Your perceptions of what an "artist" is supposed to be is messing you up here. Putting on a beret and laquering dog poop is not creativity simply because it has not been done before. Making something to fill a need or express an idea is creative. There is no need to coin a new phrase to describe the creative process when creativity will do just fine- and is better applied to the act of making a bowl to eat your popcorn out of than it is to stripping naked and throwing paint at the wall.
At root, the word contains creation. Don't give it away to those who create nothing of value simply because they have a snotty attitude. There are all sorts of degrees and applications of creativity in the world, and most have nothing whatever to do with some self-proclaimed avant guarde.
So there you go. You're a creative artist. If you like, I can make you up a certificate or something to that effect, but would hardly think that is necessary.
No decoder ring? No secret handshake? Not even a beret with my name embroidered inside - in gold thread? No learning the name of a Cabal member? (oops - wrong news group)
Seriously - we see pieces done by others, and some of us show pieces we've done. Where'd the idea came from and how did it get from the beginnings of an idea to the piece? That part is missing.
I'm using an example of an idea I'm playing with to illustrate one of the many ways to end up, hopefully, with an interesting piece, or a series of pieces. The hope is that others will provide examples of another process they've found. And with several approaches to getting ideas and then a piece, maybe someone will give it a try and finally getting around to discovering that creativity is built into them - and be creative.
Here's the next idea for using a ball and socket swivel joint.
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Getting pretty good at doing the ball and socket parts. Found I had a 1/4" shank router bit for routing letters - cuts a half round - just the right size for a small round socket. Chuck it in a drill chuck in the tail stock and making the round concave part of the ball and socket a snap. Turning the ball to fit the socket is pretty. Now it'll be easy to play with this swivel joint. May end up going nowhere - but so far the trip's been interesting. With an easy way to make the parts, maybe someone else will come up with some interesting uses - and tell us about it.
Insight couched in humor. A zen exercise poses a question which can't be answered - with logic/ego. The idea is that when the ego grinds on the question long enough it gives up and what lies beyond ego is revealed - ultimately that everything is everything. In western thought it's getting past the conscious mind to the subconscious mind. If you've tried to see a faint star in the dark night sky, you know that if you look directly at it you won't see it. But if you look a little to the side of it you will see it. Has to do with how the eye works - but often the brain seems to work in a similar manner.
LOL! Whenever I read a response like yours using 'but' I can't help to add the words implied, but left out:
That's OK. You have my permission to quibble, no need to disquise it or be afraid.
I agree. There is value in 'mulling it over', or 'sleeping on it.' It is an old designer's trick; give your brain a problem to work on 'in the background' and then do something else for awhile, knowing that it continues to work on it.
Slept on the swivel joint idea and came up with another application - Interactive, Ball Activated, Articulated Elements Bowl
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Plenty of room for variations with this one - change the size of the ball, change the contour of the inside of the bowl, limit the movement of the ball socket to either just vertical or just horizontal - lots of possiblities for making a dynamic, interactive piece. Since the swivel joint is relatively easy to make, playing with ideas to use it is easy.
Going "modular" has many advantages and lends itself to experiment- ation - a critical component of "creativity".
*pssst* -- the secret password is "oh CRAP!" :) If you like, I learned all sorts of secret handshakes and chicken dances in a previous life among various silly societies, and I'm sure I could come up with something pretty convincing. :)
There's nothing missing, IMO. Having had plenty of mulling time at various boring jobs over the years, I made a point of thinking about thinking itself.
What I came up with is this, and of course others may modify or disagree- I can only see what is in my own head, after all.
Every concept is derived from one of your senses, after being passed through (at least) five basic steps. The first is observation- whether that is visual, aural or olfactory really makes no difference, but nothing exists in a void of sensory input.
After observation, the next step of congnition is identification. To merely observe something means nothing- the mind has to ascribe attributes to the object of an observation to give it "handles" with which to deal with the information.
Once a thing is identified as accurately as possible, it needs to be analysed and generalized to associate it with things with share similar charateristics, and distance it from thing which are dissimilar.
That abstraction rolls seamlessly into catagorization. We all have an internal mental framework which allows us to put things in their proper place. That framework varies from person to person, but everyone has something along those lines. So, when we encounter, for instance, a tree we have not seen before, we can identify that it is rooted in the ground, has a trunk which supports a canopy of leaves and is covered in bark, and is more than likely a tree. That's the broad catagory- from that, we may deduce that it is more similar to a pine than an oak, which might lead us to the conclusion that it is coniferous, and so on- leading from corse gradiations to finer ones until we have placed the new plant in it's proper niche.
