What is an Idea?

There's a reason so much great art comes from inspired constraints 

An "idea" is the ultimate constraint, restricting the viewers perceptions of all the things something could be, down to the thing that it is. It exists now. It is an Idea!

Great inspiration can come from great restriction,  and you've now created a restriction in the form of an "idea", so what does this "idea" inspire? "Ooh... that is also an interesting idea. Let's see what inspires that!" And so on. This is a fun way to build a world. The conception of a world can come easy, from simple ideas, zooming closer and closer into more complex detailed ones. Each layer of detail inextricably linked either by association with or derivation from the previous idea, in a chain, to the top.

And these details don't have to be concrete ideas or plot points or notes, they can be colors, they can exist in timbre, they can exist in the evocation of grammar.

How deep or detailed can this idea chain go? If the depth and detail is in line with what you find interesting or familiar, you might consider that work to  be good, or masterful. You notice the detail because you are already familiar with the ideas. They resonate more, because so many ideas begin to ring with truth or excitement. you recognize the patterns of an ever-approaching idea fractal, feeling the fuzziness of it's tiny fronds as they look up at you in time and in space. You feel it as a fine noise, sometimes fuzzy, sometimes grating. if it overwhelms you, you may exert it as laughter! Or a bad cry. or feeling "Studied and Relaxed-to chill vibes"

Expressions of ideas can be made through artistic "pieces" - but could also be conveyed just as powerfully through conversation, or intimate lovemaking, or introspection. but the feelings you get are entirely perceptual and created by you through the act of conscuous and subconscious interpretation. How do you hone or communicate the ideas, the perceptual constraints, which inspire emotion?

Painters and sculptors use light, and by inextricable link, matter, as their medium

Musicians and poets(comedians) use rhetoric through sound, and, due to its inextricable link, time.

Filmmakers and Performers combine the mediums.

You can engage all the many other senses, like touch, and taste/smell, too, of course.

A way to enjoy creating is to be able to really percieve success in ones own creative process, to self-stimulate in a way, as audience and as creator.

And getting good at this self stimulation can be part of who you know yourself to be. I'm a noise musician and experimental artist and improviser. And I am nonbinary. And I am Agnostic. What about you?

Some creation can be altruistic, or masturbatory. Some creation may be more thrilling while others explore subtleties. All has the ability to be valued.