Known for his deep thoughts and captivating storytelling, author Gündüz Vassaf gives an in-depth study of Caravaggio, one of the iconic figures of art history. Recounting his seven-year artistic journey with Caravaggio, Vassaf shows how his perspective on detail shifted throughout the process. The author also examines the effects of digitalization on literature and art. Gündüz Vassaf leads readers on a truly inspiring journey

Hande Aral Uluk: Hello, my name is Hande. I’d like to jump right into my first question. You often talk about wandering inside a culture, spending time there, and living in the moment. So, how do you decide when choosing the places you want to live?

Gündüz Vassaf: Which country I visit and where I stay usually happen by chance. But in recent years, there is something I enjoy that I call “slow tourism.” Instead of rushing around a place, I want to sit down and let the city revolve around me. I love settling in as if I were a local, talking to its people, and breathing in its atmosphere. After that, the story of getting lost in a new city of losing myself begins. The feeling of being lost is both a little scary and enjoyable, and you start challenging yourself. Questions like, “Will I be able to find my way without asking anyone, or will I be forced to ask someone?” start swirling in my mind. When I look at it, there’s a distinct joy in asking someone a question too, because you connect with people. Sometimes you follow someone who just stepped out of the bakery, wondering where they are going with that bread in their hand, what kind of place they live in, and a story emerges. Rather than choosing a city or a place, it is much nicer to chase after the coincidences and the things that wink at me wherever I am.

Sedat Erol: After reading The Painter’s Rebellion, I’d like to turn to Caravaggio through the lens of space and the church; there was a passage you described there. You say that Caravaggio, as a religious ecologist, cleanses the traces of the Vatican’s filth that pollute our souls by transforming them into paintings. Could we hear from you about the Caravaggio from your pen and his relationship with the church?

G.V: I’ve read what art historians have written about Caravaggio. They view him as a wretched, psychopathic man, yet also as a good, devout painter. As for why they see him as a devout painter, it’s because his work always centers on the church. He always painted saints, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus, but painting these subjects doesn’t mean he was devout the opposite could just as easily be true. Imagine you’re a photographer and they send you to a football game, but you hate football. You don’t have to love the sport to do your job; it’s simply your job. He, too, didn’t have the luxury of painting anything else. In the early 1600s, landscape painting and flower paintings were only just beginning, and those who wanted to make a living from painting were forced to work for the Vatican. Caravaggio doesn’t reflect the Vatican’s beliefs, and that’s when I started questioning him. Perhaps he was writing letters to the Vatican about his own beliefs, embarking on a dangerous journey.

He was essentially risking his life, yet he still decided to paint anyway. In the 1600s, the Inquisition was active, and those who fell out with the Vatican were beheaded or burned at the stake. During this period, Caravaggio created paintings that shocked the Vatican; when depicting religious figures, he avoided using religious symbols. While many paintings of Jesus from that era featured a halo, he did not use one. Whereas painters before him depicted the attire of the nobility, he portrayed the common people on the street.

To those who asked, “Why are there no angels?” he replied, “Show me an angel and I’ll paint one.” In other words, he began to fundamentally question the Vatican and he didn’t stop there. For example, one of the Mary figures he created among the poor turned out to be Rome’s most famous prostitute of that era. In reality, his head should have rolled immediately, but who was going to report him by saying, “You turned a prostitute into Mary”? If a cardinal said, “You did this,” he’d be asked, “How do you know that woman?” In short, he maintained a delicate balance and took risks. “Caravaggio made me a more patient person. As I followed him to different museums, life slowed down, and I began to live and read more deeply.”

“Caravaggio made me a more patient person. As I followed him to different museums, life slowed down, and I began to live and read more deeply.”

H.A.U: You embarked on a long journey with Caravaggio. You spent about seven years writing the book, shared so much time with him, and dedicated a lot of time to the church. Did Caravaggio change you during this process?

Caravaggio made me a more patient person. It kept me quite far from Istanbul and my family, but it was worth it. I stopped looking for new things, like “I’ll go here, I’ll see that.” As I followed Caravaggio through different museums, life slowed down, and I began to live and read more deeply. I had never really looked closely at his paintings before, but now I examine them in detail, as well as from a broader view. I pay attention to his characters, the models he used in his work; there’s simply no end to looking at paintings. Back then, I’d go to any museum out of cultural snobbery. You look at a few paintings, then you get bored, of course, you don’t understand a thing, and you just walk quickly past. Sometimes I felt embarrassed in front of the guards, wondering if they thought, “Does this guy not understand paintings? He’s just walking through so fast.” Because it’s as if they’ve crammed a shopping mall’s mass merchandise into museums. But you go to see one specific painting nothing else. Then, paintings become something completely different, and I learned that from Caravaggio.

