Creating confusion

Work by Erik Hoedemakers

Creating Confusion

How annoying is it when we mix things up, forget appointments, break things, or just plainly mess up?  Yet, if we never confused the order of places, events and things we already know, we would be like machines. Too much like machines. Of course, we all know machines are good at doing things they have been designed to do. A good machine does what it was designed for well. A machine that fails to do this, is a failure and worthless.

A person who attempts to do something in the way they have been taught and who fails but continues to look for ways to accomplish their goal, innovates, invents and creates. So a person who fails, is not a failure and worthless. In fact, they may be one of us with more to contribute. Sometimes, we look for other ways to do things than we already know, because the current solution is less than perfect. But then we have direction, a goal.

The search

In search for a solution to a problem, all sorts of discoveries are made along the way, but because the goal has not yet been achieved, they are tossed aside, for the time being at least.

How many human discoveries have been attributed to accidents, to failures, to confusion? It might well be that we have blundered through the entire history of humanity to get where we are today. That does not necessarily mean we do not know what we are doing. Then again, perhaps it does. Which might not be so strange really, because just like a machine can only do what it is designed for or retrieve answers from a databank created by its makers, how can we think of something we do not know?

Human aspect

Is that what makes humans so special?  Our ability to identify the usefulness residing in a rejected idea, a poor solution to another problem or just a good old-fashioned mistake.

If we establish that there is a usefulness in mistakes, can we still say there is a good way and a bad way to do something? Perhaps we should just accept that if we do a lot, there will be lots of errors.  So the best way to create is to get busy. Not to dwell on our failures, but to build on our successes – no matter whether they were intentional or not. In the end it is the result that counts.

Creating from our confusion.

Cabinets of Curiosity

We are curious makers of things, things we dream up ourselves. Remarkable, useful, beautiful and original things. Sometimes they are made entirely by hand, sometimes partly by machine, in the future perhaps by robots. May be not robots. Always with an eye for detail and with an element of fun.

If you care to follow this blog and join our journey, we’ll share our successes and (occasional) failures with you and hopefully you’ll become a frequent visitor. Suppose that depends on us keeping you entertained. So let’s get on with the words and pictures.

Work in progress

Copyright

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