Roughly put together but I'll smooth it over with time. Use the tabs on the left to navigate down through the story explaining why I made these small drawings.
Trying to understand this concept of "originality", sitting in a cab for long periods or working as a courier gives you lots of time to think about stuff. Trying to think of a way to capture this idea that we all see things in a very unique and individualistic way, I remembered a class discussion at uni' about the Voyager Mission and the Golden Records - the images and other things that were inscribed on the records and sent on a probe out into space, in hope of one day being discovered by an intelligent alien race. I remember my lecturer highlighting the ridiculousness of expecting an alien civilization to be able to interpret the symbols. I was captivated by this idea and it reminds me of the work I eventually wanted to do before leaving university. More later about that.
If not for school (uni) I may never have come to taking these ideas seriously enough to eventually be making art around them. The two main ideas are the kind of thing you might think of every day and assume that others do also. Well actually that's the case for me but it seems many others do not consider them to be normal thoughts or ideas. I suppose unless it becomes a huge topic of interest we will never know how popular these ideas have been in the past.
As ridiculous as it is to assume that amongst bazillions of galaxies of ever changing atmospheres and gases (assuming that's what's out there) there might be a civilization that will find a familiarity in the Voyager missions content, it might be just as silly to think that the following might actually be worth taking seriously to any degree.
Two of the ideas I had as a child became more important to me because somehow I allowed them to be more than just a thought.
As the internet grows and people are able to share their ideas it has become apparent that I was right to believe that I wasn't alone in wondering these things which is probably a testament to the idea that we do not encourage our children enough, to be more imaginative. Had that been the case we may be discussing such ideas as a thing of the past rather than me trying to justify my existence for having these ideas.
The Trueman Show:
My first year photography folio project fell into the vein of exploring the unknowable. It was about the idea, that I may be surrounded by actors playing their role, in my life, to ensure that I was never to become aware of the fact that I was different from everyone. It was about others ensuring that I believe that I'm normal. My believing that there was nothing wrong with me, was the most important thing to the whole world. Without me, the world would not exist as it did. Incredibly narcissistic of me I know, but that was the simple idea and in hind-sight, I didn't consider the absolute potential context of it enough. It could have been so much more than that. That I was the only reason my world exists and therefore a realization that I'm alone in the world (that somehow I have created).
A few years after I left uni, The Trueman Show was released and it seemed to explore the same idea, but there was a lot more work behind the idea and I have to wonder if it was inspired by similar thoughts or ideas. It must have been.
I think the movie The Trueman show did the same idea but gave it a more realistic or relatable premise.
As unreal as it was/is, we can all relate to it in various ways but more familiarly as a TV show so it makes the idea digestible. A similar, if not the same idea that is described in my art school project - along with similar narcissistic undertones - and at a safe distance from us, the viewers who much like the Simpsons we rush to the TV to watch versions of ourselves play out the various adventures of the day, without having to actually take part in real life (whatever that is).
This article about the Trueman Show, actually draws on what seems like my own paranoia back then, but it's apparently a thing today. Read that article - it's "interesting" and "you'll love it".
Rashomon:
Another related idea that came to mind was something I had some trouble describing to others because it depended on shifting your understanding of the way "we" see things in general and also our education and experience in order to describe it successfully ( I don't think I was very skilled at doing so). I think I may have succeeded to some degree but I was always left feeling that I didn't actually completely relay what I was trying to.
In the simplest form I was actually just trying to describe the idea that no body sees anything in the same way. To what degree that might be true, has no boundaries really because there is no way to measure it using common ground. Try applying the laws of physics to this idea and even that will fail at some point because everything we know is based on and relies on other information being correct and that information always has its basis back in logic. To leave this realm of logic means you can't operate or function in any way that is useful and all your ideas become irrelevant (but only to those who need to live there and what of the notion of what is useful?).
