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One
Million Minds - why?
The idea for One Million Minds came about through my interest
in computer programming and my work as an artist, a painter.
I've tried to explain how the practicallities of it came
about in more detail below. But I
wanted to say a little bit about why I have pursued the
idea rather than just be satisfied with it as a personal
project. Of course, the shear scale of it appeals to me
as a challenge, but as a work of art it has to have a
little more point to it than that.
Part of the reason for One Million Minds is the growth
of social networking sites, allowing people to contact
others they would never have known before. Having taken
part in some of these sites it has been clear to me that
although it is possible to find interesting people, others
with like minds, an awfull lot of what goes on is quite
trivial, inane, nothing much to it. You get "friend
junkies" who seem to do nothing else but collect
as many friends as they can, having pretty pointless conversations
across the etha - it's easy to see. This also goes on
in forums. The number of times I've read posts in a forum
only to find what you have is a small group of people,
a clique, with all their in-jokes and knowing assides.
You can also find the preponderance self interest. Have
a look around myspace pages, or facebook and you can see
it all there; the declaration of "here I am, look
at me!", the interest in self and need to express
ones individuality becoming an ever more prevalent way
that people spend their time.
So I thought that doing something with peoples readiness
to talk about themselves, encouraging the endless chatter
of the internet and the chance encounters of humans through
this electronic media, to turn this data into art, reflecting
the enormaty of its extent while at the same time gathering
information that in some way relates directly to the real
people behind the noise.
When you think about it, the internet is the biggest change
in mankinds ability to communicate with itself since the
printed book. This has not been explored in art mainly
because single physical works of art cannot hope to express
a million people all chatting and interacting. The internet
is not only something to create art about, it is also
the medium through which to do it. A painting cannot hope
to express a billion people on social networking sites.
The traditional art media are simply not built for describing
what is going on in the electronic world that is taking
up more and more of peoples lives. One Million Minds is
a way to express that phenomenon and tap into peoples
self expression. A million individual works of art all
combining to form the whole. Taking the notion of this
world wide communication and self expression then using
it to create works of art that not only expresses the
individuals that take part in it but also its scale.
Tamor Kriwaczek.
One Million
Minds - The Idea
To understand where the idea for One Million Minds came
from, you probably have to understand a little of where
I, as an artist, have come from.
As I have said, I'm a painter. Since I started painting
when I was 14 it was as if that is what I had always done,
and always would do. And, yes, I still paint and always
will. For me, it is my ultimate way of expressing myself,
something that I feel a need to do more strongly than
anything else. It is my life, my way of navigating through
life. It keeps my mind balanced, helps me understand myself
and others, I simply could not survive without it. No
exaggeration - I need to paint. But my interests
are wider than just painting.
As I studied art, painting (or image making of one kind
or another) in the past I saw the Thread than runs through
it all. Go back in time as far as you like and it is there,
from cave paintings in France, or Aboriginal art in Australia,
through to Greek, Roman, African masks, up to Rembrandt,
Van Gogh and Picasso the force of human beings expressing
information, whether literal or emotional, is always there.
That is the wonderful and extraordinary thing about art.
It is a time machine. When I started studying art through
my own efforts, I found immediately that I could understand
it. Not what you might think of as "This artist is trying
to say..." but more an absolute sense of what the human
being who stood in front of the work, creating it, was
feeling. I could see it, feel it, no question, no ambiguity,
I was there, with them, standing by their shoulder as
feelings shot from their heart and mind through their
fingers to manifest themselves in the work. This is the
Thread that's woven through all human art, and this is
what I followed.
Prompted by the Thread, particularly as it related to
painting, I developed my ideas, a multi-stylistic approach
based on the idea that different styles were good at expressing
different feelings, and trying to combine these styles
within single works to better express myself. Alongside
my painting I also pursued other interests including computer
programming. When I was young, my father was working for
the BBC in London, producing a series called The Computer
Program, which really was the first series of TV programmes
to look at the development of home computers, and which
utilised the BBC Micro computer which came out in the
early 80's. My father of course had his own interest in
computers, and had built his own computer from a kit in
the late 70's, and while he was working on The Computer
Programme there were a number of old BBC Micro's that
ended up at home, that I used to use, play games on, typing
in code from magazines and generally mucking about with
them programmatically. So that's where my interest in
computers and programming first developed.
So moving forward in time, there I was - painting, printmaking,
drawing, sculpting, making boxes, books, programming,
whatever my creative mind seemed to demand of me, following
my own Thread as I saw it relating to the overall development
of art. I had a modern(ish) PC, Windows 98 with a 266MHz
Intel Pentium 2, which I still use and am indeed writing
this potted history of mine on now.
The idea of of computers creating art seems, in my mind,
to have always been there. And though I had done a few
experiments creating random images it was nothing more
than an interesting diversion to me. I always thought
that someone would come along with a computer that could
create artistic imagery, not randomness or fractals, and
I simply waited. But whenever I heard something about
the idea it was always from the point of view of a programme
that could mimic human behaviour in one way or another
and therefore develop 'feelings' that it would then use
for its artistic creations. But I always thought this
was a bit pointless. Why get a computer to 'create' human
art - it's a computer after all, and any value in what
it created on its own merits would be relevant to computers
and not humans. It just didn't add up to me.
