It starts with the hum. The one beneath the noise.

The one the algorithm doesn’t hear.

Not the Spotify shuffle.

Not the AI-generated sonnet.

Not the Pinterest-perfect moodboard.

It’s the hum of your intuition.

A wild, irritable, unscannable thing.

You hear it when a painting stares back at you.

You feel it when a stranger’s poem knocks the wind out of your chest.

You follow it when nothing else makes sense.

That’s 100% Art.

Not optimized.

Not market-tested.

Not available in 4K with a limited-edition tote bag.

Just true. And often, terrifying.

THE ALGORITHM MIRRORS US. BUT IT DOESN’T KNOW US.

Let’s state the obvious:

AI is dazzling.

It can paint like Van Gogh, write like Whitman, design like Dieter Rams, and occasionally make better small talk than your uncle.

But imitation isn’t the same as invention.

Recognition isn’t the same as understanding.

Remix is not rebellion.

And rebellion is where 100% Art lives.

TRUE STORY #1: THE BAND THAT BROKE THEMSELVES ON PURPOSE

(The Smiths, Strangeways, Here We Come)

Manchester’s most literate misfits were teetering on the edge of greatness—or oblivion, depending on who you asked.

The Smiths had already reshaped British indie music.

They made loneliness sound luxurious.

Morrissey moaned like a wounded Oscar Wilde.

Marr made his guitar glisten like broken glass in sunlight.

The nation swooned.

Then came Strangeways, Here We Come.

The final album. The breakup letter. The self-sabotage dressed in strings and synths.

It didn’t chase radio.

It didn’t play to the faithful.

It sounded cinematic, strange, haunted.

Songs about self-parody, artistic disillusionment, the wreckage of relationships, the finality of death, and the slow erosion of moral ground.

The jokes were darker. The arrangements weirder. The sadness less romantic, more terminal.

It was the sound of a band unspooling—

—and that unspooling became the art.

They didn’t tour it.

Didn’t promote it.

Didn’t speak.

They just… vanished. Imploded. Lawsuits, silence, mythology.

And yet, Strangeways endures.

Not because it was perfect.

But because it was final.

A cracked cathedral of sound—half prayer, half demolition.

That wasn’t a failure. That was 100% Art.

They didn’t optimize.

They didn’t scale.

They walked offstage mid-sentence and left a masterpiece bleeding in their place.

That’s what happens when you stop trying to win

and start trying to say something true.

TRUE STORY #2: THE WOMAN WHO REFUSED TO CLEAN UP HER WORK

When Jean-Michel Basquiat brought his paintings to gallery owners in the early 1980s, they told him his work was “too messy.”

“Too raw.”

“Not refined enough for collectors.”

He refused to clean it up.

His canvas was a battlefield—graffiti, oil stick, poetry, rage, saints, street corners. He painted like the city was burning and he was trying to save its soul with every stroke.

That rawness? That refusal? That mess?

It became a revolution.

He didn’t try to make art that looked like art.

He made what needed to be made.

Today, his paintings hang in the world’s most prestigious museums.

One sold for $110 million.

The irony? That same “mess” they once rejected is now his most valuable truth.

TRUE STORY #3: THE DANCER WHO GOT LAUGHED OFF STAGE

In 1913, audiences packed into the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to witness something new: The Rite of Spring, a ballet by Igor Stravinsky and choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky.

It was violent. It was awkward. It sounded wrong. It looked possessed.

People jeered. Fought. Walked out.

But what they didn’t realize was:

That night, music changed forever.

That raw, rhythmic rupture—later studied, revered, canonized—was one of the most important performances in modern history.

Because it defied convention.

It disturbed the polite.

It was—yes—100% Art.

THE MACHINE DOES NOT BLEED

AI can now write novels in your voice before you’ve even found your voice.

It can “co-create” your branding deck and predict which colors will convert more effectively by region, demographic, and circadian rhythm.

But here’s what it can’t do:

It can’t take the risk of failing in front of people who don’t understand.

It can’t doubt itself, question everything, and make it anyway.

It can’t feel its stomach drop when a project flops.

It doesn’t create with its back against the wall.

It doesn’t cry when it’s done.

It can only mimic the ghost of what you've already dared to do.

THE RULE: IF IT’S TOO PERFECT, IT’S PROBABLY DEAD

True art sweats.

It stinks.

It forgets its lines.

It shows up late and leaves too early.

It gets banned.

Misunderstood.

Rediscovered decades later by weirdos who finally get it.

100% Art doesn’t belong to the now.

It belongs to the necessary.

It doesn’t worry about reach.

It worries about impact.

Not analytics. But aftershocks.

And you can’t train an aftershock.

SO HERE’S THE MISSION:

Make work that gets you kicked out of meetings.

Write something that ruins your algorithm.

Design something that gets uncomfortably quiet reactions in group chats.

Be too raw. Too poetic. Too genre-less. Too old-fashioned. Too far ahead.

Make something untrendable. Unmonetizable. Unclear.

Something so full of soul it fries a server.

Be 100% Art.

Because the world doesn’t need more content.

It needs you.

THE RECKLESS CALL TO ARMS

If you’re still reading this,

you already know the truth:

You weren’t born to create on a conveyor belt.

You weren’t built to be branded.

You’re not a thumbnail.

You’re not an avatar.

You’re the origin.

The one-off.

The untrainable glitch in the matrix.

So stop asking what the market wants.

Stop waiting for permission.

Stop editing yourself for the feed.

Make something no one asked for,

and trust that it will find who needs it.

Read the Book. Stoke the Fire.

Creativity Without Frontiers 

by Roy Sharples

How to make the invisible visible by lighting the way into the future.

Founder of Unknown Origins.

Champion of originality in an age of imitation.

Attitude. Imagination. Execution.

www.unknownorigins.com 

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