welcome ^^

[This entry assumes the reader has played the game Immortality, thus not only contains spoilers but also will probably only make much sense to you if you did.]

Immortality by Sam Barlow and company is a story that has greatly influenced the way I conceptualize art ever since I first played the game. Told through snippets of the production of three separate movies featuring the seemingly never-aging actress, Marisa Marcel, the events of the story speak mainly of love: Love for humanity and love for the arts, as experienced by The One, an immortal being which lives on through the people it consumes.
Despite it's non-human status, The One is undeniably a person, an artist, one with similar struggles as many of us. The same self-hatred, the same fantasies of grandeur, the same wish to make a change to the world through its art, the same need to consume others, the same aversion to being consumed itself. The message told through this humanity is simple; To me it speaks of the way true ascension is obtained not through creating something so great it changes to course of history irrevocably and forever, but through placing oneself inside history's chain, taking from those that came before to give it to those that will come after.
Not exactly "sitting on the shoulders of giants", more so "climbing on the backs of your ancestors, so descendants can climb on your own".
As said before, this isn't a complex message, it has been said before Immortality and will be repeated again. But what makes its exploration through the game special is the emotional substance that underpins it. The One is tired of consuming others, of taking from them without ever giving back, but it does not know any other way to interface with the world. It tries to repay its debt to humanity through "the greatest story" again and again, believing if only it can change things for the better through its efforts, then it'll have been worth it. It doesn't work, simply because it hasn't realized that it's not the one who's going to change the world, those are its descendants, the ones who consume it.
The violence inherit to the story's perception of love is also, I believe, poignant; The One points out throughout the game the dichotomy between love/creation (artists), and fear/destruction (law), seemingly not noticing that it as an artist continues to destroy those around itself, just like they have destroyed those around them. Its violent, gross and it IS love, though it requires the last step of accepting one's own destruction to become something beautiful.
This specific element is what inspired me to start my current digital horror series, spirit.avi, actually. The first episode was meant to be a standalone, until I played Immortality and saw the ways in which its perspective on love played into that one episode's story. The violation always present in wanting to be closer to someone, the willingness to be hurt needed to be truly connected to others, these inspired me and reminded me of other stories I love.
The second episode I ever idealized (currently planned to be the forth) was meant to be a meta-textual expression of that. I'd destroy my most beloved inspirations, of course not aiming to hurt its creators (many of them are my personal friends, so I'd never do something to them with the intention of causing harm), but definitely aiming to misshape their art, distort it to my own desire and invite viewers to do the same to my own, trusting that everyone involved would be okay. Because I truly believe that's what creation is. Nothing is completely new, everything is an adaptation of something that came before it and what we call authenticity is simply the perception of genuine care; Some many people around me know this, but some little have pointed out the beauty of that. That's what I hope to steal from Immortality. That's what I love about it.
So much I hope others can steal if from me, make it into a new, better adaptation. Until the greatest story is created, not by the work of a single artist, but by the work of everyone, or rather, everything that has ever existed.

ps.: ngl this isn't revised cause it's almost 3am and I more wanted to ramble about something that I read than actually create a super duper solid well-written text. So beware of (even more) typos

Today after work I decided to get started on John Dewey's Art as Experience once again, as I've decided to embrace the messy relationship I have with reading, as incentivized by a youtube video essay, because of course. Essentially, I want to learn to accept the frustration and distraction of reading as something normal, which it is, instead of trying to fight it incessantly and in vain. Art as Experience felt like a good alleyway back into reading because it is such a well written text. I remember being mesmerized the first time I tried getting through it by how much it felt like I was reading a novel even though the book is a philosophical text. Dewey does a great job not only conveying his ideas clearly but also their beauty, at least for what I've read to so far and been told by others interested in his work.

This is essentially an attempt at summarizing what I managed to read today, as well as my thoughts about it. So I can better process what I read. I do plan on doing one of these each time I read, but idk, let's see.

Dewey's objective in this book is very much to develop his own philosophy of aesthetics, centered on the idea that the study of art should not start at the analysis of artwork as a concept or object. Instead, he seeks to analyze the relationship between the experience of creating/appreciating art as indistinguishable from other aesthetic experiences. He presents: Adjusting the wood inside a campfire, train-watching as one waits at the station, tending to house plants, and many others as examples of aesthetic experiences similar to the arts, and defends that they should exist in a similar context in the day-to-day.

The author heavily criticizes the culture he saw at the time, and which one could say still exists today, of separating art from the people, placing it in a (literal) pedestal which sits in a context separate from routine. Museums and galleries serve as representatives of this culture, which Dewey uses as examples for its relationship to imperialism and nationalism. Through such institutions art exists as a vehicle for building national pride and identity. Alongside artifacts stolen from colonized nations, artworks inside building such as the Louvre serve as symbols of a nation's superiority and wealth. The same applies to the usual rich art collector. For Dewey this steals away the work's role as part of the public's day-to-day. It also impacts one's perception of widely available art. If true/good art only exists in the context of museums and galleries, then the common routine aesthetic experiences, even those such as music or film, which one could argue are categorically art, are deprived of such status. They become lesser, which for Dewey, is a mistake.

Essentially, so far, the book seems to defend artwork as one of many avenues towards aesthetic enjoyment, which shouldn't be conceptually separated from the others. Its view of art seems entirely dependent on a living beings interaction with it, on its experience. An object cannot be considered art without it, whereas an experience can be considered art, even if not accompanied by the object, as long as it brings aesthetic enjoyment. Not exactly "art is all that creates aesthetic enjoyment", more so "The distinction between art and other sources of aesthetic enjoyment does not matter, it causes more harm than good".

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This view of art does please me, personally. I think it works well with art's subjectivity. I cannot accept the idea that there is an objective definition of art, as it simply does not make sense to me. The "definition" presented by Dewey seems to take this impossibility of categorization into account, art is seen as... well... an experience. One which depends not just on the art object, but also on the audience, artist, and the context that surrounds their interactions to exists. One could also describe it as a feeling.

I also find Dewey's direct rejection of the idea of "Art for art's sake" quite appealing. I remember having a conversation related to this with some friends some time ago. I couldn't understand the view of art as something that can exist for its own sake, or for the sake of nothing at all, because even if subconscious, there seems to always be a kind of objective, some need to be met, not just in artistic creation/analysis, but in all living-being's action. This perception was promptly rejected by the rest of the group, which I still don't understand (though I'm willing to). Art as Experience seems to come at this from a similar angle. Prescribing the artistic experience as intrinsic to the concept of art shows a rejection of the idea that the art object can exist for nothing/itself. Art exists for the sake of its experience, we create art for the sake of experiencing its creation, and we interact with art for the sake of experiencing that interaction. In a sense it is a view that could be described as "art for art's sake", but it differs from the meaning of this phrase by seeing art not as the artistic object, but as the artistic experience.

I've read very little of the book so far, but I'm excited to get to the rest. It isn't a complicated read, since it seeks to come back to the subject's most basic ideas which connect it to the common experience of living. It also seems to be a text focused on creating a healthy relationship to art as a concept instead of trying to arrive at an absolute truth about it. That's probably what I appreciate the most about it. I'm excited to keep reading.