Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Conscious minds

Anil Seth has a TED talk about how minds come to be and work.  He also has a book called "Being You."  It looks to him that our conscious minds have two basic properties: information and integration.  The words may not sound like it but they mean something along the lines of unpredictable and "of a whole", not scattered or random.  Between what I read and what I watch, I feel like I see the sort of properties he means in some works of fiction or in print.  


It is natural and basic for creators to try to be impressive, notable, memorable.  So, why not do something quite different?  Howaboutlosingthespacebetweenwordsandsomeothercustomsofwritinglikecapitalletters?  Yes, it looks different but is it taken as a bother instead of a fun innovation?  Since the development of photography, artists of various kinds have asked what is a drawing or a painting trying to do that a photograph couldn't do or wouldn't do.  Standing out by being unusual needs to be done with care and imagination: something a bit different but not TOO different.  


What about integration?  Think of some bit of UNITY, some clinging together, usually around a purpose, at least around a theme.  Without some coherence, we just have random colors, sounds, a big mess. We need something we don't already know and we need that something to show an integration, a whole.

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