2 The importance of Art and the human experience

Art, I would argue, is important, not because it does anything special or new, but because it connects us and reminds us of what makes us human.

If you are making a film you can't make the audience get shot in the head, but you can simulate it, you can make the audience *feel* like they've been shot in the head, by using the right framing and viewer psychology, take this with a grain of salt, I am after all, not a film buff or director, but you can still make it feel like you yourself have been shot in the head, the few neurons left firing into a void they cannot explain, left to grasp at the open air in a way unintended, by you at least.

Art can also make you empathize with not just sad moments but also happy ones, art, especially interactive art can make you experience the birth of a child, the kindness of a stranger you don't know before you freeze on an empty street, the isolation of a lone survivor left to pick up the pieces and escape a desolate island before the wilderness and his or her own basic needs consume them. Two of these are based on "games" I have played before, but I don't think that video games should be called games, specifically because they put you into another world, another's shoes and sometimes another's joy. Videogames are art because they allow us to empathize with others and make another person a part of ourselves.

If you were to walk one hundred miles, how would you do it? Would you say "screw that" and buy a car to drive a hundred miles? Would you take the bus? Or would you, hungry, isolated, and afraid, walk one hundred miles as your shoe disintegrate and your legs begin to give out as you slowly starve before seeing the flagpole at the end of the road. Videogames give us an outlet to answer that question, it just means you need to program it in.

Books can do this too. Writing is the art of passing knowledge and experience through time, and I mean that literally, we have books from hundreds of years ago, these books allowed us to build society as we know it, they allowed us to build digital books, that could be stored, sorted, and read remotely. But like all art, books too are imperfect and I would argue no art could ever be perfect, because perfection is unique, what makes me say "this is perfect" is different than what would make you say that.

Pain too, is important and many put their pain into their art, and it shows, pained artists always have some level of edginess that can't be replicated.