Artists Process

Anyone's life can benefit from practicing the process of an artist.

Lots of people have an aversion to calling themselves an artist. They think it sounds pretentious, that artists are weirdos. I have a different defintion of what artist means though.

An artist performs experiments on the subjective – domains which can't (yet) be measured or repeated.

I'm a commercial software developer by trade – a programmer. Most folks think programming and computer science are identical, but they're not. Programming is an art.

Science experiments on the objective. A program can be tested over and over under the same conditions, establishing various measurements with confidence.

But these measurements are not how we ultimately judge programs. Instead, we judge programs based on how much we like them. The new version that runs more features faster and costs less may not "feel right". Context matters: the same person may like a program in their day job, and dislike the same program when they're moonlighting.

In math, the same value can be expressed many different ways. You could say six thirds, the square root of four, or one plus one. But your math teacher rejected all those forms, not because they're incorrect, but because they're unsatisfying. The satisifying answer is "two". Same measurement, different feeling. Mathematicians call this quality "elegance", and they prefer elegant solutions over correct but clunky ones.

Scientific process focuses on ensuring repeatability. In forms of art, no situation is ever truly repeatable; every time a person appreciates a work of art it changes them. The context changes constantly.

So contrary to popular misconception, artists must practice process discipline as rigorously as scientists. Tiny changes can have huge and unpredictable effects on how people feel, so those changes must be tightly controlled. Any artist worthy of their tools can recreate tiny changes on demand.

Artists process.