I hope this is not my legacy

Imagine a cube: 3 metres by 3 metres by 3 metres of empty space. Now imagine something within it. Maybe a sculpture of an ostrich made of lightbulbs, maybe a stalagmite of coloured minerals, maybe it is empty except for a layer of paint splatters on the bottom. The possibilities are infinite, there is no limit to the number of distinct things that can occupy any space. I suppose if you assume a subatomic particle (or set of particles) which is the fundamental building block of everything then you could argue that the set of things was in fact bounded (albeit at a ridiculously big number) but that is beside the point.

Given that there are a number of possibilities for filling a three dimensional space, we can map all the possible entities as points along a line (any line has an infinite number of distinct points along it). Along this line we can thus place every item in existence which we know is within the set of things which fit within a 3m cube. If we could think of a way of ordering such as set, a way of giving each item of the set a real value between 0 and 1 where items which are similar scored similarly (a plate and a bowl would be very close values, a mouse and a tennis ball serving machine less so) and drew a point on the line where items lay, we would begin to see how well our discovery and exploration of all possible objects within the 3m by 3m was going. We could see if there were swathes of space which were unoccupied, begging the question “what goes here?”.

Now if we restrict the set of items which fit into a 3m cube to be the subset where the items are functional as a knife or cutting implement, suddenly there are a lot less potential objects. Again we have a line representing all possible knives, with the ones in existence, from kukris to cutlasses to scissors and nail clippers, and knive forms which have not been designed yet.

Sometimes when I pick up an object, such as a knife, I look at it and think “why is this object as it is?”- some person has, from nowhere in particular, filled a space with a design. They could have done anything else, but they chose to design that exact object. The nowhere in particular in question from which the knife design arose, is probably the combination of a specification (“design us a table knife with a floral inset pattern”) and experience (the knowledge that table knifes are a given size and shape, require a given sharpness and must withstand dishwashers etc).

There is something amazing about bringing ideas into existence, not because you are reducing the set of undiscovered items (because you can’t subtract from infinite), but because of the question of how your mind can come up with something novel, something new that it has never experienced before. I think this is an established field of study within psychology and philosophy, but I don’t know as much about it as I would like.

One of the ways I see art is as an exploration of the set of possible things, trying to get as far away from an existing point on the line as possible. Trying to find some space on the line which scores a value far different from any other object. There is no best or worst score, only a distance from other scores. Of all the items which we have not yet discovered, some will be aesthetically pleasing and some will not, some will be functional, some will be offensive. Of course we can also use time to further increase the possibilities- things which change over time, and thus things which make sound, things which smell, things which interact with the viewer.

I find art interesting, at a basic level, just because of all the things that the artist could have created, they created a sculpture of a man made only from plastic toy guns. Why?