[Tranc{E]nd} (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} seattlesque) wrote,@ 2004-08-03 14:20:00 |
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MYSTERY (poem)
MYSTERY
I placed a box
inside another
one box showed
one box covered
one secret's mine
one not revealed
the inner box
by others sealed
If I pack a box, I know a "secret" because I know what I put in it. Yet because we are always operating using parts that we did not design at some level (atoms, if nothing else)...then I don't necessarily know all the properties of the things in the box. Thus, my own box is a mystery even to me.
I intended this as a quick capture of the impossibility of making a work that is not derivative. I am using the language of "boxes" and "seals", because lately a lot of my thinking of the design of ideal systems has had to do with "shrinkwrapping" and digital signing. Yet the notion applies to any creative work, like this poem itself being composed of words whose connotations I don't entirely know.
Increasingly I have wondered about "open-source art"...the idea that artists would be willing to speak to their composition process, while not limiting the interpretive freedom that others would have of the work.
MYSTERY
I placed a box
inside another
one box showed
one box covered
one secret's mine
one not revealed
the inner box
by others sealed
If I pack a box, I know a "secret" because I know what I put in it. Yet because we are always operating using parts that we did not design at some level (atoms, if nothing else)...then I don't necessarily know all the properties of the things in the box. Thus, my own box is a mystery even to me.
I intended this as a quick capture of the impossibility of making a work that is not derivative. I am using the language of "boxes" and "seals", because lately a lot of my thinking of the design of ideal systems has had to do with "shrinkwrapping" and digital signing. Yet the notion applies to any creative work, like this poem itself being composed of words whose connotations I don't entirely know.
Increasingly I have wondered about "open-source art"...the idea that artists would be willing to speak to their composition process, while not limiting the interpretive freedom that others would have of the work.
