Issue 6 - Art
“What’s the point?”
“A five-year-old could do that.”
“Why not do something more productive?”
We immerse ourselves in art, perhaps more now than at any time in human history. Sure, much of it is commoditized and sanitized in an attempt to have as broad an appeal as possible—formula-driven sitcoms, homogenized pop songs, or mass-produced prints of famous images. But these are, nevertheless, art. For many of us, it’s rare that we’re not engaging with some form of it, even if only passively.
And yet there’s still a great deal of skepticism attached to it. “Arts graduates” are seen as being worth “less” than those who studied science, or law, or economics. Artists are viewed with an odd mix of admiration and suspicion. Artistic endeavours are regularly dismissed as “a hobby”, “unproductive”, “a waste of time”.
And we often seem to attach an idea of “required virtuosity” to fields like music, painting and sculpture, implying that the art worth viewing springs forth from some innate firehose of talent housed in an individual, rather than being achievable through study and regular practice.
Every field of human endeavor has its place and its contributions to make; even our mistakes can become breakthroughs often enough. But art… art is what really elevates us as a species. Most commercial endeavors, by contrast, are just a highly-refined form of animalistic behavior; a competition to amass more resources for oneself.
Art can, of course, be pursued or co-opted in the service of the commercial. But it doesn’t have to be, and when it isn’t, that’s often where the most startling, entertaining and revelatory moments happen.
I spent the past weekend at Love Burn, the Miami Burning Man regional event. It involves around 4,000 people camping in the Historic Virginia Key Beach Park, directly south of Miami Beach. There are art pieces, art cars and sound stages—it is a surprisingly perfect replica of the feel of Burning Man, scaled down 20x and with rainshowers instead of dust.
The above is a distillation of thoughts I had over the weekend regarding the purpose of art. We’ll return, indirectly, to the theme when we get to the Thing Of Beauty below.
Also, in case it wasn’t obvious, this edition of Vague Mountain Chronicle is coming to you on a Tuesday, because it took me 2 days to get my stuff back together after spending 4 days living out of an RV.
Project Updates
In which I attempt to keep myself honest by talking about things I’m thinking of making, or have half-made. Or perhaps, have put successfully out into the world.
In the last Chronicle I said that it was time for me to pick a project to focus on, and so I have! I try to be a man of my word…
My primary effort for the next little while is going to be devoted to IDGAF, the party game which is probably a tiny bit too complicated right now, but play-tested very well when I tried it.
My major blocker here has been visual design — I’m not practiced enough to knock out large, complex design schemes, and that’s held me back from even trying to attack it.
I’m currently attracted to some kind of vintage feel for the whole thing; something in the 50s/60s/70s spread of eras; all chipper clip-art and upbeat color-schemes. Below is a tiny idea of the inspirations I’m working with right now.
This project would likely benefit from some co-conspirators if it’s going to get anywhere near being a real thing in the world. Give me a ping if you have any interest in getting involved! Meantime, I’ll be plugging away as much as I can, and trying my darndest not to get distracted by other shiny things.
A Thing of Beauty
One of the more hidden experiences at Love Burn is The Lost Island, which had its third iteration this year.
This art “experience” is big–as big as any of the “landmark” pieces which make it out to Black Rock City each August. It must have taken at least a week to assemble on the beach, and many months of dedicated work from a sizable crew before that.
And the crazy thing is… it’s fairly deliberately hidden. If you follow the paths which most attendees do, your only clue to its existence is a small lighthouse, visible in the distance from the main path between Gate and the core of the event.
Wander off the path towards the lighthouse, and you get a hint of other things lurking in the mangrove stands just beyond it. Follow a small path into the trees, and you come across multiple complex, highly-detailed structures which read like a mix of old Pirate lore, a better-executed Swiss Family Treehouse and (in one particularly secluded grove) a horrendous fairytale disaster involving a bloodstained dinner-table and half a stuffed brown bear, which put me in mind of Angela Carter’s classic The Bloody Chamber.
Love Burn had around 4,000 attendees this year. Optimistically, maybe 20% of them found Lost Island (judging by how empty it was most times we passed through). That means months of work for an experience which perhaps 800 people shared.
This, to reprise the opening theme above, is dedicated art. Lovingly crafted, for the sake of making a thing in the world. No big payout, no adulation, just the quiet honor of having moved a few hundred people to tears.
It was built by Lost Creations, and I wholeheartedly salute every single one of them.
