
Waiting to see how the backlit film facemounts to the back of the plexi before I order the rest of the resin but looks promising. Then it’s pour, pour, pour as I practice my careful no-air-bubbles clear film rolling technique. Almost there!
When I was in school there was a tiny little record shop called Dr Disc that I used to visit to buy my music from. The thing I liked most about it for choosing new music was the little blurb they used to put with new imports. Usually it was a comment on the artists involved or the style or something else that gave some insight into what the music was like. I found this way more useful than just purchasing music based on the look of the sleeve or some other “judge a book by its cover” approach.
By the same token I really appreciate a decent book synopsis or review of food, wine or anything. Without hearing about someone else’s experience of something that would otherwise be impossible to discover without actually trying it we’re at a loss for deciding on whether to consume it or not. In the same way, I’m really beginning to appreciate the role of curator or selector when it comes to art – in all forms.
This applies to almost everything in our lives. We appreciate the referral from a friend who has similar tastes or similar situation just as we come to like certain radio stations, or DJ’s who bring their particular predilection when presenting music. The same can be said for anyone who assembles a collection of things. And now more than ever, as we are more and more connected with each other and able to share our own personal collections of things, are we able to reap the benefits of curation.
I value the curator because they assemble collections creating order from the massive chaotic maelstrom of all possible things. The curator groups things with a specific goal in mind – a comment, a style, a theme – something, anything – just as we assemble groups and collections in our own lives typically with the theme of “I like this”. I feel that much of what I do with my artwork when I edit and choose what images to present is curation on some level. I am deciding which of my work best represents my theme or idea in a cohesive manner.
I’m choosing to put my best foot forward to present the images that are truly mine. I’m creating order.
The other day I accidentally saw an interesting talk by Freeman Dyson broadcast on TVO. He wrapped up quoting James Gleick’s book – The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood – saying from this point onward, our function as finite creatures – as humans, is to create islands of meaning in the flood of information – that this applies to all forms of creative activity from science, and art to literature.
He said, somewhere around the year 2000 there was a turning point visible almost everywhere in both intellectual and practical activities at which it became cheaper to collect information than to understand it.
Personally I’ve struggled over the past 17 years with this paradigm shift in almost all my personal, creative and work activities with an ever increasing panic – to the point now where I’ve embarked on several personal projects to eject and delete information – music, images, videos, books, files – that I’m not immediately using. Simply because I can easily collect them again if I need to. More and more I use the internet as a repository, as an index and search for the items I need when I need them.
I’ve bought more and more and more rotating storage – hundreds, possibly thousands of CD’s, DVD’s and now Terrabytes of harddrives. In the name of redundancy and disaster recovery, I now own more than 20 Terrabytes (approximately 20,000 Gigabytes) of disk space scattered across my print, creative and personal life – and I don’t even work with video – okay a little.
In 1999 I began to compress all my CD music into mp3 files and collect them into a single database of easily accessible music. At that time I had maybe 30 Gigabytes of music. By 2002 I was overwhelmed by the library of music I had accumulated – music I did not have enough time to hear let alone time to decide whether I liked. On top of this, I’ve now digitized all my vinyl and taped music – but have yet to edit, compress and integrate it into my collection. It’s a giant mess.
In all respects this deluge of readily available material has changed the way I function. For my Light Signatures project I’ve collected almost 5000 source images – without even trying hard – most of them worthwhile. Never before have I captured, stored and archived work with such ease, never before have I had such ready access to a feedback loop that consequently enabled the capture of such a high percentage of worthy images.
What began unconsciously at first – creating islands of meaning as Freeman and James so eloquently put it – I now openly acknowledge as my creative raison d’etre. Creating islands of meaning is exactly what I’m searching for – finding order in chaos. This concept underlies what I do in much of my life.
There are some negatives.
Items are no longer precious.
It is now harder than ever to make compelling statements.
I feel panic – I’m overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of this undertaking and concerned my projects are never-ending.
But, there are more positives than negatives – I think.
Our standards are higher. We demand and expect greater quality.
We can draw conclusions and inferences more readily and rapidly.
Education and knowledge is more accessible.
The pace of change and discovery is increasing – some may see this as a negative.
We are more connected as a whole species – as a whole society.
We are more responsible – both individually and collectively.
However, it seems cornucopia doesn’t necessarily equal paradise.
We need coping mechanisms – methods to find and utilize the information we require – discard and ignore what we don’t. Ways to sift through the chaos and noise to create compelling and meaningful constructs. These are the tools we need to make if we are to survive this tsunami wave of our own devising.
Exciting times.
Writing a blog post every week for the past year has certainly helped focus my thoughts about what I’m making. This idea of chaos vs order is clearly fundamental to what I’m exploring. Until recently I could really only articulate my work as pattern seeking – an effort to illustrate the underlying patterns in the chaotic motions of things around me.
Now, I think pattern seeking a by-product – ultimately my interest lies in order that can be found in chaos – that what appears chaotic is actually subtly ordered. It’s my job to reveal order in this apparent chaos.
There is another idea I’m intrigued with that Stephen Wolfram discussed in a Ted talk – that simple systems can create complex patterns. I recently read a post where he discusses his book A New Kind Of Science. In the post he talks about nature sampling a brood spectrum of the computational universe and the patterns that result. This post and his demonstration of the complex patterns that can be generated by simple cellular automata made me contemplate that I too am a complex pattern in a simple system – a pattern generated by the simple rules of my DNA, that in turn arose from the simple rules or our computational universe.
This notion of complexity generated from simplicity appears on many other levels – like for example, the complexity of the human brain, generated from a relatively simple segment of our DNA code. Our brain’s complexity lies in its redundancy and the parallel repetition of simple structures within it. Or for example, how we are able to perform extraordinarily difficult feats of pattern recognition simply because of this massively parallel nature of our brains – something we are hard pressed or unable to perform with today’s computers.
I think, given the relative simplicity of the laws – the fundamental structure, elements, particles and sub-atomic particles etc – of our universe, coupled with the innate pattern recognition skills or our brains, there is massive opportunity to find unforeseen order in the apparent chaos of our world – that what appears to be chaotic at first glance, may in fact be subtly ordered on some scale(s).
I’m toying with the idea of our universe as computation system, with the manifestation of complex patterns such as ourselves, spontaneously arising out of the apparent chaos – generated from the rules of our universe.
Thus, I am a pattern seeking patterns.
I’ve always observed the flow of things. Like predicting the flow of traffic around me while I drive – to plot my optimum path through it. I do this while driving on the 401 for example. I do the same thing when I photograph – I watch the movement of things, predict their alignment and photograph the patterns.
All my images are about alignments in the chaotic flow around me and the beautiful patterns they form.
In earlier days documenting alignments was enough for me. But in time, I recognized that just because it was my perspective didn’t make it interesting or significant for others – it needed something more.
If I could somehow distill my image to it’s core elements – it’s essence – and remove distractions, I could show it for exactly what it is. I could show it without the distraction of context – in the same way a young child beholds the wonder of the world.
This is my focus now.
I give you alignment without context – order and symmetry, manifest from chaos.
Isn’t it wondrous?