How do artists, writers, etc. decide when something is right, whether it's ready to show people other than your confidants? This is a slightly different process than the creation of a piece. A step back and evaluation, but still part of the creative process.

Not that people often talk about this, but it is often alluded to... For example, I remember an article about Kurt Cobain where he said he wrote lyrics by writing his feelings about a real world situation, and then going back and changing any words which gave it too much specificity or obviousness to words that sounded good or that related in a way that only made sense to his internal symbolic logic of malfunctioning bodies and teenage angst - all done in the car ride on the way to a recording session, probably stoned. (I don't intend to cite my source on this because it's a much elaborated and personalized faux-memory - I mean, I did spend a lot of time superanalyzing Nirvana lyrics once upon a time.)

I'd love to see a collection of artwork, songs, essays, etc. that were declared "not fit for the public eye." Unfinished. Too personal. Too derivative. Too bold. Too incomplete. Too obscure. What could we learn? How much could we laugh and relax?

There seems to be a dialectic between
clarity/directness/relevance/communication/generality/simplicity
and
obfuscation/stylization/decoration/singularity/detail/complication.
That is, there are really only a few important things to say. If you say them too directly, it feels embarrassing and obvious. If you say them in too personal a manner you are not really communicating.

This seems to relate to the general idea of distance - that you can describe something in superdetail and miss the big picture or describe the larger meanings and not have any concrete examples. There is a balance point somewhere, or rather a fleet of different balance point.

This is not just a description of a product, it relates to a mental state behind the production of that product. When I am hyperactive or in some kind of attenuated and alert mental state the details all flock up; buzzing and pleasurable and non-linear, without the large connecting blocks. When I am feeling low and dull the truths come out in all their bleak starkitude. One is a manic mental state, the other depressive. Mania tends to tell secrets, write truly awful poetry, start arguments, flush with emotions. Depression tends to hide in the dark and hide the products of mania as well. If working, it is supersmooth and clear, though often downturned and unmotivated. A swinging balance is needed to be judged public.

Well, I didn't explain that very well. Here is a speech made by an artificially intelligent computer. It is the thesis statement for GLYPIX in a way. Please note the combination between communicative words and decorative words. I need some advice on this, so please feel to critique mercilessly.



Follows



Welcome to Glypix, beta, a 21st century infomatic content stream of virally-propagated hypnotainment, a fill-in-the-blanks-fueled simulated neuronet of subtle pop aesthetics derived from a meme-engineering based process of imitation, chancy mutation, and faux-natural selection to create a kind of uber-intelligence, a living wax cast of the cinematic meta-mind, the world’s first truly democratic groupthink, a psychic samizdat. In other words, we will create an artificially-conscious hypo-computer by simulating a multi-lateral parallel circuit on the most advanced processing systems known today – the simple organic human brain. You, the viewer, represent nodes of unconsciously creative processors, emotion-playing consoles spread out across the real world, our experimental subjects whose lives become a tiny tick in the thunderous tock of the universal equation. The glypix algorithm is to use bio-feedback through web-based peer-networks to anthropomorphize a cryptic glyph, a symbol hanging free in a limbo of referential nonspecificity, to reach consensus without agreement, communication without communicating, thereby creating a new breed of innate symbolologic and driving the blues away. This symbol is the flashpoint code, unintelligible to us, but of great import to the immortal metamind. Perhaps reading the symbols we will reveal a great living forest of opinions with tag-teaming branches expressing a passionate caress of logical feeling, or perhaps there will only be an empty metal net, expansively large, but inexorably twist-crushing up around us like a frozen cybernetic boot forever and ever. This is why we need your kindest simple words, your deepest earthy whispers, your electronic squawk readings, your princess-naming wishes and dragon riding revenge fantasies. If we hold hands in a squiggle across the grid our lightning squeeze-love chatter will evade the censors and humbugs and a flower will bloom for the first time in the sad entropic superfund site. Everyday you have been searching, shopping, googling, contemplating. But how do you know when you have reached the prize? You know when you say, “This is oh so very strange...”