rocket science

jakoblodwick:

Creativity and Digitization

Years ago I heard a great quote. It was attributed to the film director Fellini (though I can’t find it anywhere on the web), and it was like: “I don’t talk about my work before creating it, because the energy goes into talking about it instead of creating it.”

For years I have wondered about the psychological basis for this phenomenon. I know it to be true; my most successful projects are ones that I just do before I explain. And I think I figured it out, or at least, I figured out an explanation that satisfies me.

In reality, there are no fundamental units of time and space, as far as we can observe. There is no equivalent of the pixel in physical reality. We can create arbitrary units, and they suffice for human needs, but at a fundamental level we’re just imposing a made-up grid on space and saying, “it’s good enough”.

Imposing a grid is a form of digitization. Digitization is the reduction of something raw and analog — something real — into an absolute, structured system. There are many benefits to digitization; primarily, it becomes much easier to transmit.

Here is the basic tradeoff of digitization: you invariably lose something. Look at the sound waves above. The top one (analog) is the real deal, the bottom (digital) is better than nothing but still not what it represents.

Any why does talking about a nascent creative project take away from the project itself? Because words are digital. The act of translating a creative idea into words is an act of digitization. If you explain an idea, you reduce a nebulous inner state of images and emotions into something you could fit on a PowerPoint slide, or explain to a corporate drone.

There is sometimes an illusion that the words are the idea — that an abstraction is the concrete — that the map is the territory. And this, dear readers, is why I think creative projects should have exactly the minimum number of people involved, and never more. I’ll take my art raw, thank you.