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()1yrwri-creativeprocess Essay3.doc } fall semester 2001
()1yrwri-ergonoimcalycorrect.doc } fall semester 2001
()1yrwri-unusedportion Essay1.doc } fall semester 2001
()AAP-CMAC Spotlife.doc } fall semester 2001

1yrwri-creativeprocess Essay3.doc

There are two types of thinking processes, I'm pretty sure. I read something about there being two innate models that humans follow. One that is defined as more inspiration, visionary kinds of conceptualization. Another that is process oriented, with steps, brainstorming, and a logical order of development. It goes without saying that no human uses all one model or the other, and in fact uses a bit of both. There is nothing immediately wrong with either form of innovation but there are certain qualities that make them differ. Inspirationally based epiphanies seldom surface and remain only for a short period of time - like the first seconds of awakening from sleep when one still vividly pictures the dream but drifts gradually back to consciousness. The other process is much closer to being fail-safe and a sure shot at least at coming up with a finished product.

I rely too much on dreams and intense externally provoked inspiration and not enough on the later, formal planning. Brainstorming requires so much time, so much work, and results are always static, relative to the quantity of effort invested. There is nothing terribly wrong with appreciating the equation of less work equaling better art. The notion that this imagery I captured between the blink of my eyes in the middle of the night comes to fruition exactly as that flash had portrayed it; it provides me with the warmest, most confident, feeling. The problem with this model is that the ideas are not as developed as they could be. That quality is expected understanding how the idea was birthed. I have a sentimental spot for the so obviously absurd - irrational ideas giving the impression they are aware of their being irrational, and quite honestly, they don't really care either. Realistically, inspiration hardly comes often enough to any one person to make it a reliable commodity for producing work, and the other method replaces it.

An example of such an idea-engine is this paper. Free writing is almost always the way I choose to start a paper. Scribble down anything and everything that comes to mind, quickly attach personal or impersonal relationships between the topics that grace the page, think of ways to implement the relationships of those ideas into good terms for a paper. The free writing process ends up in a tragic cycling loop of procrastination. I actually attempted this paper writing on my procrastination. A friend sent me a link to the website: http://www.makeoutclub.com. It's not what it sounds like, believe me, it's a music related site but it is full of kids in the area that post their pictures and contact information. It was totally a bizarre thing to observe, thus becoming in an ironic way, inspiration to write. The process then deviates further because the ideas I was writing about vanish, and papers are reduced to describing any current feelings I am having while composing it. It seems my model of writing has dated itself quickly.

Brainstorming alone can only take one person so far. I have certain personality traits that dominate over others and therefore constantly influence how I write. It's comparable to a painter and their painting style. A certain formula develops and from that formula, everything is decided. It just feels like I've relied too heavily on craft and too little on content in most former writings, the technical creative process of this essay is turning out wishy-washy. I don't compare to Giacometti because he works and re-works the same pieces over and over again. I do not believe in that. A piece of art has one life and one emotional entity attached; to rework anything erases the meaning of it. I am not like Toni Bentley because I am not a victim of my art. The beginnings of art come and go randomly, I choose which to harness and produce. Things end when the dedication to them ends. I will have an intense love affair with a painting, when either of us grows tired of the other, then it is finished.

My love affair with this paper was to pursue an original idea by experimenting with my style. I chose to briefly address the suggested topics, but instead illustrate a much larger picture that, perhaps, danced about the actual paper. Idea after idea resulted in being a dead end and this paper proved to take on the literal sense of exploring my art making process. I write about the dead ends.

You collect the papers and for some reason notice the typeface of one particularly more than the others. You are soon distracted with other more prevailing thoughts and hastily slide the papers in between the pages of a notebook and set it aside. You decide the class has had a long enough time to write on the journal prompt. It's not quite 12:00pm and all that needed accomplishing today in class is finished so you decide to stage an impromptu field trip for those of us interested in going out for coffee and pastries. While sitting, you begin grading the papers and come across the odd paper that caught your eye before. Such a normal typeface, yet it stands out so much. You finish reading it and know already, without looking, it is John's paper.

John Benson
Essay #3
The Creative Process

1yrwri-ergonoimcalycorrect.doc

All of the textured plastic is worn off; More so on the A, S, T, I, O, N, the E, and the space bar. The Z still has all of its surface, as does the X and most of the extra characters like: >,/,?,+,},and |. Obviously, it is because I rarely use these keys traversing the daily varieties of typing. There is grime collecting on the beveled sides of the keys where the tips of my callused fingers do not make contact. A long time ago I popped the arrow keys off and returned them to each other's spots where they do not make sense. No, it is not the natural-type styled keypad where it is keenly split as to match the natural curves in the wrists. This is the keypad that comes with the warning label printed right on the front of it, "WARNING: Some experts believe that use if this keyboard may cause serious injury." Nothing sticks on it, thankfully, life is much worse with a sticky key, especially the space bar or the return key. There are some keys on this board that I think I have never used; and touched less than a dozen times purely by accident in the 3 years I have owned it. The little collapsible boots on the heel of the keyboard that angle it to a comfortable typing position are broken. Not broken off, just broken enough so if you try to use them it tilts over like a table or chair with one leg longer than the other.

This worn out typing tool is not alone. It has a partner in the mouse. When the lights are off a strange light is cast from the base of the rodent. It happens to be in the shape of an upside-down Y. There is glowing coming from all over the place. That is because it is powered by a laser instead of the, now obsolete, tracking ball. The artificially roughened surface of the input peripheral is still very much unaltered where my palm has yet to touch. You can see shining marks on the contours, brought out by the light of the bright display screen, where my hand cups when I push back and forth. This is not the most sophisticated model available. The upper scale model was quite intimidating; with the flick of your wrist, you can perform a dozen functions. I was satisfied with two buttons and a wheel.

