As a researcher, I began asking simple questions like “What is art?” or “What is science?” For some, art and science are ways to categorize ideas.  Knowledge falls in the category of science while creativity belongs to art.  For others, art is simply a form of expression while science is revered as an accurate mirror to the physical world.  Each person’s basic assumptions about these words are usually ignored as we communicate.  So I set out to learn how word meanings are created and specifically to learn about the term, artistic voice.

Artistic voice is a commonly used term describing the expression of an artist’s unique passion. I wanted to know how artists’ defined, experienced, and claimed their artistic voice.  I also sought my own artistic voice so I could write about it from personal experience, not just theory.

I asked ten film artists in Austin, Texas about their artistic journey.  Psychologically, what influenced their artistic voice?  How was it developed? I also observed the emergence of my own voice as I wrote about their journey.

Systems Theory

The beauty of systems theories is the applicability of their principles in a variety of settings. Emergence and change are facts of life. To see it, to influence its direction, to understand the potential for one’s own experience involves expanding one’s mindset from the world (and human beings) as a closed, mechanical system to an open, emerging system. The leap of perspective is similar to that of people in the 1500s—from the “world is flat” to the “world is round” belief system or paradigm. What we see is shaped by the assumptions of our belief system. Changing paradigms changes our experience and expands the possibilities from which we live. We live in exciting times.

I want to give you the names of four books that helped me understand the concepts within systems theory or complexity science. The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systemsby physicist Fritjof Capra, gives the big picture. Scientists across disciplines such as biology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence were using complexity theories to understand the process of emergence. Capra’s book was easy to read and helped me apply these theories to my own research, the emergence of creativity and artistic voice. I recommend it highly.

Another author whose research has deeply influenced my work is Yvonne Agazarian. Her book, Systems-Centered Therapy for Groups, integrates systems theory and psychological theory. Her concept of subgrouping provides a permeable boundary through which information can flow, the difference between open and closed systems.

Before I became a psychologist, I happened to pick up M. Mitchell Waldrop’s book, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and ChaosI read it and became excited. Here was the emerging history of a new science and the serendipitous events that brought together their group at the Santa Fe Institute. I resonated with their work and decided my future research would be based on complexity science.

Grégoire Nicolis and Ilya Prigogine wrote the book, Exploring Complexity: An Introduction. I found out Dr. Prigogine’s theories of thermodynamics were the foundational work behind complexity science. He understood the important role of heat in generating nature’s complex systems. Hurricanes and human beings are complex, open systems. His use of non-linear mathematics to map open systems challenged much of current science based on a linear mathematics that mapped closed systems, i.e. the mechanical universe idea behind Newton’s theories. The book is hard to read for non-mathematicians, but well worth the effort.