The Creative Act and Its Double

Discernment is always required in recognizing the difference between appearance and reality.

Individualist expression is essential to art, and demands a devotion to strenuous work.  As a social phenomena, individualist expression alone is highly superficial, facile, and usually inconsequential beyond its sociological and psychological implications.  It should not be conflated with art, as is often the case, but viewed as another matter altogether.

An artist's work speaks for the artist, and for itself.

Marrow, Nerve, Light

Ideas have consequences; causes produce effects.

The most dangerous conflicts are not always won through armed combat.

Clear

Complicate or simplify art, to any purpose whatsoever.

In either case art remains unchanged.  Perspective alone is altered.

View and Variation

Art expresses belief and judgement.

Certainly this means art represents a philosophical perspective, whether viewed as a representation of reality or as gesture alone. To interpret or to simply experience any work implies a philosophical choice.  Were it otherwise one would have no choice, other than to accede to, or impose, diktat.

What cannot be expressed directly can, and will, be evoked by other means.

The Uncanny and the Avant-Garde

Assemble elements both predictable and popular and there is nothing unexpected.

Now strip away, by degrees, these elements. That which was recognizable evolves toward the unknown, taking on an alien aspect while remaining somewhat within the realm of experience.

This is the aesthetic beauty of the unexpected, outside the bland, dull order of shock and offense.

Force and Limit

Engaged in the creative act, it is possible to maintain focus on the outcome.

Trace expression from aesthetic concept through emotional and intellectual evaluation, and what is significant is total effect.  All else reflects the cultural climate, regardless of the degree to which any personal, subjective, and objective forces combine in composition and execution of the work.

Reality, Gesture, Object, Effect

Balance reason and the intuitive.

The creative act expresses synthesis of idea and media; it is in flux until it is complete.

Substance, Shadow, Consciousness

So-called "dark" visions and expressions are but infantile, morbid extravagances.

To place greater value on technology than upon the ultimate potential of the human mind is an affront to humanity itself. Such a false perspective is one of infinitely greater hazard to freedom, culture, and society than any demoralized view of the human condition can possibly be.

Cross Talk

Clearly, perceptivity stands in opposition to nihilistic insensibility.

Yet the latter perspective always takes contemporary precedence by dint of incessant clamor, appeals to ignorance, and mob mentality. The sleep of reason yields monsters; their attempted expressions are nugatory, and absurd.

That which will be must conform to reality, and reality will not be coerced.  Contrived eccentricities create neither power nor individuality, and the quest to make them do so has rendered them common, pointless, vapid, and impotent.

Art, Social and Personal

Media directs the attention towards external impressions, and interprets them for various purposes.

Yet, given its superficiality, imagery for mass consumption cannot rival direct experience, and does so only in proportion to weakness of intellect and will.  One may well consider all the implications.

Wax, Wane

Attainment of intellectual expression is a goal and focus of art.  It is noble, and desirable.

This is because of lasting impact, the shaping of future events, and what might be called the transmission of cultural progress through evolving ideas.

As a perspective this is easily lost upon society, and the momentum of reason difficult to gain.

Now and Everywhere

Ars longa, vita brevis.

Hippocrates continues the observation, finding "opportunity fleeting, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult".

So the arts demand action, and the delineation and representation of experience,  There is no time for considerations regarding gain and loss.  There is only the time that remains.

Withheld, Obscured

Consider those things not revealed.

It may be necessary to renew the idea of  "secret societies", as they were known in the past, simply to continue to convey concepts of realism and objectivity to those capable of making such judgments.

The artist must trust perceptivity.  For the artist, the eye, and for the composer, the ear, must reveal insights that may be expressed.  This is especially critical in a culture which declines to the state in which one may call day, night, and night, day, only to be celebrated for claiming such "belief".

Promoveo, promovi, promotum.

Sound and Appearances

Listening implies expectations, usually emotional and often motivated by impulse.

But there are other ways to listen, just as there are other ways to compose with sound.

Begin with reason; explore the contemplative and subtle, the objective atmospheres, as opposed to the common inventions of subjective imagination.

In and Out of the Abstract

Inevitably, the arc of history appears to end in the corruption of the present moment.

But this is no more than the nature of the present moment.  What is not now apparent continues the arc into the future, even as it exists, within reach, yet in obscurity.

Unreal Distances

One cannot be both here and there.

Contemporary subjection to immediacy demands engaging in continuous direct involvement with all forms of technological representations, and imposes vicarious participation in cultural events at the expense of direct perception.  Attention is divided, communication loses purpose.

Technologies are tools of expression; viewed wrongly, they become its shackles.

Future Echoes

Begin with that which is not possible.

Walls are breached, and doors opened, through imagination and action, reason and free will.  It is not up to the artist to say what will be, but to work to bring that idea, concept, vision or sound into being-- impossible or not.

Disconnection, Immersion

Technology may serve a variety of purposes, or be no more than a diversion.

In the former case, technology may yield increase in capability, expanding potential; yet it is clearly the latter that occupies the attention with little in the way of reward. Here, in fact, is an example of a situation in which power of choice rests with the individual will, and the artist acts accordingly.

Hearing the Distant

Change, never ceasing, is a mechanism of survival.

Sounds across cultures, in the moment now, move toward wider, deeper expressions.

This is the inevitable consequence of their dynamic nature, and cannot be held in check by human desire for certainty.

Surface, Shadow, Symbol, and The Real

Art is human reality; thus within it, human error.

Observe digital media in various forms; consider these in the context of Plato's allegory of the cave.