Debunking Parallel Universes

There is an idea in contemporary physics that the universe is one of an infinite number of parallel universes. I do not believe this to be correct, but the idea has grains of truth in it.

Firstly let us dispose of infinity, for one infinity anywhere will inevitably lead to infinity everywhere. There is no instance in the real universe of infinity, although reality can often move as close to it as possible. Mathematics creates models of infinity (infinity doesn't exist in mathematics, as such, we could never count forever) but its models of infinity and a perfect universe work to describe ours. We can say that space is infinite, in that there is no limit to the nothing that particles can move into, but the size of the universe can still be finitely specified as the range between the particles at its most extreme; this is, and will always be, finite. One may say that the expansion of the universe will continue forever, but as forever is infinite, this cannot be the case. I am aware that this is logical fallacy and so state this jokingly; I am doubtful of the existence of forever, as, like infinite space, time can be measured as the difference between the start and end of the universe in its dimension. If time were infinite, such a measurement would be impossible. Would time exist in those circumstances? No. Remember that time is relative, and indeed, so is existence itself, which brings me on to the crux of this argument.

Some simple logic will conclude that multiple universes exist, but not that the observable universe is one of an infinite number of possibilities. Instead we have one each; there is necessarily one universe per observer.

Each of us has a unique viewpoint of the universe; you have a different view than I. This also applies to every particle and atom. Because of this, we each build up a unique picture of what the universe looks like. Our views may overlap; we might agree that the moon is over there, that the sky is blue etc. but our views can never be identical, there will always be an instance of knowledge that one of us knows that another doesn't. This means that the knowledge about the universe that we each have is unique to us.

This might sound obvious and lacking in serious implications, but actually its implications are extraordinary. I might not know anything about the dark side of Jupiter, but that doesn't affect whether it exists or not, does it? Actually, it does. The existence of the dark side of Jupiter, or of anything at all, depends on our observation and knowledge of it. That is a crucial fact in philosophy, and quantum mechanics. Our knowledge of the universe actually defines reality. Only what we know exists for us. Essentially, existence is relative to us, not absolute.

Of course, we can learn by communication and thus gain knowledge. Light particles communicate the existence of distant stars to our eyes, but at the same time, it is our unique knowledge that defines the reality of our universe.

So, there are multiple universes, but we are each in our own unique one. These are not infinite in number, but dependent on the number of particles and therefore viewpoints in the universe. Particles can combine; I myself, like you, are a summation of particles, so do I have a unique viewpoint, different from any of the particles or groups of particles that constitute me? Perhaps. If so then the number of viewpoints in the universe is the total of any combination of all of the particles in the universe; a gigantic number, but not infinite.

We will always have a unique perspective, and thus exist in a unique universe of our own. Perhaps, as a result of this perspective there is an aspect of it which cannot be shared, and perhaps this is what we call consciousness. It seems that consciousness cannot be defined in absolute terms, only relative, and then only experienced by ourselves and not proven to exist elsewhere. If consciousness is the result of our unique perspective in our universe, then all things, even atoms and sub-atomic particles, experience what we perceive as consciousness; a perspective, which is separate from thought.

What we call the objective universe is an overlap of a vast number of others; a common, but not definitive or perfect, reality.

Grey Technology Dream

I had a dream about a Lego space probe, heading for Mars as part of a school science project. It was dependent on all of its systems, and if one should fail (I imagined the failure of one of the axis aligned gyros) the whole probe would fail. I named this effect as black redundancy, a slight fault incapacitating the rest of the object when most of it was functional, and related it to computer programming where a tiny error or mutation in the machine code would be fatal to the integrity of the program.

I spoke to a dream character that biology was different, analogue in this respect, that it never truly breaks or is truly fully functional. I termed this white redundancy. I envisaged grey technology; machines with semi-redundancy, where the working parts of a machine would keep working when the broken parts were broken, that breakages would be detected and worked around automatically.

Essentially this was machinery that was much more tolerant of errors, particularly relating this to digital ones in computer code that might cause a crash. That the machines would behave biologically, and the wounded probe would do its best using the working functions. I called this grey technology and defined it as semi-redundancy of independent systems. I rushed home to publish this online.

In the dream I could not share the idea, prevented from working by children in my room, then a larger bullying child who I eventually threw out of the room, but he returned with a gang, and vicious animals to hammer down at my door and prevent me from typing. I felt that the dream was about the prevention of achievement of good work and good ideas by social commitments, or trivial things, but whatever that meant, at least now, I can publish the grey technology concept.

The Specialist, the Anti-Artist

Artists often become specialists, gradually becoming better and better at their chosen technique to the point of mastery, yet this, like any restriction, is a death of creativity, and thus the death of artistry. In such artists, their technique becomes less and less creative as it becomes more and more focused and refined (consider, for example, a hyper-realistic portrait painter). The philosophy at work is that the subject is what is creative in such artists, not the technique, yet frequently this too becomes more and more restricted because as artists attain their mastery they tend to specialise in subjects as well as in their craft, specialising in portraits, or trees, or animals, limiting both their subject and their technique, always moving down a narrower and narrower tunnel as they work over the years, more and more constricted, mechanical, blind. At this point, is the artist creative at all? More to the point, does and artist need to be creative?