H.A.U: Do you identify with Caravaggio, or do you feel a connection to him?

G.V: Unlike the painters of his era, Caravaggio didn’t dress in a bourgeois way. He had a black jacket, black pants, and a scarf, and he wore them until they were completely in tatters. Yet most painters were quite particular about their appearance. I didn’t care much about how I lived either. For instance, when I was a professor at Boğaziçi University, I had a lifestyle that wasn’t typical for an academic.

Back then, the university’s general secretary wrote for the Cumhuriyet Newspaper. I was both writing and reading it, and we’d chat occasionally. One day, the general secretary invited me to his office and said, “The police are uncomfortable with you, and that’s why they’ve been tailing you.” In those days, people in Türkiye being followed was quite normal. The police were bothered because they couldn’t reconcile my lifestyle with that of a university professor. Because I wasn’t just staying at home every single night. Since they were young guys who had never been to a university, the image of a professor in their minds must have been completely different. They complained because they couldn’t see me as fitting into a university, and Caravaggio was a bit like that too.

Umut Yiğit: In Caravaggio’s work, there’s a sense of action rather than mere depiction. He narrates an event, and to understand it, you don’t just look at the painting you have to step into the scene. That’s how you describe it, too. You also say palaces. Is the truth we call “reality” about crossing this bridge?

G.V: It’s hard to live in many worlds at once. To feel a sense of belonging to all of them without actually belonging to any, and to have that empathy. Building that empathy isn’t so easy. But when in London, instead of looking at a Londoner and asking, “How are they different from me?” it’s important to look and ask, “Who is this person?” By observing, trying to understand and internalize, we can overcome prejudices. It’s possible to do this. Dostoevsky does this very well in Crime and Punishment, his protagonist is a murderer. So, perhaps putting ourselves in the place of a tree branch, saying, “The wind is swaying me,” and trying to feel that, is what’s important. Then your own seriousness fades away, and you find yourself in a much more playful, joyful, and adventurous life. I’m both swaying at the end of a branch and I’m a rusty ship it becomes a whole different kind of fun.

U.Y: The real question is not ‘How am I any different from this?’ but simply Who is this person?

G.V: Even beyond the question of “Who is this?”, I am that person. I am not trying to be anyone, because what matters to me is that I am nobody. In other words, it’s about breaking free from my own conditions, my own circumstances. Because if we were together every single day, we’d start to resemble one another; we’d fall under each other’s influence. It would start to look like a uniform. You’ve been working in the same place for many years and there’s a team spirit, but bringing someone else into the team might not be a bad idea either.

“Human relationships are also an art, but we don’t dwell on it much. We either speak freely or get stuck in stereotypes.”

Sedat Erol: In your narratives, I sometimes thought of the narrator as you, but sometimes it was someone else. What kind of person was the narrator in your eyes? Who was the narrator telling the novel, experiencing the things there? For example, were you always the one sitting in the church?

G.V: I wanted it to be me, and at the same time, I didn’t want it to be me. Then you fall into a contradiction, asking both “who is it?” and “could this be possible?” That’s just the kind of person I am. I always tell myself I couldn’t have done that, but I did. The person sitting in the church was both me and the narrator, but I didn’t do everything that happened there. There were some things that crossed my mind, like the “Farting” story. I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to bother anyone, but it could have been a game. That’s how farting enters into literature it’s a literary reference. If it can happen in a church, it can happen anywhere. Human relationships are also an art, but we don’t dwell on it much. We either speak freely or get stuck in stereotypes.

H.A.U: In the novel, your character says, ‘Art doesn’t serve as a guide; it doesn’t try to change the world.’ So we tend to ascribe a lot of meaning to art. How do you view this?

