"What if my approach to narrative was as free as my approach to generative art?"

I have finally managed to step back from my animation idea, and get my project in line with my arts practice. I have also located the question at the core of my project inquiry.

At the start of the semester, I was grasping onto a somewhat contrived story. I was using technical methods of graphical recombination similar to what I had used last semester, but I was overly attached to creating a particular narrative animation. Worse still, the project I had in mind would not necessitate me learning any new skills or software. It was all to take place using simple animations in After Effects.

I became very frustrated with the problem of 'trying to tell this story'. I had begun with the end goal, and had therefore trapped myself into the uninspiring task of finding a path to it. Play, experimentation and growth had been unwittingly put on the backburner.

After much difficulty trying to find this path, I recalled how free and exciting I felt creating my generative works last semester. For both my short datamoshed animation and my collaborative 'Glitch Swap' game, there had never been a goal in mind. The aim was to play freely and "see what emerges". What emerged was consistently interesting, surprising, inspiring, and far more exciting than anything I could have conceived of. It was a reciprocal play with happenstance, that did not rely on my own contrived ideas.

The animation I have been planning this year had none of these wonderful influences. So now, instead of writing a story and painstakingly executing it, I have based my inquiry on the following question:

"What if my approach to narrative was as free as my approach to generative art?"

This frees me from the uninspiring task of 'trying to make what's in my head', and opens the animation up to be something far more experimental, playful and unbounded.

So, what was it at the beginning of the semester that caused me to sacrifice excitement and freedom for contrivance and 'project tunnel vision'? I had forgotten the lessons of Lyndon Whaite.

I learned design under Lyndon, who is a celebrated Australian designer frequently featured in the Graphis Annual in his heyday. 

By far Lyndon's most important lesson for me, (a revelation that had me running off to feverishly scribble notes in the relative peace of a nearby stairwell) was that a designer must learn to drop their personal attachment, their sense of ownership towards the work. In short, they must learn to drop their ego.
 
This seems to buck common sense. Shouldn't a design should be your 'baby'? Something painstakingly envisioned, planned and executed?

I learned from Lyndon that this was not the case. Nature itself is a surpassing designer, capable of showing you up in the extreme. The act of creation surpasses human intent, because it is a reciprocal 'play' with Nature. 

If creating becomes a process of play, if you surrender to the spontaneous and embrace what Bob Ross calls 'happy accidents', then the work itself will lead you into unexplored spaces beyond your puny human imagination.

This idea is now in its proper place at the centre of my practice, and will underpin my approach to future studies.