What I'm looking for in art.

Aug. 8th, 2025 08:15 pm
andrewducker: (No Time Travel)
[personal profile] andrewducker
I remember seeing a game which looked amazing. The whole world was destructible, there were thousands of different combinations of things to find in it, and they'd put a ton of effort in to making it a fun experience.

I played it for a couple of hours, and got bored of it, because it turns out that that isn't enough for me. Because what they'd made was also a Rogue-Like. Which is to say that it completely resets back to the start when you die, and that start randomly creates the world that you play through.

And I don't want to play through a whole different world each time, where everything is different to the last time I played. What I want for a solo game is for someone to lovingly craft a world, and then for me to learn that world inside out as I try to beat the various challenges in it*.

A few months ago [personal profile] danieldwilliam sent me this link to a Neal Stephenson essay. And while I didn't agree with him about everything, the idea of "microdecisions" has stuck with me. That what makes art art isn't the idea (although good ideas are important) it's all of the ways that that idea was reified into the finished work.

A key quote:
Since the entire point of art is to allow an audience to experience densely packed human-made microdecisions—which is, at root, a way of connecting humans to other humans—the kinds of “art”-making AI systems we are seeing today are confined to the lowest tier of the grid and can never produce anything more interesting than, at best, a slab of marble pulled out of the quarry. You can stare at the patterns in the marble all you want. They are undoubtedly complicated. You might even find them beautiful. But you’ll never see anything human there, unless it’s your own reflection in the machine-polished surface.

And if that works for you - if staring at the swirling polished surfaces is what makes you happy, then I'm delighted for you. I've certainly been very entertained by generated patterns myself in the past. And I can totally be distracted by it for short periods of time. But when I'm looking for something actually *engaging* then right now it doesn't work for me. I need something human** in there.

Another example of this - movies. The more that special effects became good enough that movies could show me *anything* the more I wanted things with *character* in them. Things where you could tell that someone (or some group of someones) had really wanted to get something out of their brains so that other people could see the world the way they see it. I was discussing with [personal profile] swampers the other day that we really appreciated the movies that A24 are putting out, because even when they're a bit of a mess they're a really interesting mess that someone had obviously cared about. The trailer for Eternity looks like it would absolutely annoy me in parts, but it would do so because I'd be experiencing someone's thoughts about the world, and I might learn something about them, and maybe also about me for engaging with it.

*Multiplayer games are different. When I played a ton of Minecraft with Julie I was happy for her to set the direction of what to make, and then I'd treat that as my challenge. But sandboxes with no set challenge don't interest me. And I have played a chunk of games like Slay The Spire or Balatro or Dead Cells . But even then I'd play for enough to get the hang of it and then stop, usually without actually beating it, because "Go back to the beginning and beat that for the 500th time so that you can spend 10 seconds losing the end before starting again" isn't much fun for me. Even with Hades, which does a great job of giving you a meta-story around each run that grows as you replay, I got all the way to fight Hades, lost near-instantly, and the thought of replaying the entire game for 20 minutes just to lose to him again filled me with exhaustion and I haven't been back since. If Noita had a "save" function and a set of specifically designed levels that were fun and were definitely beatable *and* a random world generator you could use once you'd played those levels then I'd probably have invested a lot of time in it.

**I am not against the idea that eventually AIs will achieve consciousness and attempt to impart something to us through the medium of art. And that would interest me. I just don't think that the generators we're currently investing in are that.

Photo cross-post

Aug. 8th, 2025 12:26 am
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


Last ever nursery drop off for Gideon.

He has Monday and Tuesday in a holiday club and then from Wednesday he's in school!

We've had a child in this nursery since 2019, it's going to be weird to not be there any more.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Photo cross-post

Aug. 7th, 2025 12:27 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


It was bath day, and I needed a physical book to read in the bath.

Thoughtfully my friends have written one and it was published a few days ago.

(The Needfire, MK Hardy. I'm two chapters in and rather enjoying it.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Thames Invader

Aug. 6th, 2025 07:14 pm
squirmelia: (Default)
[personal profile] squirmelia
Mosaic made from pottery sherds found on the Thames foreshore. (With a permit.)

Space invader mosaic

Devil's Toenails and other Fossils

Aug. 5th, 2025 07:58 pm
squirmelia: (Default)
[personal profile] squirmelia
I found a lot of devil's toenails when I visited Marske. They are also called Gryphaea, and are a genus of extinct oyster. They may be around 200 million years old.

Devil's toenails

More photos of fossils )
squirmelia: (Default)
[personal profile] squirmelia
Low tide at Battersea was at 15:12, which meant I had a morning to do other things.

I went to see the Anselm Kiefer Van Gogh exhibition at the White Cube and still regretted not seeing the Finnegan’s Wake exhibition a few years ago. I then went to see the Ugo Rondinone - the rainbow body at Sadie Coles, even though the gallery’s website had said the gallery was closed.

