“We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. … Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” (Dawkins, the selfish gene, 1976, p 192).
Perhaps that is why only those ideas that are close to the front-line af Art are accepted into the ‘art pool’ and those that are too far out will seem strange and alien and rejected. We have survived and evolved to being what we are today by being good imitators. Here is a meme idea for you to propagate. We should look at work that is obsercure and new-weird as being enlightening possibilities by ‘choiceless observation’ rather than meme thinking. Referencing is encourage in all our ideas and work so we are constanly working off the past. Creation comes with no time. It is an insight, spontaneous, in an instance without thinking-time to alter and manipulate the original image. It is a kalichakra process. If Art keeps living off its past it will always be a slave to what already exists. Just as we evolved as imitators not very far away from yesterday in anything we do. If we don’t break this chain by being aware of ‘what is’ and recognise that work does not have to look like yesterday to be good, then perhaps we can swing the meme-gene by its tail back to the past and it would have met its end and tomorrow will be new.
Siri.