Frameworks
Or fram(ing) work.
1133: All creative people should keep lists (and work in series). If creative work is in the flow of your life, why not begin the serial process and follow it through? A natural branching occurs the longer you do it. But the objective is not only to gather and glean, but to also cultivate and prune the list, and give it power to be generative.
Sol LeWitt said in one of the very few interviews he gave: "I'm not the same person I was in 1968 or 1978 or 1988...I hope I would not be the same 10 years from now if I'm still alive. I've changed, and I hope all aspects of life can be accounted for in the thoughts I have and the kind of work I do. It's a matter of discovering things as you go along that perhaps you didn't know or realize or think that you might have [within]. As one grows older, one discovers more and more about oneself. It's all filling out your own self."
But the converse is also true: I'm still thinking the same way creatively as I was when I was 8. What changes are the domains, but the early operating systems are still the framework for everything else to the present, from Lego blocks to serialization of process (lists, rules, and so on).
Ideally what you want are series that are open-ended, and can be stopped and started over a lifetime. Some artists use one for their entire careers (Like Peter Halley) and some have many.
I typically like to limit things to three of something, and take breaks to investigate fortuitous events while working on the main projects or ideas worthy of development. Invention (or contrived invention) is typically a rough road as it is difficult to stay interested in edgy experiments that don't have momentum. Sometimes experiments can be placed into existing series, or a new series. (You can start a series anywhere, and you could have hundreds of them, and they all hold together in some way, as they are part of some framework, not just a one-off experiment). Moreover, the more series you have, the greater the possibility the errant pieces will find relevance.
1133: All creative people should keep lists (and work in series). If creative work is in the flow of your life, why not begin the serial process and follow it through? A natural branching occurs the longer you do it. But the objective is not only to gather and glean, but to also cultivate and prune the list, and give it power to be generative.
Sol LeWitt said in one of the very few interviews he gave: "I'm not the same person I was in 1968 or 1978 or 1988...I hope I would not be the same 10 years from now if I'm still alive. I've changed, and I hope all aspects of life can be accounted for in the thoughts I have and the kind of work I do. It's a matter of discovering things as you go along that perhaps you didn't know or realize or think that you might have [within]. As one grows older, one discovers more and more about oneself. It's all filling out your own self."
But the converse is also true: I'm still thinking the same way creatively as I was when I was 8. What changes are the domains, but the early operating systems are still the framework for everything else to the present, from Lego blocks to serialization of process (lists, rules, and so on).
Ideally what you want are series that are open-ended, and can be stopped and started over a lifetime. Some artists use one for their entire careers (Like Peter Halley) and some have many.
I typically like to limit things to three of something, and take breaks to investigate fortuitous events while working on the main projects or ideas worthy of development. Invention (or contrived invention) is typically a rough road as it is difficult to stay interested in edgy experiments that don't have momentum. Sometimes experiments can be placed into existing series, or a new series. (You can start a series anywhere, and you could have hundreds of them, and they all hold together in some way, as they are part of some framework, not just a one-off experiment). Moreover, the more series you have, the greater the possibility the errant pieces will find relevance.
