8 Clicks from Nowhere Productions ䷀

Category: Part 1 – Setting out to Nowhere

The creative self from the one you left behind to the one you are looking to become. The basics of creativity.

Chapter List

  • Insta Warrior 

    I just opened up the app and counted: as of this writing I have eight active accounts on Instagram.

    Each of them is unique.

    Each of them is maintained.

    None of them are popular.

    Look, I am not some kind of dabbling influencer wannabe, just so we’re clear on that point.

    I just see it as a tool for expression. It is a blank wall upon which to scrawl the products of my art, as tempting as a passing train car might be to a graffiti artist with a backpack full of fresh spray paint.

    It is there, so I use it.

    My most recent work on the platform has been me posting monochromatic photos: I only upload black and white pics that I’ve captured, from textures and abstract shadowy artsy-fartsy illusions to simple monotone landscape shots from my wandering adventures.

    It is not meant to build a following or create a brand or generate an audience or—forbid—become a revenue source. It is nothing more than a creative outlet that caught my inspiration one rainy spring day and has grown the barest semblance of metaphorical legs that has kept it going for a couple months (so far).

    Art is expression.

    Art is filling blank spaces with humanity.

    Art is using the tools that are right in front of you to spread a bit of joy, drive a taste of curiosity, and cast a feeling out into the universe without knowing what the result might be—if any at all.

    It is the silent warrior.

  • Tools Troubles

    Fellow Canadian Marshall McLuhan told the world that the medium is the message[1], and I have long taken that to mean that it is as valuable to study the tools and techniques as the final product if we are ever to understand the whole.

    The artist can easily get lost in the tools, though. Photographers can bang on about their camera specs. Writers can wax poetic about their favourite keyboards. And musicians these days it seems are just as apt to post content about the subtle tonality differences between brands of violin strings as share their music.

    Yet, creativity is and always will be an intimacy with the tools and techniques. The art and the mechanisms that enable it are inseparable and interwoven as two things can be. 

    Maybe that’s why we get hung up on the medium and the message and often confuse the effort to concentrate on them both with the attention they deserve. 

    Or maybe I just like writing about my toys and I am going to devote some space on this blog to share my thoughts about keyboards, cameras and violin strings. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.

    Under the category of Tools & Troubles, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Oughta Should

    When did we force play to become learning?

    And I’m not just talking about the kids. I mean, all of us? Why can’t we just play?

    Oh, I admit, this is probably a personal observational bias, but it seems more and more from what I read, and talking to other people—parents, friends and creative contemporaries—over the years the idea that anyone can just play for the raw enjoyment of something has turned into a pariah. 

    All too often I fall into the trap myself. 

    I feel like I can’t just sketch, but rather I need to be making something for my online portfolio.

    I shouldn’t be playing music, instead I ought to be practicing repertoire or logging my progress.

    Even just sitting here at a keyboard writing I am thinking not about the joy and fun that I get out of typing words, but rather my mind is always drifting over to content and audience and something bigger that I should be seeking from this act.

    Of course, these invasive thoughts are at my own control, and maybe—lucky you—you are able to ignore them and just enjoy doing things for the sake of it. But then if you are the type of person to be reading a blog post that started with such a question maybe you too are like me and feel guilt from directionless creativity.

    So I ask again: When did we force play to become learning? And how can we snap out of it?

  • Eyes Ears

    If you were to ask me about the most basic requirements of creativity, I may suggest that observation and awareness of the universe are about as fundamental of a skill as there is.

    We are in the middle of a weird space and time in the timeline of creative pursuit. At no other point in history has the average person been able to have access to so much inspiration, feedback and educational content. Simultaneously, society has fostered these massive generative content engines we often call artificial intelligence and are using them to churn all of that into an output that ranges from the curious and interesting to the negligent and slop-laden. 

    I doubt that there has been a time in history that equals this for the opening of eyes and ears to the complexity of what it means to create.

    And yet I also think that there is very little new—and where new does squeak through the cracks of Xeroxed regurgitation of commercialization and generative language models and social media influence it squeaks through when a person notices something interesting the piques the ineffable nuances of our brains. We observe and think and churn and ponder. And what comes out the other end may be interesting and beautiful. It may be creative. 

    At the heart of all those other things is knowing that what the ghost in the machine can accomplish is now no longer distinguishable from human skill, but that seeing and listening and feeling are a core skill yet uncaptured by an algorithm. 

    Under the category of Eyes & Ears, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.

  • Banger Trap

    If there was a simple and obvious way to credit the ephemeral wisdom of random video clips that pass through ones feed in the middle of an evening doom-scroll session I might write the exact coordinates when and where this particular term crossed my screen. 

    The notion of a “banger trap” pinned down something that I had been thinking about a lot lately as I scrolled through the endless posts by countless technically excellent photographers posting their best works.

    All of those pictures of perfectly lit sunsets and amazingly hued mountain scapes and perfectly focussed wildlife glamour shots were technically awesome. Amazing. Aspirational and skilled.

    And yet they made me feel almost nothing.

    I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled and my mind was on repeat saying: yup, yup, seen it, yup, lovely, yup, yup…

    They are all very skilled photographers and will likely have successful careers selling their talent and their banger content. But after seeing the same perfect photos more times than I can count and the abundance of kudos and praise? Well, it strikes me that it starts to seem like little more than a factory product, mass produced and polished.

    Instead?

    Show me something real. Show me life. Show me imperfection. Show me something I see everyday in a different way that gives me a new perspective on the mundane. Show me more than perfect.

    I get it. Showcasing our technical best work is a calling card of skill and experience, but it’s also a trap: a snare line upon which it is easy to trip and snag, that the banger is the ultimate and final stage of making great art. 

    Because I don’t think it is.