the protocols of creativity and the chaos theory

8/14/2019 The Protocols of Creativity and the Chaos Theory

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THE PROTOCOLS OF CREATIVITY AND THECHAOS THEORY

by PaulHenrickson, Ph.D. 2004

tm. 2007

I should comment that I find this a ratherpretentious title, but it does say what it isintended to say, and, perhaps, just a little bitmore.

Even a banal reference to what nearly everybusy housewife could have heard about suchas a writers block could start us off on a pathof discovery from which we might never returnunchanged. A corollary to this thought is thatit is everyones obligation to change, develop,or emerge and that being so, the morality of itlies in how the individual charts the course.

But there is something more possible than thisin the following anecdote: a curious pubescentboy of eleven, the kind that smell a little, picktheir noses and do not curb their tongues forlong was venting his curiosity, and that is all itwas really, in the tool shed when, by accident,a stack of used but not emptied paint canstoppled and three, whose covers had not been

very secured, opened as they fell.

Well, one might imagine the result. Instead ofa range of brownish grays of ageing wood andsomewhat dull and rusted metal attachmentsthe dark interior of the shed suddenly burst


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into color. It was clear to him that this was notwhat his parents had had in mind when theystored these things here and he knew it wasimpossible for him to hide this catastrophe.

The boy was resourceful however and so heenergetically open all the other half-emptycans of paint and after a few hours he hadpainted the entire collection of tools so thatthere were now wooden handles of red, blue,green, yellow and pink and now, as heexplained all this to his parents, you need

only to remember that a rake is blue and ashovel is red and the wheel barrel is a brightyellow.

He waited apprehensively for the explosion ofrejection and promises of punishment and sawendless hours using turpentine to clean offthe mess. Fortunately his parents saw the

fruitlessness of that approach and decided tolive with this experiment in creativity. Theyflexibly decided to turn the accident into aproject and soon the entire community hadtool sheds containing brightly colored toolsand there as an element of contentmentthroughout the community because some ofthe frustration of negotiating life between

dawn and dusk had been liberated

In part, this is what is meant by creativesolutions arising out of chaotic circumstances.The mind strives for a balance while, at othertimes, it also tests the limits of that balance to


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see how much more complex he might make itand it is the exercise of this ability which anartist uses in his never-ending search forappropriately meaningful signs.


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This is what the experience of engaging in thecreation of these protocols was intended to do.While, on one hand, they may be seen asfinished works of art, they were not initiallyintended to be finished works, but only steps

in the direction of a more openly receptiveawareness of potential. The process isongoing, rewarding and addictive.

In regard to a product being an accidental workof art, or a work of art accidentally, there are


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two examples which might serve to broadenour understanding. One of these isMichelangelos slave and the other is aconstruction by Carl Nesjar.


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Michaelangelo: Slave

Nesjar,Carl: Ice Sculpture

and an other ice sculpture by Carl Nesjar both of which raisethe questions of creative accident, permanence and creativeintent. Certainly Nesjars work achieves much more on themeasure of timeliness than the work of most artists and verynearly moots the question of the creative contributions of

Giacomo Balla and Marcel Duchamp.

Nesjar,Carl: Ice Sculpture

Nesjar has followed through with hisinvestigations into the accidents of occurrence,Michelangelo who had, we suppose, no control


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over the whims of the Pope who kept shiftinghis assignments from sculpture to paintingmay not have reflected upon the veryinformative image to which we are heir, but

one Michelangelo probably had neverintended. Because of the interpretation weplace upon the slave we becomeconspirators, with Michelangelo, [but withouthis active awareness], in the meaning the workhas for us. An interesting experiment might beto take a computer generated image of whatMichelangelos Slave might have looked like

if completed and the way it looks now and testa contemporary audience on the differences inperception, if any, they evoke. What I amattempting to point out is that the meaning ofa work of art does not inherently exist in thework itself but is, largely, a product of thecomplex organization of the person perceivingit. In this regard per haps Agnes Martin was

correct when she was quoted as saying whatyou see in my work is what you see. Thestatement, as it reads, is off-putting and Iwould have preferred her to be less laconic andrather much more verbal. As the statementstands we really have little evidence of herthinking.


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A work by

Agnes Martin. N.b.: As I have said elsewhere an artist, more often and

perhaps more deeply, reveals who he is in everything he does whichis one of the reasons why I believe Paul Brach to be overly rewarded

There is some meaning in the adage thatbeauty is in the eye of the beholder, but Idislike the adage because it seems to negatethe insightful contributions, if there are any,of the producer.