After it is catagorized, most things are associated. The process of association might tell you that when you smell salt in the air and see seagulls flying overhead, you are likely near the ocean. Or when you are surrounded by sand in a hot, dry environment, you are probably in a desert. While these things can not necessarily be catagorized together, they are casually linked and integrated with your total worldview.
That casual linkage seems to be the area from which most creative endeavors arise. When you wish to create something, your mind recalls the links to those things which your initial concept is connected. So, if you wanted to create a bowl that represented a watery theme, your mind may come up with anything from a wave shape to a life-preserver. You pick those things which fit the mood you are trying to convey- for instance, a large fish hook or spear may not represent a particularly calm image (though it may, if you're an angler,) so you might choose not to integrate those sharp hooks or points into your design. A water lily is not necessarily a good way to convey a thunderous sea.
In the case of a utilitarian item, those linkages will be of a different character, but operate on the same principle. If you are engineering a bridge, your mind will recall the relevant materials and their properties, as well as various known structural forms that are appropriate to the task. Eliminating variables to fit the intended use will lead to the appropriate form and construction of that bridge.
In both cases, the act of creativity was a process- whether or not it is ever articulated by any given person. Inspiration does not come from a muse- and it does not enter your nostrils from some unseen ether. It is a natural process, whether concious or unconcious, that consists of recalling casual linkages and reducing them to fundimental principles to relay information or perform a task. Everyone is creative to a degree, but that creativity is informed by the rational function of that person's mind, and the breadth and depth of those things which they have observed, identified, and integrated- thus, some people appear to be more creative, while others will appear to be less so.
In the cases of insanity or brain damage, a person's casual links may be altered or missing- sometimes that leads to striking imagery, but it rarely actually means anything. Unfortunately, it seems like that is too often the case with the avant guarde of modern art!
That's a noble enough goal- and I think I may have missed your inital point in that. I do enjoy your posts, but occasionally it seems like you are beating yourself up a little (though it's just as likely my toungue-in-cheek meter is out of service some days)- and there is certainly no call for that!
It definately is an interesting concept, and I thank you for sharing. It will undoubtedly get used somewhere down the line in my shop.
"Prometheus" wrote: (clip) they are casually linked and integrated with your total
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Very interesting post--you obviously HAVE spent a lot of time thinking about thinking. I normally would not nit-pick about a spelling error, but in this case, it seems to have a serious effect on your meaning. Where you write "casual," do you mean "causal?"
(Actually, I'm just trying to prove that I read it." ;-)
I am a little hesitant to accept analyses like yours, and Dr. Phil's, which divide complex continuous processes into numbered steps. This kind of thinking can be helpful sometimes, but after you have the categories firmly in mind, consider removing removing the boundaries between them.
At first I did, but then it occured to me that those links are not always a product of cause and effect, but often informally linked by emotion as much as any real connection. I actually typed causual first, and then reconsidered- it was easier to drop the "u" than to figure out a more appropriate word (I was getting tired, and ready for bed.)
That's good thinking on your part. The point was less that what I had to say was graven in stone then that everyone's mind has a system of processes that it uses to deal with reality, and anything you do will be a natural outgrowth of those. As with anything that is enormously complex, a person can only make a broad outline if you want to make a case without going into endless qualifications! There are folks who have gone that route as well, and build elaborate castles of logic, but those are tough to follow (Aristotle comes to mind- by the time he adresses his thesis, you've gone though 30 pages of definitions for each word, and an exploration of every concievable "what if".)
I've been doing a lot of late-night thinking recently about things 'everybody knows' that are actually anything -except- certain.
I'm coming up with insights of a level I am not accustomed to in recent years. I'm not liking them especially ... there is clearly a dark wind blowing ... but am also mulling over how I can turn them to my advantage. Some of what I am seeing more clearly now I've seen dimly before. But now I'm looking straight on at it. What I am seeing is both ugly and dangerous.
I think I've come up with my first answer with wide ranging usefulness. If it catches on, my days of honest labor are over. You'll find it in my shopping cart under the category of "subversion". It sets privacy invasion back one full notch at a cost of exactly $2.00. I think it'll cost me about a buck to do. I get to keep the other for my trouble. In a limited sense, it can be done locally, but will work a lot better if it gains an anonymizing layer -- me.
I got the spy v spy graphic from a blog about real-life spying
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but I rather suspect that they busted on the Mad Magazine copyright. If anyone knows where I might find some similar symbolism (copyright free) in a graphic, I'd appreciate a 'heads up'. In the meantime I'll try to come up with something else on my own. I -really- don't want to bust on someone elses' IP for more than a day or three. Beyond that time frame, I'll pick some non-related image. Bill
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