The extent of
applications of technology in our modern world seems to have no bounds. One particularly interesting group of
applications deals with the ability to create within a virtual world of
experience. Sound Stage is a program
which allows a person to set up a virtual music studio for creating music
without the expense or, for that matter, the clutter of real solid equipment
and instruments. In terms of the
technology, only one piece of hardware is required. Tilt Brush is a 3D painting program that
allows a person to paint in virtual reality.
And what Tilt Brush is for painting, Medium is for sculpting. It allows a person to manipulate a virtual
object and to shape it as if it were made of real matter. Whereas Sound Stage avoids clutter, Tilt Brush
and Medium avoid material waste products and the messes made from them. Clutter, waste products, messes – sounds like
things that we all would like to avoid in our lives. Most people have an inherent dislike of the
disorder and chaos that clutter, waste products and messes generate. There are people today whose job it is to go
around to other people’s homes to help them sort out the messes and clutter
that have developed from the agglomeration of their possessions. Get rid of the possessions that aren’t really
needed or desired and put some order in the possessions that remain. Clutter and mess are dirty words (no play on
words intended) to people who think like this.
However,
for many creative people, a certain amount of mess or clutter in their lives
may not only be normal for them, but may even be more comfortable for them. Mess and clutter provide a kind of
environmental grounding for them. The
different things and materials that eventually form a perceptual blur in their
residences and studios, create a kind of reassuring organic connection for
them. Seeing the mingling of different
materials and things acts as an unconscious stimulus for different creative
connections in their minds leading to the further development of components and
aspects of works of art.
Far
fewer of these implicit organic connections appear in habitations and
workplaces where everything is very neat and orderly. Things and materials in such environments can
be experienced as clumping together in fully defined discrete free-floating
figures that float in the sterile empty vacuum spaces in which they exist. Implicit creative connections are not as
easily made in such formalized environments that contain relatively few
overlapping phenomena. Placed in a
different perspective, messy cluttered habitations are conducive to acting as
templates for creative connections in the minds of creative people.
And
messy cluttered environments may not just be good for artists. There are many articles that show that messy
desks are associated with innovative people in whatever field is
considered. For such people, messy desks
can be both a source of comforting grounding and of organic stimulation. In contrast, a neat orderly desk and living
environment may be conducive to thinking in neat orderly practical ways. Finding the shortest, most efficient, defined
discrete pathway to solving a problem. In other words, conventional solutions to
conventionally defined problems. The
difficulty with this approach is that many problems in work and in life look
simple on the surface but, in reality, have many complex aspects with which to
deal. Complex problems are usually
uniquely complex, having a special combination of problematic factors. Such problems cannot be solved by an approach
of finding the shortest distance between two points. They often require creative innovative
intuitive solutions that have more indirect, even convoluted, pathways. They often require creative thinkers who work
well in more messy cluttered environments.
Which
brings us back to possible problems with the process of creating within virtual
environments. All the virtual
applications that we talked about at the beginning of this article don’t have mess
or clutter in using them. Sound Stage is
free of the clutter that comes from equipment and instruments lying
around. In Tilt Brush, it would be a
freedom from the mess that comes with paint that is used on palettes but also
that can get on everything: on clothing, furniture, and floors. Also no more clutter from paints, brushes,
and canvasses lying around. In Medium,
it would be the freedom that comes from a lack of all the dust that gets on
everything and the discarded pieces of sculpture material that come from
creating any sculpture in the real world.
Also no need for the clutter of different sculpture tools.
I
would submit that the clutter and messes just elaborated on actually help a
creative person, even while he is in the process of creating his artistic
works. As the work is created, the mess
and clutter are created, and they become a kind of encompassing organic
grounding, a template that helps to stimulate the ongoing interaction between
the artist’s creative tools and the work of art that is being created.
In
other words, it is the contention of this article that a certain amount of mess
and clutter actually stimulate creativity.
And when people consider the lack of mess and clutter in Sound Stage and
Tilt Brush and Medium as benefits, because then, one supposes, one can create
in a totally sanitized vacuumized focused environment with only neat defined
discrete phenomena with which to deal, these people have a flawed understanding
of creation. In nature, childbirth is
messy. Planting trees is messy. Cultivating crops is messy. Raising animals is messy. You can’t get away from messes when dealing
with creative processes in nature.
But
we must remember that people today are trying to transcend above their organic
natures in order to break away from the cycle that includes organic
perishability. As much of an oxymoron as
it is, people today are trying to explore paths that lead to the development of
robotic creativity. A creativity that
transcends above the arbitrary uncontrollable mingling of different kinds of
matter and things that in and of itself represents a kind of primary unfocused
creativity. On the other hand, robotic
creativity supposedly allows a person to preserve an imprint in a vacuum,
before it has been made with the supportive stimulation of surrounding messes
and clutter. Such creativity produces
imprints (audio as well as visual) that are sparse in the kind of flowing
continual blendable stimuli that are an essential part of the experiencing of
traditional more organic works of art.
Without these stimuli, meaningful connections cannot be formed between
the viewers or the audience, on the one hand, and the works of art on the other.
In
today’s world, messes and clutter get a bad rap. At least in the area of the creative arts,
this bad rap is not deserved, and, on the contrary, messes and clutter are an
essential element of the whole creative process.
(c) 2016 Laurence Mesirow
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