Slipknot percussionist and artistic director M. Shawn “Clown” Crahan has opened up about his lifelong ardour for video video games and creativity in a brand new interview with The Escapist, revealing that these pursuits have not too long ago culminated within the launch of his personal customized Minecraft server, titled Vernearth.
In accordance with Crahan, whose gaming historical past stretches again to the times of Atari and Intellivision, the venture just isn’t motivated by cash, however by what he describes as a deeply non secular and artistic necessity.
Through the years, Crahan says video games have helped him fulfill that artistic urge in lots of varieties — from modding first-person shooters like Quake, to embracing the absurd freedom of Goat Simulator, to discovering neighborhood in MMORPGs corresponding to World of Warcraft.
Describing Vernearth, Crahan stated it is “the most important artwork piece I’ve made in my whole life,” later including: “It obtains music. Scoring and music. It obtains coding, utility, imaginative and prescient. It is proper in my very own tradition… it is like a meet and greet, however as a substitute of you go, I get to hang around with you all evening and construct a tunnel.”
As for selecting Minecraft as the inspiration, Crahan emphasised his long-standing respect for the sport: “I come from nothing however respect and love for the genius of Minecraft. I’ve 4 kids who grew up on it… I used to be within the mall and acquired Minecraft the primary day it was launched. I’ve watched all of the updates.”
Crahan additionally shared that the open-ended nature of the sport helped him course of profound private grief, together with the loss of a kid, by permitting him to construct, discover, and create on his personal phrases.
Past Vernearth, the dialog additionally touched on Crahan‘s views on synthetic intelligence. Whereas acknowledging widespread issues, Crahan stated he has chosen to embrace the expertise: “The way in which I take a look at it, it’s a professor in my pocket who solely desires to do what I ask it. Its solely job is to make me completely happy, me, not you, not the world, nobody.”
He went on to counsel that AI might be used creatively, corresponding to feeding 1000’s of poems written in his personal phrases right into a system to generate new vocal approaches. Crahan even joked that this might threaten conventional producers: “What is the distinction between me pulling out my pocket producer… or me making an attempt to get a well-known producer that may not even work with me and will probably value me $150,000… who will solely give me one or two methods — I am not mentioning any names!”
The remark gave the impression to be a tongue-in-cheek jab at Rick Rubin, who produced Slipknot‘s Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) in 2004 — a collaboration the band has traditionally described as irritating because of Rubin’s hands-off strategy.
Doubling down on his perspective, Crahan framed AI as an inevitable evolution: “Our era goes to hem and haw about AI. Do you assume some child in fourth grade who’s grown up on it agrees with you and I about how horrible AI is? That is the carried out device of life at present.”
He concluded with a broader reflection: “You and I’ll by no means come up with the money for or energy to sway anyone away from what life is doing. Life is shifting ahead. And AI is a part of it. AI is the least of our worries on this planet. We at the moment are the worst of our worries and have at all times been the worst of our worries.”
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