Interactions With Nature
Many animals in existence have the ability to create. Nests and burrows are examples of how creatures have taken materials available to them and then created something. Humans are infamous for our creations to the point where our ability to create and express has become a major distinction between us and other animals (though I am pretty sure it makes no difference to other members of the animal kingdom). We have danced, cooked, sculpted, painted, harnessed, and fought our way through history with ingenuity and doing so has resulted in such crafts being the defining role of what makes us human and what somewhat distinguishes us from other animals. In recent ages of human evolution, the act of creating art has gathered some pretty interesting connotations. It is almost as though art is considered, in western society, as a by-product of 'human greatness'; a thing that we can do once we have time after domination or evolution. I strongly beg to differ. The arts are as much as a product of our biology as creating children or learning to hunt is. Art is an interaction with nature; art is a tool, not a toy.
All forms of how humans create and work with materials, objects, and ourselves represent a unison with the individual, the material, and the group. Professional rock climber Chris Sharma has attained fame in climbing circuits for his abundance of strength and his competitive success since youth. A particular quote of his was incredibly important for me to hear: “You know, climbing is a very creative, artistic thing as well as being an athletic sport; It's about finding beautiful things in nature and interacting with them.” These words were important to hear for me because it showed me that a craft as rough and raw as climbing has the spirit of artistic creation within it--it has to. Without the passion and involvement that creation brings to something like rock climbing there would be no craft, but conformity and hard work.
So, what is artistic creation? What is this amazing unison between the individual and the rest of the world through the act of making and acting? I venture to say that creation is an expression of an inner dialog, a very broad inner dialog within the individual. The individual creates this dialog through the synthesis and observation of outside sources and inner reactions. Observations include the world and the entirety of existence. Such things vary in each individual through conditional perception, but the ability to analyze and observe is a trait that I know belongs to all humans I have encountered. When inner reactions take place within the individual understanding expression gets tricky and interesting. After all, feeling about things is a choice. In understanding choice most philosophy goes from a study to a poetry. There is an infinite amount of variation as to how the human choses, infinite enough so that there is no scholastic way to describe it.
If creation and interaction is a product of expression through synthesis and observation, what is the act of expression? Can a bird express? Can a rock express? How about an orange, can it express its disappointment with the post modern condition? Can expression be found in survival and evolution? By building a nest to protect its eggs and secure a future of further evolution, I can say that a bird expresses living. By having a strong husk to protect its sweet fruit and its precious seeds, an orange expresses that the process of evolution has created a fruit that works and will continue to propagate wherever oranges grow best. The process of evolution is very much an expression if we are to use my definition of what expression is: the synthesis of outside experience. To stretch the theory, a rock is an expression of the process of geology and gravity. The laws of nature that work beautifully within this world are all expressions of existence.
Another question: Would expression exist if humans were not in existence to perceive it? I mean that throughout this paper I convey that the acts of mamillia, fruits, and rocks all mean something. In other words, I have been putting my motives on the actions of other organisms and objects. I can see that beyond my perception evolution just is, birds just are, and I just am. Geology is the prime example of what I intend to convey. Geology has laws that express the working process of gravity and the earth but it only expresses that to whom ever perceives it. It still works whether or not anyone is there to analyze it. I feel as though the same may apply to organismic existence. Functional reproductive systems and good adaptation usually result in living but whether or not it is an expression of living is up to the viewer.
It is important for natural laws to be viewed as a function that exists without analyzation i.e. life works without human intervention or interpretation. This perspective allows for societal systems to function in terms of broader views and more consistent integration with ecology and economy.
However, the nature of expression still exists. Expression can be seen in many functions of existence to the point where expression is part of that said functions biology in the forms of survival. Mating rituals, den creation, and visual art are all examples of how we the animal kingdom express our interpretation of synthesized data from life and experience. When people who specialize in crafts find exuberance in work, when members of a pack find their niche, when animals learn to fly, and when the first cave man learned to paint on a cave wall, each individual has expressed a part of their biology with beauty and interest. It would seem that art exists whether we interpret it or not.
