CREATION - THE ART OF MAKING - PAST

Creating has always been a part of human culture. It has also been one of the most dividing, opinion generating, destructive, moral topics in history. The reason being, us, as humans, have always wondered and strived to understand what was the origin of the creation of the universe and ultimately the creation of life. Some say its linked to religion, some say it was a massive explosion in a space infinitely small. We're not going to discuss if one of these theories is more valid than any other, but rather how these theories were popularised by past media, how these could have influenced future opinions and what types of media these ideas were displayed in.

FIG1: Ancient of Days (God creating the universe). William Blake, 1794.

The obvious starting point for this more "existential" research is the Bible. This book has been not only in production for centuries, but has served as the base of culture for many civilisations for centuries as well.

So how is creation seen in the Bible? If we look at the book of Genesis, we read about how god created earth and the Universe from nothing.The creation of something so vast as the earth, a concept so vague as light, and organisms so complex like Humans and other animals, essentially life, in just 7 days. This is how the ultimate form of creation is represented in past media, with the creation of everything we see and know, in a time so limited it exceeded the grasp of understanding of all. Still, this didn't stop the popularisation of this book, since it is by far the best selling book ever, and has had countless different editions released. The justification for creation and the origins of the world was so needed that, with these answers, people were happy.

But I don't want to go too deep into this, what interests me is the impact of the book in society and how creation can be a powerful topic when seen through any form of media. The spreading of the bible goes way back, even in the Egyptian empire times (The independent, 2009).

FIG2: Fragments of the Bible found in Egyptian monastery.

The concept of this form of creation and dictation of morals spread through a lot of cultures and became the law and the conduct to follow in these. This goes to show how the concept of creation is so admired and revered that, when someone can do something so big as creating, it can change entire civilisations and views of life.


Not only these concepts were popularised with the bible, but through art as well:

FIG3: Creation of Adam. Michelangelo, 1511.

Lets look at creation within the human capabilities and forget about the makings of higher gods.
To follow the lines of what we researched in the Present of this topic, we will look at weapons, and items created to destroy.
War, sadly, humanity's oldest tradition. Although it has negative connotations because of what it means and represents, I want to look at it from the sole perspective of creation of its tools. A good smith would be very prestigious in the middle age if he could create a beautiful, well built, well weighted sword. Some swords really are beautiful pieces of art, and that, of course, did not unnoticed by other types of media.

FIG4: Persian Sword.

A well made sword had to be beautiful, have perfectly balanced, and be light enough to be easy to swing with one hand.
The first type of media that comes to mind with the makings of swords is books that explain the art of the making of these instruments.
 "The craft of the Japanese sword" by (Leon Kapp, Hiroto Kapp and Yoshindo Yoshihara. Kodansha International, 1987) Which goes into detail of making Japanese swords.

FIG5: The craft of the Japanese Sword,Kodansha International, 1987.

From there I found a numerous amount of old books that go into detail of how to make different cultured swords, like "German swords and sword makers: Edged weapon makers from the 14th to the 20th centuries" (Richard H. Bezdek, Paladin Press, 2000), " The swords of Britain" (Ian Colquhoun and Colin Burgess,C.H.Beck, 1988), and many others.

FIG6: The Swords of Britain, C.H.Beck, 1988)

This proves that sword making was a popular topic in the past and that through the media of books, the creation of these swords was seen as an art, and had enough recognition to grip an audience.

Lets change the tone now and look at the creation of Toys. One of the most obvious things that comes to mind when thinking of creating and toys in the past is train sets. It could even become an obsession, and no one could argue about the massive impact that train sets had in kids and adults around the 60's-70's.

There were thousands of different trains you could use, different cars, different sets... all in all it inspired people to create models of worlds in which to put their train sets, and some of them were simply amazing. Probably, the most popular make of train sets was TYCO (Tyco Inc, 1960).

FIG7: Tyco train set

Through the media of toys, people were inspired to make their own creations and, ultimately, make a living, amazing set that had nothing to envy from reality:

One of the most famous art movements of the past few years has been Graffiti. The makings of an entire subculture would of course be recorded in some sort of way, and apart from the primary media in which graffiti is stated which is obviously painting, the documentation of the creation of these graffitis was almost as important as the art itself; People were interested in knowing how those graffitis were made.

Most of these documentation came in the form of home videos that were then uploaded on the Internet in the late 90's, 2000's. It also attracted professional media like the film "Basquiat" (Eleventh street Productions, 1996), which documents the rise to fame of the artist Basquiat as one of the greatest graffiti artists of all time.

FIG8: Basquiat, Eeleventh street productions, 1996.

In the late 70's, with the advance of technology, inventors and engineers were really starting to create some buzz with some of their creations, and one of the most successful and popular one was The Car. The first Car was created by Nicholas Cugnot. Powered by steam, it was used by the French army to move cannons. This doesn't just symbolise the creation of the car, but the creation of non arbitrary movement without the use of a living organism.

The amount of media dedicated to the admiration of the creation of good cars spread extremely fast, and one of the most obvious examples would be "Top Gear" (BBC, 1977) which began in 1977, and has dedicated ever since (with a slight break up) to the breakdown of the properties of cars and the quality of their creation.

FIG9: Image from one of the earliest Top Gear episodes.

Taking my research in another direction, I looked at creation in other types of media like Architecture. Interesting creations has always been centre of attention in architecture, and one of the architects that gained much of that attention was the famous "Alvar Aalto". He was one of the pioneers of the architectural movement known as "Modern Architecture". The thing that makes Alvar Aalto stand out for me most is that he created with purpose. Every building he'd design would be tailor made for the activities that the building would host. One of the most amazing example is the "Piamio Sanatorium" (Alvar Aalto, 1929-1933), which had plenty of terraces for the patients to be exposed to the sun (it was believed that solar radiation could help with the symptoms... Aalto also designed all the chairs in the building to be at a specific angle that would help the breathing of the patients, the hospital is located in the woods so that the patients would get fresh air (also recommended for tuberculosis patients), and the list goes on. It is this type of creation, that can blend style and purpose, that makes the art of making truly remarkable through any media.

FIG10: Alvar Aalto, Piamio Sanatorium, 1933.

Doing a search through Amazon, I found an album by a band called Megablast called "Creation" (Megablast, Stereo Deluxe, 2003) published in 2003. The word creation in music can refer to two things primarily: The creation of the actual music, or the content of the actual songs is about creation. Megablast looks at it in a different way, and introduces creation in their songs as the creation of a new style, a new entity that is linked to them solely. They believe that with "Creation" they have made a unique blend of sounds that they can call their own creation, and they present these ideas in the form of music. They album was released in 2003 and was quite successful.

FIG11: Megablast, Creation.

Continuing with my Amazon search in the book section, I wanted to see if books about the creation process of a film or music piece or any form of art were popular in the past. One of the first things that caught my eye was a book of the making of Snow White. This came to me as a surprise because I thought that the popularity of "Making of" books was something quite reserved to our present time since we have had a little more exposure to these design processes through the internet. But still, this book:

"Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: An Art in Its Making" (Martin Krause, Hyperion books, 1995), is a fantastic example on how the creation of things has always been a popular thing for us, even when not so exposed to the "behind the scenes" part of making these masterpieces.

FIG12: Making of Snow White, 1995.

Creation has always been a popular subject in media, from the begginning to the universe to the making of the artwork of a masterpiece animation, we have always been curious as to how people make things, and that has been represented in media of all types.