Aaroneus Drawings

From English 194 Wiki Site

This is my theory on Aaron's 'creativity'...

As Viktoriya pointed out to me after class, my comment may have gone misinterpreted. It seems to me that what is more important to creativity than unpredictability is what I called 'incoherency' in class, but is probably better termed 'incomprehensibility'. First it must be noted that the term 'creativity' is so overused that its meaning has blurred anything that has ever been created with the most brilliantly original inventions. Anything I do could be considered creative simply because it has never been done exactly that way before, but this kind of definition is useless for our purposes. I propose a definition that will also outline why Aaron's drawings are not creative and yet something like a Jackson Pollack painting (often a collection of individually uncreative dots of paint) can still be considered creative. After all, we all think of Pollack's paintings as creative already, the important distinction lies in where to draw the line.

Aaron draws pictures (I am ironically speaking of Aaron as an autonomous artist, but do not assume this means his works are creative) that, presumably, have never been drawn before. This in itself is no grounds for calling his work creative. I can draw a tree that no one has ever drawn before in exactly that way, but few would call it a creative work of art. All work cannot be creative, otherwise we would only care about art based on its aesthetics and that is clearly not the case; many important paintings are not generally considered aesthetically beautiful, but are considered creative. Many pieces of postmodern art being obvious examples: sculptures made out of pieces of trash, etc. The reason people call Aaron's paintings creative is because, as professor Liu noted, they are unpredictable.

This condition is inherently flawed. Someone could ask me to say a number and the number I choose will be completely unpredictable because it could be any number conceivable to the mind, and clearly no one would consider my choice creative. And here I have exactly explained the true condition for creativity. The condition lies in the comprehensibility of the system within which the creator is working. Aaron the program, not Aaron the artist, is a comprehensible system. I admittedly do not now how Aaron is programmed in even the slightest way. The software, however, remains a logically, practically, comprehensible system. If I wanted to, I could learn how Aaron worked. Still, I would not be able to predict what drawing he was going to produce, but that is no longer of concern. His finished products are limited within a conceivable framework of programming. None of Aaron's drawings would surprise me, though they would still be technically unpredictable. Only the first painting of haystacks or water lilies is creative. The others, are merely aesthetically beautiful, for which, there is still significant value. Unless an artist expands the system (not to be confused with the medium), aesthetic variations are not acts of creativity, but of editing.

Here it may seem there is a problem with my logic. One might say, "fine, perhaps Aaron's paintings are not creative in themselves, but then Aaron must not be a creative production?" Im fact, Aaron is a very creative idea. Harold Cohen exhibited creativity when he thought of the idea and brought it into being. This is because 'construction' or 'creation' in such generality, is an incomprehensibile system. We cannot understand the unlimited possibilities of creation because we cannot give it an enclosed circumference. The same logic applies to any creative painter. It seems that painting on canvas of a specific size is a comprehensible system. Picasso's mind, however, is a completely incomprehensible one.

I think that believing this theory requires that one believe certain philosophical notions, namely, that the mind cannot conceive of concepts like infinity, or God, or completely empty space, or things of this nature. I believe we cannot truly conceive of these things, but they are not universally accepted thoughts.

I feel like this explanation is a little incomplete, so I will most likely return to fill in the gaps later. Also, I did not write this for any specific purpose, only to express my opinion, and possibly to either make it a concrete belief or completely alter it with the guidance of anybody's comments.

Alex Barkett 23:50, 26 April 2006 (Pacific Daylight Time)