G.V: Not lying, being sincere is just like human relationships, and doing that in different languages. A painter does it with their brush, a writer with words, a musician with music. In fact, the relationships we build with each other are all a work of art. Not hurting someone, loving, discussing our thoughts by listening to them. These are human relationships, but at the same time, art. We don’t dwell on this much. We speak freely or we get locked into patterns. We set patterns like these are things to be talked about with a teacher, a friend, a lover. Then human relationships cease to be art and become a uniform, a lie. If you have a mission, you are lying. Because life does not consist of a single mission. Even while you have that mission, your mind can wander to a different mission, you can question, and there is no end to this. Your art and mission must be within all these endless things. This is about not being able to belong to a place, an environment. It’s about being afraid to perform as required or about “what am I going to say.” Consistency is always expected, but the universe is not consistent. In physics, small consistencies are found, but everything is built on a great uncertainty. Dark matter, dark energy we don’t know ninety percent of these. In this case, how can what we know be consistent? You can see consistency under a small microscope, but there is no such thing; if there were, people wouldn’t change. The fifteen-year-old me and the forty-year-old me are not the same. I am not the same person, man, lover, and I am a completely different person.

Burak Avcı: Has the emergence of artificial intelligence changed our understanding of art? Can works produced by artificial intelligence possess any artistic qualities? What makes art art?

G.V: We’ve even started asking the question, ‘Should we call it art, or shouldn’t we?’ They held a Biennial in Romania, and the curator was artifi cial intelligence. In Japan, there’s a young woman who’s a painter; her paintings are selling and making money, and people have started calling this art. Many writers and illustrators have begun incorporating artificial intelligence into their own work. A blend of human and artifi cial intelligence is beginning to emerge.

B.A: Something is being produced, but is it possible to feel that taste and texture? The question of “where is art in this” comes to mind.

G.V: By inventing words in our speech, we have drifted away from a reality, from our purity. You know how cats perceive, feel, and talk to each other in a thousand different ways. We created an artificial world by imprisoning these in our words. Because those words are not my feelings, my thoughts; they are just an effort to express them. No word expresses it so well except for “yes” and “no,” and even they do not.

H.A.U: At the end of your book, we come across a QR code leading to a digital petition. How do you view these kinds of reflexes emerging from social media?

G.V: It’s a way of clearing one’s conscience, simply because it’s so easy. We sign something and say, “I’ve done my part.” At the same time, it raises awareness and opens new windows. People say, “This bothers us, let’s unite over it” there’s a yearning for unity. While ideologies, religions, and family used to bring us together, now campaigns do. This is an incredible thing; even if it just eases our conscience, it still makes us better. It strips us of our old affiliations and uniforms, inviting us toward universality. These people would never have come together so easily in the past.

S.E: A single action on social media can completely wipe out a person’s past. I was thinking about this in relation to Bruno how do you evaluate this current trend?

G.V: Bruno was in serious trouble back then. Because he was trying to unify religions, sharing knowledge about space, and claiming that other planets existed. That’s why he was a threat to the entire system. In a way, I idolize Bruno because he is one of the world’s few martyrs of thought. I’m even launching a campaign; I’ll submit a petition to the Pope. Yet, the very man I idolize is actually someone who viewed women as fifth-class citizens. Then I find myself questioning and lynching him, telling myself I shouldn’t idolize him. In truth, I am both idolizing and lynching him at the same time. When we decontextualize people from history and look only at their actions, they become untouchable, and the fact that they are human catches us by surprise. We even start gossiping about what they did. If we hadn’t idolized him in the first place, we wouldn’t have even taken his mistreatment of women seriously. Because so many systems are built exactly this way. “History is so frequently used to impose identities and create enemies that whoever controls the reins of history whoever possesses that knowledge drags you behind them.”

“History is so frequently used to impose identities and create enemies that whoever controls the reins of history whoever possesses that knowledge drags you behind them.

S.E: Or we could say it’s a direct consequence of idolization, that’s how I feel.

G.V: It’s in Nâzım Hikmet’s poetry [one of Türkiye’s most renowned 20th-century poets]. He openly admits that sometimes he lies just to spare someone’s feelings, or for no reason at all. In other words, he does wrong, he lies, but he also admits to doing these things. Yet those who idolize Nâzım Hikmet forget that he said such things; they don’t want to hear it. For example, Aziz Nesin [a prominent Turkish satirist and author] also wanted to be famous, and there was a rivalry between him and Nâzım Hikmet. Within that rivalry, Aziz Nesin wanted to portray Nâzım Hikmet as a human being. He explained what he didn’t like about him, and as a result of what he wrote, he was expelled from the writers’ union. There’s no limit to where idolization can lead.

U.Y: You said that historical consciousness is no longer something I believe is necessary in our relationship with the system. Has history become an instrument of the system for you?

