Everything is protovation.

Protovation is about being able to observe and detail the flaws in a system you yourself are in the process of creating. As an artist it means working in series, as a scientist it means taking a laboratory approach to breaking down a problem.

In series work you start with a proto piece. Often this is some awkward, typically throw away piece that resulted from some sort of experimentation. The artist takes that one piece and then creates a series of pieces meant to move towards the ideas that were embodied somewhat inadequately in the primary proto piece. After creating several pieces that all relate in some direct way to the original idea they are then taken as whole as a sort of idea set of protovation values, Usually the piece that the Artist best feels captured the original intent of the idea is presented as the gallery advertisement card, and also decorates the exterior wall of the entry way to the exhibition.

In science the idea is to have a hunch, and idea or an assumption, and then genuinely challenge it. Bad scientists create experiments that prove their theories and good scientists try and design experiments to test and possibly disprove their hypothesis. That is how ideas are established is by testing the known boundaries of what we know.

Artists like Andy Warhol superstructed on top of both of these practices and created a laboratory of protovation that churned our series in series. His artworks were as much the environments of social networks that he created in his projects as they were the wall pantings or books or photo screening projects. Warhol was a master of the social scene, the attention to peer production and constant networking resulted in a new sort of massively collaborative art process which has continued on in the guise of studios like Superflat artist Takashi Murakami. He is part of a larger movement of superflat artists which includes his own stable of artists working in his large scale "Hiropon factory" studio, however is not limited to them.

These artists are distinguished by a rather conceptual somewhat scientific approach to sorting out the ideas which they approach in their work. There is an attention to detail and the sensuality of the medium that demands a the work be the process of a series of protovation efforts. The series of protovation efforts nest elegantly in smaller units of fractal beauty.

The Art series process has become meta. Each artwork in a series represents a section of the overall idea that is being presented in the exhibition rather than simply an iteration of a single idea. This arose from the boom in curatorship which also emerged in tandem with accessibility to shows and information over the internet. Rather than directly replacing Galleries in any way online presence and images promote the existence of gallery space even as it is transformed it into a sort of laboratory of ideas and interaction. Many of Takashi's pieces require the combined collaboration of many artists to execute, and his shows are massively attended due to the large popular thoughtful set of ideas he represents concerning modern identity and in particular sexuality.

An artist who works like a scientist typically approaches a set of ideas with an embracing scatter approach. There is a spreading and testing period in which you must study the known data and repeatedly question your own assumptions. This is the part of being an artist. Artists also typically responds well to the studio environment and the company of high caliber intellectuals in proximity because it is imperative to break ground. When you start throwing out a lot of ideas in rapid procession you need people around to sort of comment and say "hey that one is really good" because otherwise you start to overlook potential areas of focus.

Like a scientist the artist need to test their own assumptions about the ideas that they are presenting. Many artists mistakenly think this is a directive to test their own boundaries of perception however most people interacting with the idea stream on any real level understand that the known world of ideas is only expanded when people test their own preconceptions. For some people this may seem like a prescription for madness however modern cognitive psychology suggests that it is a balm.

Inwardly there has to be a lot of intense attachment to an idea and at the same time you must tolerate a sort of ambivalent dissent. If the idea is not correct you simply move on to something else. For a stretch of time as an artist I felt that California needed a sustainability festival and after great investigation I determined that it simply needed the existing festivals to become outwardly sustainable and to be expository to that end. End of project.

It is just as exciting to fail. That failure may point to a method of resolving the problem that is more coherent, closer to the mark, easier to accomplish. The fail might be part of a win.

Warhol at one point decided that he could not resolve and present his ideas any longer through his Factory and the traditional fine art gallery and museum system. He produced a hugely attended gallery show in which he showed a roomful of square constructed mylar helium baloons (which he carefully constructed they hadn't ever existed really). After his entrance to the gallery crowd , at the moment in which he was expected tospeak, he instead opened a window and allowed the ten or so mylar baloons to float out into the Manhattan night air. He promptly went on the road with The Velvet Underground and re made over again the rock and roll show by re-introducing the mirror ball. There was some larger message about massively immersive group participation which he wanted to explore which went beyond what the studio or gallery could contain. He had to break out into the massively socially networked music industry and youth culture ...where visibility and presence in pulp culture matter ...to make his voice heard in the texture and tone that he was working to create. Warhol was more than just a Pop artist he was a champion of pop culture and of society by extension.

