Having an idea is my favorite stage of the art process, the one full of potential and free of drudgery. I wanted to illustrate "idea space" and the question: with six billion-plus people on earth, are we going to run out of new and unique ideas?
Ideas I've had, that others did something about, range from: a lit sculpture made of baggies filled with colored water, to a picture made of packaged lunch meat laid down like tile.
But like any other form of invention, the key to success is doing something about it. Can you translate what feels like magic into something others can see? Can you turn away from the glittering potential of all other ideas, and invest the time and energy it takes to find out if one of them is worthwhile?
And that may be the disturbing question at the core of the ideal of "individual freedom" epitomized by The Artist: if you can do anything you want, just what do you do?
Anyway, when I first thought of idea space, I pictured a large ball with a forest of long toothpicks sticking out, one for each idea, so the space between them gets more cramped as related or similar ideas are added. (Of course an artist had already done something similar with toothpicks, so mine wouldn't be all that unique.)
It would be depressing, especially for creative types, to see idea space shrink. But I think it's unlikely we'll ever run out of virgin space because: (1) societies tend to forget, so each generation has to rediscover the world, and (2) new technology changes our frame of reference and opens up new worlds. From smoke signals to cellphones, and from oil paintings to virtual reality -- for better or worse -- technology remakes the world and how we look at it, and lets us reach further into idea space.
So though the toothpicks would get dense, and clog space close to the core of the ball, they would also grow out an infinite distance, leaving an infinite amount of space to fill in. More like rays from the sun than toothpicks, and how would you build that?