Chapter 7 discusses the short-term timescale of artistic activity, which includes both the creation and experience of art and shows how the creation or the experience of a painting or installation is a dynamic system with typical features of complexity. The creation of a work of art is described as a process in an attractor landscape, with self-organizing attractors as emergent types of creative activity. Existing linear models of creation are compared to a complexity model. An example is given of how a very short-term activity, namely, a single brushstroke, is a complex system in itself, interacting with higher and lower timescales. The discussion of the experience of art begins with existing sequential models and shows how they can be reinterpreted as non-linear, complex, metastable processes occurring on interacting timescales.

With this chapter, we contrast the mainstream explanatory practices with forms of causality that are processual: complex causality. Complex dynamic systems are used as a framework, incorporating principles such as emergence, self-organization, circular causality, and perturbations. With this alternative, processes themselves are seen as causes, making causality a moving and dynamic phenomenon. We conclude with descriptions of various concrete causal models that can be used to help researchers understand causality via processes.