The Archeology of Art

When you’re working on a project you are like an archeologist, uncovering what is already there. You might not be able to see the entirety of the artefact you’re digging up, and you’re probably going to get your hands a little dirty in the process, but with enough time, consistency, and care, you will eventually see something emerge.

This is why it’s important to keep digging, so you can fully uncover the idea, or project. Also, like any good archeologist you’re well aware that what you’ve just uncovered might still be covered in gunk, and need to be pressure cleaned, and even polished. This is the creative process.

Now, once you’ve got your artefact you might also realise you want to do something with it. You could very easily leave it where you found it and go on with your life, or you could safely package it together, put it in a shipping container, send it to the other side of the world, and then finally start telling people about what you just found.

Someone might offer you money for it, someone else might offer you a chance to display it in a museum, or maybe, you just want to keep it to yourself in your own home. These are the decisions you need to make when creating.

Also, now that I think about it, it’s not even really creating and the better word is just uncovering. There is nothing new under the sun and everything has always existed. It’s just up to us to uncover the recipes, the formulas, and the compositions that are already out there waiting to be discovered.

It’s so interesting to contemplate how before mathematics, bitcoin, chocolate brownies, nuclear bombs, yu gi oh, artificial intelligence, and the device you’re reading this on were discovered, all of their components were there, patiently waiting to be rearranged and polished into what appears as something new. It’s kind of like recipes in Minecraft where all the materials are there, you just need to uncover how they fit together.

It really is quite extraordinary when you truly think about it.