To look or not to look.
Reflections February 14, 2008
Has it ever happened to you that the sheer amount of “stuff around you” makes you feel like losing yourself and that everything you created is just a mirror from what you’ve just seen over the past few days when browsing around and nothing is truly grown on your own turf?
Or do you happily surf the internet, the bookstores and every magazine you can lay your hands on… and pull it all in, drink the abundance of colors, viewpoints, knowledge, dreams and prints… take it all in, turn the blender on 5 and then pour the mix into a whirlwind of your own?
Before the internet - this statement makes me stand instantly with one foot in my own grave and the worms ready to gnaw, even though the before is only 15 years to me - well, before the internet I barely reflected on this issue as it never had been an issue to this extent.
Have I lost you already completely?
We are all children and products of our environment. Plus a few other factors. But lets stick to the environmental influences for now.
So, we are children of our time. Cheerios, McDonalds and all. Repetitiveness makes a single thing into a habit or a regular or a “everyone knows”… even into a common style. And thus uniqueness becomes trend becomes cheap becomes trash.
Inspiration is good. Copycat is not.
How much do you take from inspiration to not be stealing but to stay within a trend and ride the wave of current interest; how much do you inteprete the inspiration into something completely else; and how much do you refuse a momentary trend to seep into your inner process and lock it completely out?
For several years AtW (after the web) I felt the data inflow pounding at my door and it was as caught by quicksand, trying to hold my position but losing an overpowering battle. [As a note, drowning in quicksand got busted at the 20 October 2004 Mythbuster TV Show].
It didn’t start out as such. At first I sucked in every piece of data I could put my hand on. Bought every computer magazine under the stars, ate manuals by the pound, checked out every multimedia show, every demo application on the magazine CD’s; lived, slept and dreamt of computers, 3D, animations, colors and design.
But it never stopped, there was constantly more, more, more. And more. Suddenly the line between me and them was no longer solid but fluid.
My counter reaction was to block everything out, didn’t want to get tainted, wanted to remain pure. So I locked out every creative book or website, closed my eyes to artistic progress and diversity; didn’t want to know, didn’t want to know.
This is not a solution in the long run, because too much separation will alienate you and your art from others and put you outside of time. There are a few artists who won in the long run by doing this, but it doesn’t appear that I would be amongst them.
Finding that single wave which keeps me enough in touch with the current but allows me to go off on my own and not falling for the big wave - this is my game.
What is yours?
