I always imagine art is the willingness to commit to creating ones own inner world. By creating, I actually mean exploring it. The pieces to it already exist beyond doubt and often beyond recognition. When you dream or when you have a longing for something that's where the mind starts to actively assess those pieces of a potential world that in fact already fully exists. It is the artist’s job to act as a catalyst and as a translator to make sense of it and bring it into shape.
Making sense of things in an artistic may involve an emotional, intellectual, and intuitive understanding of interpreting those symbolic packages of information that we pick up throughout the day and ultimately live. At the beginning of it is the physical training. Learning and figuring out how to execute things within the artistic language. Then, along with the realization that everyone is an individual and an autonomous world, art becomes a matter of acting as a receiver of information – translating it into something personal at a level where it resonates foremost with oneself because almost always this is then positively reflected in how the outside world perceives it. At this point ones inner world is expanded and art becomes original. It becomes language.
There is nothing like reality but to have the ability to shape a dream into something more or less real is close enough to be a sufficient tool for creation. Imagination and dreams are reality but not in the sense that we actually live through them. Because of the missing part of physical reality our imagination becomes a major motivator behind the whole task of dreaming up scenes, landscapes, and situations that can touch us, threaten us but not destroy us. We can immerse ourselves in imagination but the physical element of reality is left out. There's a kind of safety to it. Like getting our feet wet in a vast sea of possibilities while also knowing that there exists a lifeline that connects us back to land.
‘I’ is an adjective and we can shape it whatever we want. Music, Art, Entertainment is not abstract. It is human life, a story. Like the saying goes: 'There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.' Our society has both but as far as I'm concerned forward thinking (electronic) music should be more than a collection of concepts. Practicing abstraction merely to encrypt its message is incompetent because it misses the point of communication.
Sometimes we are attracted by opposites, something that doesn't exist in ourselves. We strive to become that opposite. When we arrive we sink back to a motionless zero state, looking for the next challenge. We're attracted to something we understand and admire, yet something that is not us. We can get carried away, trying to learn to fully imitate this foreign state but when we arrive, we are still confronted with the fact that we actually denied ourselves, what we are and always were. Instead of imitation, art begins when the artist believes in what she already is, that is courage. Imitation is only a beginning step. Instead of imitation the artist tells a story that is unique and at the same time common to all of us.
Imitation is based on an understanding of what is actually happening and then dissect it into something we can perceive as real as much as possible when we replay in front of our inner eye. Another part of it is to have Courage. It doesn't mean to be daring but to isolate oneself, to bring the inner world out of balance with the real world. I guess this is necessary because otherwise Imitation will just be that – imitation. The input comes from the real world, through Imitation we can get an understanding of it but through Isolation we actually start to create because whatever is perceived becomes ourselves at that point. After this actual creation follows. Dreams and memories can stand and live on their own, right in front of us. There is nothing forced about it. The world is already there – has been there – and will be there but it's a matter of exploring it to find out how vast that world actually is.
If you are a scientist you are a thinker. As a thinker you are observing and put the perceived into an analogy, which makes sense within a human symbol system. If you are an artist you are a creator. As a creator you are imitating that which is already created and put it into an analogy.
You cannot create by thinking as thinking always comes after the creation, namely that which is being observed. You cannot observe without creating as creation always comes before observation, namely the observer. At the root of thinking lies creation. At the root of creativity lies creation. Both are the analogy to something more fundamental than language.
Sometimes though the question just is whether art is trivial or if it can really make a difference.
