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Hello xcllnt people, i have a question to ask of you if you do the creative thing. If you make the arts or the musics, just how "personal" is it to you? Just something nice to look at or listen to or well, i dunno, something that actually means something to you? I suppose this is a bit of a therapy thread, i've been having a bit of a hissyfit trying to reconcile the stuff that i make and the stuff i actually feel or think... i'm having quite a hard time articulating what i mean here, but if you make something without any kind of intentional reference from how you actually feel, do you feel dissatisfied, even if other people like your work? Or do you think whatever's in you just kind of comes out anyway, even if it's not intentional? The whole creative-crisis thing strikes me as being of the realm of spoilt angsty wank, but i feel like i'm in a bit of a fucking mess at the minute. I'm really not liking anything i make at the moment because it doesn't feel like "me". It's hard to describe. The worst thing is, the art course i'm on at the moment demands certain criteria to pander to the moderators, but the guidelines they set makes the whole thing feel like a fucking waste of time. I want to pass and get off to uni because it's the only route out of ShitVille i can realistically see, but at the same time i want to make something that actually feels worthwhile. Ahhh, i dunno. Sorry for such a long post and Thread Of Jizz, but i was just wondering if anyone's had the same kind of experience and shit. BLOG |
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Making stuff is a feedback loop where you do a thing and it speaks to you and you do more and see what it says and it's a dialogue between the present you and the immediate past you which is now entombed in the thing you are making. This is how soul gets into things. So I don't see how something you're doing can ever be NOT a personal expression - even if you don't enjoy doing it that will be present in the work and you'll respond to that in the feeback loop of making it. I'd say jerk off your professors into a cup and drink it and smile and be glad you didn't have to drink it right from the bell end. Soon you will be free of them and you will graft their heads onto farm animals. |
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I'm having a kind of shitty period too - I'm having a lot of trouble finding something to write about, something that I actually WANT to write about. to me it's the most major of problems - if you haven't got anything to say you'd just as well stop completely. normally what I make isn't very personal, but when I write it for me it's essential that it has some kind of personal interest for me. |
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I basically try to make stuff I like... sometimes it turns out good and sometimes not. |
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it can easily be something that's not a real personal expression - apart from the trap of emulation, you can make something that's technically proficient but has no "heart" to it. you also pretty quickly learn the tricks on how to ellicit a quick emotional response from your audience and it can be another trap to fall into - simply building something around those tricks (which in a way is pandering to success). you might learn from it, but it can also just cost a lot of energy and reap little. |
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to me the whole thing is quite different for music. it doesn't have all these "storytelling capabilities" (at least not automatically). it's much easier to recognise when you're doing something you like or not, I find. |
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You're right, you're right, you're right. If you're making it then it's naturally going to be an expression of how you feel at the time even if it's not a conscious thing, i think i'm bogged down in trying to separate aesthetics from Tha Personalz when they're naturally connected anyway. Motivating my bad self into prof-wanking is another matter, mind. Be it of the Acceptable Artz kind or that of an altogether more sticky world. Thanks though, You Have Helped And Made Me Think A Bit. |
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It's easier to instantly like or dislike what you're doing with music, yes (and easier to edit)... for me at least it takes weeks to decide if something visual is actually worth the time i put in. It's the trap of falling into a style i'm not comfortable with that's the problem i think, it's easy to make something look good but a lot harder to make something that feels good. It's the second i can't quite grasp, and if i actually made the change, stopped painting altogether and actually made art that i thought might have any kind of meaningful effect, then i wouldn't pass the course and have a proper route out of a place that has too many bad memories. Suck. |
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to me it seems like you're just having a "creational block," which is something that most likely will pass in a few days. You need to do something you normally don't do; you need new experiences to draw inspiration from. If you feel your music lacks your emotions and as you say, you don't feel like it's "you," you probably just need to awaken yourself again by challenging your routines and doing something out of the ordinary. I noticed an increase in creativity after the year I spent in civil duty, now that I've returned to uni... I'm reading lots of interesting stuff and learning lots of new stuff that adds to "me," and how I look at things. This somehow inspires me to make more music that I feel is good enough to [spam] to you people! |
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I understand what you are saying and I feel I can relate to it. I have a theory that whatever you make at the time it is made is reflected on how you are feeling at the time you make it. If what you make feels wrong and messed up then it's reflecting how you feel inside. This can be the ruin of what you do unless you learn to control it. If you feel like shit then you can make shit unless you can control these emotions, directing these emotions into what you create. This isn't desensitising your emotions but reflecting them into something that people can see and feel. |
