Unnamed Sixty One — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
I’m mostly concerned with the category of motion called transport – which is motion in everyday life, like walking, falling, playing, change of position, orientation of objects or water or the behaviour of people. Traffic is a derivative of people’s behaviour.
“All Motion is relative. It’s perceived in relation and opposition to the environment. Motion is important to the human condition. What can we know. Who are we. What should we do. What is death. Where does life lead. Motion is mysterious though found everywhere. No one has been able to shed light on the central mystery – what is motion?” – Motion Mountain vol 1
Stationary Front, 2016 – Convergent :: (click to see more)
I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating how things are going to unfold in the near future – both in general and personally. First of all, because I’m self-employed it means I’m on my own for future finances but also I’m having a hard time imagining myself just stopping work at a certain age. I would get incredibly bored. I prefer to enjoy my life now as it unfolds and then just keep on doing that until I run out of steam.
But aside from this dilemma I believe we are all on a path that will drastically change what we collectively do with our time regarding useful work. We are experiencing the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to the changes that AI is bringing to our lives. And these changes are following an exponential asymptotic curve – which means it starts out as a very mild shallow curve which we recognize as close to a straight line, but then it hits a sudden upward bend that goes essentially vertical. The really large changes this will bring are unimaginable now and seem very far away, but they aren’t.
A parallel past example – if you remember when the human genome sequencing project began in 1990 almost all scientists at the time believed there was no way it would be completed in the target 15 year timeframe – and it would not have been with the technology available in 1990. But in that 15 year timeframe the technology matured exponentially and the project was in fact essentially completed in 2000 – with a complete draft published in 2003, 5 years early at a cost of $3 billion. Now 13 years later anyone can have their genome sequenced for under $1000.
We are at the start of the same thing now with AI and it will affect our lives in the same way retirement affects most people.
What useful things will we do with our time?
What will we do with these new extraordinary abilities?
How will our lives change?
What next?
Green Streaks and Cyan, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)
It was a struggle to make this today for a lot of reasons. But the more I make things the more I feel I’m onto something – both internally and externally. Internally, because of my health pursuits – a mild way of saying I’m insanely interested in my personal longevity – I’m wrestling more and more with difficult ideas around purpose – future purpose – and how to reconcile myself with where I am in my life agenda.
I’d like to say most people my age – but don’t want to paint with such a wide brush (on the other hand I get a sense that it is most people my age that feel this way) – are in middle age at this point. They might have had a mid-life crisis. They likely have some kids or are married or both or have settled down in some way – a job, a house etc and are looking forward to retiring in 10, 15 or 20 years. The assumption here is their lives have a duration and an arc. I want something else.
I’m working toward positioning myself for a longer duration and arc or even multiple arcs. Which means I’m not in the middle of my life. This is all unproven, futuristic, hopefulness of course but chance favors the prepared. So with that in mind I’m preparing. Problem is it requires a kind of schism since I need to think and act in both ways at the same time in the off chance I’m wrong about the future. This is difficult and casts a ton of doubt which in turn makes it a struggle to produce.
So far I feel good though. I guess we’ll see how this works out in the years ahead.
Green Brown Snakes Beneath Azure Waters, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)
Occasionally during a moment of calm I’ll get this overwhelming sense of impending boredom. Its a weird kind of feeling I think has something do with extreme compartmentalization – something I’ve never been too good at, yet somehow I’ve managed to achieve. It’s as though I have a complete and detached overview of all the campaigns and projects of my life. I see that nearly all the spare space that would normally accommodate random possibility in my life has been squeezed out of existence by these projects.
Its at once demoralizing and uplifting. I feel pride at the efficiency but boredom with the mundane grind. My life became a chaotic mess after our son was born and from that froth of random non-direction I’ve managed to set my life on a course. I’ve much to accomplish and nowhere near enough time to do it in. But… is this the right way to live? I don’t know. I have a tendency to swing from one extreme to the other it seems.
While I think its important to have goals and direction I also think its important to embrace the process of living. I’m wondering if proceeding on such a rigid set of goals precludes embracing the process of living or if the process of living need be random. Random in the sense of not planned out beforehand – blown where the wind takes me.
Am I just pining for the old days when I had spare time and went out with friends? Perhaps. But when I do suddenly have spare time I’m at a loss for what to do with myself. It feels like I’ve fallen off a cliff – I’m in free fall. I do think on the list of tasks or projects but then I think… nah. Its a rare moment of free time – time for myself. Take it as such – don’t squander it on the stuff you already have to do the rest of the time.
When all is said and done I’m sticking with my projects and campaigns. They’re laying the groundwork for greater things – building a framework from which to hang future goals. I’ve worked hard to choose, define and refine them. Now I have to defend them – but not at all costs. Again it comes down to balance. It’s alright to be goal driven as long as you remain present – experiencing the process of reaching the goals – enjoying the fruits of your labours. That’s life.
I spend of lot of my time thinking ahead about projects I want to complete. I’m very goal focused – which from time to time leads to crushing depression when I fail those goals. I’ve been noticing how unhappy I’m feeling lately – despite managing to accomplish a great deal and methodically meeting many of my goals. I decided to try and spend less time in my head planning and analyzing new projects and how I can fit all these glorious little nuggets together into the perfect jigsaw puzzle that will become my life and instead to exclusively focus on the present – the now – the moment. This is… impossible, well – difficult at least.
I’ve been feeling crushingly nostalgic about things I’ve done, people I’ve known, moments I’ve experienced, places I’ve been etc and it dawned on me that perhaps I was nostalgic because I wasn’t paying enough attention to them when they were actually happening. That instead of being in the moment fully experiencing them, I was off somewhere in my head planning away my future – looking past the horizon.
