Transpersonal Making?

What Exactly is Transpersonal Making?

Start with the “transpersonal.” That word term comes from transpersonal psychology -- a relatively new discipline dedicated to understanding experiences which transcended the individual person. No surprise it started in the late 1960s.

detail from “The Tricksmith’s Pet”

The most obvious examples of transcendent, transpersonal experiences come from religious and psychedelics. But creative making has, in a special way, its own transpersonal element.

The transpersonal element is most obvious in collaboration. William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin invented the concept of the "Third Mind" [pdf] to capture the intelligence which emerges in any successful collaboration, the power greater than the combined power of the participants.

Only the genius of the Third Mind would photograph Block City Bridges in this mysterious tiled chamber.

But even when you are making art alone you are collaborating with past version of yourself, and when the creation is working, a third mind emerges from the piece itself, and the writing seems to be writing you, the painting paints you.

This is called “I See A Face.” Do you, and where? What about people? What are you looking at here?

TMT stands for "Transpersonal Making Team." We make paintings, pixels, and photographs. The paintings are the most obviously transpersonal: they show states beyond normal experience and are, themselves, made in transpersonal collaborative ways.

What makes a photograph like this transpersonally made?

What about pixels design like these?