Art & technology – kbrecordzz

A while ago I tried to describe kbrecordzz' tagline "art & entertainment", and in there I explained art as:

"Art is when you make something for the sake of itself. Art is similar to knowledge, curiosity and insight, in how you're never supposed to reach the end, find the definitive answer, create your masterpiece or become the best. You just continue exploring."

I want to update that description now, to explain why kbrecordzz is focusing on art and not on technology as a creator of games.

Art is a personal expression, coming from inside yourself with no commercial intent. Great art is when it has some kind of quality (obviously), which I don't really know how to define, except that I know you can't calculate what's great art, you can only feel it. Truly great art is those works that people never seem to stop talking about, when someone creates something impressive and beautiful that no one else could ever do again, like Shakespeare, Da Vinci, Mozart, and other immortal artists and works.

As a game creator, you usually have both an artistic and a technical side. Programming and handling hardware can be interesting, and sometimes even fun, but in the end these are just tools to reach something else. Technology in general is never the goal itself, it's a tool to reach another goal. Which could be comfort, entertainment or just anything that makes us feel good in the moment, or it could be to solve bigger problems, cure diseases and raise people's objective living standards. Even though the meaning of life may very well be to let as many people as possible live a good life, I can't get away from the fact that everything I've just mentioned eventually dies down and people forget about it.

The thing people seem to never forget about, the thing they continue to talk about forever, is truly great art and truly impressive people. Even knowledge, which is arguably a quest bigger than ourselves, kind of loses its edge once you understand a piece of it. When I try to understand the inner workings of a computer it gets more and more fascinating the closer I get to the lowest level, but as I get down to the 1s and 0s it suddenly stops being interesting. Because there's nothing more to understand. We're done! We obviously have lots left to understand about the world, but as soon as we understand something it loses its magic.

But a truly great piece of art is never "done". People are never done trying to understand it just to move on to something else. If that was the case, people wouldn't still talk about Shakespeare today. And maybe it's not just art. People are never done being impressed by nature either, or being captivated by geniuses like Einstein and Aristotle and iconic figures like Jesus. Maybe nature is art too, and maybe these exceptional scientists and people are artists as well... Or we need another word to describe these things that are bigger than ourselves and continue to captivate us (or maybe (god forbid!!) my theory has a plot hole). At least, it seems to be more about emotional experiences than about facts, opinions and bodily pleasures when it comes to the things that outlive ourselves.

This is why kbrecordzz' focus is on creating art and not on creating technology (but, we create technology as a tool for creating better art).

(Some day I may also try to explain the "entertainment" part of the tagline. But right now that part kind of contradicts what I've just said.)

Subscribe to Golden emails