psemme

Proposal – Capturing/recording an act of creation is a valid, 100% original, irreproducible, existential proof.

Your existence is not a destination. It is defined by its continuity and quantified by its “exhaust”. All of your movements uniquely change the world – sometimes infinitesimally, sometimes categorically – from heartbeats to hugs. Your existence, in space-time, is a perpetual act of creation; life reaching constantly forward, building and defining (increasing entropy?), second by second. As conscious passengers on this trip we are given opportunities to create signposts along the way – artwork.

For my purposes here, I want to focus on the act of creating art and my belief that it is, perhaps, the most valuable, and least appreciated, aspect of an artist’s work. We all admire an artist’s “masterpiece”, the final presentation of an accumulated set of efforts. But these final gifts to the world are only part of the story. And now, with technology, of potentially questionable value given concerns of authenticity and provenance.

Irrespective of its final disposition, the actual act of creating the artwork, is absolutely unique, irreproducible and irreducible. It can never be recreated. As such, capturing, as completely as possible, the act of creation, becomes an art form itself.

The video at the beginning of this post is on of my initial, simple attempts at demonstrating the idea. The final drawing, the final “presentation” or “destination” isn’t the point of the video. It is the creation of the drawing itself – the conversion of thought into reality, intangible into tangible, creative energy into physical matter.

This is an important distinction.

Consider : pictured above is a new “artifact” based on the original drawing – a derivative of the first. This is what happens to artistic “destinations”, and why they can’t reliably serve as existential proofs themselves (even though they can be considered artwork themselves).

The act of creating is a celebration of being, and documenting your creating is proof of your existence. The drawing is just a form of exhaust generated from your journey forward – but in this case it’s intentional exhaust (aka art).

There are other data points we could could capture during the creation process, beyond visual.

Imagine for a moment a technical device that would allow you to experience the same heartbeat as another person during a particular timeframe. For example, imagine being able to feel, in your own chest, Neil Armstrong’s actual heartbeat as he did when he first set foot on the moon.

We could record the artist’s heartbeat. Then, via this future device, “viewers” could experience not just what the artist saw during the artwork’s creation, but how they were physically responding at the time. There are a virtually limitless number of elements we could could measure during a creation process, each uniquely bearing witness to the act itself. In fact, the more measurements recorded, the more unassailable the authenticity.

My next post introduces new measurements into the creation process and discusses the creative opportunities. It also attempts to address this recurring theme of authenticity – how can anyone be sure it’s actually “me” claiming my existential proof?