For example two people could be looking at the same object and at the same time and for all we know the experience is worlds apart and it is simply the language they use that unites them in some kind of meaning. Even if we had a device that could show us what each person was seeing there would still be doubt that the device itself didn't suffer some kind of filure in perception. Failure is the wrong word to use - maybe better to say some aspect of the same symptom of experiencing the moment and object according to its own understanding and interpretations of reality - or data input in the case of it being a device (based on this reality and experience I reckon most would agree).
I guess the focus is more on what is unable to be proven than what is the possibility that I am right about it. More importantly perhaps, with this thinking comes a kind of loosening of thought and mind. It has taught me to let go of some things that have likely hindered me in what I've wanted to achieve. Although again coming back to common logic and language that would all depend on the idea of what it means to be "successful"
I've encountered other examples of this and it appears to be what many or maybe even most artists strive for in one way or another. Being conscious of it might be the problem or the hinderance - that once you know you cannot unknow it, therefore you are forced to try and figure your way out of it in order to gain a sense of freedom or real freedom from the idea so that you are not bound by the rule it creates when you realize it. Which reminds me of something else... (friends with benefits).
So anyhow, this was a simple idea I had carried with me since, possibly early primary school but I had never thought of it as anything special or out of the ordinary. Most likely I got this in my head from watching way more TV than I should have as a child and throughout my teens. At the time I must have just assumed that it was something we all thought about occasionally and that everyone had similar thoughts, but it wasn't something that you bothered to discuss with anyone else, since the footy, or girls, or other school life dramas were far more important.
I guess being asked to produce something in class in photographic form, that would represent something of interest, is what actually got me thinking about it more. It was at this point I realized that not everyone had these same thoughts - I could tell only because of the reactions I got from people.
That might be what triggered my curiosity about how we all communicate and what we perceive to be real or not, its hard to remember that far back to be more precise about it but I reckon that was it.
In hind-sight it seems that I must have challenged myself to prove that what I was thinking is a real thing and it became unshakable (probably just because I'm stubborn) and I reckon I've spent the last 30 years thinking about it (whenever prompted) and never really being satisfied with any way to explain it.
Maybe a few years after uni' I became more interested in film and of course came across the Kurosawa film "Rashomon" made in 1950. Here's a good article that describes the film but you really have to watch it to know how amazing it is. If you know the film you might see why I mention it. It was a moment of validation for me and when I saw it I was overcome by some kind of understanding that I could allow myself to believe in my ideas because they seem to be coming from somewhere real and possibly from all around me..
So how did I explain this idea to others?
I guess I can call it Rashomon as it relates to seeing things from your own perspective
I remember trying to explain things in a word salad kind of way, that felt as if I had no control over it and just watching the faces of those victims of mine turn from curious to a bored disconnection and I was eventually just talking and explaining it to myself whilst everyone else quietly thought "he's losing it" (or something like that). Lets see if I can remember how it went.
I would start with something like... "OK, so you see this cup on the table? lets say that the colour of it is what we have both (in fact all of us) learned to call the colour blue. So what I see is a cup that is the colour blue as far as what I know to be blue but what you are seeing could in actuality be a cup that is the colour that you call blue also, but if I could see it through your eyes I might see it as the colour that I call pink, but that's the colour that you call or identify as blue". It was something like that, and then it got so intricate to try to be more precise about explaining it accurately that I lost cohesion with both the person I was talking to and myself in a mess of logic that was trying to contradict itself it seemed.
So this was back in 1993-95 but I guess possibly now in 2024 we have seen enough examples of similar ideas in movies and stories that its probably a bit easier to explain it in a way so that it can be understood by a sane person.
So how would I explain this idea now?
Not sure it has really evolved much but I've found other artists or even scientists over the years who have written or worked on these ideas and some evidence of this being a mystery throughout history. Often now I refer to such things as Rashomon or The double-slit experiment but how about this...
Stepping outside of the boxed logic it could probably be better explained to imagine that there was an invisible manipulator who oversaw the communication between two people.
