I’m guessing most of you following this blog create artwork for a specific end product: a painting to hang on a wall, or a sculpture; maybe a book or poem for publication; music to put on a CD and so on. What if you were to envision a different context for your work to exist in? Would that give you additional ideas to pursue?
What if you were to create a painting intended to be a book cover, or a poem that became a song? My point is that I often have been stuck on the thought that what I produce eventually gets framed and hung on a wall, but now as I create work to be seen as animation (a project that is actually in the works), elements in my work previously seen as static can be thought of as transient and moving. This opens up the visual possibilities and I’m thinking that this could do the same for other types of art. I also think that it needn’t be an actual alternative project. Make one up. What sort of art would you create for an imagined CD package? Maybe you could even create the music and lyrics for it!
Visualizing a bigger context for what you’re creating may take you to some far-away exotic territory.
4 Comments
In permaculture, it is called expanding the edges. Design work is often about working with edges, and creating more edges creates more space – to do art or grow things. What do you think?
Absolutely. The edges are the most exciting place to be. Doing art is growing things.
I like that “doing art is growing things.” We are learning about patterns in nature and design – and the synergy of all things and relatedness/connectedness and it’s remarkable how the study of permaculture translates to many other activities and practices.
Here is a link to some reading we did. We focused on Chapter 4 – which is about restoring prairie lands – interesting. Kevin Kelly is pretty out there, but the reading got me thinking about evolution and relatedness.
http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php
Denissia
Thanks for the link, Denissia. I look forward to delving in a bit more. At first glance, it looks like there’s a huge amount of information.