{"id":64837,"date":"2026-01-17T16:12:51","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T22:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=64837"},"modified":"2026-01-17T16:34:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T22:34:00","slug":"slipknots-clown-shawn-crahan-building-a-minecraft-world-for-gamers-with-a-theme-of-off-kilter-realm-of-danger-and-mayhem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=64837","title":{"rendered":"Slipknot\u2019s Clown, Shawn Crahan, Is Building A Minecraft World For Gamers With A Theme Of Off Kilter Realm Of Danger And Mayhem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In an article from The Escapist, Crahan goes into details about why he’s creating this art experiment, what it means and where it’s going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Paul McNally:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shawn \u201cClown\u201d Crahan doesn\u2019t talk about games like a celebrity who\u2019s been handed a controller for a photo op. The Slipknot founding member talks like someone who\u2019s spent decades living in the overlap between art and obsession, the kind of person who sees a digital world less as \u201ccontent\u201d and more as an engine for coping, creating, and connecting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m 56 years old,\u201d he tells me when we meet, and when he says he was \u201cthere when I lost my best friend to video games,\u201d it isn\u2019t a moral panic. It\u2019s the opposite: a marker of the moment his generation tilted from woods-and-bikes childhoods into screens and systems. Back in late-70s\/early-80s Iowa, games arrived like portals. \u201cMy best friend had Atari. I had Intellivision,\u201d he says, brightening immediately, and if you grew up the same way, you can hear the grin in it. \u201cIntellivision was the best.\u201d My ears had pricked up at that, as I was also team Intellivision against the wave of Atari kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Clown\u2019s gaming DNA is part tabletop too. He grew up around the kind of board games \u201cthat make Risk<\/em> look like nothing,\u201d and around role-playing. \u201cMy best friend played D&D,\u201d he says, but he always felt more physically wired, less muscle-memory grind, more sensation, more discovery, more what happens if I do this?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That question, what happens if I do this?<\/em>, is basically the thesis statement for Vernearth, the Minecraft realm he\u2019s been building into a full-on art project. It\u2019s also why, when he talks about the modern games industry, he doesn\u2019t sound nostalgic so much as disappointed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been around the corporate world my whole life,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing wrong with the corporate world, but it ends up being a bunch of nerds and people that just don\u2019t want to look at it another way.\u201d When he says \u201cnerds,\u201d he clarifies he doesn\u2019t mean it as an insult, more as tunnel vision. \u201cThere\u2019s no room for the error. There\u2019s no room for the glitch. There\u2019s no room for the exploring.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He grew up wanting secret rooms. He grew up loving the ugly magic of early arcade weirdness, when breaking the rules wasn\u2019t a scandal, it was the point. \u201cI grew up on Donkey Kong<\/em> arcade games where you\u2019d take the player and throw him over on the side in the air while the barrels rolled down\u2026 that was a glitch. So I grew up on glitches and weird manufacturing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now, at the end of 2025, he thinks the industry\u2019s terror of that kind of chaos is going to cost it. \u201cIt\u2019s very transparent that everyone just copy-copy\u201d he says, and then he shrugs it off with the sort of cold confidence only someone with decades of survival-bred success behind him can deliver: \u201cIt\u2019s good though, because they\u2019ll all fail. They\u2019ll all lose all those millions of money from copying each other\u2026 that\u2019s not what life is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He isn\u2019t doing Vernearth because he wants to make a safer Minecraft. He\u2019s doing it because he wants to make a stranger one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From Quake to Goat Simulator: why absurdity matters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Clown\u2019s tastes track a certain lineage: games as systems you can bend, worlds you can alter, places where the player isn\u2019t just completing tasks but testing reality<\/em>. \u201cOnce I got onto Wolfenstein<\/em>, it took me to Doom<\/em>, which took me to Doom 2<\/em>,\u201d he says, \u201cwhen Quake<\/em> hit, it revolutionized my brain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For him, Quake<\/em> wasn\u2019t just a shooter it was a cultural event because it opened a door. \u201cQuake<\/em> released OpenGL to the public to go ahead and have fun,\u201d he says, and he remembers thinking he\u2019d \u201cgone to heaven.\u201d Because for someone wired like Crahan, the thrill isn\u2019t just aiming. It\u2019s possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He tells a story that perfectly explains his fascination with player ingenuity: modders taking the code for a Rottweiler enemy and swapping it into the grenade launcher so the gun fired dogs instead of explosives. \u201cI would get the grenade launcher, I would get the ammo of Rottweiler, and I\u2019d unload seven or eight Rottweilers at my best friend,\u201d he laughs, marvelling less at the kill and more at the idea that somebody even thought to do it. \u201cI don\u2019t even care that he\u2019s dying. I\u2019m like, can you believe this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s his lens: games as a living culture, not a fixed product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it\u2019s why he rates something like Goat Simulator<\/em> so highly. He calls it \u201cso ridiculous and so out of control that you almost can\u2019t find yourself in it, but when you do, it becomes this epiphany of potential.\u201d The absurdity is a feature, not a bug. He says it is like a Sharknado<\/em> movie, proof that someone, somewhere, still has the balls to make something with no shame and no safety rails. \u201cPeople want crazy out-of-the-box thinking to stay loose in this reality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Minecraft, grief, and why Vernearth exists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

