Drawing hands

A pair of hands is drawing each other…

1. When we write down a thought, we can see our hands moving. As thought is elusive- in the beginning our hands awkwardly move on the piece of paper- which is also our blank mind. They keep on doing the same thing, drawing some circles for example.
2. While our hands repeatedly move in circles, our eyes unconsciously follow our hands, while our thoughts are unwillingly trapped in this everlasting, inescapable repetition. It is as if our hands were moving in circles, one hand chasing the other, or as if a snake was chasing its tail (an ouroboros as it is called).

3. But suddenly something happens which brakes the circle. It happens spontaneously, as we are unaware where it came from. (We usually call it inspiration.) As soon as this spontaneous symmetry breaking occurs, we can see our hands free, beginning to draw random patterns, or write down an automatic text, which gradually makes more and more sense.

What is a strange loop?

4. “What I mean by ‘strange loop’ is not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive ‘upward’ shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. That is, despite one’s sense of departing ever further from one’s origin, one winds up, to one’s shock, exactly where one had started out. In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop.” [1]

5. To make some sense… Is this the purpose? Would it be sufficient to end up with the automatic writing or drawing? Well it could be, but in reality we have already moved away from this stage- right now as this text is being written down, and our thought is evolving.
6. This mixture of spontaneous randomness, which initiates the process of creation and deterministic will, which guides the process retrospectively, gives us the final result. This together with some decorative elements which depend on the artist’s vocabulary.
7. But what determines the true value of the writing or the drawing is the good understanding of this dual process of creation- how deeply an artist can delve into the unconscious mind, and how well he can distinguish between what is irrationally fantastic and what is willfully real.

Is thought an impossible object?

8. Hofstadter’s strange loop reminds of Penrose’s impossible stairs. This is a construction which tricks the eye, as the spectator thinks that while he ascends or descends the stairs, he finds himself back to the point where he started, at the same height. [2] 
9. Such stairs form an impossible object, because normally when we ascend a staircase we expect that we will find ourselves at a level higher than before. But let’s imagine for example that we are in a space station. In the absence of gravity there is no ‘up’ or ‘down.’ Therefore in a space station all stairways are impossible.
10. But is our own perception about reality an impossible object? Is there any ‘gravity’ in our mind? When we imagine for example that we climb a mountain, do we really ‘climb’ it? Even when we are indeed climbing a mountain, what makes us certain that we are ‘really’ climbing it- or even that the mountain exists-, instead of imagining it? Does this just depend on how strong our imagination is? 

11. The thoughts we write down return to our own thoughts… But as soon as a thought returns, there is something missing in the process. Usually we have already forgotten the original thought…
12. Can we recognize now what has been written down? In fact we have to go back to the beginning of the text and read it again. The thoughts we write down go back to our own thoughts once again...

Is there progress after all?

13. But wait a moment. Isn’t there any progress at all in the process? Can we identify a text we wrote (or a painting we drew) with us? Did the original thought belong to us after all? Can we escape from this closed loop of a self- referring paradox?
14. Let’s go back to the pair of hands drawing each other. Let’s imagine that picture, while a pair of thoughts also begins to spin around. These two opposite currents of reflected ideas which are projected back into the mind is all we know about reality. An implanted virtual memory could be as vivid and real as any other true memory.
15. We can claim that everything we know about reality is found in our memory, as the inputs from the outside word are processed and ‘censored’ by will, before they are handed down to memory as real objects of interest. But during the process of recovering the memory, there is always something lost. The object of memory is not as ‘bright’ as it used to be in the first place…
16. Fishing at the inexhaustible pool of imagination, we catch a fish. We may keep it or throw it back into the pool. But even so our hands will not be the same again. The fish will not be the same again. Reality will not be the same again. Perhaps imagination never changes. But as soon as it turns on, something is born, splashing like a fish on the shore of perception. This process of creation, which on the personal level we call creativity, is definitely a spontaneous, unstoppable and irreversible process. 

17. And the hands were born…

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_loop]

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_stairs]

8/4/2018

Painting: Drawing hands, M.C. Escher