Creativity & Mechanics
I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance twice in college and recently picked it up again to refresh. Inspired, I have subconsciously woven the theme of Quality and mechanical work into my own creative practice, taking patience and time to meticulously record hexadecimal code and build on the relationship between artist and work/work and quality.
"'Man is the measure of all things.' Yes, that's what [Phaedrus] is saying about Quality. Man is not the source of all things... Nor is he the passive observer of all things... The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things- it fits."
-Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Pure aesthetics gets a bad rap in ZATAOMM as it offers no evidence of the time taken to really get to know something, to struggle with it. As a painting student at the Savannah College of Art & Design, I really grappled with this. Were my landscape paintings superficial? Que conceptual art. Once I discovered my studio practice as a tool to understand the intricacies and relationships of digital technology and human interference, I found Pirsig's Quality in my work. I completely abandoned any trace of representation and produced images of bare color and scribbled digits. The connections I made with my own practice and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence might be stretching it but they provided plenty of concepts to consider while mindlessly recording code or painting pixels.
The truth is my own creative practice has slowed down in recent years for reasons not worth getting into. Although I have found happiness in the other parts of my life that have demanded my attention I can't help but feel a little empty for that missing Quality found in the studio. Motorcycle Maintenence addresses the value found in taking the time to work on an engine. I'd like to use this experience, rebuilding a van, not to explore Quality but Creativity. As someone who has felt their creative juices run dry, can I somehow regain that energy through working on this van? How will the relationship with this vehicle feed my studio practice, if at all? And, after all is said and done, can I use our little VW Tintop Vanagon as a sort of artist residency on wheels? Guess we'll see...
