Scientists Discover the Key to Artistic Success: ‘Promising New Ideas’ and Intense Focus (ArtNews)…well it’s obvious.

Jackson Pollock. Number 11, (Blue Poles), 1952. National Gallery of Australia

Acknowledgement to Shanti Escalante-De Mattli for her article in ArtNews September 14, 2021 (see below) for summarising Dashun Wang and his team of researcher’s work which used AI to discover the key to artists “hot streaks,” or periods of intense and successful artistic productivity

Introduction

The paper “Understanding the onset of hot streaks across artistic, cultural, and scientific careers” Lu Liu, Nima Dehmamy, Jillian Chown, C.Lee Giles & Dashun Wang. Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 5392 (2021) states:

“Across a range of creative domains, individual careers are characterized by hot streaks, which are bursts of high-impact works clustered together in close succession.” The researchers defined a “hot streak” for an artist as by clusters of high sale volume and prices in the art secondary market, the researchers used data from to …. sale price data gathered from Artprice (www.artprice.com) and Findartinfo (www.findartinfo.com).

The paper posits that in the art world and other creative enterprises a hot streak is four – seven years.

“Exploration” and “Exploitation”

The paper claims “exploration” and “exploitation” are the keys to these artistic hot streaks.

The paper states” “ individuals tend to explore diverse styles or topics before their hot streak, but become notably more focused after the hot streak begins. Crucially, hot streaks appear to be associated with neither exploration nor exploitation behavior in isolation, but a particular sequence of exploration followed by exploitation”

But is this just to be expected?

But is their paper anything other than stating the obvious using a complex approach, difficult for a layman to understand and thus challenge? Further as this paper, is in a respected journal, well researched, using innovative AI techniques we are primed to believe—it must be valuable and make sense…but must it?

But let’s stop and think. Isn’t this paper just describing a natural rhythm—we work from the general to the particular or using their words, we explore multiple areas and then exploit by focussing on one; a university degree, an investment bank searching for an acquisition, when we buy a house.

Exploration followed by exploitation for an artist is natural. An artist must learn their trade, skills, before they can produce their best work—early artists worked under masters now the majority go the art school, studying numerous techniques and topics and afterwards continue to develop. Learning is exploration, exploration is learning as an artist expands their own boundaries and matures.

Artists as they mature can follow any number of paths; intense focus in one area—exploitation—being but one. Focus in an area after exploration is natural, it is the way of the world; we play one or limited number of sports, our careers focus in one area; butcher, baker, surgeon, physics researcher, blogger.

The progression described by the paper is, to me, self-evident, the data given clouding the thesis rather than elucidating it especially by the author’s choice of examples.

Jackson Pollock’s hot streak cut-off is 1950 yet perhaps the greatest of his drip style paintings “Blue Poles” is dated 1952. The authors lack sensitivity by choosing Pollock as the representative “artist”. He died whilst driving under the influence of alcohol in a tragic car accident which took not just his life but the life of young woman. Except for his sad and untimely death his career may well have gone on further to more “hot streak” success.

Peter Jackson on the set of Lord of the Rings

The paper centres Peter Jackson’s directing hot streak on the The Lord of the Rings trilogy dating it in the period 2001 – 2008. Yet development for the project began in 1997, the long gestation due to the development history and ownership history of the project.

But since then Jackson’s work, contrary to the model not fallen away. He has produced and directed the well IMDB rated Hobbit trilogy between 2012 -2014, and the extremely well IMDB rated (8.3) documentary They Shall not Grow Old in 2018. His work continues to be exemplary, his hot streak has not ended, his focus has moved elsewhere.

John Fenn receiving his Nobel Prize in 2002

John Fenn’s “hot streak” was just one of a number of hot streaks in his career. It was not confined to his Nobel Prize research in Electrospray ionization. that was just one of the several periods of distinguished research of his career. John Fenn was also a world recognised researcher in molecular beams, leading him to be named an honorary president of the Sixth International Symposium on Molecular Beams in 1977, and the first fellow of the International Molecular Beam Symposium in 1985.

A more interesting question?

The 4-7 year duration of ‘hot streaks’ is interesting and perhaps worth some further research. The under 10 year period of ‘hot streak’ is not confined to artistic endeavour or scientific research; elite professional sportspeople have a 7 year career, the average tenure of a C-suite member is 4.9 years, we are in high school for 5-6 years, undergraduate degrees 3-4 years.

Is there a pattern of change in our human condition approximately every 5-7 years? Is this a question to be answered?

In fact the above question I find interesting is the same as the researchers also pose as a possibility for further research:

Notably, the sequence of exploration followed by exploitation closely resembles strategies observed in a wide range of natural and socio-technical settings, from animal foraging45 to human cognitive search46, from multi-armed bandits and reinforcement learning47 to role oscillation between brokerage and closure in social network48 to changing innovation strategies over business cycles49. It thus suggests that the sequential strategies of exploration followed by exploitation uncovered in this study may have broad relevance that goes beyond individuals’ careers.

ArtNews Article

Understanding the onset of hot streaks across artistic, cultural, and scientific careers

Shanti Escalante-De Mattei ArtNews September 14, 2021

According to a new study, Jackson Pollock's "hot streak" took place between 1946 and 1950.PHOTO DAVID GOLDMAN/AP

In a new study published on Monday in Nature Communications, a team of scientists said it had discovered the key to “hot streaks,” or periods of intense and successful artistic productivity. The paper cites Jackson Pollock’s four-year period of intense productivity and success with his drip paintings.

In a previous paper, Dashun Wang and a team of researchers had proven the existence of hot streaks. “In scientific careers, we see that it is in a four to five year period where scientists publish their best work,” he said. “Ninety percent of scientists experience a hot streak, and it usually happens once.”

But one discovery complicated his findings. “There is equal probability that the hot streak could occur in the beginning, middle, or end of a career,” Wang said. “It seemed like a random magical period.” This puzzle set the team on a three-year journey to understand what kinds of conditions precede a hot streak.

To produce its new paper, Wang and his team relied on artificial intelligence to track the kinds of outputs artists, filmmakers, and scientists made in the period leading up to a hot streak. In particular, they were looking to see if exploration or exploitation best predicted periods of peak creativity. For the researchers, exploitation meant focusing on a narrow range of subjects or style, not abuse of some kind.

The researchers’ specially designed AI was able to consider the evolution of an artist’s art style over time. It was exposed to 800,000 images culled from museum and gallery collections that represent the careers of 2,128 artists. If the AI detected a lot of variety in style this was termed as a period of exploration, or if the AI detected little variety, it was a period of exploitation. An artist’s hot streak was identified by examining which period of time resulted in the artist’s most expensive works.

The scientists found that neither exploration nor exploitation on its own could significantly predict a hot streak, writing, “Not all explorations are fruitful, and exploitation in the absence of promising new ideas may not be as productive.”

On the other hand, the researchers did find that a sequence of exploration followed by exploitation could predict hot streaks in the careers of not only artists but filmmakers and scientists too. The researchers cited Jackson Pollock as an example in the paper, saying that the Abstract Expressionist’s hot streak took place between 1946 and 1950, when he produced some of the drip paintings for which he is best known. For Pollock, this era was a time of intense focus on a very specific style, and this, the researchers said, preceded by a good deal of experimentation.

“We searched for an answer for three years,” Wang says. “I was surprised the answer was this simple. But the best kind of results are the results that are so obvious once you know the answer.”

Read more: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/artificial-intelligence-predicts-success-study-1234603724/