression, and for the sublime and frustrating joy of not being alone in the universe, but nobody—least of all myself—wants me to be lofty. So let's say that I want to get up to cool shit with others, and I want to find ways for other people to get up to cool shit with me back. (Though my saying "shit" nonstop is about as aggravating as my being lofty, so y'know what, let's just drop this altogether.)
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It's a big overlong to be an artist's statement, but then, I don't really have a gallery to stick it next to. So whatever.
When I tried articulating this at 20, I could only think to use the phrase "Playful Science Productions" to describe all this, and I could not have told you what on earth I meant by that. So: progress, I guess! That, or I peaked at 20. You be the judge.
When I tried articulating this at 20, I could only think to use the phrase "Playful Science Productions" to describe all this, and I could not have told you what on earth I meant by that. So: progress, I guess! That, or I peaked at 20. You be the judge.