Meta-art

It occurred to me today that there is a certain class of person who might be called a “meta-artist”. Most people, when they set out to, say, make music, will find the instrument that best suits them, and will proceed to master that instrument.

But then there are people whose love of music inspires them to look at instruments and ask the question “what could I do to make this instrument better?” People like Les Paul, Robert Moog and Laurie Spiegel. Such artists don’t just want to give the world music. They want to give the world a better way to make music.

The same thing happens in all of the arts. But it happens in a really unique way in the computer arts.

When I was sixteen years old I saw Walt Disney’s Fantasia for the first time. From that moment forth I knew I wanted to do that with my life — to create visions of the worlds that we can see in our dreams.

As I set about doing this, I quickly found myself proceeding in a meta-artistic way. I didn’t end up drawing pictures (although I could draw pictures reasonably well). Rather, I started to write computer programs that would simulate the worlds I wanted to explore, that might create the visions I wanted to see.

I spent a lot of time doing math and creating new algorithms. Yet I wasn’t particularly interested in the math or the algorithms. Or rather, I was just as interested in them as, say, an architect is interested in a screwdriver. Math and computer software were merely the tools that could lend me greater power to explore the sorts of wonders that I had on seen that day, sprung from the minds of such visionaries as Bill Tytla and Oskar Fischinger.

Now that an ever greater number of kids are becoming versed in the ways of computers, the intersection is growing between kids who yearn to create art and kids who learn to wield the awesome power of programming. We might very well be entering the age of the meta-artist. A brave new world indeed!