INNOVATION AND CREATIVITY: REFLECTIONS FROM THE ANTHROPOCENE

Abstract

We live in a new era in the history of our planet Earth,
an era in which humans are the dominant influence on the
environment and climate. Humans are in control, contrasting
with other times when living species adapted to natural
evolutionary conditions. Similarly, now is a time when the
arts are more and more reflecting human identity, as humans
are more and more alone and isolated, and less in tune with
other life forms, seen and unseen, with whom we have shared
the planet for tens of thousands of years. What brought me
to Indonesia, and Bali in particular, as a twenty year-old in
1972, was a fascination with the acoustics of bronze and an
understanding that art was as much about interacting with
nature and unseen forces as it was about human interactions.
I sense that Indonesia has something important to offer the
world, if it is still able to do so, in part by looking far back to
early innovations, inventions, and creative achievements that
involved an intimacy with and sensitivity to our environment,
seen and unseen. Nobel Prize- winning physicist Leon
Lederman, who studied neutrinos, once said, “Human understanding
of reality is largely over-rated.”
What has been bringing me to Indonesia for the past
fifteen years is Bali 1928, an ongoing restoration, research and
repatriation project involving the first published recordings
of music in Bali as well as related film footage and photographs
from the 1930s. These are the only music recordings
made in Bali and released prior to World War II, a diverse
representation of new and ancient genres that were published
on 78 rpm discs though quickly going out of print. Our project