Lichtenbergian Precepts: Successive Approximation

The fifth Lichtenbergian Precept is SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION. After you’ve created crap with your ABORTIVE ATTEMPT and stepped back to assess its GESTALT, then it’s time to try again: rewrite that chapter, use a different harmony, add a little blue.

Sometimes, of course, if it’s not perfect or even cromulent, you have to throw the whole thing out and start over. But with SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION, you know a little more about how to get to what you want.

I first started using the term SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION in theatre work. Too many times the actors would want to solidify a scene long before they should. Or if we were working on a company-developed piece, the participants would become anxious at not having a product.

In either case, I would just tell them that we were OK, we were going to be OK: no one in the room was — or should be — expecting perfection. We were simply nudging the work into shape, and nudging is all we should be doing. Just get a little clearer with each SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION.

You will have noticed by now (or again, depending on how long you’ve been a Lichtenbergian) that once you’ve nudged your approximation, you have a brand new ABORTIVE ATTEMPT on your hands, which requires to step back and assess its GESTALT and on and on and on.

How do we know when we’re ready to ABANDON the work? Stay tuned.

In the meantime, the mini-doc below is worth your 20 minutes. The clarity with which they explain how GESTALT and SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION not just “saved,” but created Star Wars is fascinating. And if you ever thought great artists just whipped out their cameras, started at the beginning, went until they reached the end, and then stopped, you must watch this video.