Thank you Ralf for your exploration of the relationship of the artist to his or her tool of creation. I like the focus on the need to step back from the process of creation, and the discussion around the tool itself. Your principal motive here in creating seems to be able to connect with the audience, to provoke a feeling in the audience that, in the best case scenario, resonates with yours (but if it doesn't an emotional response is better than no response it seems). If I understand well then, the measure of your artistry is not the amount of work that has gone into the work, or the mastery of the tool itself, but the ability to connect with the audience, more quickly, more efficiently, more masterfully. And in this case, what I sense makes you happy is the fact that you can use language to create brush strokes of any epoc and time. AI empowers you to connect with the visual expression, through what you feel most confident with, language. It's a good progression for someone like you, who masters the word. What do you think?
For me, when I think of artistry, or being an artist, I think of someone who devotedly faces the impossibility of translating their experience of life, into something understandable, communicable, relatable, and does so over and over and over despite failures and rejections. That's one attribute of being an artist to me. The other is the mastery over all the tools that the artist uses to create, a scalpel, a brush, a welding torch, a pen, a baseball bat or ball, their body (i.e. acrobatics, dance...) and so on. An artist's journey entails, in my opinion, the need or desire to master his or her relationship to his or her tool of creation.
Every artist, though, deeply invests into a relationship, the primary relationship being their relationship to themselves, through the tool they are using to express that relationship. The tool disappears in themselves, and only becomes the means to an end, to bring outside that which resides inside. Whether that inside is the great potential to do things on a bar that no one could ever imagine before, or whether that something is being able to express the horrors of a war or dictatorship through a brush. The tool is a means to this particular end: to master the ability to bring the inner immaterial world into the outer material world. Bringing the inner immaterial to the outer material makes it easier for others to relate, to absorb some elements of ourselves, and so finally, to relate to us.
After completing this journey of relating to ourselves, and translating the invisible into the visible through mastery of a tool or environment, we finally can feel like we relate and are releteable to others. Our perceived sense of isolation drops and for a temporary space of time, we feel connected or in harmony with others. The artist, in this sense, is no different from the meditator, or the devout spiritual. They all, at some level, hope to achieve a kind of subtle orgasmic union with the whole, dropping, finally, the burden of our masks.
"If I understand well then, the measure of your artistry is not the amount of work that has gone into the work, or the mastery of the tool itself, but the ability to connect with the audience, more quickly, more efficiently, more masterfully.": Correct. I think that's what artist means. Someone who can express something in a way others can not not relate to. He's a provoker of reactions. Preferrably intended reactions because there is something in her that urges her to be expressed and shared.
For me now being able to use words to create visual expressions is not that important. It's just more convenient than using a pen or chalk.
"For me, when I think of artistry, or being an artist, I think of someone who devotedly faces the impossibility of translating their experience of life, into something understandable, communicable, relatable, and does so over and over and over despite failures and rejections.": Well said 😁 There is an impossibility in all sharing of one's experiences. It goes beyond words (sometimes) - and also beyond images or music. But the artist at least has to try.
"The other is the mastery over all the tools that the artist uses to create, a scalpel, a brush, a welding torch, a pen, a baseball bat or ball, their body (i.e. acrobatics, dance...) and so on. An artist's journey entails, in my opinion, the need or desire to master his or her relationship to his or her tool of creation.": To me that's primarily an optimization😁 Mastering the tool of expression increases the likelihood for a creation matching the artists experience.
But then - as I tried to describe - there is another dimension to it. But I am not sure it's about mastery of the tool or mastery of oneself. It's the potential for co-creation. When artist and tool fuse into a unity.
That sounds very deep, doesn't it?😁 But what I mean is simple: The artist just has to be open for the randomness inherent in using a tool. Does she fight it - or does she embrace it?
A master of a tool who just uses it "as her slave" still is lacking a spark of artistry, in my view. On the other hand, an apprentice of a tool who's open for what happens inadvertedly while using it and letting herself get inspired and turn it around to come closer to a fitting expression, she's more of an artist, I'd say.
Said all that: it all starts with intention. Artistry is about intention. That's why a million typing monkeys never produce a work of art - even though it might be a work like Shakespeare. What's lacking is the "mindfulness" behind the product.
The product might still have value because however it was produced it changes the recipient. But it's not art. Art - to me - is a message. It's an act of communication.
