silversand

I had to document my creative process for a seminar I’m taking this semester. I’ve never been comfortable with my process for making work, so it was great to look at what I do and think about what I might like to do.

I don’t feel that I have a fully developed creative process. I’m unhappy with the way I go about creating work. I think I get mired in research and end up straightforwardly presenting the research, hoping that the piece communicates a variety of unconnected but compelling details that appealed to me during research. I need to find new ways to move past research, and to take my art-making process out of my head.

1. Isolate an area of interest or framework for a piece
   1. Generally I’ll realize I should look into making work relating to something I already care a lot about
   2. Occasionally seeing a particular interesting something or just thinking/trying to sleep/etc. will trigger a particular partial framework for a piece
2. Research area of interest looking for angles that might be useful angles for art-making
   1. At this stage the scope of the piece tends to broaden
   2. If I’m researching topics related to a particular framework for a piece, the framework starts to come apart and I get caught up in my interest in the topics
   3. I tend to find a number of compelling particular fragments of knowledge over the course of research
3. Become mired in research
   1. While I discover a lot of things to pursue while researching, I end up with a hopelessly broad scope, a fragmentary picture of whatever I’m looking into (with a number of compelling but unconnected fragments)
   2. I find myself increasingly drawn into conceptualization, trying to work out all aspects of a piece before starting to realize it, and then falling away even from thoughts about a potential piece
   3. I also tend to convince myself at this stage that things are more hopeless than they are
4. Reorient myself toward initial idea while marking other interesting fragments of ideas for future development
   1. I don’t really do this, but I think it might be a good thing to try
   2. Trying to do this sort of thing though, is tough, because generally I find that my research exposes insufficiencies in whatever initial idea I might have had
   3. Alternatively, my idea is framework for content and the research, which was supposed to turn up content for the framework hasn’t done so
   4. Sometimes I can still pursue the initial idea in its original form and other times I can develop it in new directions
   5. I’m not sure to what extent I unfairly undermine my own confidence in the adequacy of these frameworks at this stage, so it may be worth pushing myself to pursue the initial frameworks even when I think they are leading nowhere
   6. However, when I tried to do this last semester, I wound up with a dead end very late in the semester
   7. So, I really need some way to move myself into other facets of art-making while I’m still researching
5. Begin making things
   1. This needs to happen as early as possible, and when I have frameworks in mind that involve construction, or technical knowledge I don’t have, I should begin my research by looking into these sorts of things, so I can start making things right away
   2. Making things could involve programming, circuitry or instrument construction (speaker, radio etc.), recording, imaging or video work, or whatever else
   3. When I feel that I need to start building things, I often satisfy my anxiety at having not yet done so by creating a website relating to some aspect of the project or setting up a blog or database to document my research. Having such a database is a good idea, but this allows me to put off other kinds of building
6. Continue making things, developing studies, and working toward a completed piece by trying things out while researching, rather than just researching
   1. This is my sense of how I might find it easier to end up with a piece instead of nothing and might be able to make work that is more than a straightforward or surface-level presentation of information
   2. This provides a more immediate outlet for interesting facets of my research and allows me to put aside concerns about making something I don’t really like by allowing myself to make studies

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 13th, 2005 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Sound, Art, School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.