[2018.09.30] Creation Rotation

A series of tweets on creative scheduling and distinctions between mediums of creation.

One of my goals for my gap year is to create. To produce as much as possible, leaving imprints of evidence over the web. At school I feel I’ve consumed a lot. However, most of the information was contained, rarely channeled into something outside my head of my own creation.

Recently I read this list on writer’s block, and it made me think: I don’t have much discipline to my creation right now. Instead I kind of follow my whims according to how much energy and ideas are built up within me during the period of free time that I have available to create. As a result I rotate through different mediums.

From lowest to highest, my hierarchy of energy-input is: watching videos, reading books, code-generated art, visual art, writing.

(5) Watching videos — Sometimes I have trouble sleeping, and that results in a state of mind the next day where, if I read, it sets off too much noise in my brain and I start feeling restless [what I mean by noise]. In that case I watch something and write reactions in my notebook, which calms the mind inflammation a bit. I think of consumption as part of the creation process, picturing my consumptions as kindling/fuel for creation. Videos fill in lots of the senses for you, so not much mental fabrication is required.

(4) Reading books — I may be experiencing an energy dip (but not lifeless), so I read and record concepts I find interesting, sentences that catch my eye, or reactions/connections that they spark. Hopefully this way I can appreciate and absorb the beauty of other people’s work.

(3) Code-generated art — I have some energy, but I don’t have many ideas. I am still in the process of learning the fundamentals of art by code, so working on this is more learning/consuming information as opposed to creating flexibly. I work through tutorials and then try to create a small project out of what I’ve learned from that day. It is largely experimental — I don’t have a pre-set idea of what I want to create before I sit down.

(2) Visual Art — I have some energy. Sometimes I have ideas, other times I am just sitting down to experiment without a pre-set concept.

(1) Writing — This takes the most energy/ideas from me. First of all, I do not think I have an intuitive grasp of beauty in writing. I can appreciate it, but I am clumsy in trying to create it on my own. Second of all, I must have some pre-set idea. With writing I think there is less experimentation with the process. With visual art, the materials I work with have some character independent of myself: watercolor can spread; charcoal is bold; I can mess around with pen and find certain patterns that I like without having thought of them beforehand. With words, however, they come entirely from your head. If you just type around with the keyboard you are unlikely to discover some profound and wonderful sentence. It is less about ‘discovery’ and more about ‘expression’. Therefore I only write when I have some clue of what I want to write.