2003-08-15

 
The Infinite Mechanism of Being.

Take a digital disk of music: it is a work of art, an expression of an individual's emotion, culling their experiences to an effusion of sound. It is a unique experience, inimitable. Yet, it is a digital collection of concrete definitions... the bits of a digital piece of information are not subjective -- they're either one or zero. There is mechanism in music. Take the sounds that make you weep, that remind you of your lover, of the full moon walks you've taken, of recovering from a blight or blizzard... These sounds can all be defined and programmed; I'm sorry but the magic of music is material.

Yet then proceed to calculate the probability of randomly arriving at this collection of digits, yielding the same music that transports you to the winding corridors of the city of Cordoba. You will have barely embarked on this vast task before you will realize that the amount of time for an event like this to occur is very large -- unfathomably large -- INFINITELY large. Thus it is improbable. Yet the possibility exists. You can very well theoretically arrive at the disk of music randomly. An intact human set of DNA could very well materialize out of a stew of component chemicals and yield Eve or Adam (well it would have to happen twice in this case). But this probability is so tiny that we must discount this theory as unlikely.

There is something highly unique in the work of art, in the handwriting of an individual, in the bed you have slept in and the way the sheets have been wrinkled. No two persons can share every exact experience, and hence there is no way to escape the dea(r)th of individuality, of existence.

For certain, there are commonalities that we may arrive at to determine likelihoods: if a person studies Italian Renaissance art, they are likely to pick up skills to paint a lovely image for their church and for it to be received as "good". Yet this does not imply that in order for an artist to accomplish elegance they must submit to the history of past artistic triumphs. There are infinite ways for people to create something (at all), and just as this there are also the same infinite ways for people to create something that is good. Of course, if you wanted to rationalize, there are more ways to create something (good or bad) than the ways to just create something good. But both are inifinite. Try that on.

We accept standards based on what experiences we have had. Even in the technologies are there infinite possibilities. There is an infinity of source codes that a programmer can write to arrive at a common efficient program. There are limitless possibilities to construct a bicycle. But there are standards, based on experience, that have locked us in to accepting certain methods. You can build a good, unique bicycle with no background in bicycle history at all, but no bike shop will be willing to market your bicycle until it has been proven that it is successful and that a market exists for it. Instead, the shop would rather continue selling the mainstream style of bike the public has known about. The same goes for combustion, classical music, cooking, calligraphy, caricatures. Breakdancing, baroque architecture, bookbinding, banjo-picking. The mainstream, accepted way to do something well has clouded the tributaries.

In this infinity of possibilities of finding a way to do some activity, I would not say that all of these possibilities are good. Indeed there are many poor inefficient choices, many undesired and wasteful ones. Often, the best route is the safest route, which is to emulate your neighbor and your teacher. We should not seek to be strictly nonconventional -- that is too conventional a strategy. But we must know always that there are no walls (burn them down if you can!) and that your creativity can be as unique as you seek for it to be. Nothing beats excellent ingenuity; become a master at being yourself.
posted by MM 10:48 PM