The Shape of Infinity

Voice Actors:

Sources:
Piranesi (Susanna Clarke, 2020)
The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays (Marguerite Yourcenar, 1962)
Oriental Tales (Marguerite Yourcenar, 1938)
Marguerite Yourcenar: Piranesi at Petite Plaisance (Little)
The Piranesi Effect (Stone, Long, et al., 2015)
Time in the Art of Roman Opalka, Tatsuo Miyajima, and Rene Rietmeyer (De Jongh, 2010)

Games Shown: Manifold Garden, Gorogoa, The Library of Babel, (additional footage provided by Baby Boundo)

Music Used (Chronologically): Trust Fall (Manifold Garden), Pilgrimage (Gorogoa), Castle in the Mist (ICO), Astraea, Tendrils, Ancestral, Bloom, House of Leaves (Manifold Garden), Mii Plaza (Wii), Oculi (Manifold Garden), Intro Radio (Half Life: Alyx), Chiasm, Environments (Gris), Strange Worlds (Manifold Garden), Piranha Plant Lullaby- Piano (Super Mario 64),

Description Credit: Piranesi at the Molo, Amy Bagan

[razbuten]

Like two days ago one of my friends asked me if I had played Manifold Garden. I hadn’t, so I looked it up and my first thought after seeing a screenshot was “this is a Jacob Geller game.”

[FrancisBass]

i always think of the hitchhiker's guide quote: "It wasn’t infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity — distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself"

[CasualGraph]

There's a wikipedia page titled "List of numbers". The first sentence on the page reads:
"This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness."

[Viewsk]

"So Jacob, did you like Manifold Garden?"
"We ourselves are nothing. Shapeless, voiceless, shadowless..."
"Uh huh..."

[Ami-Wishes]

God, this video was incredible. I'm the gameplay programmer of Manifold Garden, and this video, man... I don't even have words! It's a fantastic collection and analysis of a bunch of different versions of infinity, and seeing something I worked so closely on, with William on, included in that list... It feels kinda incredible.


I've been watching your videos for a while, and you just keep getting better and better. Looking forward to the next one!

[Baddylongway]

"...his world is infinite. He knows that there are flights of stairs much higher than he could ever reach, secrets hidden below the violent tides. And what he does with this understanding isn't to despair, or resign himself to a familiar corner, but to embrace the gift that is a world that will never stop showing him new things."

That's just life. You just described the experience of being a mortal being in a world where even the tangible, finite, human-made reality is far too vast to grasp for the mortal soul. Whoof. Thanks, man.

[jherboss]

Thank god he’s back, i was starting to have a normal mental health for a bit

[OnyxSkiesXIX]

I love seeing House of Leaves as the only book in that stack with its spine out but then it’s not mentioned in the video. Details like that are so intriguing.

[williamlight]

I love how falling down seems like ascending at the same time.

[backslash]

I love this.
Being a physicist, I work with infinity almost second nature. It is frighteningly easy to capture it with maths - it really is just a symbol, and because we made up maths, we just also made up rules on how infinity would work. Ain't no one ever gonna disprove any of those anyways.

I think it is the perfect conversational partner to the artistic dialogue with infinity.

I'll never be more frightened by anything more. Infinity in physics, to me, always seemed - quite literally - like real-life cosmic horror. The more you ask questions, the more the answers drive you mad. You start to uncover infinities where they really shouldn't be.

[pedrobulby]

I love how you're like "i juste make videos about videogames" on twitter but you're really making videos about fine arts, architecture, philosophy, History, litterature, science ... And videogames.
That's Always incredible writing.

[ernestolombardo]

More than talking directly/mathematically about something as baffling and unexplainable/unknowable as infinity in your video, you talked about artistic representations of infinity. What a unique, refreshing approach. Also, I'm getting Manifold Garden.

[Koliflower]

I’m sorry, but... “airborne burial with no fear of ever hitting the ground” is probably one of the greatest lines of poetry Jacob has ever written.

[eldritchthing]

I am so happy you talked about Opałka, I think he is genuinely one of the most interesting artists in my country's history, and it upsets me whenever I hear about him in the context of "hurr durr stupid modern art that doesn't mean anything and requires no skill" because not only that point of view is utterly stupid, but also I feel like of all conceptual abstract artists, the weight of his project is the most blatant. The insane dedication, the "march towards death" aspect, the meaningfulness is undeniable to me and I'm happy to see it appreciated.

