Beyond the Known Pattern
INWARD SOUND | 12.20.20
For yesterday’s New York Times I talked to the chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov about music, chess and artificial intelligence. I came up with what I thought were lots of clever parallels. Garry swatted them all away — a welcome reminder of how subjective my templates for understanding are.
But he did warm to the subject of AI and creativity:
A machine can learn rules, whether it’s chess or music. Offered a variety of options, it can eventually come up with something. But creativity has a human quality: It accepts the notion of failure.
The way machines approach a problem is always about the bottom line: “This move is good because it offers the best return.” But creative beauty is not to go against the rules, but beyond the known pattern.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that last line. It seems to me that breaking patterns doesn’t just open the way for creativity. It wakes us up.
When our attention runs along a smooth groove of predictability we are rarely aware of it — we’re aware only of the object of our attention. When we hit a rut in the groove, self-awareness flashes up. In measuring what’s before us against what we expected, we feel a spark of meta-consciousness.
Meditation is designed to facilitate that pure consciousness. But art, music — and humor — can also help us experience it.
The image above is a sculpture by Carmen Herrera. Now 105 and still making art, she is a master of going beyond the known pattern. Writing in the Guardian, Simon Hattenstone describes how the off-kilter quality of the two Ls breathes life into the work:
The deliberate imperfection humanises the work; it could be a couple cuddling or making love. For such precise, arithmetic art, it is surprisingly sensual. Lines come at each other from all directions, narrowing like arrows, touching, or almost touching. The perfect kiss, or the kiss denied.
Speaking of the surprise of things denied, here’s a limerick that no AI program would ever come up with. (It’s also one of the few really good clean ones.)
There once was a man from Japan
Who wrote verses that never would scan
When his friends said, “but the thing
Doesn’t go with a swing,”
He said "yes I know but I always like to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can.”
Surprise makes us self-aware. It’s like a quick kiss of mindfulness. This week’s playlist invites you to bump along musical roads rutted with unexpected pauses. Some build up drama, others play us for laughs. All have the potential to ping us out of our trance.
Image: Amarillo “Dos” by Carmen Herrera