Archaeology of line and heuristic algorithms for contemporary art in Levent Valley caves: Cave 2.0

Art is a powerful human activity that has accompanied human destiny throughout all times as one of the most effective tools of human efforts to make sense of existence. In fact, this effort should be evaluated as a concrete manifestation of human coming to terms with the consciousness of existence and non-existence. Throughout times, line stands out as an important indicator of the creative potential of the human mind and its effort to comprehend the world. Humans reveal themselves with their accumulation of knowledge, cultural environment they interact with, place and time, economy, climate and politics, and with their forms of expression that they personalize with all their inwardness, in addition to existing natural forms of expression. Throughout history, art has been one of the most important tools of this manifestation. Since art provides the ability to respond to all stimuli with its own language with the broad background inherent in its nature, it has always been preferred as a meaningful ground for existence. The first artists made a creative intervention in the order of nature that existed on its own, added meanings that carried the traces of their existence to it and first embodied the claim of building a new universe from their dreams with line. Man has succeeded in strengthening his claim to existence on earth by using the possibilities of his intuition and creative mind. This research attempts to understand the nature of the creative mind by empathizing with the creative minds of the Paleolithic age and using the possibilities of contemporary art. For this reason, the Levent Valley and caves were used to conduct thought experiments and produce works of art due to their similarity to the natural environment in which the Paleolithic art was produced. The experiments conducted in the Levent Valley provided valuable data to understand the mental and emotional dynamics behind this creative process. The deep silence and darkness of the caves allowed people to turn inward and establish an intellectual connection with their essence. The lines produced in this environment, beyond an aesthetic search, are aimed at understanding the effort of people to find answers to their existential questions. It is considered that for the first artists, lines were a way of thinking and a practice of creating meaning. During the research, it became possible to see how lines were integrated with the creative actions of people both technically and conceptually. During the research process, a number of hypotheses were put forward and these hypotheses were tried to be placed on a scientific basis with the possibilities of phenomenology as a scientific method. One of the most important conclusions reached is the hypothesis of dreams, shadows and reflections regarding the invention of line. According to this hypothesis, the invention of line is based on human curiosity and search for meaning. Creative minds must have thought that they could create a meaningful alternative to nature with line from the dreams they saw, shadows and reflections they observed. In this way, they may have developed a mimetic attitude with the images created by minds and created the first meaningful depictions on earth. In this process, line has transformed from being a tool for us to perceive and determine form by ontologically separating something from everything else, to the most important tool of human creative attitude that serves to make the existence of images visible. When the archaeology of line is made and the creative attitudes of all lived times are examined layer by layer, the legitimacy of this conclusion is further strengthened. In other words, it can be said that the essence of art is line ontologically. This research aims to contribute to the recognition of these examples of art as the oldest flashes of human genius on earth by scientifically criticizing the narratives in the art literature that fail to see the lines of the Paleolithic artist as the product of pure reason. This research, which makes an extraordinary effort to understand the creative minds of the Paleolithic artists who paved the way for us to create today's world with their unique aesthetic and plastic perceptions, intends to make a meaningful contribution to the construction of the art of the future. As a result; whether the line is considered as a proof of man's claim to existence, or as a tool for understanding and making sense of life as a manifestation of a tendency to leave a mark, or as a form of information; mankind will continue to use the line to tell its own story. Perhaps the most obsessive passion of creative minds is to convince other minds of their own reality. Keywords: Line, Creative mind, Contemporary Art, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Art, Art.