Thank you Ralf for your exploration of the relationship of the artist to his or her tool of creation. I like the focus on the need to step back from the process of creation, and the discussion around the tool itself. Your principal motive here in creating seems to be able to connect with the audience, to provoke a feeling in the audience that, in the best case scenario, resonates with yours (but if it doesn't an emotional response is better than no response it seems). If I understand well then, the measure of your artistry is not the amount of work that has gone into the work, or the mastery of the tool itself, but the ability to connect with the audience, more quickly, more efficiently, more masterfully. And in this case, what I sense makes you happy is the fact that you can use language to create brush strokes of any epoc and time. AI empowers you to connect with the visual expression, through what you feel most confident with, language. It's a good progression for someone like you, who masters the word. What do you think?
For me, when I think of artistry, or being an artist, I think of someone who devotedly faces the impossibility of translating their experience of life, into something understandable, communicable, relatable, and does so over and over and over despite failures and rejections. That's one attribute of being an artist to me. The other is the mastery over all the tools that the artist uses to create, a scalpel, a brush, a welding torch, a pen, a baseball bat or ball, their body (i.e. acrobatics, dance...) and so on. An artist's journey entails, in my opinion, the need or desire to master his or her relationship to his or her tool of creation.
Every artist, though, deeply invests into a relationship, the primary relationship being their relationship to themselves, through the tool they are using to express that relationship. The tool disappears in themselves, and only becomes the means to an end, to bring outside that which resides inside. Whether that inside is the great potential to do things on a bar that no one could ever imagine before, or whether that something is being able to express the horrors of a war or dictatorship through a brush. The tool is a means to this particular end: to master the ability to bring the inner immaterial world into the outer material world. Bringing the inner immaterial to the outer material makes it easier for others to relate, to absorb some elements of ourselves, and so finally, to relate to us.
After completing this journey of relating to ourselves, and translating the invisible into the visible through mastery of a tool or environment, we finally can feel like we relate and are releteable to others. Our perceived sense of isolation drops and for a temporary space of time, we feel connected or in harmony with others. The artist, in this sense, is no different from the meditator, or the devout spiritual. They all, at some level, hope to achieve a kind of subtle orgasmic union with the whole, dropping, finally, the burden of our masks.
"If I understand well then, the measure of your artistry is not the amount of work that has gone into the work, or the mastery of the tool itself, but the ability to connect with the audience, more quickly, more efficiently, more masterfully.": Correct. I think that's what artist means. Someone who can express something in a way others can not not relate to. He's a provoker of reactions. Preferrably intended reactions because there is something in her that urges her to be expressed and shared.
For me now being able to use words to create visual expressions is not that important. It's just more convenient than using a pen or chalk.
"For me, when I think of artistry, or being an artist, I think of someone who devotedly faces the impossibility of translating their experience of life, into something understandable, communicable, relatable, and does so over and over and over despite failures and rejections.": Well said 😁 There is an impossibility in all sharing of one's experiences. It goes beyond words (sometimes) - and also beyond images or music. But the artist at least has to try.
"The other is the mastery over all the tools that the artist uses to create, a scalpel, a brush, a welding torch, a pen, a baseball bat or ball, their body (i.e. acrobatics, dance...) and so on. An artist's journey entails, in my opinion, the need or desire to master his or her relationship to his or her tool of creation.": To me that's primarily an optimization😁 Mastering the tool of expression increases the likelihood for a creation matching the artists experience.
But then - as I tried to describe - there is another dimension to it. But I am not sure it's about mastery of the tool or mastery of oneself. It's the potential for co-creation. When artist and tool fuse into a unity.
That sounds very deep, doesn't it?😁 But what I mean is simple: The artist just has to be open for the randomness inherent in using a tool. Does she fight it - or does she embrace it?
A master of a tool who just uses it "as her slave" still is lacking a spark of artistry, in my view. On the other hand, an apprentice of a tool who's open for what happens inadvertedly while using it and letting herself get inspired and turn it around to come closer to a fitting expression, she's more of an artist, I'd say.
Said all that: it all starts with intention. Artistry is about intention. That's why a million typing monkeys never produce a work of art - even though it might be a work like Shakespeare. What's lacking is the "mindfulness" behind the product.
The product might still have value because however it was produced it changes the recipient. But it's not art. Art - to me - is a message. It's an act of communication.