Completion and sketching
creative processing
When drawing, sketching, doodling or otherwise setting our mind consciously or unconsciously to the act of marking on paper our thoughts, feelings, and experiences, what is the energy being represented? In that state of flow, or cautious representation, or mindless wandering, do we sense an ‘end’ to the final product? The culture of deadlines might not know it’s own boundaries, but how as creative individuals can we know when a piece we’ve been working on is complete? It may have to do with the goal itself.
While often, time itself acts as the marker, or marcher, encouraging us to carpe some diem wherever possible — my process might be more episodic with creative experiences, and results — merging the two. How is it productive to think of processes over products, might be another way to phrase this question of creative emergence.
The low hanging fruit would suggest it’s the goal itself which might serve as a tangible guide. Is the image of a particular landscape complete? If it can be said that seeing enforces forgetting then what is the act of representation itself then for more broadly? But whose authorship decides this finality might remain the prominent question of relevance here. Subjugating one’s abilities in the service of a larger goal seems hardly appealing to an Author, so it must be more of a process (in the collective sense) of compiling, editing, and arranging elements until a picture emerges (and here pictures is not meant in the literal sense). At times we are in our own picture, and at times we drift out of it wandering into other realms of thought.
John Parman, a mentor and friend pointed me to Horst Rittel and the notion of a ‘wicked problem’ — of which I’m still learning. But namely a problem requiring massive amounts of iteration, combined with an inherent difficulty of measuring the results. I believe architecture fits this notion well, of encapsulating the inherent uncertainty of results of a built process.
How then might architecture (little ‘a’ here) learn from other modes of creativity, such as writing or sketching? Given it’s inherent scale and complexity surely there are other factors at play, including labor organization, codes and governance, general well-being and safety, and construction methods themselves not to mention design. Architecture then stands at a sort of multifaceted intersection of these forces. Forces requiring accuracy, flexibility, speed, slowness, and methods of representation, simultaneously or in patterns through time.
It is in my view the necessary purpose of an educator to connect these ‘historical wires’ of process (and precedent) with a new context for a new generation of designers and architects. The results of art may seem to ebb and flow through movements and dialogues, but architecture rests on a much harder to ascertain language of not only what it generates culturally as a byproduct of emergence, but also in its form and experiential factors of a real, if immeasurable, life in such a built place as a structure or city.
Then perhaps we can learn about adaptation here between architecture and sketch. Finding the smallest piece of something meaningful also provides it a space in a larger field of meaning without over-crowing the memory of it. To such a degree that the loss of meaning might mean the loss of detail in a sort of relational dance. If expression in material is a goal in itself the results may be lacking clarity — but extending our experiential selves into new modes of representation and creation opens us to thoughts not before had… a nice place to be.
