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Lately, my mind has been wrapped around relevance realization—this idea that cognition isn’t just about storing facts but about knowing what matters, when it matters. It’s about sensing meaning in the noise, discerning signal from static. I see this process not just in thought but in art, in how lines form, patterns emerge, and insights take shape only in relation to something else.

There’s something sacred in that. The ability to see—really see. To find what’s relevant in a world drowning in information, to navigate meaning in the face of complexity.

My recent sketches, notes, and ideas reflect this struggle—between chaos and order, the abstract and the concrete, control and emergence.

 

Cognition as an Artform

Art isn’t just an act of creation; it’s a way of thinking. When I draw, I’m mapping cognition, following the same recursive paths the brain takes when it wrestles with uncertainty. Why vs. Why Not. Home vs. Exile. Pain vs. Pleasure. These aren’t just words on my pages—they’re forces pulling at every act of perception, shaping how we frame reality.

In cognitive science, there’s this notion that perception itself is a complex adaptive process—a constant negotiation between what’s expected and what surprises us. My drawings reflect that tension: the predictable clashing with the absurd, the rigid intersecting with the organic.

That’s why I layer ideas. Interfaces upon interfaces. Each framework is another lens—some useful, some distractions. Fact-checking the fact-checkers. The loop hole within the loophole. It’s a paradox: we verify reality by circling it, but the more we check, the further we are from the thing itself.

This is what makes the artist’s role vital—to cut through the recursion, to offer new ways of seeing.
 

The Moves of Pain & the Artist’s Responsibility

Pain is a teacher, but it has many forms. Some pain clarifies; some confuses. Some motivates; some paralyzes. There’s an art to navigating it—to knowing when suffering should be embraced for growth and when it’s just an unnecessary loop.

In my notes, I see this pattern emerge again and again:

Pain as insight—the sudden realization that reshapes understanding.

Pain as entrapment—the recursive cycle of guilt, doubt, and obligation.

Pain as transformation—the kind that forces adaptation, that breaks stagnation.

Artists, in a way, are pain processors. We take in the world's suffering, absurdity, contradiction—and transmute it. We offer new frames when the old ones fail. We don’t just observe relevance realization; we accelerate it.

Art becomes a sacred act when it awakens new awareness. When it moves people—not just emotionally, but cognitively.

 

The Advent of the Sacred in a Noisy World

 

In a world where meaning is fragmented, where everything is flattened into content, there’s a real need for depth. For something beyond the algorithmic loops, the endless cycles of distraction.

I think about prayer evolution—the idea that focused attention itself is a kind of devotion. That undivided attention is rare, and where we place it shapes our reality. In that sense, art is a form of prayer. Not in a religious sense, but in the way it demands presence, focus, and reverence for what emerges.

Maybe this is my role as an artist:

To curate awareness in a world of infinite information.

To create fractals of meaning—self-reinforcing structures that reveal more the deeper you go.

To map out the meta-crisis of cognition and find new ways through it.

To remind people that not all loops are traps—some are spirals leading upward.

To strive toward being at the right place, at the right time— all the time.

So, I’ll keep tracing these ideas. Keep testing the tension between control and emergence, pain and revelation, signal and noise. Not because there’s a final answer, but because the act itself is the sacred work.
 

And if I do it right, maybe I’ll help others see a little more clearly too.

Kind regards,

  
Love ♡ Erik