Sam Gentle.com

Manifesto

I need to create beautiful things.

Need is as I defined it previously: something beyond a want. Something that can't be satisfied by a decent attempt, a good try, or anything short of actual success. Something that's necessary for me to live, either because I wouldn't be alive without it, or because what's alive wouldn't be me.

Create means both creation and creativity. For something to be creation it has to involve bringing new things into existence, and for it to be creative it must involve that wonderful spark of ingenuity, that sense that it's opened up a new world or made the old one much simpler.

Beautiful is, in some sense, just my subjective sense of aesthetics. But I also believe in objective beauty. Something can be beautiful in function by achieving its purpose so well that it becomes an ode to the platonic ideal of that purpose. And something can be beautiful in concept by bringing together ideas and connections in such a profound way that experiencing it gives you a new understanding, even enlightenment.

A thing is an object that exists outside of myself, with some kind of tangible, reality-based nature. A balloon animal is a thing, but an idea for a new video game is not a thing. An idea for a new video game that you write down is a thing, but the thing is the writing, not the idea. And, of course, it's the plural: not one thing, but many things; enough that you don't think of them individually, but rather as an awesome mass of stuff rolling together and picking up speed as it goes.

I've been thinking about this for a while; different wordings, different concepts, different qualities that could make the cut. But I keep coming back to this one. I think if there's anything that's defined my work, not just over the last few years, but back as early as I can remember, it's this. I need to create beautiful things.