He speaks about Minecraft with something close to reverence. \u201cI come from nothing but respect and love for the genius of Minecraft,\u201d he says, and it\u2019s not a band-guy talking point. It\u2019s parental memory: \u201cI have four children who grew up on it\u2026 I was in the mall and bought Minecraft the first day it was released. I\u2019ve watched all the updates.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His kids didn\u2019t just play it; they revealed<\/em> it. \u201cAll four of my kids are different,\u201d he says. \u201cSome of them liked redstone, some of them didn\u2019t. Some liked color palettes, the other ones couldn\u2019t care less.\u201d Minecraft, to him, is the rare platform that doesn\u2019t demand one type of brain. It accepts them all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he says it plainly, and the tone changes: \u201cUnfortunately, we had lost a child.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He doesn\u2019t turn the conversation into spectacle, and neither will I. But he\u2019s direct about how this feeds into what he\u2019s building. When grief happened, he went looking for ways to survive it, and Minecraft became one of them. \u201cI was finding many avenues to help me grieve in the way that I need to,\u201d he says, and long story short, it led to him looking at Minecraft \u201cfundamentally,\u201d not just as a game but as a framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not using it because it\u2019s the biggest game ever,\u201d he says. \u201cThe potential of it, because of coding and utility, it\u2019s sort of like a giant cracked-out OpenGL situation for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s Vernearth in one sentence<\/a>: Minecraft as a living OpenGL playground, turned into an art project that can hold emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He describes last night\u2019s session like it\u2019s the most normal thing in the world: dozens of people online, five or six building closely with him, collaborating, altering each other\u2019s work without ego. \u201cThey were letting me build and then they were helping me,\u201d he says. \u201cI was warming them up to the idea: you can change any of my stuff, add to it, let\u2019s work together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For someone living through heavy thoughts, that kind of co-creation isn\u2019t just \u201ccommunity engagement.\u201d It\u2019s medicine. \u201cIf I\u2019m going to live in a dark place and I\u2019m going to grieve and I need to be in my imagination,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s flawless.\u201d A girl on the server mentions she\u2019s in the UK,  maybe even in Manchester like me,  and he has that small, stunned thought you only get when life suddenly feels impossibly big and strangely intimate at the same time: \u201cThis is everything I ever dreamt about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he lays out the origin story like a myth: \u201cShawn Crahan, the Clown\u2026 bought his own server, employed the engine of Minecraft onto it, uploaded it, started bringing builds I\u2019ve been doing for years, and brought in a whole team of people that can think like myself.\u201d The result: \u201cAnd then I created a world. It\u2019s called Vernearth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Vernearth, he explains, \u201cVernearth is the solar world\u2026 and the Oblivion is where you\u2019re walking around.\u201d But what makes it different isn\u2019t just the lore, it\u2019s his impulse to treat Minecraft\u2019s building blocks like raw materials. \u201cI get to look at the block,\u201d he says, \u201cand I get to change it. I get to make utility.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s building his own biomes, his own blocks, his own mobs, \u201cmy own NPCs, my own sky,\u201d coded in a way that he insists is collaborative rather than parasitic. \u201cI choose to live hand-in-hand with the platform,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not trying to turn it on its back. I\u2019m trying to be an option.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And crucially, he says the payoff isn\u2019t cash. \u201cI\u2019m utilizing the things I love for major reward that isn\u2019t monetary. It\u2019s purely spiritual.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That line matters, because Crahan\u2019s idea of Vernearth is less \u201cSlipknot Minecraft server\u201d and more \u201cthe biggest art piece I\u2019ve made in my entire life.