Lists, Grids, And Creativity

 

Umberto Eco on lists: 

"The list doesn't destroy culture; it creates it. Wherever you look in cultural history, you will find lists. In fact, there is a dizzying array: lists of saints, armies and medicinal plants, or of treasures and book titles. Think of the nature collections of the 16th century. My novels, by the way, are full of lists."

I've always been a proponent of incrementalism, both pre and post-production. It's the "Gantt Chart" if using an architectural/engineering metaphor. Like the German idiom "wall in the head", there's also "grid in the head". Anyone that knows me knows I work architecturally most of the time--especially in music production. I see it as the only way to complete things. Some people use the scaffold metaphor, which is fine, but a scaffold isn't a building.

When I first started writing and recording music in the early 1980s, I started keeping a log of the pieces that I completed. It was a form of collecting, and I would assign numbers to them. The creative process was partially motivated by simply making the next piece and assigning the next number. This process continued on in my visual art with serialization, my book Dynaxiom (a riff on Robert Fripp's Fripporisms), which now has over 2500 entries--as well as lists of titles, lyric lines, and ideas generally. It's a very useful resource when you need an idea to start something. For example, I'll use one of my Dynaxioms for a lyric idea. Many of them have already become songs. 

For the sake of self-reference, a few Dynaxioms on lists:

2449. Keeping lists increases the chances that you'll complete some of the items on them. Lists are a form of motivation even if you don't do anything. At least you made the list.

1790. A scale is essentially a list. A chord or melody is a selection from the list. The chord is a vertical stacking (portrait) of the scale and melody is a horizontal (landscape) of the scale.

1787. Innovation has become our new to-do list. But we actually have to do the things on the list. Writing and talking about innovation takes time away from its implementation and working through the experiments.

1573. ...creating frameworks for creativity is more satisfying than just making another one of something without it being generative in some way, or derived from a generative process that anyone can use. It would be more rewarding, for example, to see how people use the elements you created. An example in music are lyrics, melody, and chord changes.

1405. There are two basic ways to add cohesion to creativity: 1) create the work, then serialize; and, 2) create similar pieces in an existing series. This also works in music where you can compose first, then add to a collection (album) or define the framework for the album and fill it in accordingly.

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.

Grids as Lists 

One of my main influences in both music and art is the artist Chuck Close who typically uses grids, and then paints in each square to assemble a painting. It gives you a way to work by simply following the heuristic (list) you made for yourself. A list is a possible routine. 

Close often used the analogy of music--particularity orchestration--in which the composer creates a work incrementally over weeks or months by "pointilistically" placing (or assigning) notes on staves, the standard grid for music. 

A way to do something is to work on something else. 

A creative work of any kind always has a list of things to do. They are mostly linear and sequential, but you can sometimes do them randomly. When I'm working on an album I tend to skip around a lot between types of activities. So if I'm stuck on a certain problem I'll do something completely different, such as designing the cover art, or think about the titles, or just do some technical work, such as setting EQs, reverbs, and other effects for instruments and instrument groups. It's a way to move towards a resolution, and a way of keeping the motivation in motion. 

As Jerry Saltz suggests in How To Be An Artist, always leave something to do tomorrow. You could have done it today, but it gives you a way to restart the list.

City Grids 

Chicago is a city on a strict grid and I’ve used the grid as a metaphor in Hundreds of Arbitrary Decisions Made By Design, as well as a way to build the piece. Like a Mies building, it's "completed" even if it's under construction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A piece that actually is a grid, Ship of Theseus

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The infamous Beeple piece which sold for almost $70 million is essentially a chronological grid/mosaic/list of works collected over a period of ten years.