Last week, I inadvertently pulled the lovely folks from the IndieWebClub Bangalore community into a discussion about LLMs and creativity by wondering out loud about the value of trying to train AI to create a “watercolour painting”.
During this conversation, I mentioned the abiding value that so-called boring or repetitive tasks bring to my creative process, and in doing so, I gave the specific example of cataloguing the old Pelican books I collect. I’ve been collecting these books for almost two decades, and one of the reasons that I do this is because I adore their cover designs and hope to learn from the many iterations and interpretations of the underlying design system and themes.
Like most of my documentation projects, this work is perpetually on slow simmer. I have been meaning to properly catalogue the Pelicans I own for a long time, but the only real progress I made was a few years ago during winter break, when I photographed the covers of all the titles in my possession at the time. Arguably, those photographs should be enough to automate some manner of cataloguing. Having this record ready sooner rather than later has its advantages: it would make acquiring new books easier (I would know what I have), maybe I will end up posting the covers online or even begin to write a short essay that could turn into an issue of my currently-dormant newsletter (God knows, that newsletter needs reviving). I would very much like these things, but I am also not in a rush.
Instead of expedience, I would much rather savour the cataloguing process. I like to take my time to look at the covers and invariably check the stack, real or virtual, for others that belong to the same set. I wonder if all the books I have by the same author have similar covers. When possible, I check who the designer is. These days I’m in Brussels and a majority of my collection is in Noida, so I defer this step for when I am in the same room as my books. I make note of my favourite covers; I curse randomly-pasted stickers that sometimes obscure them. I’m always curious whether any given book was inherited from my grandfather, or something I purchased (Where did I purchase it from? I’ll be honest: I’m starting to forget). The signatures, notes and ex libris left by previous owners are always a delight. Some titles are hard not to flip through, or just drop everything for so I can read them immediately. I get to know a little about people and ideas, and I think about friends who might enjoy hearing about a particular title.
This meandering, seemingly-inefficient process is joyful. I say “seemingly-inefficient” because what better way to create a learning environment for myself? Each time I sit myself down with fifteen, twenty, however many many books (or book covers), I give myself a fresh opportunity for observation and discovery. All of it fills up my creative cup. And depending on the other ingredients swirling around in this metaphorical cup on that day, I see different patterns and make different connections.
As if on cue (and probably to confirm my own bias), the stack of books I grabbed to catalogue this weekend included Leon Bagrit’s The Age of Automation, and it brought me straight back to the dialogue I had participated in just a few days prior. The book collects a series of lectures that Bagrit gave in 1964. He is known for his far-sightedness in predicting how developments in computing could change industry and society (word to the wise, though: his views on women and their motivations are quite outdated, even for his time).
About the arts, Bagrit says —
❝One of the most interesting and remarkable things we are seeing at this present time is that, side by side with increasing mechanization and automation, there is an extraordinary display of interest and activity in, for instance, painting and in sculpture. You find that with the steady reduction in working hours and household chores, men and women are engaging in many creative and artistic activities for which they never had time before. There is a far greater involvement in the arts than there has ever been previously...
... As people have more leisure and less need to go and sell their leisure for money, they tend to use it themselves and rediscover the joy of using their hands.❞
Oh, all the ways in which the current state of the world would disappoint him!