\u201d Not because it\u2019s massive, but because it lets him combine everything. \u201cIt obtains music. Scoring and music. It obtains coding, utility, vision,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s right in my own culture\u2026 it\u2019s like a meet and greet, but instead of you go, I get to hang out with you all night and build a tunnel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the most Clown sentence imaginable: a meet-and-greet where you build a tunnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even on tour with Slipknot Vernearth doesn\u2019t get paused, it just gets squeezed into the margins between chaos and showtime. Crahan tells me \u201cI\u2019m known to literally have my stuff on while I\u2019m making things and be told it\u2019s time and go. Not because he\u2019s trying to be some tortured workaholic, but because creating is how he carries the weight without dumping it on the people around him. \u201cI got a lot on my mind, man\u2026 and I don\u2019t want to dump that on my wife\u2026 I don\u2019t want to dump that on the fans\u2026 I want to love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI try to recreate creation\u201d: Clown\u2019s world is designed to be broken<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A lot of creators talk about community, then quietly panic when the community behaves like\u2026 people. Crahan seems to crave it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He starts telling me about a Slipknot<\/a>-branded block, a tribal S design, with variants handed out by different members of the team, and how immediately the community did what communities do: they stole them off each other. \u201cEvery time we give them away, everybody\u2019s stealing them,\u201d he says, and rather than sounding angry, he sounds delighted by the sociology of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The theft forced structure. Community guidelines, accountability systems, rules you can actually enforce. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one point, he says people were \u201ctalking about making their own government so they could shake people out,\u201d and Crahan\u2019s reaction is basically: yes. Good. That\u2019s the point. \u201cHere we go,\u201d he laughs. \u201cThis is everything I wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s his creative stance across the whole project: let them break it. Let them glitch it. Let them reveal the edges so the edges can evolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s obsessed with farms for that same reason. \u201cFarms end up being my favorite thing in Minecraft,\u201d he says, fascinated by the way players \u201ccapture the automation and make it work for yourself when you\u2019re sleeping.\u201d He loves that people copy the same farm, then refine it, then obsess over \u201cthe mathematics and the ticking\u201d behind Minecraft\u2019s systems. He\u2019s drawn to the mind that stares at a sandbox and sees a spreadsheet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he does what any good systems designer does: he adds variables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crahan talks about a custom vampire mob his team created, and the idea that players are already discussing how to build a vampire farm, something he\u2019s never seen before. The drop rates are intentionally rare: \u201cone out of 10,000\u201d type logic, designed to create a new kind of long-term pursuit that doesn\u2019t exist in vanilla Minecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s also candid about the danger of that approach: the devs don\u2019t even know what players are doing with it yet. \u201cWe don\u2019t know if they\u2019re going to get a pet every hour and we have to redo it,\u201d he says. \u201cIt makes it glitchy\u2026 we don\u2019t even know what they\u2019re doing and we don\u2019t know how they\u2019re doing it yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then he basically summarises his entire design philosophy in one moment: \u201cLook at this dude. He\u2019s duplicating rail. We\u2019ll have to shut it down, of course, but I\u2019ll be like, \u2018Bravo, bro.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is Clown in a nutshell: fix the exploit, celebrate the mind that found it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are on our way out\u201d: stop trying to force kids to be us<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The interview takes a turn when we start talking about kids, screens, and attention spans, the modern parental anxiety bundle. I mention how my own kids won\u2019t read books; everything is iPad, everything is ten seconds long, and it\u2019s hard not to feel like something\u2019s been lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crahan doesn\u2019t sugarcoat it. \u201cUnfortunately, my friend\u2026 there\u2019s nothing you can do,\u201d he says. Not because he\u2019s given up, but because he sees the machinery. \u201cThe god corporate hand of money has way too much money to brainwash everybody and everything around us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he shifts to something sharper, something a lot of people don\u2019t want to hear, especially if they\u2019re over fifty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou and I\u2026 we are past 50 years old. We are on our way out. It\u2019s guaranteed,\u201d he says. \u201cThese kids are coming up. So it\u2019s not our right to sit there and go, \u2018Damn, you don\u2019t read a book. Damn, you don\u2019t do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, he argues for influence without control: show your kids what you love, and let them decide whether it sticks. \u201cFind those things that actually interest you and figure out a way to show that to at least your children,\u201d he says. \u201cHopefully because of their love and admiration for you\u2026 they might take a liking to it because their dad does.