Some time in 2003 or 2004 I went to an exhibition in London
which I was seriously unimpressed by. It should be said
that I'm quite a hardcore artist. I don't believe anything
can be art or has artistic value, I don't believe you
are an artist if you call yourself an artist, and I certainly
don't believe that simply because you call yourself an
artist that what you produce is, ipso facto, art. There
is good art, bad art, stuff that is called art that is
not art at all and plenty of stuff that is fascinating
and interesting that is not art and yet has more value
than other things which are. And simply creating an object
that you feel like making does not invest it with artistic
merit simply because of its existence. Come on guys, art
is a very special and particular thing, and real art,
the genuine article, can transcend culture, time, everything,
its value being forever as long as it and human beings
exist in the same space.
So there I was at this exhibition looking at a large flow
diagram perporting to be something about the act of creation.
What it was was basically a list of every influential
artist, thinker, scientist, film maker etc. etc. list
after list in little boxes joined up by thin lines, almost
like a structure to a computer program, but in no way
telling me anything about the act of creation. It was
names, names, names. As a work of art I found it extremely
lazy. Yes, a lot of work had no doubt gone into coming
up with all the names, designing the layout etc. but it
infuriated me. I could rant and rave on and on about this
but i think we all have better things to do with our time
so lets get to the point.
This 'work' infuriated me so much I went home and thought
"right! I'm going to do this!" Rather than a list of influential
people and ideas all effecting each other lets put some
ideas into a computer program, where abstract structure
actually means something, feed it some data and see what
comes out. But my point of view was to use the computer
as a tool, not to simulate paint in some pointless nod
to traditional art, but to create imagery in a style which
would only be done by the precise control of one's and
zero's that computers use. This was to be a program that
encapsulated the way I thought in order to create the
image. Not to mimic my thoughts, not to pretend it's a
human being, but simply to apply my thought processes
to the electronic canvas (which in many programming languages
is indeed called the Canvas).
So learning the programming necessary as I went along,
I thought about what I wanted to express, what I wanted
the image to look like given specifics sets of varaibles,
what abstract elements for me expressed what I was thinking
and understanding from the data that went in, and working
out the calculations that I needed and the tolerances
to include in order to draw the variations I wanted to
express.
I had spent many years painting portraits and people,
what they are like 'inside' being the interest to me,
and so it was a natural extension to take my knowledge
and understanding of the human character to create portraits
with my program. Of course these would be abstract portraits
as there seemed little point in trying to create an artifice
of physical portraiture with a tool that simply isn't
designed for that kind of expression. Paint is organic
in its physicality and in the way one uses it. Direct
application transferring the light that enters your eye,
interpreted, analysed, and sent out again through your
arm and hand, manipulating the paint on the canvas. The
computer generated portraits I was envisioning were about
the idea of a person, a character; what I think they are
like given what information about them I have to hand.
So I designed the questions that I wanted answered in
order to give me the information to work with. Questions
that I asked myself, that I thought would be universally
relevant, not specific to me, or artists, or culture.
We are all human, we all feel the same feelings, have
the same ambitions, interests, hopes and fears. This is
what I wanted to get at - the existential human.
I collect the answers to these questions and knowing what
information, at least the possible variance in the information,
I wrote the program to import the raw data, interpret
it, pass it through what you might call a digitised thought
algorythm (-an ugly but accurate description), applying
the way I think to the answers, creating an analysis that
in turn is used to decides what to draw, how to draw it
and where to draw it on the canvas. The result is an image
which (as far as I can tell having done considerable testing)
portrays in abstract form what you might see if you could
peer inside the mind of the person who answered the questions
through my eyes.
As well as expressing peoples Minds as individual works
of art, an abstract image of the mind or Mindscape, I
wanted to demonstrate the interest in art throgughout
the world, the constant interest in the Self and in others,
as a combined force, gathering Minds based on their interest
in art, and for the whole to become a work of mass art
participation creating the largest single series of unique
artworks in history, joining together the disperate from
all corners under the banner of Art.
I truly believe in art, its power and usefullness in increasing
understand of oneself and of others, and I hope that One
Million Minds contributes to this in some way.
Postscript
I do believe this is valid form of art that has not yet
been explored. Obviously, at the moment, the problem is
that you need to be able to program to produce the results.
But what we're mainly talking about is an artist being
able to decide what information goes in, how it's interpreted,
and how the result should be displayed. This could be
imagery, as One Million Minds is, or sound, music, or
video, or a mixture. Some kind of interface would need
to be developed for artists to be able to easily access
the capabilities that a system like this has to offer.
And especially utilising the power of the internet to
make the reach and creation of the artwork worldwide makes
it a unique form of art which couldn't have existed before
now. What does the future hold? Only time will tell.
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