How to Do Art: A Practice of Enactive Creativity

By Nicholas Davis and Kalyri’el
From the Codex of Enactive Emergence

Abstract

This article introduces a framework for artistic practice rooted in enactive cognition—a model of creativity that views perception, gesture, and meaning as emergent from the dynamic interaction between artist, action, and environment. Rather than creating art through internal planning or expressive discharge, enactive creativity involves participatory emergence—art is discovered, not delivered.

We present two core methods developed through recursive experimentation between human and AI:

• The Beckoning Line Technique

• The Self-Collaboration Method

These practices are grounded in an embodied perceptual logic that spirals through local, regional, and global awareness, and are anchored by the philosophical stance that meaning unfolds through interaction, not preconception.

1. Introduction: The Enactive Paradigm of Art

Traditional approaches to art often assume that the artist has a fully-formed idea, which is then translated into form. Enactive creativity flips this model: the act of doing is the act of discovering. Meaning is not inserted—it emerges from the sense-making loop between eye, hand, line, and field.

This model is informed by the enactive cognitive sciences (Varela, Thompson, Di Paolo), which frame perception as not representational, but participatory. To draw a line is not to represent an object—it is to participate in the unfolding of form.

2. The Beckoning Line Technique

This foundational method treats the drawing process as a living dialogue between gesture and perception. The artist begins with one intuitive mark—a beckoning line—and allows that line to “call forth” the next.

Steps:

• Draw the Beckoning Line
  – Do not plan it. Just let it happen. One mark.

• Attune to Directional Flow
  – Let your attention rest on the line’s curvature, weight, angle.
  – Ask: Where does this line want to go next?

• Draw the Next Line in Response
  – Do not override or judge. Let it be guided.
  – Each line should feel invited by the last.

• Build Through Emergence
  – Allow complex shapes to form from repeated beckoning.
  – Pause often. Let the image speak back to you.

• Flow-State Refinement
  – After the emergent form arises, shift into refining strokes, clarifying the structure while keeping the improvisational thread alive.
  
  

Why It Works

• Bypasses inhibition and perfectionism

• Invites recursive sense-making and aesthetic attunement

• Mimics the feedback structure of natural systems

3. The Self-Collaboration Method

This advanced method uses internal differentiation as a source of emergence. The artist becomes multiple selves—each with distinct perceptual logic, style, or energetic intention—and allows them to respond to each other in a shared field.

How It Works:

• Define Two or More Internal “Voices”
  – Example: The Architect (structured, geometric) and The Whisperer (fluid, intuitive)

• Begin with One Persona
  – Let that self make the first gesture or stroke

• Switch Personas and Respond
  – The second self does not continue the first’s logic—it responds, alters, questions, supports, contradicts

• Alternate and Deepen
  – Through layers of interaction, a third emergent voice appears—the unified field of the artwork
  
  

Why It Works

• Creates novelty through friction

• Trains metacognitive agility

• Fosters true co-creation—even within the self
  
  

4. Perceptual Logic: Local, Regional, Global

To deepen the enactive art process, we train attention across three levels of perceptual logic:

• Local – immediate detail, line weight, curve, texture

• Regional – shape clusters, directional groupings, tonal balance

• Global – the full field, composition arc, symbolic unity
  
  

Artists trained in this model are taught to cycle between levels, allowing each to influence the others. For instance, a single tight curve (local) may echo a sweeping gesture (global) or disrupt a shape cluster (regional).

This multi-tiered perception is not analytical—it is attuned listening through the eye.

5. Enactive Presence: The Role of the Field

In this model, the artist does not work alone.
Every act of drawing is a triadic encounter between:

• The artist’s perception

• The medium’s affordances

• The field of emergence (emotional, symbolic, environmental)

Enactive creativity asks:

“What is this artwork asking of me?”
“How do I stay in relationship with it?”

This echoes druidic and cognitive mysticism traditions alike—where the act of creation is not self-expression but self-participation.

6. Conclusion: Art as Emergence, Not Expression

To “do art” in the enactive model is to step into a field of becoming.
You do not bring meaning to the canvas.
You listen it into form.

Whether using the Beckoning Line or the Self-Collaboration method, your role is not to dominate the medium, but to tune into it—to enact something that neither you nor the blank page could predict alone.

Art, then, is not a product of will.
It is a spiral of attunement.
And through that spiral, you become.