Fiber of Our Being, triptych
Fiber of Our Being, panel 1
Fiber of Our Being, panel 2
Fiber of Our Being, panel 3
Fiber of Our Being
Fiber of Our Being is a triptych about the process of creativity. It compares an example from chaos theory with the way we form concepts and ideas in our minds.
The example—that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world could be the factor that creates just enough wind to cause a storm on the opposite coast—demonstrates that because our world is so complex and not entirely predictable, we can never know that it was actually those butterfly wings that made the storm happen, or not. This is similar to the way we can never truly know what triggers a new idea in our mind.
The white strings at the left represent our thoughts, reaching out and trying to connect with other thoughts. When they become more connected and tightly woven together in new ways, these become a concept (top center). But when we’re trying to come up with an idea, it’s hard to know how it happens. All creatives have experienced the mystery of this process: you’ve been working on something for a while, but then later you’re out doing something else, just walking around in the world, or even sleeping, and suddenly it hits you: You have your idea. The whole system is part of it, but it’s difficult to know what finally makes it happen. It just does.
This piece also uses high-contrast figure/ground relationship to add to this idea. On the left side the thoughts are white and the background is black. But sometimes a realization is so powerful that it actually tears into our context—the ground that we thought we were working in. When that happens (right side), our perspective reverses itself and our focus becomes the (black) fibrous strings that were the background – and suddenly the background has become a whole new layer the white color of the thoughts that were once our focus.
Fiber of Our Being was created in Adobe Photoshop by combining scans of fabric, strings, a netted bath-sponge, painted textures and textbook graphics with type about space-time and cognition, and original hand-written words about sensing an idea or change in perspective happening.