[chiaralocatelli]

OK BUT the fact that you had House of Leaves in the background and never mentioned it just fills me with a sort of deep existential dread and fuck why do I have vertigo from watching a video essay

[NjordsWolf]

All of Jacob’s videos are marvelous, but this one really did it for me in a different kind of way. It made me think back to my childhood when I first got into writing D&D campaigns. I wrote about many worlds with distinct histories and people, and I strive to make each interesting and distinct in its own right. There was one element, however, that I kept constant through every world, and that was an infinite library. It didn’t exist anywhere in particular. It was a place that could only be reached accidentally. Stretched forever in every direction, and was infinitely varied, with equally bizarre and marvelous ecosystems carving out niches everywhere, forever. It was an abyss in every direction, and falling was a primary mode of transport. It’s interesting to me, the similarities and differences in how people tackle the infinite. I had never heard of these brilliant artists before, though I’m certainly intrigued now. I first learned of infinite libraries in reading Sir Pratchett’s Diskworld. I wonder why it is that libraries are most often the spaces endowed with eternity, because in the real world they’re fleeting, as everything is. Perhaps it’s because libraries carry the immense weight of time, storing mostly volumes of those who’ve passed on, and will come to carry volumes yet to be. Maybe it’s because people who think of infinity love to read.

I don’t know if you’ll read this Jacob, but if you ever tackle this topic again, I’d like to encourage you to explore, however briefly it may be, the mathematics of infinity. I never lost my love of studying the infinite, and in fact it’s what drove me to become a mathematician. Math has tamed infinity in wild ways, but in others it has shown infinity to be more incomprehensible than anyone could have previously dreamed. I highly encourage reading the book “Infinity in the Mind”, by Rudy Rucker. It’s a fabulous introduction the study of infinity that’s very light on the maths, and it gives a marvelous historical perspective on our species struggle with eternity. Keep up the marvelous work. We need more people like you around.

[elliottvantonder]

This is Piranesian effect is exactly what I encountered in a recent playthrough of bloodborne where I made sure to stop after every encounter to whip out the monocle to see if I could spy the chiselled head of the cathedral clocktower above; the faint pale shape of the church of the good challice nestled deep in the valley; or perhaps the giant tree growing behind the source of the dream.

The sheer absurdity of Yarnham seems to be that it is build on top of a series of telescoping cylindrical platforms without exits or windows. They thrust out of the valley in a manner that suggests that they extend far under ground. These tower-like platforms are clustered at such varying altitudes that they should be instantly distinct, but it seems that the yharnamites have so thoroughly paved their tops with pointed towers, connecting bridges and cluttered streets that the forest disappears between the trees.

Obviously the platforms that can be seen from the hunter's dream are representative of this reality. I always thought they were the dreams of other hunters.

[quinquangular]

this video has a lot in common with a philosophical school called phenomenology, its like a study of time but based on how we experience it rather than its passage. the "being toward death" thing is really prominent in that school of thought.

[buzzhaterz]

for some reason the discussion about the wandering of the library as a holy task, as something one approaches with reverence, everything about this video reminds me of "you are not obligated to complete the work, neither are you free to abandon it"...a conversation with the infinite. what a lovely video as always :) thank you for sharing this

[yosha]

I had always feared infinity, that which does not end just never seems natural, something that couldn't possibly exist. But one day I looked at the night sky and came to a simple realization, the universe I'm in right now is infinite and even though it seems finite from this point of view it stretches far beyond that (of course I knew the universe was infinite but never really digested it) and I just stared and stared hoping to see further into the small scope of the universe I possessed at the time, and then instead of a growing anxiousness, I felt a far stronger relief from this experience. There is something cathartic about the infinity of the universe, within it anything is possible and yet almost none of it will be observed, it'll keep existing and existing with no one to explore it, and even if someone were able too they would never be able to see it all, a universe of infinite wonders and beauty, of infinite horrors and ugliness that stretches beyond imagination and bogles the mind. But from that day forward instead of anxiety and stress, infinity brought me a certain sick joy and can't explain to this day.

Just wanted to share hoped you liked reading it.