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he does draw a line around language, books, and attention. \u201cReading a book, that\u2019s very important,\u201d he says, and he frames it as cultural preservation rather than morality. \u201cEvery day they change the words in those books. Words are going away\u2026 it\u2019s our duty to make sure we don\u2019t lose words, we don\u2019t lose colors, we don\u2019t lose the ability to not be on the phone.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His practical solution is wonderfully blunt: social boundaries. \u201cIf I\u2019m going to dinner, I tell people to leave the fucking phones in the car,\u201d he says, because he refuses to pay for a meal where everyone\u2019s somewhere else. And then he admits the grim truth anyway: \u201cThe minute everybody gets to their phone, including myself, we\u2019re right back on it. We are stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So he returns to the only thing he thinks we can honestly do: create while we can. \u201cYou and I\u2026 we can still write books. We can still manipulate video games. We can still give art and color, taste, smell, feelings, emotions,\u201d he says. \u201cWe can only contribute while we contribute.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s where Vernearth becomes more than a realm. It becomes his answer to the present tense. \u201cI try to recreate creation,\u201d he says. \u201cTo reimagine imagination.\u201d In Vernearth, he wants to prove that someone who seems untouchable is \u201ctouchable,\u201d not as a brand, but as a person who\u2019ll build something \u201cflowery and Hallmarky\u201d with strangers at midnight, like a platform where players can get married, or celebrate an anniversary. \u201cThe culture was helping me,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause that\u2019s what we wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He isn\u2019t trying to alter the future. \u201cI\u2019m just going to live in the present, take from the past, and hopefully create something that lasts,\u201d he says, and when he adds, \u201cwhen I\u2019m gone, hopefully Vernearth will be standing strong,\u201d it lands like a mission statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The slow grind: auction houses, plot worlds, and the nightmare of in-game money<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For all the talk of imagination and spirit, Crahan is deep in the practical trenches too, the stuff most people don\u2019t see when they imagine a famous artist \u201cmaking a server.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s months behind, he says, because the idea was too big at first. \u201cWe started all of it at once,\u201d he explains, \u201cand then we had to slow the whole thing down and start on certain things.\u201d One of the biggest headaches has been in-game money, because the moment you touch real-world transactions, you inherit a world of banks, taxes, and friction. \u201cUncle Sam wants his,\u201d he says dryly, \u201cand banks don\u2019t necessarily understand in-game money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He laughs that he doesn\u2019t even know why he wanted that system, and then immediately confesses he knows exactly why: \u201cI love the auction house in World of Warcraft<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not just about trading. It\u2019s about theatre. \u201cYou go there and just watch everybody in their outfits and their mounts,\u201d he says. It\u2019s a social hub. \u201cThe auction house brings all of the community together in one area\u2026 because you could be underground and never see this guy as long as you live. So this brings people out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s also building what he calls a Plot World, a protected showcase space where players can display builds that can\u2019t be broken or stolen. \u201cYou\u2019ll get a 52 by 52 block plot,\u201d he explains, and whether you copy a build from the Oblivion or rebuild it from scratch, the point is preservation: admiration without grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s Minecraft, but with safeguards built around community behaviour, the same way any society ends up building guardrails once it realises people will absolutely nick the tribal S block the second you turn your back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAI is a professor in my pocket\u201d: Clown\u2019s take on the tool everyone\u2019s panicking about<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Near the end, I ask him about AI, whether it scares him, whether it\u2019s going to ruin everything, especially since he co-habits two industries AI is actively chewing on: music and games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crahan\u2019s answer is not what the internet wants. He doesn\u2019t play the outrage hits. He doesn\u2019t do the \u201cit\u2019s the end of art\u201d sermon. He says, flatly: \u201cI\u2019m employing AI 190%.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he reframes the entire debate as something simpler: intent. \u201cI\u2019ve been using AI my whole life,\u201d he says, referring beyond this current wave of tools, but the broader reality of technology as assistance. \u201cNo one needs to use it,\u201d he adds, acknowledging the purist position. But for him, AI isn\u2019t an artist. It\u2019s a helper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe way I look at it,\u201d he says, \u201cit is a professor in my pocket who only wants to do what I ask it. Its only job is to make me happy, me, not you, not the world, no one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He gives a practical example: poetry. He has \u201cthousands and thousands\u201d of poems he\u2019s written since he was young. With AI, he can feed it his own words and ask for transformations without surrendering authorship. \u201cHere are my words,\u201d he says. \u201cDon\u2019t change them. Don\u2019t alter them. But show me some different ways to sing it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then he delivers the point with the blunt clarity of a man who\u2019s booked studio time his whole life: what\u2019s the difference between that and chasing a high-end producer? \u201cWhat\u2019s the difference between me pulling out my pocket producer\u2026 or me trying to get a famous producer that might not even work with me and could potentially cost me $150,000\u2026 who will only give me one or two ways \u2013 I\u2019m not mentioning any names!