Art and Rules

I’ve loved art my whole life. And not just any art. Unusual, strange, gross, weird, one-off, quirky, unique, stunning, and authentic art. Run-of the mill “art” has never held my interest. I want my art to have soul. I want it to have a life of its own. That’s the art that I love to see.

I hate when art becomes polluted by the pursuit of money.

I love when people play with the rules.

One surprising set of artforms that has interested me since I was a kid are the custom level creators included in some videogames. Many game developers choose to let their users create their own levels, and the levels they make often show creativity that the developers could have never imaginied. Sometimes they make beautiful designs or new and interesting challenges.

There is a videogame called Geometry Dash. If you’re not familiar with the game, you control a square character through levels of simple auto-scrolling 2D geometry. The creator of the game included a custom level creator, and the works of art created by some users in their geometry dash levels are beautiful. A few creators even went so far as to use the game’s basic logic blocks to simulate a virtual 3D level within a strictly 2D game. One creator in particular, Spu7Nix spent years of their life making one 3D level. Designing, optimizing, and perfecting it—just in time for the game to recieve a major update permanently changing the gameplay. The depth and complexity locked inside the bounds of a videogame that will eventually be lost to time are an honest testament to the artistry within the human spirit. They tested the rules of the game to their limits, finding new depth that the original creator could have never imagined, and in the end they left a part of themself in that level.  

 

 

 

I think that art is always a dialogue with rules. We start choosing rules for our art as soon as we commit to a medium. The physics constraining our chosen medium then begin to constrain us, shaping the direction that our creativity flows. We push and pull against the constraints, working toward something we might eventually call "finished."

I’ve always loved this about ASCII art: it’s rules are very rigid and yet totally arbitrary, crafted by milenia of linguistic development. While never making any great ASCII works myself, I think it is an excellent example of how when we create art we choose the rules we play by. Because if there are no rules to our art then how can it be distinguished from the random noise of the universe? We separate our creative works from the infinite canvas by choosing bounds. The rules bound the art.

Dada has also captured my imagination. Unlike other forms of art that play with the rules of form, color, tone, or what have you, dada plays with the rules themselves. The only guiding constraint is in the decision to say “this is art” or maybe “we are experiencing art now.”

I admire artists for their journey to find beauty at the extremes of constraint. Always seeking to imbue the physical world with inspiration in new and creative ways. Repeating and practicing craft with the dedication that it takes to seek perfection. Always searching for new depth.

Artists are rebels. They rebel even against their own artforms when familiarity drags into boredom. And in so doing, they find new beauties.

Art is built on rules, but my rebel heart knows:

Fuck the rules.