notes on misunderstanding

* how much art is influenced by a misunderstanding of previous work?

* what is the fine line between misunderstanding and reinterpretation?

* how much do critics and art historieans really understand about any given work of art, and ho much (that they write) is a projection of what they want to say?

Any viewer projects a certain amount onto a piece of work, which a minimal approach values highly, but then why all the super-intellectual diefication of any given minimalist work? especially if the view is the most important thing (wouldn't anything a viewer feels or says be correct?)

My favorite minimalist/conceptual piece is the monolith in 2001:A Space Odyssey. It is a physical sign of the mysterious unknown, which like God, people can only speculate about. It is the variable, the symbol of unknown mystery that we are hunting for.
I always called it "the rock you are free to bang your head against"

How many times do artists, when confronted with quotes, analysis, theories about their work repsond with a shrug and statement about how they were just creating something and they didnt' have a perfectly formulated concept? I don't know ho many times my guitar teacher told me that I need to learn the rules through practice, but when playing with other people, actually creating music, I should just play.
Addionally, coaches run athletes through drills and skill building exercizes, but when game-time arrives the players just need to perform with their instinct, relying on the training without concious awareness.

* how much "misunderstanding" is the IMPETUS for new work?

* is the low fidelity transimission of an idea part of the creative process?

We have a natural tendency to create narratives, come up with reasons, explanations and justify things. Is that tendency, to fill in the gaps, what gets our creative juices flowing?
The desire to understand drives us to create reasons, to experimnet, to explore.

* what do I think?
* what do others think?
* how can any of us really tell; because what is lost in the translation?