The answer is of course, yes, yes! The point of art is creativity, to discover new things and to push humanity towards new ideals. If art is about humanity, communication between people, then the artist must be an explorer and curious, a communicator or feelings and ideas. To specialise is to become more mechanical, as machine-like as our hyper-realistic portrait painter. A camera or computer can never be an artist, they can only communicate what it means to be a camera or a computer, which is of interest only to other cameras (or academics, the killers of art by analysis).

The artist is an explorer, and what he or she explores is the new, the future, things that are now unseen. The only way this can be accomplished is creatively. Specialisation limits creativity, and at its most extreme is a hindrance, not an aid.

If art is about creativity, how can an artist learn? Advancement is ruling in and ruling out, evolution, and mastery of technique is important if an artist is to create good quality work, yet an artist must always be aware of the limitations of specialisation. In short, the ideal artist is master of all techniques, and able to pick and choose the best one for each situation.

It is always more creative, and a greater display of ability, to be good at several techniques than to master any one.

Creativity

Or why creative ideas are unpopular, and popular ideas are uncreative!

Governments eschew the value of having a creative economy, the value of creativity. Free thinking and creative acting has great benefits. Revolutionary ideas demand it, and can transform the world drastically for the better. Yet, governments rarely actually mean that they would actually like creative ideas. For a start, creative ideas are always and necessarily subversive, and always and necessarily unpopular.

Even in art, projects often list in their success criteria for an idea or submission that it is creative, which is rarely true. Someone, at some point, must after all judge which idea is the most creative. The result must surely be the least fashionable and least popular, criteria which are rarely selected for, and even more rarely desirable. Sometimes, briefs or specifications for art projects request that a proposal is creative and engages the public, which is impossible. Creativity and public engagement are opposites. The more creative you are, the more out of step with median opinion. That's what being creative means.

The creative idea is any idea that differs from consensus. The more creative the idea, the more it differs from the consensus view. This also shows why creativity is related to madness because a mad idea is also an idea that differs from consensus.

This understanding has important implications for artists, as art is an industry driven by creativity. An artist must choose between a creative idea, which is unpopular, or a popular idea that is uncreative. People tend to need a degree of popularity to survive. There are many more uncreative artists successfully creating their mediocre, mainstream paintings, objects, designs, than genuinely creative artists.

One must also ask, what benefit does the supremely creative idea have, if it is unpopular with everyone? Of course, ideas and tastes change, and one important factor of art is in driving trends. Art creates new, unpopular, ideas, which become popular. This is why creativity is important, it is the embryo of the future. Change is inevitable, and the creative idea determines what things change into.

Cover Versions and Perfectionism

Music artists tend to get to an age when they record cover versions, and I always saw that as a sign of a lack of creativity. There is another trend that affects artists too, wanting to update past work. That is something I can relate to.

This applies to visual artists too. Gradually as you learn, you improve, get better, better, and suddenly reach a step, when you look back at your earlier work and think... I could have done that so much better now. Of course, it's difficult to repaint a work, the feeling would be lost, but in many craft areas, such as framing and presentation, it's all too tempting to want to remake something. My first Love Reliquary was very much a learning process; my first attempt at gilding and many other things, so last year I decided to remake it, build a second one. Not only did the second one take half the time, it looks twice as good.

The thing is, this can be a never ending task, so every choice must be weighed.

Now, I find myself unlucky enough to look back in horror at much of my old work and how I've presented it. I want to reframe, restore and neaten my old artwork, at least 300 of them! As you might expect, rather than being a fun task it's an obsessive perfectionist nightmare, but it must be done.

We can't always run ahead, sometimes we must pause, reassess, neaten, perfect what we have. Legacy isn't only an artists' last work, but a lifetime's worth

Painting in 2017

It is 2017 and painting as an art form is at a great nadir. The proliferation of images due to a technological revolution, plus a swarm of decorative paintings, have discredited painting, and 2D images in general, as a force for great emotional communication.

Music too is suffering. Drama and dance, as yet immune to digitisation, are the dominant art forms. Even poetry recital is resurgent, an art form that is at least 3000 years old(!) has supplanted one that is merely a few hundred.

Yet the storm driven by technology, by the impact of social media, but ten years old, is abating.

The brain operates using images; these will always constitute art. Painting is superior to photography and digital art because it is difficult. What is easy is ubiquitous, any idiot can do it. Less people can do what is difficult, and the most difficult things are the domain of genius. It is for this reason that painting will not only survive digitisation, but forever be an important art form.

The New Renaissance

If the history of art tells us anything, if the history of science does, is that discoveries never end, and that new, vast worlds are always unexpected. I would imagine that in 1840, visual artists had considered their art refined to the ultimate degree, yet it was merely the start of what we call Modern Art, due to photography.