Ephemera
Fast Radio Bursts. Yes, I know, the energy involved is massive, and they’re caused by large phenomena like black holes. But still, every time we discover more about them it sparks a little fire in me, as I imagine some alien astronomer revisiting his observatory every 16 days to send a new batch of signals, and check his equipment to see if there’s been any response. We do exactly that (a form of it anyway) with SETI, and there are literally billions of stars in the universe. How can there not be an alien astronomer out there somewhere looking for us, like a minor guest-starring character on an episode of Star Trek?
…on which subject, I’ve excitedly anticipating the new Star Trek: Picard show for a while now. The first episode, though, honestly left me a bit cold, and I haven’t been motivated to watch any more of it yet.
The show wastes no time in starting to reveal a big, mysterious conspiracy which is going on. Starfleet (and the Federation by extension) seem a bit broken—their most inspiring captain has long since turned his back on the whole (cough) enterprise. It’s more of the same “dark” feeling that makes Discovery pretty off-putting for me.
I’m still a fan of the Federation of my childhood, meaning Next Generation-era. It was optimistic; focused on peaceful exploration and discovery, emanating from a post-scarcity world where struggling to survive was no longer a primary concern. The crew were professionals, but they were also a quasi-family. Technology could be bent into all sorts of babble (“Re-route the primary plasma conduit via the deflector array!”) to solve novel, cataclysmic problems. Even unbeatable enemies like the Borg were no match for our inventive, intrepid crew.
I know, I know—good art, particularly good Sci Fi, reflects the time in which it is made. TNG borrowed its optimistic bent from the original Star Trek series, itself rooted in scientifically-curious, “atomic age” excitement, a time when it seemed like humanity (in the USA, at least) was racing towards a perfect future. In hindsight, of course, that era seems problematic in all sorts of ways. But there were at least thick strands of the culture striving to imagine a better world.
The darkness of modern Trek stems obviously from the darkness you can pick up by turning on any 24-hour news channel these days. But it feels to me a little too much like navel-gazing; like a surrender to the bitter, ugly, cruel and empty narcissism of Trump and his ilk.
I’ll drag myself into watching the rest of Picard soon; maybe enough Brent Spiner cameos will blunt its edge. But really, just like I don’t want to watch Black Mirror while it’s happening outside my window, I don’t need “Dark Trek” while we stumble our way through the present Dark Timeline.
Ironically, the best Star Trek on TV right now is Seth McFarlane’s The Orville, which is an affectionate parody of golden-age Trek without being a slavish copy.
Continuing the nostalgia-train, some nutcase has ported a bunch of video game maps into a browser-based rendering engine, so you can (albeit a bit clunkily) navigate around old game-worlds. It includes maps from a bunch of Mario games, and the brilliantly bonkers Katamari Damacy (I still can’t believe I used to be colleagues with its creator), but the most nostalgic for me is GTA: San Andreas, a game which I originally and obsessively played-through during my last month in London, before I moved to California. And while the map is a gross simplification of its real-world counterpart cities, I still managed to understand the topography of San Francisco more than once during my early years there because I’d already “visited” in a Playstation game.
Rounding out our nostalgia-news, this HD re-render of the “dancing baby” occupies such an interesting liminal zone. It’s a rush of nostalgia, with all the attendant “was this necessary? …but it’s kinda cool, I guess!” of a “20th anniversary remaster” of a classic album, but it’s really only deeply meaningful for those who are old enough to have experienced the original at the time of release.
Simultaneously, though, it’s real clunky and kinda boring if you’re a Gen Z “digital native”. Have you been on TikTok? It’s like a constant bombardment of trap music, scarily-realistic real-time visual effects and—for a bunch of teenagers basically mucking around—high-production-value sophistication which makes “The Terrible Secret of Space” look positively quaint.
Bonus related link, as heard during a fantastic Breaks set at the Big Puffy Yellow camp this past weekend: Eric Laville and Fred Closer’s 2012 track, Uga.
Dragging threads from my Burner experiences, and pulling in one of the things I mentioned loving about TNG-era Trek, this article is a fascinating exploration of the relative recency (and recent failure) of the idea of the “Nuclear Family”; it more-or-less ends up advocating for the sort of chosen-and-extended family I already feel beyond-fortunate to have. (The Atlantic)
This story about a Racoon is exemplary of the sort of writing I try to do here–taking a specific, entertaining incident, and managing to connect it to broader themes regarding our place here in this world. It’s delightful. (Kotaku)
And finally, check out this sign I spotted in I Love Tacos in Weston, FL today. It’s fascinating how the original constraints of glass-tube-bending have become a whole visual language. This sign isn’t made of neon tubes, but it’s captured their quirks pretty precisely.
Endnote
Bzert. My brain is buzzing this week. Apologies if this felt over-long, or overly enthusiastic in its bouncing between topics. Thanks, Love Burn!
We should be returning to your usually-scheduled Sunday delivery this week.
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