Effects of Envirornmental Affective Charge on The Creative Process

Abstract

This presentation would encompass a 10 to 15 minute discourse on my Master’s thesis followed by a 10 minute live performance that is directly related. I am studying the potential of unwanted influences to intervene in the process of artistic creation. One of the primary factors I am considering is the affect of the environment in which the work is created, and I use the work of Nigel Thrift to investigate affective charge. I join Thrift’s work with that of Deleuze and Kant in order to consider the embedding of rich layers of meaning and the possibility for multiple angles of interpretation within a work of art. Building upon the works of these three authors, I examine how environmental features directly or indirectly, and sometimes unknowingly, influence the significance of a work of art. I suggest that for a work to have the greatest degree of generative force—“wildness” per Kant or “breaking out on a line of flight” as Deleuze would say— the environment must be something that minimally interferes with the artistic process; the process is driven by the artist’s mind. An affectively charged environment can “flatten” a work of art and make its meaning one dimensional. While researching and writing on this topic, I have simultaneously been in the process of creating original artistic aerial dance and musical performances at Buffalo’s Alt Theatre, and I would like to present the excerpts of creative work produced in that space alongside this discourse on environments for artistic creation.