Creativity Top 5: August 13, 2012
/The ice cream spot is so creepy I'm trying to erase it from my head by thinking of what to send to the Obermutten International Museum of Friendship.
Embracing The Remix: An Act To Promote The Progress Of Useful Arts
/We are not self-made. We are dependent on one another. Admitting this to ourselves isn't an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness, it's a liberation from our misconceptions.”
Kirby Ferguson
Minecraft, Dubstep & the Olympics: Trying To Figure Out What More We Can Do
/It's time again to catch up with Idea Channel (seriously, subscribe.) This time host Mike Rugnetta explores the boundaries of what we can imagine, create and do, plus makerbots.
From the Jetsons to Cory Doctorow, science fiction writers of all stripes have imagined a world where any object could be instantly created. Modern economics on the other hand, is built on the principle of competition for scarce resources. And while it may not seem like a video game and printer could alter this economic reality, we beg to differ. Minecraft's creative mode is the perfect vehicle for understanding a Post-Scarcity world; a place where resources are permanently available and constantly regenerated. It shows that with unlimited resources, people end up creating amazing digital structures! Of course, a world of infinitely available resources seems pretty fantastical until you consider the Makerbot and the future of 3D printing. The Makerbot is an at home device that allow you to print real three dimensional objects, meaning a Minecraftian future where you can print anything you want at anytime might not be that far away.
Dubstep. Is. Awesome. While some people may hear noise, we hear amazing musical genius. The aural creativity of Dubstep, and its embrace of inharmonic sounds, makes it the most recent member of the long-established Avant Garde community. There is a long history of avant garde musicians and thinkers promoting the concept of noise and non-instrumental sounds as MUSIC, much to the horror of their audience. But over the past century, changes in technology and music genres have primed listeners, allowing mainstream audiences to enjoy the beautiful noise of Skrillex, Bassnectar & the whole Dubstep movement.
Everyone is obsessed with the Olympics right now, watching these geniuses push the boundaries of their field. Wait, did we say GENIUSES? Yes! We normally associate the word "genius" with intellectual accomplishments, but athletes are geniuses at pushing their bodies to new heights, making the impossibly difficult seem easy and effortless. While it might not seem like it, genius of any kind requires financial and cultural support. In a world where athletes are developed and celebrated, more so than scientists or artists, it makes sense that we turn to the Olympics as a model for fostering genius.
Previously on the Idea Channel:
Here's an idea, PBS Idea Channel is TED Talks from the fringe
What are bronies, and are they changing the definition of masculinity?
PBS Idea Channel: Are Hologram Tupac And Hologram Freddie Mercury Nostalgia Or New Aesthetic?
Superflat Epic Minimalism And Hello Kitty
Is Instagram The Best Thing To Ever Happen To Photography?
Is “Texts From Hillary” Art?
Authenticity In Pop Music: Computer Generated Miku Hatsune vs. Marketing Generated Lana Del Rey
Super Mario Brothers Is The World’s Greatest Piece Of Surrealist Art
Creativity Top 5: The Olympic Edition
/Find your greatness indeed.
Why You Should Care About Jonah Lehrer’s Great Fall→
/I find myself mourning this loss in a way that makes me feel silly. And when I examine the mourning, I realize that it’s not just about me losing a personal idol. Jonah Lehrer, both before and after the publication of his latest book, which is all about the creative process and the elevated place that creativity deserves in our society, was a strong and articulate proponent of the power of art and creativity in society. By relying on scientific findings, by pulling difficult, jargony papers into the mainstream with patient and enthusiastic explanation, by placing the role of the creativity in the functioning of the brain, and both the brain and creativity at the center of what makes us human, Lehrer in ways large and small was an ally to the arts field. Whether he meant to or not, he fought against the marginalization of what we do by attempting over and over to explain the particular work that our work was doing. And more than that, particulars aside (as I don’t pretend to know what other quotes he might have fabricated), he told true stories, valuable stories, stories based in a tremendous amount of reading and research, built out of data and embroidered with stories and anecdotes. Imagine is a formidable book, a book that at its core tackles the same questions our research into intrinsic impact is trying to tackle—what is creativity? How does it happen? How does it work? What does it do to us, as makers, as consumers? In the same way that he previously tackled memory through the creative lens, Lehrer has created in Imagine a book, which had sold more than 200,000 copies at last count, that placed front and center the secrets of what we do in this field, and for the world.
And now, because he needed to tack on a few emphatic quotes, because he needed to not let the words of one of the great poets of our time sit as they were, that book has been pulled from shelves, removed from e-book stores, and its author shunned.
The blog post the above quote comes from, by Clayton Lord, pretty much summarizes how I feel about the Jonah Lehrer situation, particularly since I have recommended his work here and to my friends and colleagues so much. Like Lord, what I appreciated about Lehrer's writing was the multitude of examples that he provided in simple language that I could use to further a conversation about art, technology, creativity and even marketing.