I ate Hong Kong French toast ice-cream and strawberry clotted cream scone ice-cream, spotted a few Invaders, and then headed to the foreshore.

I hadn’t visited the foreshore at Battersea before and got off the bus, and ended up on the foreshore on the north side of Battersea Bridge as opposed to the south side, which I intended! So I guess that was actually Chelsea and not actually Battersea at all. Somehow I hadn't noticed.

Anyway, I walked down the Beaufort Stairs and it was a little muddy, but under Battersea Bridge there were a lot of big pieces of broken pottery. I only picked a few up and resisted the rest.

The foreshore was quite litter filled and seemed like some sewage had washed up there.

I noticed two other people appear on the foreshore, down steps the other side of the bridge, and that seemed less muddy. Those people quickly went away and I was the only person on the foreshore there for most of the time.

I met a man with a stick who asked me if I’d found anything and I told him I’d found a doorbell, and he said he hopes to find a sword one day. He also said I should get a broomstick, so that I can just poke at things and don’t have to bend over all the time.

Although I picked up the doorbell, I didn’t pick up the pregnancy test, the pink balloon nor the walkie talkie, nor the plastic folder with Chinese writing on (I translated it though and found it was about what documents you need for immigration.). I also left the bit of shoe. I didn’t find out if the Thames was pregnant.

I spent time thinking about a story with these things in it. I then thought about what I could do with the doorbell - wire it up and make it play sounds of the Thames when you press it perhaps.

I walked along further and noticed Battersea Power Station on the opposite side of the river.

I found a large piece of a glass torpedo bottle, which may have been from 1840s - 1870s. They were designed so that you had to lie them on their side. Unfortunately I cracked it more while I was cleaning it, which was sad.

There were a lot of shells on the beach, piles and piles of them.

I found a fishing weight, probably recent.

I found three wooden objects- one looks like a fork, the other has letters on it, and the third I am unsure of entirely.

I found a pirate’s legs! They are the legs of a pirate that was in a Kinder Surprise egg in 2008. It would have looked like this: https://en.todocoleccion.net/rubber-pvc-figures/kinder-sorpresa-2008-monster-pirates-donnie-ref-mpg-nv-110~x52490537

I found a fossilised sea urchin! A echinoid! It is possibly about 80 million years old. I am quite excited by this one.

I found a piece of Lego, jagged and broken.

I found a piece of glass that I thought said “Bat” on it, but I now think “Bate”, so perhaps it said “Bateman”.

Mudlarking finds - 31.1

Wooden mudlarking finds - 31.2

Torpedo bottle

Photo cross-post

Aug. 3rd, 2025 11:33 am
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


Spent the day at a kids festival. Sophia's favourite act was the fake Taylor Swift.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Photo cross-post

Aug. 2nd, 2025 07:27 am
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


We have gone in search of nature.
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Birthday giving

Jul. 31st, 2025 10:31 pm
andrewducker: (livejournal blackout)
[personal profile] andrewducker
It's Rowling's birthday so I've just donated £25 to Mermaids to support trans kids.

Life with two kids: death

Jul. 30th, 2025 11:51 am
andrewducker: (psychodrama)
[personal profile] andrewducker
Two days ago Sophia told us her thoughts about death. She had clearly thought about it a lot, worked through various things, and come to some interesting conclusions.

Unfortunately she told us all of this in front of Gideon, who has now spent two days bursting into tears intermittently and telling us he doesn't want to die.

I'm sure he'll also work through it, but in the meantime it's hard not to feel sorry for him. I suspect that starting school in two weeks and being away from home for a week aren't helping, as he's also intermittently telling us he wants to be back home.

I'm confused about Palestine and Gaza

Jul. 29th, 2025 06:11 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker
I'm possibly being dim here, but I can't see what "Recognising Palestine" does for the current humanitarian apocalypse.

(I'm not against it, but the government seem to be presenting it as somehow connected and I feel like I'm missing something.)
andrewducker: (slogans)
[personal profile] andrewducker
It's raining outside and Sophia was looking bored so I suggested she have a dance party

At which point she grabbed her cousin and they've spent the last half an hour decorating the dancefloor and designing tickets.

No dancing has yet occurred.

Photo cross-post

Jul. 28th, 2025 03:47 pm
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


We've gone on holiday on purpose!

(Us, my brothers, our families, my parents, and their dogs. Seven adults and five kids altogether. Staying in a rented house half an hour out of Southampton for a week.)
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

Photo cross-post

Jul. 28th, 2025 07:07 am
andrewducker: (Default)
[personal profile] andrewducker


The invader has been captured!
Original is here on Pixelfed.scot.

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