Sence

When I originally thought of this question I was thinking of how people make up different individual unique interpretations of songs when listening to music. I do agree with the idea, I listen to songs and I interpret them in my way. I believe songs are meant to speak to the listener, and if that means interpreting them differently then so be it. However, when thinking about interpreting music in different ways you naturally start thinking about when the original vision of the creator ceases to exist and gets lost in your interpretation of the song. I think this question can also be interpreted as “When does something stop being itself and become an entirely different thing”. While that is pretty ironic, given we are talking about interpreting things differently. I imagine thinking about it in that direction will lead to a different line of thought. So I don’t think I’ll entertain that interpretation much, though it might be a topic for a future post.

Now, back to the topic. I think the topic can be reduced to a few bite-sized points that mainly revolve around the same sort of idea. For starters, I believe an interpretation can only change so much before it becomes a vision. Which I believe is (theoretically) larger in scale than an interpretation. Simply interpreting something differently is different than having an entirely different vision of that thing that you could use to remake that thing in your vision. Think of video game modding. Depending on which video game we’re talking about, and which mods, The severity of the modifications made to a game can vary. But assuming we’re talking about a game with great modding potential where a (few) mod(s) can change the game so drastically that it looks and feels like a different game. At that point, the game when modified, feels like an entirely different game. It’s inherently different. With new mechanics and items and stats and so much more. You feel and regard the modified version of the game as a different game altogether. It’s not the same as the base vanilla game. It’s a different experience. One that is made in the vision of the developers of the modification(s) made for the game.

So the point is, interpretations stop being interpretations when they get too big at which point they become visions. Then they realized different experiences. But there remain two questions from that conclusion. First, how big is “too big” of an interpretation? And second, Should I, as the original creator of this song or game, allow and possibly encourage different interpretations let alone visions of my game that could very well be realized into different experiences that still carry the essence of my creation? Now, quantifying things in philosophy has never been easy. At least for me, but I’m going to try my best to try to answer the first question in a way that makes sense.

Now, I think one way someone can go about this is not one where they try to quantify, but rather just draw a line of when an interpretation becomes “too big” to be a mere interpretation. I believe that a line is drawn when the experience provided by creation is just an inherently different experience when interpreted a certain way. Then, the creation can just be realized in an entirely different vision.

As for the second question, I believe that some aspects of that question can depend on certain particularities of the creation. Like, a musician should probably be more lenient with different interpretations than a game developer would since music speaks to the listener more than (some) video games. However, the main point would probably be to encourage whatever gets your message across as the creator of your creation. And at the same time, there shouldn’t be any qualms with different realizations of your creation realized in different visions than yours. In the end, people saw your vision and were inspired to realize their own.

In the end, it’s a very interesting topic to think about. While I didn’t have a lot to say about it, I enjoyed writing this post and I enjoyed thinking about the topic. All the examples that I mentioned in this post (and probably all works that can be interpreted in different ways) are art. Art is subjective in many ways and can also be understood in many ways. And with that, I thank anyone who has read this post to the end.

Thank you for reading.