And Again Mr Lion.

Out from the radio came a US debate, video games v creativity, a games designer v a theatre director. It was like two complex characters in a play, both curate’s eggs. My take is there are two forms of activity, creative and recursive, and that computers in general beckon recursive activity. I have used computers professionally for words, accounts, mathematical modelling, design, draughting, graphics, music and 3D model making and in each case once you know what you’re doing the activity comes down to doing the same thing over and over again. In a real sense all these things were creative, and computers have proved an amazing tool in every case, yet one does it by following the same procedures ad infinitum. Not just mouse clicks and button pressing but the prescribed methods of doing every action within a program. The results can be seen in music, magazine presentation, design and architecture. What wasn’t doable now is, which is great, but as everyone learns Cubase, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, SQL, Autocad, etc, even Powerpoint and Excel, we all learn the same methods, apply the same filters, reverbs, fades, cuts and pastes and achieve the same results. Even though we’re being creative we’re being recursive. Compared with the ‘live’ parameters of voice, guitar, pencil, appraisal and presentation the use of these seemingly miraculous binary concoctions is akin to doing surgery with a thousand spoons. And all the time we move in the direction of recursive thinking like a lion pacing a cage wondering, ‘can I get out this way,,, can I get out this way,,, can I get out this way,,,’ I guess it passes the time. But I also guess the lion would prefer its natural habitat given the choice.