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WARNING: This is a work in progress. As an exercise in understanding my position more fully, I've decided to leave my partially finished work open to the viewer.
Determinism is a key concept for my artwork. There are many different versions or brands of determinism, which has led me to create and appropriate my own particular style. My brand of Determinism is the idea that everything in the universe, from the physical to the psychological is set on a path determined by the momentum of the past. The forces from the past are undeniable, pushing every atom, every celestial body, every human mind in a direction determined by that which has come before.
From the perspective of an atom, Newtonian physics determines their energy as they bounce their way through the universe. Do they have any mechanisms to change course? If we could know all the positions and energies of all atoms in the universe, could we figure out where they would be with what energy at a particular point in space? My brand of Determinism says yes. Now Tanner, isn't it impossible to know every position and energy and whatever other physical mechanism that you are too ignorant to know about for every single atom in the known and unknown universe? In my brand of determinism, there is no impossible, just because we don't know the answer or if we will never be able to know the answer due to our lack of computing power does not mean the equation is void. A similar thing can be said of quantum physics. Just because we don't know fully how the inside of an atom works doesn't mean what is happening is random. It just means we don't have the tools to be able to wrap our limited human tools and brains around it.
From the perspective of a human being, our nature and nurture compose the vast majority of our decision reasoning. A key question of my work is, why do we make the decisions we make? To attempt to answer this question requires a profoundly deep, open, and inquisitive mind in regard to examining one's past and an understanding of evolutionary psychology. I believe that simply the pursuit of trying to answer this question by attempting to deeply understand one's past is where
There is no randomness in my brand of determinism. Randomness can be explained by a lack of knowledge and understanding by the viewer. Just because we may not have the tools to understand a certain situation does not mean it is random.
Determinism is a multifaceted concept that has to do with how the current individual, society, planet, solar system, galaxy, universe has come to be and where it is going. Determinism is usually contrasted with the concept of free will. A great book that helped shaped my ideas on free will and determism is Sam Harris's, Free Will. Determinism can be used to answer the question, "Why do we make the decisions we make?"
So why has determinism become such a big part of my work? I can pinpoint a few developments that lead me to this concept. During my development as an art student, I started to become interested in water as a material. While experimenting with this supposedly inanimate material, I started to understand why the water behaves in the ways it does. There were numerous times I thought I knew exactly how the water was going to behave when I introduced it to new geometries or materials but ended up being wildly mistaken most of the time. Through this process, I started to learn/connect the science behind the molecule of H20. Things like how its polar molecular structure contributes to its adhesion principles and surface tension or how currents are created and move throughout the body.
I started to see a pattern; whenever the water behaved erratically to my uneducated eye, there was a scientific principle that easily explained the reasons for its behavior. Whenever the currents moved in a way that surprised me, further examinations revealed an explanation.
Interestingly enough, I also saw this pattern in my own personal actions. When I look back on an action I made and wonder why I made that decision, usually, if I just took a deeper look into my thought process leading up to it, the decision could be explained. The reasoning usually came down to previous, impactfully experiences I had in my childhood
Agree? Strongly Disagree? I would love to hear your thoughts. Drop me a line here!
Thank you!