G.V: When you asked that question, I began to wonder if that was what I’d actually been thinking. Come to think of it, I’ve often said that history has spoken to me in recent years, but I can’t say the same about art. From cave paintings to the present day, there’s just so much out there. Throughout history, everyone has tailored a garment looking from today back to yesterday, based on the spirit of their time, their beliefs, and the tools at their disposal. History is so frequently used to assign identities and create enemies that whoever holds it, whoever knows it, drags you along. They all construct sentences like, “This is who we are.” It’s a disgrace. Whether those claims are true or not doesn’t matter at all. Who wrote them, when, and under what circumstances none of that matters anyway, since most of the information is incomplete.

They’re using history to brainwash people and manufacture a sense of belonging. I love reading history; the more I read, the more I think, “Wow, so that actually happened.” I like the idea that country names or the shapes of continents might change, or that women might have discovered all this. I get lost in the fairy tales of the past, and I love that, but the world that could be built tomorrow interests me even more. I’m far more interested in space exploration than in the French Revolution. Archaeological findings fascinate me because history changes so rapidly. For example, they discovered Göbeklitepe [the world’s oldest temple site, dating back 12,000 years], and history instantly shifted back by five thousand years. We started as hunter-gatherers, then transitioned to agriculture all of that is nonsense. So it’s a back-and-forth, but it all happened simultaneously, and yet we went on for centuries with those memorized facts.

H.A.U: While reading your work, one of the recurring themes that caught my attention is the question of belonging. At one point in the novel, you state that our protagonist must become rootless. You claim that migration and love possess this transformative power. Do you think we’ve managed to achieve this at the point we have reached today?

G.V: Let’s say a child is born. The father is Polish, the mother is Ecuadorian, and the child is born in France. Another child comes from a Turkish and Kurdish family but was born in Germany. They get married and have children. When you look at it, this renders all those identities meaningless. Our son has three identities: Turkish, American, and British. It was very easy to dissolve his sense of identity because, since he has three, he never had to choose between two. If he were stuck between two, he’d start questioning it, so I ask him, “Ziya, are you Turkish?” When I say, “Do Turks do this? British people don’t do that,” he just starts laughing. Identity is being questioned, yet culture is expanding. He eats Portuguese food and is familiar with Ecuadorian music. With migration, incredible connections are emerging. As university students study in other cities, new songs, tastes, and values emerge. It’s impossible for those people to vote for conservative, racist parties. They cannot be racist, because then they’d be racist against each other. For example, I’d realize that you are thirty percent Jewish, and you’d realize that I am twenty percent Muslim. What am I supposed to do attack your thirty percent? When the Roman Empire existed, there were countless groups like the Visigoths and Vandals coming from Asia. In the Roman Empire, men had pedicures, wore perfumes, and ruled Rome. The newcomers, however, brought a completely different Europe.

Now Africa is moving to France, and in France, perhaps thirty percent of the population will be African. In the U.S., Hispanics will be the majority by 2040. In short, a sense of belonging is fading, especially in big cities. Birth pangs and racism are perfectly natural in this transition. Suddenly, millions of people who don’t dress or speak like you have arrived and want a slice of the same pie. You shouldn’t view this as a threat. One day, while teaching at a university in Germany, I had a Turkish student who was an immigrant. Let’s call him Mehmet. I said, “Mehmet, you’re the Voltaire of the future,” and the whole class laughed. Mehmet asked, “What do I have to do with Voltaire? How is that even possible?” Now look: the scientists who developed the BioNTech vaccine in Germany are Turks, but twenty years ago, Turks were looked down upon there. So, a lot can change in a very short time.”

B.A: What kind of a world do you envision? In what kind of world should we be living?

G.V: If artificial intelligence goes well and doesn’t bring about the end of our species though it certainly carries that risk. Just recently, the British prime minister gathered business leaders in London because they, too, have started to get scared. If it goes well, no one will be forced to work; there won’t be any investment in workers or machinery because robots will do all the labor. There will be enough wealth to distribute to everyone, even to throw into the streets. There will still be the very rich, but the rest of us will be left to make art, work in agriculture, and tend to the land. My only fear there is the Metaverse. Because in that space, I can create as many avatars as I want and completely distance myself from the world, its problems, and cooperation. I can play games there as much as I want, my food is just a button’s press away, and maybe even the bathroom is in there. So there’s a danger similar to how the Opium Wars were used to numb China, but in my utopia, I hope artificial intelligence goes well so no one is forced to work. My friend, the poet Neşet Ergener, has a poem titled “When Will Poets Fall Silent?” In the poem’s final line, he says that when everyone becomes a poet, then we can all fall silent. Because as children, we are all poets, dancers, musicians, and painters. The first thing the organization of society and its differing expectations from people kill is the art within us. The artist, however, must confront these pressures; by not engaging with the real world, they become mere opportunists looking to cash in, and at that point, there is no art left anyway.

