S(Pi + Pii + Piii +…Pπ)Y = T is a mathematical formula for the creative process, where S is the sum of the principles (P), Y is intuition, and T is artistic creation. The formula was originally put forward by Russian critic Nikolai Punin during a series of lectures in Petrograd in the summer of 1919, entitled “Pervyi tsikl lektsii” (“First Cycle of Lectures”).
Appearing to hover between irony and earnest nostalgia, in Gaviria’s interpretation the mathematical formula suggests that the methodologies of science and technology projected onto the field of art can be both humorous and suggestive – as it presents here an unlikely symbiosis of imagination and reason, of creativity and practicality – but never stable. Stories end and start again and their frontiers are imprecise and intangible. Information, even a mathematical formula, with every re-enactment is always subject to change.
