是不材之木也，无所可用，故能若是之寿。— 莊子

It is a useless tree, good for nothing, and that is why it has been able to live so long. — Zhuangzi

And what are some other valuable things in life that aren't trying to be useful?

A Free Website

I thought of this story when I stumbled across the Art & Culture Experiment website from Google. It's a collection of interactive games and experiments that combine art, tech, and AI. And it's free. Meaning no business model, no paywall, no ads. Just… there.

Here are a few I tried, and they were all inspiring and fun to play with.

[fig 1] Art Palette: Discover artwork that has similar color palettes, a great place for inspiration.

[fig 2] Learning Light: A guided, hands-on lesson (Left) in recreating the lighting of a painting (Right).

[fig 3] Mixtape: Feed art into AI and get music back — hearing what a painting "sounds like".

Art for Everyone

Soon, I realized there was a common theme for all those games: they are bridging art and the general public.

Historically, art has served the elites who had advantages in wealth, education, and geography. Being able to enjoy Caravaggio's painting requires access to a museum that has his painting and the background knowledge of the chiaroscuro technique from education.

But now with this website, anyone can have fun and be inspired playing with art.

Back to the Crooked Tree

If you still remember the crooked tree story at the beginning: the crooked tree wasn't trying to shelter anyone, but because it was left to simply exist, it's able to shade a thousand oxen. These little experiments are the same. No one's measuring their impact. And maybe that's exactly why they work.