I still think it’s important to plan and to have plans… but… maybe I need a better balance of present and future in my life. Something more in line with that life is a journey not a destination idea.
It’s only been a few days so far – but I’m feeling a bit better and a lot less futile about my existence. I still have BIG plans and lots of ideas and goals – of course, but I’m trying really hard to let them simmer in the background while I smell the air and listen to the sounds – and try to be a little less self-absorbed. Difficult, but worth it.
I think if you boil down all your life’s actions, plans, goals etc, it all comes down to this:
Did you have a good time?
And if that is the FINAL word on life – then why not focus on it.
Lines On Brown Red Green Yellow, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)
Lately I’ve been thinking about my life in absolute terms. There was a time when I simply glided through life without much thought about where I was going or what I was doing. I took the easy route. Then about 20 years ago I took stock, realized I didn’t like where I was heading and made some drastic changes to my life. I worked out some specific goals – which I confess at the time I naively envisioned would unfurl more quickly and differently than they have. For most of this time I’ve been deeply engrossed in and focused on these goals/dreams pretty much to the exclusion of all else – okay, an exaggeration – much other important stuff has happened along the way to shift my focus – not all of it voluntary.
Lately, I’m taking stock from a different perspective. Perhaps I’m thinking this because my age is weighing heavily on me – a mental weight only not a physical one… at the moment (knock on wood). I’m realizing, when you get right down to the essence of our lives all we really have is our selves, our associations and our actions. By our selves I mean our internal state and physical health, by associations I mean family and friends and by actions I mean things that we do or make and the legacies we leave behind.
Everything else – literally everything can be classified as dross or detritus. All the hyper-activity of our lives, all the lust for goods and much of the anguish is simply excess filling the gaps. When I take stock like this, at first I feel an elated calm as I see how simple and uncomplicated my life truly is – that I can “let go”of much of my concern and upset. But then I feel immensely sad. No sad isn’t quite right – I feel a great aching emptiness within me – an angst – a dejected sorrow that feels way too close to the inescapable black hole of depression – and that scares the shit out of me. Once sucked into that downward spiral there’s no way out. I think / I hope, I feel this aching absence only because I feel directionless without the goals that have driven my life for so long now.
For too long I’ve been filling the gaps with useless trash and other people’s hype. I’ve glossed over the emptiness inside me – tried to patch it with other goals and other activities. I’ve over-done it in my fervor and eroded the true essence of my life. I’m torn in too many directions – I’m stressing out. I’ve ignored myself, my friends, my family and my legacy. I need to turn my gaze back to the absolute pillars of my life and disregard the nattering gap fillers. I need to clear the clutter.
I’ve got some serious housekeeping to do.
PS: Having written this I’m feeling a calm clarity of purpose I haven’t felt in a long time. I was really afraid I was sinking into a depression but now I don’t think so. Good news.
Deconstructed Pink Orange, 2012 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)
I can’t help feeling odd lately. I find myself with a small amount of time on my hands – enough to get down to creative work but I feel the work isn’t worth doing. I’ve been in production mode in my print business working to deadlines and tasks for a long time now and I’m suddenly at loose ends. I like to have a goal – a purpose. But just finishing images – any image, I feel has no apparent purpose except self satisfaction and oddly I don’t find it satisfying… not right now.
I’m staring at the light of my monitor reflecting off the scaly wrinkly skin on the back of my left hand and realizing with new shock that I’m getting old…er – and that my time is very likely limited. There’s no time for fooling around – or rather less time than there was previously. So why am I feeling unmotivated?
All of this is calling into question deep ideals in my life – concerns centered around purpose and meaning. Is it important or purposeful for me to make images? I don’t have a satisfying answer to that. And what is the meaning of what I’m exploring? I don’t have a solid answer to that either.
With the meaning of my explorations, I do think I stepped away from realism and figurative work because I wanted to incorporate emotion and sensation into my images and I felt a conventional realistic landscape approach wasn’t emotive enough – failed to sufficiently capture the dynamic of urban life – that, plus a still image is usually a single moment in time. I needed to find an alternative that stretched beyond those still image/single moment bounds yet somehow managed to portray movement and activity. I’m still exploring these concerns.
I later also considered a slightly different approach for Coloured City and instead distilled the view to essential shapes and colours rather than movement. But overall, I was still concerned with the dynamism, the emotion and the activity of urban life.
I don’t know, I guess I’ll just have to trust in my prime directive and keep slogging away in the hopes that I rebound out of this funk.
Orange Red Streaks On Dark Green, 2011 – Light Signatures :: (Click to see more)
I spend a great deal of time paying close attention to trends and new developments in a lot of different areas. I tend to oscillate between thinking everything is going to be alright – that we are heading toward an altruistic society that functions at a higher level and thinking large multinational corporations will continue to ascend and grow in power and reach, undermining all the advances and advantages garnered from these trends and new developments, ie I oscillate between optimism and pessimism.
I’ve been alive long enough now to begin to see trends in all things human. Enough that I have hope half the time and doubt the other half. I think its too close to call either way. This doesn’t prevent me from continuing to fight the good fight and adding my small contributions to the hope side of the equation. Still, I am always looking for ways to tip the balance and eliminate the miasma of nonsense that always accompanies all that we do as a race.
These are exciting times! There are going to be some very important shifts and changes in our future. For most of these changes, we haven’t yet fully grasped their importance or impact. The groundwork is getting laid now by those who do understandthe benefits or who wish to subvert the process and tip the balance to favour themselves – corporations and government. Sadly it looks to me as though most of us are either unaware, consider these items a low priority in our overwhelming lives or simply don’t understand their importance and long term impact.
I don’t have any new thoughts on how to raise awareness. If I ever do I’ll let you know. For now, I watch and I think and I devise ways to try and survive the impending storm.