U.Y: Marketers and advertisers focusing on America often use the term “Generation Z.” It’s highly popular here as well, and there are researchers studying it. What are your thoughts on this generational label? Can such a label really be independent of time and place?

G.V: It’s just like how marketers are constantly rolling out new phones; they’ve started inventing generations at increasingly shorter intervals. Minds are being shaped to think, “I’m part of that generation, so I’ll consume accordingly,” or “Our generation dresses like this and acts like that.” Let’s say there’s Generation Zbut that generation also has mothers and fathers. The X, Y, Z, and Millennial generations are all coexisting. A generation doesn’t form in a vacuum; there are larger events driving its behavior global shifts, the climate crisis, the threat of nuclear war, or even the availability of birth control pills. For instance, while some regimes permit abortion, others ban it. In reality, they are the ones dictating how we behave.

U.Y: Heroes are a thing of the past. You previously gave the example of the Gezi Park protests, noting that the movement had no single leader or hero. We’ve moved past the era of heroism into a different space. Yet, at the same time, there is a clear shift toward a different lifestyle and heightened individualism. With consumption now front and center, do you think influencers are taking the place of those traditional heroes? Is that the direction we are heading?

G.V: Today, influencer algorithms are far more dominant; they have created their own spokespeople and pop stars. These are a thousand times more powerful than any ideology or religion. But how far will this go? Only as far as we allow it until we say, “Stop.” Back then, everyone smoked; many still do, but then anti-smoking campaigns began. At first, no one took those advocates seriously. In America, doctors used to go on TV, light up a cigarette, and claim it was good for your health so the system was already lying back then. Now, a new sense of morality and a fierce backlash are emerging on social media. Perhaps we will see people saying, “I won’t use a smartphone anymore,” or restricting use to less than an hour a day will become the new trend. All of this is spreading rapidly, and it certainly has a frightening side to it.

H.A.U: I guess you’re closely following current events. Your novel’s character specifically mentions the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo.

G.V: I don’t follow it; someone told me about it.

S.E: In fact, many people who are genuinely interested in these topics aren’t even aware of it. This just shows how incredibly open your information channels are to new developments.

G.V: I’d say I’m curious. In fact, that’s exactly why I’m going to Boston next week. Because otherwise, the flow of information really dries up. You go out on the street, constantly observing and talking to people, but how many homes can you actually enter, how many people can you really speak with? That’s why genuine information still comes from books. The Harvard Library is just a three-and-a-half-minute walk from where I stay. The new books are all there, and even if you just read half of a back cover, you can instantly see where modern thinking is heading. Plus, the university hosts public lectures by academics. World-renowned experts on incredibly diverse and lesser-known topics come, and you can just go, sit down, and ask them questions. So, of course, it’s impossible not to keep up.

G.V: I’d say I’m curious. In fact, that’s exactly why I’m going to Boston next week. Because otherwise, the flow of information really dries up. You go out on the street, constantly observing and talking to people, but how many homes can you actually enter, how many people can you really speak with? That’s why genuine information still comes from books. The Harvard Library is just a three-and-a-half-minute walk from where I stay. The new books are all there, and even if you just read half of a back cover, you can instantly see where modern thinking is heading. Plus, the university hosts public lectures by academics. World-renowned experts on incredibly diverse and lesser-known topics come, and you can just go, sit down, and ask them questions. So, of course, it’s impossible not to keep up.

U.Y: Economic prosperity used to come through reading and building cultural capital. First, you had to read, secure a solid profession, and build enough cultural grounding to achieve financial stability. Today, however, the focus has shifted entirely toward social capital. Do you have any advice on how to navigate this hift, or what steps we should take?

G.V: If it were me, I’d go. Seeking out new horizons and seeing things from a different perspective is always healthy. Personally, I wouldn’t go to China; it’s a totalitarian state and a country on the decline. On top of that, racism and nationalism are on the rise there. America, of course, is imperialist. China only deploys warships within its own waters, whereas America’s warships are everywhere. Yet, no matter how much people complain, everyone ultimately ends up going to America or Europe because those places remain open to new possibilities. This isn’t formal advice, but I wouldn’t stay here. Niyazi Berkes, Muzaffer Şerif, and Pertev Naili Boratav were all legendary professors at Ankara University’s Faculty of Language, History, and Geography. Muzaffer Şerif went on to become a global pioneer in social psychology, while Niyazi Berkes continued his work at McGill University in Canada. Wherever they went, they connected with students from Türkiye to Ecuador, and that was a true gain for the world. Go wherever you can do your finest work and where you can find happiness. Even here, you are making a real difference; you are putting in the work. You can see that you’re transforming your surroundings, but so many others give up for entirely valid reasons, given the lack of freedom of thought. You’ve built an exceptional team here, and who knows, perhaps you will all leave together as a team.

