Process Arts, a working definition

• auto-critical disciplines which are psychological and mythographic and
  
• connect operative ideas in a given culture and narrative system of thinking by way of difference and resonance,
  
• track the way idea-complexes are connected and interpreted into products,
  
• operate fluidly in both sympathy and conflict,
  
• value eccentricity and develop distinctions,
  
• lead to participation in the creation of said cultures, and
  
• effect deepening understanding of being human at both the individual and collective level.
• a function derived and dependent term coined by Brandon Williamscraig to posit a spectrum of co-creative potential on which conscious attempts to establish relatedness may be compared using both qualitative and quantitative criteria.

Here are a few overlapping examples of potential Process Arts, depending on the way in which they are practiced, divided into casual categories for brevity rather than accuracy. The three general processes portrayed are simultaneous and interrelated.

• Concert
  
• Community Building, administration, public service, governance, civil planning, co-housing, ritual and performance (theater and other ensembles), corporate management, consulting, intentional residential and satellite/urban communities, Organizational Development, the Internet, etc.
• Conflict
  
• Martial Art, law, activism, mediation, peaceful intervention, war, sport, self-defense, etc.
• Consciousness
  
• mysticism and philosophy, religion/spirituality, humanities education and the liberal arts (including theology and mythology), psychology, etc.
• Psychology's derivatives, including psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, gestalt, archetypal psychology, Processwork, Neuro-linguistic Programming, Non-Violent Communication, Hakomi, self-help, coaching, group therapies, etc.

What is not a process art?

Anything practiced with insufficient attention devoted to How the practice is happening.

From the definition above to this point an ethics-neutral fantasy has been maintained to give a sense of the width of disciplines that can be considered Process Arts. Awareness of systemic dynamics, however, gives a certain amount of control over culture-systems and process artists, professional salespersons for example, may use this power to create systems which dominate choice making beneath the level of conscious awareness. Food resources or persons desiring public office, for example, may be framed such that entire populations are not only excluded from the decision making processes but become habituated to the choosing of a more and more tightly controlled and fabricated group of products which are in essence poisonous in the sense of being non-functional replacements for actual food or public service.

That given value of "insufficient" in the paragraph above, therefore, is hereafter framed in ethical terms as being directly proportional to the degree to which it is possible for any and all participants to choose to be fully involved at the creative, structural, systemic level. I define Process Arts as disciplines structured to maximize the motivation and capacity for ethical involvement and understanding of any participant in a given system. In that sense process arts are biased toward co-creativity, inclusivity, sympathy, and altruism. This is facilitated, at least at first and in part, by the idea of auto-criticality which suggests systems of thought and practice designed to expose their own flaws authentically and welcome difference and friction. This often weary welcome rests only in the conviction that there are breaks in conflict (different influences wanting different things) but never a surcease. Auto-criticality asks how rather than if my understanding of the need in this sphere of influence is incomplete. This undermines the reflex to dominate in the face of incompleteness and gives way habitually to more sustainable responses to mortality and finitude than are currently the norm.

At the quantitative level, it is possible to empirically (based on direct experience) measure in a given system the choice making, kinds of metaphor and language, trends, etc. that make a practice more, rather than less, a process art. At the qualitative level Process Arts result in a felt sense and intuition that can inform analysis but need not become analytical, that leads to a synthetic phenomenology of association and inclusion, a shared narrative environment or mythology, that supports a peaceful "terrain" in which "conflict done well" and other dynamics which characterize ethical process arts are prevalent.