Self-Organization and Art: Evolutionary Dynamics and the Creative Process

(Art by: James Moss, "Self-Organizing Bio-Logic")

"Life is a naturally intelligent organic technology running on the universe. It does not use copper wire, cogs, electronic circuits, and such--but rather DNA, proteins, enzymes, chemical cycles, and various self-organizing molecular processes. Further, evolution is the naturally intelligent process that crafts this naturally intelligent technology." - Simon G. Powell

Self-organization seems to be the other side of natural selection, of the organism/environment evolutionary relationship - the decentralized emergent intelligent relation of natural and open entropic thermodynamic systems in matter and life.

It's the bottom-up creative "natural intelligence" of nature, at work in the evolutionary sense-making of natural selection, which self-organizes the forms, patterns, and systems of life through the sensitivity and creative response to environmental change or context.

"Self-organization is the dynamic principle underlying the emergence of a rich world of forms manifest in biological, ecological, social and cultural structures." - Erich Jantsch

In many ways human creativity is a localized aspect of the universal dynamics of evolutionary self-organizing and natural systems. It is a fractal expression and conscious embodiment of life and natures inherent self-transcending evolutionary creativity - a reaching out beyond boundaries, and connecting of the self back, or "religio," with nature and the larger creativity and emergent potential inherent in the self-organizing principles and laws of sacred geometry.

Viewing art-making as a mirror of natures creativity helps open us up to a unity in consciousness with the evolutionary creative process and with the universe as a whole. This openness helps encourage taking new perspectives and finding emergent relationships, which in the creative process is commonly referred to as "getting out of the way of yourself" and "opening up to flow states."

I think one of the most important qualities of this relationship is recognizing how this creativity and creative play are not only cognitively relevant - but can help to promote an overall positive neurogenesis - that helps lend overall to a psychological state of staying open to the self-transformative and self-reflective aspects of the creative process, for both the artist and the viewer.

"Self-transcendent systems are evolutions vehicle for qualitative change and thus ensure its continuity." - Erich Jantsch

"Subjective and objective knowledge fall together in the framework of self-organization. The creative process wherever it unfolds, in art or science or merely in natural and effective living, falls together with the dynamics of evolution." - Erich Jantsch

"The self-organization dynamics of the creative work--its mind--and human self-organization dynamics--the human mind--are two sides of one and the same evolutionary process; they form a complementarity." - Erich Jantsch