digital garden

What do I mean to find within alchemy?

An exploration of the nature of substance

An understanding of purity within substance

An understanding or exploration of the relationship between substance and translative energy.

I would like to explore substance as a creative element – I believe this may infuse my work with density and integrity. I do not believe that it is enough to find imagery and mimic it using generic tools – this is merely scraping the surface (and therefore inevitably creating kitsch – maybe a definition of kitsch is something that exists only at a low resolution?). I do not believe design should be a creative scrap heap, where all beauty is frozen. However, I do believe that it is taught as this now.

I want the things that I create, and in the future the things that I design, to exist at the same resolution as reality. I do not want my creations to be a farce. I want the object to have integrity in itself, and I want every element of the object to be a celebration of its own existence.

Alchemy as ritual.

The joy of ritual within clothing is one of adorning the flesh – this adornment, however, is often an action of shame rather than of celebration. It is also an action of denial.

In contrast, the creative action of alchemy is a facilitator of contemplation – it is a translation of spiritual and philosophical aesthetic understandings between communicative and private realities. Therefore, the discipline of alchemy may just be (among other things) an exploration of the nature of translation – of the density of translative energy (substance?).

Can I find within alchemical and mystical disciplines discussion of the dense manifestations of the translative moment?

An alchemical process may just be a highly refined creative process – one that I would like to explore in relation to my own design process development.

How can garments or fashion be distributed without being approached with a consumptive mentality? This is an important question that I continue to return to, and I believe will continue to inform the direction my work takes. Could an exploration of substance contribute to a possible resolution?