I had read an essay that I forgot the name of, where the writer asserted that photography was a kind of violation. It inspired me and led me to my own conclusion: where the act of existing by itself is violating. By existing or being acknowledged in another person’s head, you are violating them by being forcibly known without the other person’s consent. Furthermore, you are also actively upholding or breaking biases that the other person holds through this forced acknowledgement.
The act of creation takes this one step further, by extending one’s own existence one can violate and influence when the original creator is not around. Though the trueness of the original creator and of the creator’s real self is diluted through the creation. Thoughts are never purely raw but doctored to become comprehensible to others. The true, fleeting thought can never be replicated through material means.
Artists normally have an adverse opinion to their own work because they despise their own physical limitations, its lost innovative potential, or the work’s inaccuracy to reflect the mind of the artist. A painter can never paint the exact image they have in their head, a writer cannot write exactly what is on their mind. Both only become masters at their craft when they have trained their perception to replicate and imagine within their inherently limited medium.
All art is an attempt for someone trying to exist beyond their body. Creating anything is like building a camera, where the snapshot is instead a limited and flawed reflection of the person who was building it in that period of time.
To divulge, I have reached a point where I hold indifference or an adverse opinion to my own work. Not because of its limitations, but its connections to me. I do not want to exist in any form, material work included. A large portion of my identity and experience is suffering, therefore anywhere I exist (even passively through my creations), I suffer. I’d rather be eternally unconscious than be conscious of pain even if the plain includes love, hope, and happiness. I’m a coward because I’m unable to face the possibility of my suffering being extended.
However, I still continue to make art to have agency over my identity and how it is interpreted in other people’s heads. I’m able to exist without directly experiencing suffering by owning an unconscious body, even if my suffering remains through my conscious body creating said work. The previous suffering remains as a result of the host, but no suffering can continue.
I explored this idea of the work being the creator, rather than an aspect of the creator, explaining it to myself through the relationship between the TV, its evolution, and its inventor. I built upon this idea of cognitive immortality through visual recognition and a reflection of the self on material objects.
- It begins through the inventor of the TV and his invention. The TV is the inventor because it is a diluted form of self, but still a self nonetheless— it is a reflection of the inventor during the specific period of time while he was building the TV.
- As the TV is improved upon and altered, the new iteration of the TV holds a level of visual semblance to the original TV. It holds new aspects that are completely unique to this iteration, and therefore grants a level of recognition and self from the person who helped in developing its new version. Both inventors are now attached to the TV.
- The TV spreads in commercial replicability and even awareness of the TV’s existence, cognitively, that aspect of the TV’s creators “exist” in you. A small part of themselves becomes immortal on a cognitive level through their invention being a reflection of the inventor during that period of time. After the creator dies, when people see the TV they still can see its inventors. The post-mortem identity is now connected to a limited frame of one’s life.
“I invented the TV. By watching TV, you see me. You see the idea, you see traces of what led to the idea, you see the time and ingenuity it took to make the TV. You see the period of time it took to make it, the design, and decisions made by me. That me was the TV. A derived, diluted, and limited peek of myself in that period of time it took to make the TV and the thoughts I had while making it.”
At its core, even if this reflection of the self is limited and even diluted, it is still a self nonetheless. It is still a self that will live on within other people’s heads as long as the creation still holds its original resemblance. Cognitive immortality feels possible as long as humans recognize patterns and as long as our creations are made by humans with conscious intention.
I wonder if the creator of the TV loses cognitive immortality when the creation no longer resembles itself on a visual level? Is the original inventor still mentally evoked when someone sees a massive LED flat-screen TV on display?
I don’t think humans create with the sole goal to exist in another one’s head, in the same way I also don’t believe this avenue of creation is an attempt of cognitive immortality.
Even if one disagrees with my assertion of a creation being a limited representation of the creator but not a “part” of the creator, I have reached this conclusion through recognizing the impossibility of comprehending one's real self. There is no singular person or identity, like how a stream under a bridge is never the same, we are always changing, albeit slightly each day. Is the stream under the bridge the same stream if its width is always slightly changing? If its deposits are always carrying slightly different materials? If the animals that live in it are never the same exact animal? We need to recognize the stream to be a singular for categorization— and within a capitalist society, for commercialization.
This idea of a singular is needed for our society to function, as it cannot be efficient by acknowledging the ever changing and never stagnant. However the idea of a singular individual and identity has only worsened under late-stage capitalism and its extreme consumerism. The current capitalist system relies on selling the idea of a buyable, curated identity.
Is it the same person if the memories are always slightly different when recalled? When the persona always different among different people? If the hair is always shedding and the nails are always being cut? We can never truly know who we are psychologically and physiologically because we assume there is a singular, quantifiable identity for both.
One does not have a complete grasp of their subconscious, and one does not have all of their memories, and exact experiences. On a physical level, the mirror will always be flipped, and no camera lens will ever be truly accurate. Not even others would ever be able to comprehend the real you. While they understand an ever-changing physical appearance, they cannot access your experiences and you are never the same person around them. Like a prism shining a multitude of different colors from a single source of light, your persona shows different hues of the diluted ego. Further diluted by people’s interpretations of you.
Still, doing art is attempting to grapple with the phenomenological. It is an action that is trying to translate the unique and unreplicatable phenomena that happens in one’s own brain through either strict representation or abstract interpretations in a copy of the self during that period of time it took for it to be created. This will be interpreted in someone else's head, but still will be attempting to bridge the phenomenological gap.
Regarding those who reject such attempts to connect on a closer level through false personas that dilute the real self even further; one's death becomes absolute. The self that persists cognitively is still a reflection of the individual, but even more satirized. As the true self dies along the physical body in all cases, the instance where there is no attempt to connect while alive is even more isolating. Maybe rejecting attempts of closeness on the basis of the true self being unknowable is the point.