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Either way, he still has to perform it. \u201cIt\u2019s still going to take me to sing it,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it will never be like it was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He doesn\u2019t ignore the danger. He tells a story about someone feeding a family tragedy into an AI system and getting a reckless, accusatory response back. \u201cThat\u2019s pure insanity,\u201d he says. \u201cI would tell the person: get out of there. What are you doing? That\u2019s dumb.\u201d His issue isn\u2019t with the tool existing; it\u2019s with humans using it badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that loops back to his central claim: the tool doesn\u2019t act alone. \u201cNone of it can work without you, the human,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a giant oracle\u2026 but it needs you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crahan is also realistic about the generational disconnect. \u201cOur generation is going to hem and haw about AI,\u201d he says, and then he asks the question that answers itself: \u201cDo you think some kid in fourth grade who\u2019s grown up on it agrees with you and I about how horrible AI is? This is the implemented tool of life today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He doesn\u2019t believe you can stop it. \u201cYou and I will never have enough money or power to sway anybody away from what life is doing,\u201d he says. \u201cLife is moving forward. And AI is part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he throws the heaviest punch of the whole section: \u201cAI is the least of our worries on this planet. We currently are the worst of our worries and have always been the worst of our worries.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So for him, the only coherent position is tolerance in both directions: it\u2019s fine not to use it, and it\u2019s fine to use it, but don\u2019t pretend it\u2019s going away. \u201cAlways dig within your own self to prove you can do anything,\u201d he says, encouraging artists to build their fundamentals first. And then, almost softly, he adds the part that will annoy the doomers most: \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of love in AI. There just really is. It\u2019s a beautiful thing, in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Vernearth as an art project you can actually step into<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Crahan talks about Vernearth like someone building a place he intends to live in, not a product. He wants to work \u201chand in hand\u201d with Minecraft one day, not because he wants legitimacy, but because he wants resources: \u201cMy dream is that Minecraft might call one day and say, \u2018What do you want to do now?\u2019\u2026 because I can\u2019t necessarily afford the team I need to make my fullest ideas come true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until then, it\u2019s the slow grind, reinventing the Nether, reinventing the End, adding factions where you \u201cpick a side\u201d without a clean good-or-bad binary, shaping PvP, Plot World, and other systems he\u2019s not ready to reveal yet. And he sounds genuinely excited to log back in the second our call ends. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely doing what I wanted to do,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s community first and foremost\u2026 it\u2019s wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you strip away the Slipknot mythology, what\u2019s left is the more interesting story: a lifelong creative who grew up chasing secret rooms and loving glitches, now building a realm where the glitch is still holy, not because it\u2019s broken, but because it\u2019s the most human of all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you\u2019re wondering why The Escapist is talking to a metal icon about Minecraft, Crahan answers that too without even trying: he\u2019s not building Vernearth to relive the past. He\u2019s building it because the present is heavy, the future is coming anyway, and creating something with other people, something you can \u201ctaste and smell,\u201d something that holds art and community and grief in the same blocky hands, is the closest thing he\u2019s found to staying alive inside it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an article from The Escapist, Crahan goes into details about why he’s creating this art experiment, what it means and where it’s going. From Paul McNally: Shawn \u201cClown\u201d Crahan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,39,20],"tags":[1741,1145,2009,1251,2011,2014,2013,2012],"class_list":["post-64837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-music-news","category-reviews","tag-clown","tag-minecraft","tag-shawn-crahan","tag-slipknot","tag-vernearth","tag-video-game-creation","tag-video-game-design","tag-video-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64837"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64848,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64837\/revisions\/64848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/64847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}