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I know what you means exactly. I've tried to answer but it never really comes out right. I think sometimes the important thing is to only have a framework in your head and then feed off what you produce as you produce it, because if you make the art in your head and then pour it out its not very satisfying. The whole 'whatevers in you just comes out' argument seems to work, but often I leave a painting half finished and then I just can't come back to it, because either in its half finished state its already 'exorcised' whatever it was and it feels like finishing it is just aesthetic work, or because the process of making it was unpleasant in itself, or the state of mind that I started it in isn't there anymore. Whichever it is, it's never satisfying to leave something unfinished. |
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I don't think feeling shit results making shit art, often it's completely the opposite. |
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yeah.. like the blues |
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I don't think so to be honest, i've had enough creative blocks to recognise them as they turn up. I've got a whole sketchbook full of kerayzee ideas, it's just putting them into practice that's the problem. It's what comes from being on a very visual-oriented course when what i actually want to express isn't anything to do with the image. There's a lot to be said for changing routines and situation to get new ideas though, i'd agree completely on that one. It's not getting stuck in a situation-rut that i fear, it's getting stuck in a style-rut just to get the piece of paper that's my ticket out of here. 4 months left, and i think i've made just about all the "nice" paintings i can possibly stand. I didn't mean this to be a "me me me" thread by the way, i was just wondering if anyone had felt similarly. |
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yes i think most of us have the same experience. I think what we'd all like to do is impress ourselves, really. I think there are a lot of people that go "oh boy i made something" only to turn around a month later and go, "oh it was really just boring tripe". The stuff that is truely good, will stay truely good for years and years, if not forever. |
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Aye, it's a real cunt forcing yourself to finish a painting when the moment has passed, i know what you mean (partly why a lot of the stuff i do has a load of encrusted texture on it, there's usually about 4 or 5 different semi-finished paintings under there). It's odd though, even though i do find painting quite cathartic when i'm actually in the process of doing it, when i look at it a few days later i just have to question what the point of it is. So some fellow buys a painting to hang on their wall, yeah, fine... i feel like it's nice for them to find something they like but it's all a bit cheap, pandering to an audience that already wants that kind of art. I want to make something that people find without expectations, something actually "found" and surprising instead of sought out with the intent of looking at in a certain way. |
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Well an audience for art is always a problem because you won't make anything youre proud of by 'pandering' (word of the day). I've never made anything I would call art which was made for anyone else to look at. In fact I think to me it's vital that I never plan to show anyone it. A lot of paintings I did I broke up and threw away when they were done, partly because I never have any particular use for them after making them and because it was intrinsic in the making of them that they were made for me only. But I also would like to exhibit, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. Dunno mate. |
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well, like I said, you quickly learn tricks with which to wow people. I think this works for every discipline - if you have some talent and/or understanding you'll quickly grip those basic tricks. you can then quite easily churn out something that to an outsider seems quite heartfelt, but it is more or less "factory work" to you. the style that feels good, as you call it, is so hard to grasp because it constantly changes and is what your being an artist is all about - constantly refinding that. I think it's genuinely the hardest part, constantly re-establishing what is you want to do. I don't mean in that in the silly way that you sit before a blank piece of paper and first have to formulate what is that you want to do, but it can be a central problem. like I said, I have this same problem and I'm actually getting a lot of crap at school for it. they say they don't get to see what my ambition is. which is right, because I don't have much of an idea what is either. and that's where I think my school is failing up to now - there is little education in forming and finding your ideas and subjects. and I also find I use "and/or" too much. but at least I don't say "dude". |
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That's the curse... it's hard to exhibit or make a living from something you love if the only audience is you. I've done the whole painting-destroing thing too, nearly set fire to the house burning a load in the back yard, and weirdly enough it felt just as good as making them. That's mostly why the whole art-market thing seems like such a bugger to me, it's all concerned with what "they" think, not the people that i'd actually like to connect with. Never mind the bizarre cycles of fashionable opinion and cashflow. What a fucking conundrum. |
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I think you should talk to Dan, Xltronic's Own Disillusioned Artist. |
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I think that's a problem with a lot of schools... either there's very little focus on ideas full stop, or there's the expectation that you should find a conceptual niche and stick with it, regardless of what your goal is. If you've found one that's at least more than fleeting anyway. The "factory work" thing is pretty much exactly what i was trying to say, and i must admit i'm rather grateful to see somebody else in the same position, slightly shit as it is. I had wondered if it was some kind of introverted wank-spiral that had gone as yet unrecognised in my angsty head. Also, i can't believe i said "dude". |
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We can dance around pyres of venetian snares records together and then regale each other with tales of broken creativity. Yes, this sounds most amusing. |
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I'm becoming more and more radical, thinking that art should be catharsis and only catharsis. It sucks. |
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ha ha you suck |
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I think it's a common trap - it's where technicality starts to hinder you. |
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