The word creative is loaded.
It makes assumptions.
Assumptions that limit what could be.
When you think “creative” your mind jumps to the visual artist, the musician, the writer, the performer. All creative endeavors that have pushed the conversation forward in many fields from engineering to, to politics, to science.
If you haven’t paid attention yet, what the Artist envisions the engineer develops, the politician regulates, the scientist theorizes.
Marvelous how the art of a few generations ago has now become a reality. The vision of the creative has memetically engraved in time ideas which inspire where human desire wants to go.
From space travel, to biotechnology, to artificial intelligence. It was all once a dream which inspired a kid who made it into existence.
Marvelous. Yet incomplete.
Let’s let loose about the word “creative” for a minute, an hour, and forever.
I’m a professional visual artist by trade, which will immediately invalidate my views to the more technical reader. Boosting the worth of the painter or the musician sounds like neat feel good ear candy to soothe some egos.
But it’s not about that.
The common definition limited. Incomplete.
The word “creative” encompasses every endeavor that pushes boundaries.
Art at its core is the act of boundary dissolution.
Wherever they lie, in whatever field they present themselves, boundaries are the hunt and the Artist is the hunter.
I don’t particularly enjoy how the word “artist” is being utilized in mainstream culture. It is limiting, and these limits are ironically the boundaries Art pushes against.
The maverick entrepreneur, the cutting edge molecular biologist, the x50 software engineer. They are Artists, provided that the object driving them is to push the field forward. Creative people are everywhere, in every field, they step on rules and push the vision forward. They take leaps of faith into the unknown driven by obsession. All in the drive to find something that hasn’t been before.
Boundary dissolution is what is sought after by the Artist.
In any edeavour.
In every field.
The traditional use of the word “artist” is limited, boring.
Pretty pictures and nice sounds don’t make an artist, they make a craftsman.
The lower case artist is the craftsman, I myself am often times a craftsman, and on rare beautiful days an Artist. I get hired to make pretty pictures for businesses ran by terminal suit wearers waiting for the end of the month to refuel their boats used exactly 5.3 times per year. That line of work doesn’t push the conversation forward, it just soothes the already existent zeitgeist. The same applies to the engineer working a factory job, or the biologist doing lab work for a living. Craftsmanship.
A capital “A” Artist pushes the conversation forward, wherever the conversation is, in any field. It is the act of pushing the limits to a new normal regardless of the label being put on it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pretty painting, or a new type of engine, or a new discovery in the DNA methylation pathway. Art is ideas, the unique memes communicated through an intermediary (visuals, sound, or words), or directly through first hand technological developments.
Memes are the currency. And unique memes that push the conversation forward is what drives an Artist.
The Artist never lies in the middle of the pack, he is always surfing at the edges.
Creativity is not bound to a select few fields and neat little boxes.
Creativity is boundlessness.
And the Artist has this understanding flowing through their blood.