I am in love with the process of making art. I come up with a process without knowing what will to come out of it. At times, it’s a game – stacking as many variables or complications as I can, wondering what will happen at the end of it. Will be be good? Will it be a disaster? Either outcome is *interesting.* Either way, I’ve learned something. The final piece is incidental. It’s an artifact of a conceptual process. So far, I’ve happily embraced this concept.
Then, something happened. I started working on Syzygryd. The look of the piece is pretty much fixed. Instead of knowing the process and working with it until something interesting falls out, I’m working towards a very specific endpoint. The method of getting to that endpoint is what’s undefined. The path is what needs to be figured out. And it doesn’t really matter what that path is, as long as it works. After diving into Solidworks (CAD software) and that sketchy space between CAD and reality, I remembered the divine thrill of necessity-driven quick learning. With the dusty deadline coming closer, there’s no time to wait until I’m fluent in the software. No second-guessing. No space to feel like I should hand this task off to someone more competent. There are no experts – no one’s ever built Syzygryd before. This is at once reassuring and terrifying.
I used to cling to the belief that if I knew the outcome, I wasn’t interested. What I’m learning is that the path to a known end can be just as fascinating as the exploring a fixed path to an unknown end.
Once Syzygryd is done, and I’ve washed off the (nimby or playa) dust, I’ll try adopting a similar technique photographically. I can’t wait to see what happens.