This overseer was/is actually the mind of both of these two people (unique to each) and could manipulate what each saw, felt, heard, or tasted. When these two example people encountered a blue cup for the very first time together, the overseer manipulated what each one saw but let them hear the same word spoken to describe what they were looking at. "A Blue Cup" didn't have to look like anything and yet it could be anything if the overseer chose it to be. Using the pink cup example I mentioned earlier, the overseer chose to show one of the two people what YOU know to be a pink cup and the other person what YOU know to be a yellow cup. However they both, without realizing that they see two different things, call it a blue cup.
That make sense? How can we know that this doesn't happen? I don't believe there is any way known that you can be sure that it does but for some reason this fascinates me and maybe it is the idea behind all of my thoughts. It is kind of a gap in perception and reality and that's the thing I'm exploring with my art I believe. The thing that frees me up is knowing that I can never have an answer that will suffice so it will be an eternal search and that just means a never ending supply of exploration.
Here are a couple of things that I discovered in recent years to help me with this:
- Had I known of Alan Watts back then it may have helped me come to a better way to explain or understand (or maybe would have added to the confusion, who knows) ...like this click here.
- Imagine how awesome it was to find this video explanation from 2013
- Donald Hoffman ...relevant bit here
- Double-slit experiment - this is basically the zero point (for now)
- The film Rashomon
To add another element to this story, a friend at the time (early to mid 90's) taught me a valuable lesson by spontaneously drawing a doodle on a piece of card and gave it to me saying "now that's art!". Instantly I got what he did and it made me aware of the raw aspect of art and the value that it had. So one night thinking about this stuff whilst waiting for a fare, I somehow got myself to trying to consider what the concept or "originality" is or was and why it seemed so important to so many. It kind of related to the idea that I was trying to describe above along with the idea of my lecturer talking about the ridiculousness of Voyager Golden Record. With all of this in mind I decided I would try to eliminate the notion of originality by proving that nothing is original and in so-doing, I would somehow realize that you would need to abandon all forms of communication in order to know the reality and this could mean anything at all. There's more to add but I need to go to bed.
Thanks to Friends:
To add another element to how I came to drawing these small designs / doodles, a friend at the time (early to mid 90's) taught me a valuable lesson by spontaneously drawing a doodle on a piece of card and handed it to me full of confidence saying "now that's art!". Instantly I got what he did and it made me aware of the raw aspect of art in a different way to what I used to think and the value that it had. He would prefer to stop at the point of saying "I like that" and not really discuss much more than that but I prefer to dissect and at times I think it's better to just stop at "I like it". I think what this did for me was to create a reference point. I was about to head out into space like the Voyager probe and without ever knowing if I would land so it was possibly a saviour to have this as a tether to ground. Probably also why I'll never explore beyond the boundaries of sanity - not sure it would do much good and I wont be able to come back. So the next step was to try to prove to myself that originality didn't exist.
Coming together:
So one night thinking about this stuff whilst waiting for a fare, I somehow got myself to trying to consider what the concept or "originality" is or was and why it seemed so important to so many people I've spoken with in the past. Somehow it seems to all be related to the idea that I was trying to describe above along with the idea of my lecturer talking about the ridiculousness of the Voyager Golden Records.
The idea that we might all be looking at totally different worlds and experiencing them on an individual basis meant that the universe might be even bigger than could be imagined OR simultaneously it might not even exist. That I could be like Truman within that kind of illusion or reality added more to the distance that I would travel as a voyager probe going out into an infinite void. (we've seen films that explore this kind of thinking and again not original but I actually feel it).
With all of this in mind I decided I would try to eliminate the notion of originality by proving that nothing is original and in so-doing, I would somehow unite all of my other ideas. Almost resolved to believe that you would need to abandon all forms of communication in order to know the reality that exists outside of your comfort zone which is this world you have invented for yourself.
When I think of the push to transhumanism I sometimes think of what we are about to lose. It's like we are about to throw away the answer to all that we want to learn in order to be "faster" and "smarter". Abandon faith in this world and adopt the world that will serve to distort the distortion. Someone has to be at the controls.
A little art for a bigger world