U.Y: I’d like to turn our focus to psychoanalysis an area we haven’t directly discussed yet, but whose influence I’ve strongly sensed throughout our conversation. Psychoanalysis draws heavily from literature and art. Since you are both a psychologist and a writer, has psychoanalysis shaped your own work and perspective?

G.V: I don’t know. As you know, my mother is a psychiatrist, so I’ve spent time in psychiatric hospitals. When my family went to conferences during the holidays, they’d take me along. I think that must have had an impact on me. Since I grew up behind the scenes of this profession, I tell myself it shouldn’t be like this. My mom had a saying that really stuck with me. She was describing the Ego, the Id, and the Superego. For example, if you ask me if there’s an Ego there, I’d say, “How should I know?” it’s like Caravaggio’s angels. But my mom still makes me say, “Yes, it’s there.” The Id is our natural power; it wants to do strong and natural things. The Superego, on the other hand, refers to the influence of the environment and the opportunities it offers. When I think about it this way, it makes perfect sense to me. However, I don’t think emotion and thought can be separate; they are parts of a whole.

Ece Nisa Güven: We have been discussing artificial intelligence and digitalization. In your view, what kind of potential do these technologies offer us, and what kinds of limitations do they impose upon us?

G.V: First of all, it makes writing incredibly easy. I can ask any question that comes to mind. I can find answers to things I used to put off, telling myself I’d look them up later. Because with a physical encyclopedia, I have to find it, pull it out, and look it up, and that takes me off on tangents. Now I just set the text aside, browse around, and that’s amazing. Of course, having such easy access to information also brings with it the speed of fast food. When I’m working in Harvard’s library, I go to get a book, but I come back with a topic that doesn’t interest me. If I have even a little curiosity, if I don’t have to go straight to the book I’m looking for, if I have time and think, “I’ll take a look at this one too”my world becomes so much richer. It feels like I’m discovering entirely new fields, and I slow down in my pursuit of other information. I’ve found myself in a dilemma with both. With AI, I find things faster; in the library, I find them slower. Because in the library, I don’t know if the book continues on the second floor. If asked which is better, perhaps slowing down is better. Because as I head up to the book on the second floor, questions swirl in my mind. Whereas when I jump from one to the next immediately, those questions don’t come to mind. That’s why I’m in favor of slowing down.

“With AI, I find things faster; in the library, I find them slower. Because in the library, I don’t know if the book continues on the second floor. If asked which is better, perhaps slowing down is better.”

B.A: One of the chapters that struck me the most while reading In “Prisoners of Ourselves: Totalitarianism in Everyday Life” was the section titled “Buttons.” There, you analyze optimization and machines, while also touching upon digital games. Has your perspective on digital games evolved over the last thirty-two years? Is it still possible to find a true sense of immersion that feeling of role-playing and atmosphere through gaming as a genuine form of human pleasure?

G.V: Digital games have begun to open up entirely new horizons worlds where history and fantasy seamlessly blend, and team-based games where players cooperate and learn from one another. In the early days of gaming, it was driven purely by competition, but now, games have slowed down a bit and become far richer. They have started to appeal more deeply to human emotion and identity. I believe the narrative culture rooted in Dungeons & Dragons has truly begun to reflect within these modern games.

U.Y: Boston, Istanbul, and Sedef Island are all places with a view of the sea. Is having a view of the sea or being in a city by the water a personal preference of yours?

G.V: Yes, it’s special because I truly need to be near the sea, and I want to see the horizon. My wife and I met in college; her room looked out onto the trees. My room, on the other hand, looked down on the city from a hilltop. I felt sorry for her, and it turns out she felt sorry for me, too because from her perspective, there was no nature. For example, I once wrote an entire book in a dark room with no windows, and I didn’t mind that at all, but you could still catch a glimpse of the Bosphorus from the living room. Just knowing that the sea is out there is deeply important to me.

The Journey of Art from Caravaggio to Artificial Intelligence with Gündüz Vassaf yazısı ilk önce Context Dergi üzerinde ortaya çıktı.