Guess who’s been thinking about the meaning of art again? Now that I've released WizardChess I've had a rebound into frantic sketching and exploration, but I've felt the background thread opening up slowly of "well… now what?"
I'll make another game, that goes without saying. But the question is broader, what is my goal? What is the point? What am I trying to achieve with my work? More generally…
What is the role of an artist?
According to Kendrick Lamar, it’s to express1. The role of an artist is to be present with what is in front of them. To engage with and reflect on what you feel as a result. It seems stupidly simple, but I actually think it's the only answer to this kind of question.
It seems like an important time to ask these questions on The Internet. From where I sit, creativity is undergoing a cultural assault from the technology industry in an effort to dehydrate it and make it into concentrated, high-fructose, low-effort content. Meanwhile I’ve built my career and skills on the opposite notion, using technology to invest further in the creative process and to dig deeper into what matters to people.

I used to think that I needed to "invent something" to achieve that goal, but now I'm less sure. Perhaps "doing too much" got us into this mess. What if restraint, resolve and intentionality are actually what we need? When I look at the prevailing narrative around creativity and technology, we are supposedly heading for a future where everybody is going to make whatever they've always wanted to make and with zero effort... Which conveniently omits the reason people actually make expressive work: self-motivation. The broad narrative aims to turn creativity from a self-initiated, self-fulfilling, self-expanding practice into a consumptive hobby that can be metered and sold to you by a third party.
We can already make things. We make things using technology. The issue is that interesting things tend to take a lot more effort, and interest is a dynamic property of what has already been made2. Generative AI will lift the standard that we've come to expect from media in terms of the technical sophistication, but it’s clear it will not raise the ceiling on the level of authenticity or emotion invoked by the work.
If you look at the kind of AI-generated content people are proudly posting on social media it relies on (what I call) the "Cool Factor" to get attention. Shiny, loud, colourful. Best experienced in a compressed thumbnail rather than up close. Personally, I have found over my life that the "Cool Factor" leads to shallow work that leaves no lasting impression. It's the cheapest, most generic and most transitory positive emotional engagement you can get.
"Oh! Nifty." is not emotional resonance. A repost is not authentic connection. People care about things when they emotionally resonate with them and "cool" is a non-committal, impersonal response. If you want something stronger3 you're going to have to put some of yourself into the work.
Navigate by Feel
As kids, many of us started life already creating using sticks, leaves, blocks, pencils, paper, string and glue. As adults, some of us are so far removed from our connection to our physical bodies and to our ability to manipulate the environment that we think AI-generated images are more artistically significant than macaroni paintings. Yet, that childlike embodied expression is completely continuous with adult artistry. Why would you make that?Because it felt right.

The reason that an adult's artwork is typically more "sophisticated" is because they have lived a life where they've paid attention, they've felt, they've witnessed, they've watched the world evolve and change. As a result, what they4 naturally express is a higher-dimensional understanding of the way that this world works than a child, but it's fundamentally the same. You can't make interesting art without paying attention to what's going on around you.
This sounds like a recipe to be a starving artist but that’s why it’s interesting to hear it from Kendrick. Despite his level of prominence, he is laser focused on being present, he is always evolving his understanding of the world and channeling that into his work. He is not getting distracted by the ideas and narratives of other people's ways of seeing, which might sound kind of familiar if you've read any of my writing before.
Making Space
Maintaining clarity and mindfulness in your thought process allows you to see things about the world that you simply couldn't otherwise notice or articulate. It affords other people around you the space to do the same, because instead of narrativising and signalling, you are observing. It's an invitation to step back and check, what is happening now?
We aren't used to space in our media consumption, everything comes pre-packaged with a “right way” to think… but you don't have to change someone's mind with your work. You could just help them pay attention.
I believe an artist studies the interface between the dimension of feeling and the dimension of symbolic thought. We try and translate from fuzzy, precognitive feelings into the domain of communicable media. The practical skill of refined craft sometimes eclipses the more subtle framework guiding it but... When you're ignorant of that framework you end up merely playing with colours, lights and sounds5.
The true project of artistry is the lifestyle. To become familiar with and constantly aware of the subtle nature of consciousness and, in turn, help other people understand the relationship between the worlds of feeling and symbolic thought. This relationship is evolving dynamically in every person, at every moment, it doesn't work the same for all of us. Artwork is a tool artists use to analyze themselves and their culture to help us all understand why we act the way we do.
Scaling Awareness with Authenticity
My thesis, I suppose, is that creative success for me is not about popularity or even emotional impact. Successful work is that which increases the audience's awareness and clarity of that feeling-symbol interface. I don't need them to take away a particular message from my work or adopt a set of beliefs. All I want them to do is understand a little bit more about our world, the place we inhabit in it and how it all fits together as a result6.
We owe it to one another to be intentional in our thoughts and our actions and express our true feelings without distortion from the prevailing cultural narrative. The media environment we find ourselves in is deliberately trying to destabilise and confuse the masses with inauthentic, manufactured content. This is an attempt at collective nonsense-making, to flood the information space so that we literally cannot make sense of anything and instead "give up and comply".

The only way to act collectively at scale is with authentic communication between parties. Without authenticity, there can be no good faith discussion and no learning. The good news is that it seems we can capture and crystallize authentic expression in the form of our greatest cultural works. These artifacts become a container for the crystallized authenticity of the creators. It acts as a prompt to safely explore new ideas through participation, rather than instruction. If the audience is open, they feel the depth of their understanding increase as a result of their interaction with the work. That’s all it takes. Back to basics.
I want to connect to myself, express what comes naturally from that process and connect to the real world and the real people living in it. Hopefully this newsletter fits within that canon. I am being quite candid here about the challenges I see ahead, but it's not over yet. Scarcity creates value and there's not a lot of genuine expression out there. As a creator, your advantage is your specific life experience. Use it intentionally.
Ben ✌️
Thinking About
The theme: intention, inversion, rejecting formality.
from the “Officla Kendrick Lamar Apple Music Superbowl Interview” 🙄 which sounds like a waste of time… except Kendrick is still interesting
The basis of fashion!
like delight or surprise or intrigue
well, they should have a more mature understanding… not always true in practice
myself very often included
I first noticed this pattern in my conversations with people 5 years younger than me, the most value I can offer is asking questions and introducing perspectives rather than concrete advice