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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: I just got my feedback from the intro comp...
Message-ID: <GELCt1.JLp@world.std.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2001 03:10:13 GMT
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Sasha <black_coffee_2001@hotmail.com> wrote:
>But here are the words of precious consolation, my friend: it does not
>make a halfpenny of difference. Or at least, it shouldn't. What I
>maintain (I actually took this up with ES on IF MUD shortly before
>submitting my entry to her comp... should have known better, I guess)
>is that the readers can never grasp the entire complexity of the
>author's work, since the work in its integrity exists only in the
>author's mind. Therefore (and for other reasons) the creative work
>done by the reader is secondary; and anyway, one should only write for
>his own aesthetic pleasure.

Obviously, that's one opinion. If that's your opinion, though, it seems
odd that you would bother to submit things to a competition.

Here's another opinion, shifting to the general "you": if you create a
work with the intention of sharing it with an audience, it is your *job*
to provoke certain reactions in the audience. If you put something in
your work with the intent of people "getting it", and nobody "gets it",
it is a failure of your effort, rather than a failure of the audience.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in IF: for example a "guess the verb"
puzzle.

Of course you can create a work without intending to share it with an
audience; but if you do, why share it?

And speaking of submitting things to competitions, perhaps this
philosophical issue is one of the sources of my problem with the
attitude of some authors towards their annual comp submissions,
when games that are widely agreed "should not have been submitted"
are submitted anyway: perhaps the author is holding the philosophy
that the "reader" experience is secondary. As an author and a
reader/player, I find this distasteful; I *do* create things for
myself--and I don't share them, except to extremely interested
parties (e.g. significant others or very close friends). If everybody
else is creating things carefully tailored to creating a particular
experience for the reader/player-who-is-not-the-author, it seems
rather a waste of time to submit something which is only intended
to be comprehensible to the author.

Which reminds me of something musician Robert Fripp once said suggesting
why musicians should prefer to keep it a hobby and not go commercial.
It's extremely simple and seems to me very insightful, and it is this.
When you create "art" for yourself, we can count the number of 2-entity
relationships involved, and it's just one: you and the art. It's nice
and simple. If you now create art for an audience, we count the number
of 2-entity relationships, and it's exploded into three, with the
addition of the-audience-and-the-work and the-audience-and-you. Now
when you create, you have to not just account for what gives you pleasure,
but you have to consider what effect you want to have on the audience
and how to create it; and moreover you find yourself interacting on
some level with the audience directly. (This is more obvious for
performers of live music, but it can be seen even in this thread,
as authors express dissatisfaction to their audience over the
direct feedback they received from that same audience.)

If you throw commercial production into the mix, you add a new entity,
"the industry", and you blow out the 2-entity relationships to a total
of six, adding artist-and-industry (contracts, monetary payments or
lack thereof), the-work-and-industry ("we don't think this is commerical
enough; could you change..."), and audience-and-industry ("it costs HOW
much?" and "I hate copy protection")...

Which is why every time somebody talks about making IF commercially
viable, I shudder.

Personally, for me, the sweet spot is including an audience.
I do a fair amount of music that is intended for my ears only,
but that's mostly because I've never been able to put myself
in the listener's shoes and hear it from their point of view,
so I have little clue how to do it. For writing, I enjoy the
challenge of having an effect on an audience. I can write a
clever twist into a story, but I'll never be surprised by it.

None of that means I'm above posting something explaining what I
was trying to accomplish with a work that failed--see my reviews
of the walkthrough comp games--but I'm willing to accept that the
failure is mine, and such a posting is probably more aimed at
authors than players--"learn from this" rather than "you stupid fools".
(This is not to put words in your mouth: I'm talking about *my* post.)

SeanB