Now, however, that is only one end of theprocessthe generative end. The other end,the receptor-audience end is also a highlycomplex matter and, in a sense, much moredifficult to analyze. It is also, sometimes, muchmore surprising.


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If a man watching a parade of marchingmusicians suddenly straightens his shouldersand lifts his chin, his wife starts smiling

broadly, and their child excitedly lurches outinto the street and wildly joins the multitude ofuniformed legs and mockingly swings his armswe are witnessing evidence of aestheticmessaging. It is the artistic communication inprocess, but on a very elementary level.

And politicians know it is a valuable tool of

social control.

But it is the cultivation of these sensibilities,under the sensitive control of the individual,which is the focus of aesthetic education. It isa very tender plant and one that can be a joyto have around and it is one, as well, that isunder constant threat from a mindset that is

intolerant of personal divergence. All of ushave seen, quite probably, incidence of whereone child in a larger group seems to beselected as the acceptable victim for all thegroups largely imagined sense of propriety.

If you are not one of us you are a threat, or afreak and we will destroy you

Such a view, which invites a mass devotion tosome single concept, also benefits the agendaof the bully who, often silently, spreads theidea that if there are any more heresies hidingaround similar group reprisals will be enacted.


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It is, I believe, historically understandable thatgroups have learned this technique as a meansof keeping itself together and viable as a

group. However, it also has the unfortunateeffect of curtailing beneficial divergentbehavior which the group may need in order tomaintain its developing process. Consequentlywe have this profile of a constant flow ofenergies, a breathing in and a breathing out,expansion and contraction, a conservativeposture and a liberal curiosity. It consequently

would seem to me that a governing entitymight wisely create a system whereby boththese organic responses to stimulus aremaintained in alternating balance so that thebenefit of each might be less traumaticallyintegrated than they are in some societieswhere the points of view of one group areimmediately trounced by another as soon as

there is a major power change. I think wemight try to describe this process as managedchaos.

The protocols, in the context of art, areintended to instigate some imbalance simply inorder to discover what the solutions to thischaos might be and thereby enrich the

vocabulary of visual communication.


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By way of contrasting a point of view I wasrecently informed by two colleagues concerned

about art that one deputy in the Italianparliament made the comment that theindividual commissioned to make a copy of anoriginal work also produces an original work. Iimagine that the three of us were equallysaddened and de-energized by that sophistry.

One of the situations that came to mind was

the anecdote that had originated, I believe, inancient Rome about a collector of bronze workswho had been boasting of his latest purchasewas questioned by another as to how he coldbe sure that his purchase was an originalCorinthian bronze. The collectors reply was


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that he was, of course, absolutely certain itwas an original Corinthian bronze since thename of the man from who he had purchased itwas Corinthus.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, which prides itself onbeing the third largest art center in theUnited States, a reputation possibly correctonly in term of the amount of tax revenuegenerated by the art sales which take placeand then, that figure rests only on thedefinition used to identify what is art.

In the same locality there are several highlyprominent art dealers who have been veryeconomically successful not one of whom hasgiven any evidence that they understand whatart is or that they care to. One mightappreciate, however, the honesty of one ofthem (Forrest Fenn) who stated that it made

no difference to him whether he sold plumbingor works of art. (In other areas of his professionallife his honesty has been questioned.) But suchattitudes do, regretfully, dominate and morecareful analysis of the art product andevaluation of its production is often dismissedas boring, irrelevant and unnecessary.Contrary-wise, however, it is in exactly this

careful and painstaking procedure of analyzingthe nature of the product and evaluating itsaffect upon us that the real value of the workemerges. It is of less importance that peopleagree on the value of a work of art than thatthey engage in trying to communicate the


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significance of that value. It is in the sharing ofobservations about a work of art that the valueof that work is uncovered.In an environment that seems to beincreasingly and varyingly in flux it wouldseem to be an important characteristic ofhuman behavior that open-endedexperimentation is sought and valued as oneway in which, as a community, mankind mightcome to, at least, a symbolic understanding ofwhere and who he is.

This interpretation seems historicallyconsistent with those historians and criticshave placed on such earlier periods of artproduction such as the renaissance, classicalGreece and the paintings of Lascaux andAltamira.

Paul Henrickson,Gozo

2005

the protocols of creativity and the chaos theory

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