8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions

Category: [02] Knots & Blocks

Unlearning what society probably taught you about talent.

Chapter List

  • Digital Analog

    Flip-flopping between digital art and physical media—and often the fuzzy spots in between—is a dichotomy of form that is something quite unique to the modern world. 

    As the fidelity of our digital tools improve many (if not most) art forms have found analogs in the digital realm: words, photography, design, sound, and sculpture to name but a few. 

    I consider myself an artist, and one who has (more recently as my access to powerful computer tech has increased) often started in the digital realm before investing in the physical tools to try my hand at the so-called real version of it.

    Why buy expensive paints when I have an app on the device I already own?

    Why purchase a space-consuming musical instrument when I can noddle on my laptop with some free software?

    But I also wonder: how has being a digital-first artist affected me? What is the effect on my approach because I have not needed to overcome that initial struggle incurred by the costs and barriers of physical media? Does the creative approach from using technology suffer because the media is more forgiving, erasable, redo-able? Is the technology a crutch or a learning tool?

    I can’t redo my approach, and honestly there are forms I would never have tried without first attempting with the safety net provided by digital modes. But what was the effect of that on my skill and my mind?

  • Ten Diamonds

    Jokingly I would tell people who liked my photographs that I was not so excellent at taking pictures as they suspected: after all, I only ever showed them the good pictures.

    But then it wasn’t exactly a joke, either. 

    See, I think there is a difference between expertise and amateurism, and explaining it is tangled up in my own creative efforts. I am an amateur artist, an amateur photographer, an amateur musician. And I am confident in claiming so because the difference between amateur and expert work isn’t always the output, but rather the effort required to be consistently good at the form. 

    I can make good stuff. But I am admittedly inconsistent.

    In photography I called it my one-in-ten rule: if I took ten pictures, one of them was generally pretty good. Again, I could make good stuff, just inconsistently.

    Inconsistency has a way of nipping you in the backside when you take on a gig to photograph an event, or are asked to sketch with an audience, or need to stand on a stage and play an instrument. Noodling in your basement and occasionally having a terrific night is fundamentally different from  performing on demand. One is the realm of amateurs with wisps of talent, the other is the domain of experts.

    And really. I don’t mind being the diamond in the rough, but admitting there is often much more rough than diamond is also about admitting that you can do these crafts for merely the enjoyment of them, too, and that’s not a joke at all.

  • Standards Unpracticed

    There was a realization about music that I recall having when I was younger. 

    See, when I was in my teens and twenties I listened to a lot of punk and metal from the 80s and 90s. And I remember finding it odd that most music from these genres still usually followed the rules of popular commercial music design. 

    I get it. Musical structure. Chord progression. Hundreds of years of music theory, blah, blah blah, but… think about it from the other perspective: these sounds and songs were supposed to be part of a finger-wagging, pearl-clutching anti-social revolution and a counter-culture apparently designed for angsty teens and rebellious youth to rage against the establishment.

    But simultaneously they were entrenched deeply within that same establishment by the basic rule-following and formula-driven style of the music itself. 

    There are certainly examples that don’t fit this observation, but from my viewpoint so much of it seemed to follow set standards: It was composed of phrases and verses, with lyrics, mixed into tracks of four to six minutes long that could be played on the radio. 

    All of it—in the parlance of capitalism—written, recorded and packaged to be commercially viable.

    And, sure, yeah, of course, no kidding, I get capitalism and working with the system and all that, too… but…

    …but the real rebellion it seems was making something that was not for sale, and breaking the rules and standards that guide our creativity towards the end goal of becoming just another product that needs to move in lockstep with the rules, too.