GOOD
What exactly is the good we are looking for?
In a world of constant bad, articulating the good can be revolutionary. When the world you live in values your life as a cog in a wheel of industry, doing what feels good, just for your own enjoyment, can be an act of resistance.
As someone who is genuinely concerned about and involved in the process of changing the world for ‘good’; something framed as sanctimonious to capitalists who profit from our disengagement and roles as consumers; what is good is counter to what is marketed as good.
I created Make Do Play as a place to showcase all the good work of the talented creative people I know who have dedicated their lives to honing crafts that tend to the needs of the soul, instead of focused on making a living.
It is work they had to do, they couldn’t stop doing, a part of who they are.
The shift in focus on the purpose of a piece inevitably alters the work.
When you work to your own objectives for your own pure reasoning, then the work is not only truly your own, but an intricate part of your life’s process.
The idea that AI could steal our creativity is laughable, because a robot doesn’t live experience. What you want to create always transforms in the process of creation, even in the tweaking of AI prompting there is a process, but never of the same calibre.
When Nick Cave was asked whether AI could replace human creativity in songwriting, Cave responded
‘In Yuval Noah Harari’s new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, he writes that Artificial Intelligence, with its limitless potential and connectedness, will ultimately render many humans redundant in the work place. This sounds entirely feasible. However, he goes on to say that AI will be able to write better songs than humans can. He says, and excuse my simplistic summation, that we listen to songs to make us feel certain things and that in the future AI will simply be able to map the individual mind and create songs tailored exclusively to our own particular mental algorithms, that can make us feel, with far more intensity and precision, whatever it is we want to feel. If we are feeling sad and want to feel happy we simply listen to our bespoke AI happy song and the job will be done.
But, I am not sure that this is all songs do. Of course, we go to songs to make us feel something — happy, sad, sexy, homesick, excited or whatever — but this is not all a song does. What a great song makes us feel is a sense of awe. There is a reason for this. A sense of awe is almost exclusively predicated on our limitations as human beings. It is entirely to do with our audacity as humans to reach beyond our potential.’
Real art is part of the artist, part of the process and part of the material. The final outcome is its own unique thing, something that cannot necessarily be created again, because it is from that particular experience of making. Even recreations will have subtle adjustments.
In flamenco and bullfighting, the chanting of ‘Ole’ has its roots in the arabic chanting of ‘ Allah’; uttered for when a performance became transcendent, literally lifting everyone in witness into the experience of the divine.
Every live performance can only be experienced in the present and can never be recreated. Your witnessing is part of your life, never to be experienced again.
So the process of creation is a means of transformation, of the object into the desire of the creator’s will, but shaped by the tools and circumstances of the earth. In the process the creator is also changed.
When I first conceived Make Do Play, I wrote a manifesto. Because I wanted to create a community that through the sharing of their work shared the part of the process that is transcendent.
Awareness is how we heal, grow and transform.
Through becoming more aware, we can solve any problem.
mindfulness is the key to turning the world into a sustainable economy that nurtures and supports us.
By no longer pledging allegiance to what harms us,
We can take control over what doesn’t serve us and become masters of our own destiny.
We do that by becoming more mindful in everything we do.
At make do play, we integrate mindfulness into every course, product and event.
By raising awareness of each moment we raise the consciousness of the whole,
moment by moment.
And as we turn to this very particularly violent point in human history where most of us are looking for how to wayfind a path through the insanity, the one thing that is abundantly clear is that creativity and art play the most pivotal role in changing hearts and minds towards action.
Looking at how the band KneeCap brought more awareness to the struggle of Irish speakers than any other approach to ensuring the language is maintained and taught, to Afromann winning the lawsuit against the cops who unlawfully raided him and were humiliated by the music he made to try and recoup the costs of damage; creativity is the only space that sneaks through authoritarian rhetoric and is actually able to bring change in ways that can inspire people.
Sharing the truth of our lives and experiences whether through stories or creations is the pinnacle of human expression.
What we share of ourselves is how we connect to each other, and is how we are able to experience things that are beyond ourselves.
Do you make things that make you happy?
Does the process of making them bring you deeply into the present moment?
Are you looking for community and connection and opportunities to not only showcase and share your work but want to collaborate and create?
If so you could be a good fit for Make Do Play. So get in touch.
write to info@makedoplay.com.au