These are the physical tools necessary to my art. They are not only the tools necessary to create; they are necessary to view as well. Interaction is the art. What these tools provide are the means to interact. I interact with other tools, software, to produce interactive pieces. Viewable, accessible, these pieces are experienced using the keypad and mouse traditionally on the desktop computing environment. The keyboard provides a means of entering identifiable information into a particular field for use in human processing, such as when you enter your address into a field for when ordering books from Amazon.com. The viewer has a myriad of options when using the mouse, including the ability to push or pull graphics, toss items with a simulated effect of momentum and gravity. They can drag and drop, overlay items, stack, arrange, organize, group. The mouse solved a visual barrier that was otherwise unavoidable without it. It provided a sense of spatial arrangement for which interaction can be enhanced.

There are tools exclusive to creating my art, then there are tools exclusive to my art in such a way that without them, my work would hardly exist. The keyboard, and more so the mouse, are such tools.

1yrwri-unusedportion Essay1.doc

Assignment: identify your sources for inspiration.

I obsess with ideas. I obsess with the idea that a person can suspend their mind and beliefs of what is "real" and entertain another idea or concept - like really involved calculus problems or the "meaning" attached to an abstract piece of art.

I came to this summation after attempting the first draft of this assignment. The mood I was in while writing the assignment was peculiar. I created this idea that I was born naturally proficient in the arts and music. It isn't as simple as it sounds, though, because I wanted to make it as absurd as I could. I actually claimed to be the -only- person who truly knew "art." This is obviously the most absurd opinion a person can have - I am not the Alan Greenspan of the art community; but I digress, the point I am making is how I can entertain in my mind a notion, and based on the given, develop values for X.

It seems to be what I do to myself to keep me occupied in between breathing. I suppose this character trait could route me into the checkout line for conceptual artists. The most enjoyment from art came

I conduct these intellectual experiments primarily on nouns: people, places, and things. There are no apparent rules. It has become almost entirely an arbitrary behaviour. Like assigning personality to electronic devices, or arranging the utensils in the kitchen drawer corresponding to their likelihood of being used as a lethal weapon.

I think it is funny how I can write to satisfy an objective, yet it is obvious the objective isn't literally satisfied. I can develop the idea that in not satisfying the objective on purpose is a true indicator of my personality type, and a true underlying part of me being an artist and becoming an artist. I can then take that idea of developing the aforementioned idea and write about it in this relaxed, almost third party-esque, perspective.

AAP-CMAC Spotlife.doc

You swat at the alarm clock knocking it clear off the makeshift nightstand next to your bed. You don't care. You fall back asleep only to launch out of bed 45 minutes later, almost 20 minutes late for your 8:30 class. You decide to forget breakfast, forget clean clothes, and forget brushing your teeth. Instead, you grab your homework that you stayed up most of the night before finishing and run out the door. You also forgot your school ID, the keys to let you back in your room, and your wallet. The Roommate is asleep, he sleeps all day, and will not get out of bed to let you back in the room and time is definitely ticking by as you miss your class. You, a freshman terrified to be late for class, smelling and hungry, locked out, now stroll to class - after all a Wednesday can't get any worse.

I like girls. I like all kinds of girls. Especially the smart ones - but the funny ones are really fantastic as well. I do not initiate conversations with them however. I prefer to observe conversations that others have initiated instead. Life as a college student has offered to me several instances where I may venture to say; I've fallen in love at first sight. Then, I laugh, and remember how absurd girls really are. My Mom says a girl will be the ruin of me; and for that matter so does my Dad. I am glad I have ample enough schoolwork to occupy my time so that I do not have to worry about girls in school.

Computers are really important. You have to acknowledge that, whether you want to or not. The success the microprocessor has achieved is changing the paradigm of our country's economy. The microprocessor was not alone in it's achievement, the advent of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the computer mouse as an input peripheral catapulted the power of the microprocessor into the hands of the common man. This made personal computing (PC's) extremely viscous - a rapidly expanding market. Possessing a liquid personality, the natural current of technology exploded into a raging river of venture capital spawning fantastically romantic notions of a techno-utopia.

Eating is difficult. Well, remembering to eat is difficult. It takes time to eat, with dishes and silverware, and still you dirty cups and pots and pans too. So I've been eating a lot of Ramen Noodle lately. Salty, delicious, and with minimal dirty dishes. Showering isn't so bad. You either stink or you don't. The truly challenging aspect of living is harmoniously coinciding with that moldy 2-month-old stranger who leaves his mess and stink all over the apartment. He misses the toilet, the trashcan, the sink, his mouth when he eats, and the point. I'd probably be his friend if I didn't have to live with him.

Being a CMAC student is great. At times I feel I am rewarded for my severe ADD - hence the composing of this article. As you can tell, I am full of great things to say and I multitask as I say them: drinking coffee, answering telephones, discussing fine, fine artists with Joe Z., planning the next 4 years of my life, composing songs with the clacking of my teeth. There is a myriad of things to think about being a student in the Multimedia program. Daily life is immersed in the program. I recognize interface issues concerning the handles of doors, the placement of stairs, and the absolutely optimal location of the heaters in my dorm. I stalk about criticizing anything with a poor typeface, praising aesthetic layout, and appreciating thoughtful applications of a typeface. I have dual 19-inch Trinitron monitors and 512mb of ram too. Life is good when the learning is relevant.