Now, as then we stand on the cusp of a new dawn. The Internet marks the start of a new epoch for humanity. What makes people different from animals is that we can learn and teach. Chimpanzees can learn skills, like breaking a nut with tool for example, by watching other chimps, but if that chain is broken, the knowledge is lost and a chimp must become an inventor again to relearn a skill that countless forbears has learned countless times. Humans did this at first, but soon, information stuck. Speech was developed, stories could be passed on, and knowledge through the generations and to other tribes. This was first first epoch of intelligent life. Written language was the next great leap, then printing which led to mass literacy, then electric communication which permitted the instant conveyance of the latest ideas, and now the Internet, allowing collaboration and the instant access of the best knowledge, the latest information instantly.

This new epoch has and will change humanity forever, and will change art too. The peaks of exceptional humans of the past are now sanded smooth by waves of people, vast numbers of great people who can now share ideas instantly. This is the age of the genius, which makes it harder for exceptional people to excel, but being exceptional was never easy.

In visual art, the twentieth century was all about exploring the palette, the genres of art from pure abstraction, to realism. From surrealism to symbolism, from craft to conceptualisation. In music, this was largely done by Bach's time, in that the scales and chords were then known; of course, music changed too in the twentieth century with serialism and other developments, but the basic structures and rules were set centuries ago, as they were in literature and drama millennia ago.

Leonardo da Vinci argued that visual art is superior to the other arts because it communicates with the most sacred of organs, the eye. Holiness aside, humans communicate primarily with vision. Like other primates we learn be seeing other, empathic communication. Other senses are secondary to vision. Television is vastly more popular than radio. Music can touch emotions instantly, but it struggles to communicate intellectual information. Images are how the brain operates. How often have you dreamed a sound? Or a smell? Or a touch? Or a poem? Images are the key to the way our minds work, and art is about mind touching mind.

Thus, visual artists can now at last rejoice! Here we stand upon the crest of a dawn, and one that is yet to be seized. It is ironic that the new soup of information creates apathy, rather than opportunity. From soups, islands must rise. The foam will disperse!

The visual arts are set to begin, at last. There has been no Bach of visual art, no Mozart, no Beethoven. Visual artists have become specialists in their narrow genre, this is the doom of the innovator, but now the time of innovation is ended, and yet few see this. As in any art, especially one so very badly trained as painting, people spend a long time exploring and not building, although to build palaces we must first know all of our materials.

The palette is set, and now it is time to explore it, and use it to lighten up the great darkness that pervades contemporary society. This is at least my goal. Perhaps it is all of our goals now. As machines replace each function, to create a love art will probably be our destiny as a species.

The Resurrection of Napoleon Bonaparte

My paintings are often quite complex to understand and I find that they really come alive with some explanation, so I've begun to create some videos about them. I thought I'd share my latest one and a few written words too.

Here is The Resurrection of Napoleon Bonaparte, an oil on canvas work from 2016. The spark of the idea came from last 2015, when someone came into the Macc Art Lounge, a pop-up shop in Macclesfield where I had some work on show. They were looking for paintings of The White Nancy, a local monument, and a popular subject for artists, so I volunteered to paint it. The idea captured my imagination, and I looked up the history of the odd shaped building.

It turned out to be a Napoleonic monument, and I found it irresistible to include Napoleon in the sky, charging heroically away to a glorious horizon. The image was so strong that I was determined to include him, yet made of sky, a ghost, an ever presence. The monument on a high hill was such a perfect position for the charging once-emperor. It's almost as though the famous David painting, which I knew well, was made for Bollington.

Much of my art is about art or references other artworks. In the way the music builds upon predecessors, so does visual art, and each painting now, in this so-called "post modern" era, needs these vital guides more than ever. I think "post modern" is a somewhat bold academic name for this current epoch. It implies that visual art has all been discovered, and now we must merely mop-up the visual pieces and explore and reformulate existing discoveries, rather than discover new things - when of course there are vast numbers of undiscovered art genres and classifications out there - when the well-tempered chromatic scale was documented in music by Bach, did he consider music complete?!

However, onward to the painting!

Some technical bits not mentioned in the video. It's oil on canvas in two layers and uses a walnut oil in amber medium for glazing, which gives it an amazing visual quality in real life. Interestingly, David didn't have access, or not much access, to Napoleon, who didn't see the point of realism in art and didn't consider a likeness important at all. So even in David's work (one of the five his studio completed) has only approximate stabs at a likeness, each different.

When I conceived this, a glorious dawn was coming, not a storm. Who knows which was true? I'd like to think the former. Artists might reference the past and its artistic history, connecting with a rich seam of cultural metaphor rooted in nature, yet art should document the present. These are strange times for humanity, but I think, great ones of peace and prosperity, beyond the fearful dawn. In such times artists, not warriors, must become the heroes.