These are my current inclinations about idea and concept as they stand in February 2023. My relation to idea and concept has a timeline that moves backwards and is one that will continue to evolve and change into the future. This is journal entry is an attempt to capture where I stand in relation to the topic at this point in time.
A portion of this thinking came out of preparation for a workshop for university art students. In the workshop, I taught how to come up with ideas and use concept in their work. I don’t know if this is relevant to this post, but it seems like a detail that I don’t want to forget in the future.
Thoughts on how to interact with and come up with ideas:
Don’t be precious about ideas and concepts.
Research everything of interest.
Follow any paths of curiosity.
Make concept to-do lists.
Talk through ideas with anyone and everyone.
Think about the process and the reasons for process decisions.
Build in time to think.
Engage with a variety of sources and take ideas from them all.
Let yourself misunderstand and misinterpret.
Get to work and let your brain process while you make.
Don’t let an idea go because you think it’s not good.
Sit in the struggle of finding a concept.
Structures I think about to inform my ideation process:
Medium/material
Transitive property (a=b=c . . . a=c)
Cockney rhyming slang
Parable
Wordplay/pun/double entendre
Change the context
Collage/combine
Appropriate (appropriately)
Overthinking these structures:
I don’t know if medium and material are synonyms in this context. I think it can be argued they are the same or different.
Numbers two and three might be the same thing described in different terms. It should be noted that number three comes from Kentridge’s I Am Not Me, the Horse is Not Mine 2008 talk at Tate Modern.
I have struggled finding examples of parables in contemporary art, but I continue to hold onto this as a possible structure of concept. Allegory might be more helpful.
Numbers six, seven, and eight might be the same thing. Or are closely related. Though I think of them each slightly different from the others.
Concept and Idea Linguistics:
I remain very hungup on the language around these topics. What is the difference between concept and idea? We use them interchangeably, but they also sit in different spaces in my head. My inclination is that idea precedes concept, but LeWitt says differently.
From Sentences on Conceptual Art: 9 - The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the components. Ideas implement the concept.
For me it’s: THOUGHT>IDEA>CONCEPT>PROCESS>ACTION
Has the etymology of idea and concept changed in the last 54 years? Do we use them differently than we did then? Does this matter to my understanding of ideation in the studio?
I would like to spend time unpacking perceive and conceive in regard to ideation. It feels very straight forward: Perceive is getting an idea from something external (perception). Conceive is to get an idea from our own minds (conception). Maybe. I’d like to be more cognizant of when I get an idea through perception vs. conception. Throughout this journal, I will attempt to consistently and consciously map the trail of my ideation.
I’m ending this journal entry with Olly Moss’s process illustration for his Dirty Harry movie poster. Cause why not?
