The Lazarus Archives: The LD Jam Session

I took a small break from my residential work the other day, and simply asked myself “What if I took the Lazarus Designs logo (in its metallic state) and transformed it”? The exercise turned to be pure exploration of the creative moment. What happens if I do this…..what does it look like when I do that….what if, what if, what if.

I read somewhere that when the Who composed their songs, Peter Townsend and Roger Daltry pretty much knew what the song was going to be about, and sound like. They composed their music with a destination in mind. In contrast, The Rolling Stones would get together and simply jam together, create and collaborate in the moment, and discover their music through their process. Obviously, both approaches were successful, but in my mind, the beauty of the Stones method was in the almost organic growth of the music, In other words, the song, the rhythm and beat, and even the lyrics, were discovered through the process of creation, and the collaboration of the musicians and their instruments.

This exercise was very much like a Stones jam session, and was immensely enjoyable! What I’ve learned, and indeed I am struggling with are a couple of things. If intent is absent, then is the result accidental? There is a collaboration that occurs between me, and the program I use to create these compositions (products). At what point am I merely relying on the tool to produce the composition? For example….I have countless yellow rods in the composition, and they were inserted by me for the simple reason that I wanted to contrast the fluidity of the LD, and suggest an underlying component of rigidity, or construction. Through the rendering process, I discovered that their reflections on the metal surface were much more intriguing than the rods themselves. Am I simply exploiting the program to produce content…..art without an artist, music without the musician?

The other thing I am struggling (considering) with is if you don't have a destination, how do you determine if the composition, the product, is finished? Does it matter? I can change the frame dimensions, alter the lighting source, change materials endlessly (which I have somewhat demonstrated in the images). If I were to use the music analogy again, at what time do I decide to go into the studio and cut an album?