Playing Superstruct I was really stuck on protovation as a skill in the process. At first I couldnt figure it out I just couldnt grasp how to do it. This is strange because constantly in the garden in order for the garden to thrive I have to admit and dig out my failures, and weed and improve on my successes. The process of keeping a steady supply of blooms in the garden, or food or whatever depends largely on the ability to constantly invent ways of doing things that are rapidly adapted to changing conditions and emerging patterns as you discover them. It was some time into the game before I realized that these strategies were actually forms of protovation.

We tinker things in. Often we have to make some effort to adjust, to dial it in, to create a picture on the paper that looks something like what we have in our minds eye we need to be able to imagine things we are capable of drawing. There is more to the process than simply deciding that whatever we have drawn on the paper is fine, that that line was meant to be even if it in fact reads out as gibberish to everyone else. Protovation in art means understanding that a piece needs to be truly beautiful in order for the eye to bring it into the mirror nueron system of the brain and in order for the person experiencing the piece to have the proper experience.

In this sense a laboratory experiment is a lot like an art project that is geared towards a very specific elite audience of in the know observers.

One of the disruptive strategies that artists use is to create a larger audience for ideas as they emerge than the specifically elite group of participants in the canon of knowledge. In general in our society people have had a tendency to only comment on and criticize idea systems that they themselves feel a sort of mastery of. Many people feel comfortable looking at artworks now because there is a very high level of visual literacy in our modern culture. Personally one of the reasons that I became an early youtube artist is that video is very ubiquitous in its appeal to a mass audience and their desire to comment. Most people feel that they can decide if a five minute video is "good enough" and they can often also say why.

By extension slowly there is a large group of people who feel quite comfortable on social media and in the rapid laboratory of change that is our daily environment as the internet emerges as part of the fabric of our daily lives. Takashi Murakami has already adjusted his work to include a designer QR code for Louis Vuitton. Many artists now look beyond the impact of a specific piece or proto idea and see into a larger systemic picture of how their ideas are interacting with popular culture and other artists and intellectuals. Often the social circles of visual artists overlap heavily with musicians and dancers and artists working in other mediums that are often not recognized yet as fine art mediums.

The work of game artists has not been considered as part of this process of idea protovation until somewhat recently. The entanglement of story and perception and texture in modern games has brought a whole new media slowly out of the bits and pixels of obscurity and center stage in the theater of social ideas. People feel comfortable playing games, and talking about them, and the structure of a game environment is a powerfully fertile space for the imagination to create ludic spray that extends and magnifies your ideas very rapidly.

Alongside the individualism of Postmodernism a large number of artists worked on collaborative projects that blurred the lines between art and science, practicality and whimsical imagination. These collaborations took the form of large scale outdoor multimedia gatherings like "Art After Dark" in Arcata, in the form of community demonstration centers like the CCAT at HSU, or our own Kinetic Sculpture Race begun by a community artist Hobart Brown and continued on by the community of Ferndale California which adopted it a decade ago. In some ways our Arcata interpretive bird march and wastewater treatment center is a collaboration of artists and scientists who early on worked with IT minded people to bring the project to the attention of the newly emerging alternative wastewater treatment world.

As a game superstruct had all the elements of a powerful collaborative atmosphere in which intellectuals from all sorts of disciplines can quickly share ideas by actually working on something together. By actively participating and playing at a single future together. The involvement of the team at IFTF made it a complete and cohesive experience because they were able to actively curate the ideas as they were erupting collaboratively and perform the dual function of highlighting the ideas that matched their assessment, and afterward also noticing and implementing the ideas that were beyond their expectations and collating them into a useful structure. The IFTF have done that through their assessment of the Superstruct game and their 2009 ten year forecast. They have even gone one step further in many ways by presenting the 50 year forecast along with materials to "play" the fifty year forecast with. They have worked to create definitions of skills and leadership qualities that allow the "game" of ideas to flourish and quickly grow and to protovate. As an artist and a scientist that is a very stimulating and exciting atmosphere to fall into, and I am very grateful for it.