Del Close's Eleven Commandments of Improvisation→

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Another great post from Open Culture, Del Close's Eleven Commandments of Improvisation: 

  1. You are all supporting actors.
  2. Always check your impulses.
  3. Never enter a scene unless you are NEEDED.
  4. Save your fellow actor, don’t worry about the piece.
  5. Your prime responsibility is to support.
  6. Work at the top of your brains at all times.
  7. Never underestimate or condescend to your audience.
  8. No jokes (unless it is tipped in front that it is a joke.)
  9. Trust… trust your fellow actors to support you; trust them to come through if you lay something heavy on them; trust yourself.
  10. Avoid judging what is going down except in terms of whether it needs help (either by entering or cutting), what can best follow, or how you can support it imaginatively if your support is called for.
  11. LISTEN

They apply to all creative endeavors.  

 
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Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Creativity Top 5: Week of July 8, 2013

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The bonus "and then there's this" at the end is a funny counterpoint to the #1 spot this week, very moving work for Skype.  

 
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Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

How to Be a Genius→

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Tool #1: Finding the Right Question

To generate an innovative answer requires asking the right question. Curiosity, a characteristic inherent to innovators, stimulated them to ask reams and reams of questions. Random questions, however, are like throwing darts blindfolded. Somehow innovators found their way to asking the right question in the right way

[…] 

A more unique characteristic of the questions asked by creative scientists is that they were big. Most scientists restrict their curiosity to precisely limited elaborations of existing theory. Iconic innovators (to turn a phrase) asked big, hairy, audacious questions.

 

More tools available at Medium. Check out another perspective on your elusive creative genius from Elizabeth Gilbert. To get you started, some questions to consider. 

 
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Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

Being a Lifelong Bookworm May Keep You Sharp in Old Age→

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The Smithsonian's Surprising Science blog: 

The findings, published online today in Neurology, suggest that reading books, writing and engaging in other similar brain-stimulating activities slows down cognitive decline in old age, independent of common age-related neurodegenerative diseases. In particular, people who participated in mentally stimulating activities over their lifetimes, both in young, middle and old age, had a slower rate of decline in memory and other mental capacities than those who did not.
[...] 
Reading gives our brains a workout because comprehending text requires more mental energy than, for example, processing an image on a television screen. Reading exercises our working memory, which actively processes and stores new information as it comes. Eventually, that information gets transferred into long-term memory, where our understanding of any given material deepens. Writing can be likened to practice: the more we rehearse the perfect squat, the better our form becomes, tightening all the right muscles. Writing helps us consolidate new information for the times we may need to recall it, which boosts our memory skills.

Here are a couple of suggestions to get your reading workout going: Summer Reading: Independent Learning & The Novels of Max Barry.  

 
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Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.

The Week's Links: July 5, 2013

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All the links posted on social networks this week:

  • The world's smallest museum ➞
  • A history of color photography ➞
  • How New Fonts Are Helping Dyslexics Read and Making Roads Safer ➞
  • From New York to Mumbai, the Top 100 Design Trends of the Urban World ➞
  • 5 1/2 Examples of Experimental Music Notation ➞
  • Every Night You Lose More Than A Pound While You're Asleep (For The Oddest Reason) ➞
  • Mr. Magoo’s Cartoon Version of William Shakespeare’s Comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream ➞
  • Why the Tomato Was Feared in Europe for More Than 200 Years ➞
  • The Gut-Wrenching Science Behind the World’s Hottest Peppers ➞
  • Science on money. Literally. ➞
  • Mapping mobile devices and twitter use. Amazing. ➞
  • Macoto Murayama's Intricate Blueprints of Flowers ➞
  • What Animal Sounds Look Like ➞
  • How to Convert X-Rays From A Distant Star into Blues, Jazz and Classical Music ➞
  • The Rain Room: Making it Rain, Everywhere But On You ➞
  • Creativity Top 5: Week of July 1, 2013 ◉
  • The Gripping, Mind-Blowing, Thrilling Evolution of the Movie Trailer ➞
  • So, how are cocktails named? ➞
  • Hummingbird Feathers Reverberate Like Violin Strings ➞
  • E-Readers Don’t Cut Down on Reading Comprehension ➞
  • On Venus It Snows Metal ➞
  • That “Old Book Smell” Is a Mix of Grass and Vanilla ➞
  • A New 3D Map of the Universe Covers More Than 100 Million Light-Years ➞
  • Waking Up With a New Accent: Foreign Accent Syndrome Is a Real Thing ➞
  • Clapping is Contagious ➞
  • Penguin Book Covers Get Redesigned By Street Artists ➞
  • The Disney Strategic Recipe - Todd Zenger ➞
  • TED Playlists: How does my brain work? ➞
  • The Corporation is at Odds with the Future - Grant McCracken ➞
  • 12 Ideas About The Future Of Media (From New York Times, Digg, and The New School) ➞
  • Salvador Dalí’s 100 Illustrations of Dante’s The Divine Comedy ➞
  • The 50 Books Everyone Needs to Read, 1963-2013 ➞
  • Useful: Resources for Mac and iOS Developers ➞
  • Read Fiction and Be a Better Leader ➞
  • What exactly is skeuomorphism? ◉
  • Free Ebooks for Designers and Developers ➞
  • These Amazing Twitter Metadata Visualizations Will Blow Your Mind ➞
  • How to Build a Digital Brain ➞
  • Nat Geo Mines Its Unpublished Archives for Precious Gems ➞
  • MIT Whiz Sets Out to Humanize the Internet of Things ➞
  • How the Large Hadron Collider Will Bring the Internet to Everything ➞
  • 6 Unproduced Pixar Films and Sequels ➞
  • 20 Photos of Iconic Buildings and Bridges As They Were Being Built ➞
  • A Child’s Introduction to Jazz by Cannonball Adderley (with Louis Armstrong & Thelonious Monk) ➞
  • 7 Great Works That Inspired Geeks To Change The World ➞
  • What Happens When You Deactivate Your Facebook Account ➞
  • Why Spiderman is Such a Good Dancer ➞
  • Leo Tolstoy’s library of work goes online ➞
  • Beyond the Brain: Advances in neuroscience promise many things, but they will never explain everything. ➞
  • At in-depth look at the design for the Vesper app. ➞
  • Arts and culture was fastest-growing philanthropic cause in 2012 ➞
  • New German research finds a darkened room encourages freedom of thought and inspires innovation. ➞
  • Scott Adams: Creativity and Memory ◉
  • Introducing Wireless Philosophy: An Open Access Philosophy Project Created by Yale and MIT ➞
  • 5 Minute Drill: How to Negotiate Like a Pro ➞
  • Notes toward a theory of the theater of bartending. ➞
  • A Visit to MillerCoors' Real-Life Research Lab ➞
  • Creativity Top 5: Week of June 24, 2013 ◉
  • Coffee vs. beer: Which drink makes you more creative? ➞

 

 
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Antonio Ortiz

Antonio Ortiz has always been an autodidact with an eclectic array of interests. Fascinated with technology, advertising and culture he has forged a career that combines them all. In 1991 Antonio developed one of the very first websites to market the arts. It was text based, only available to computer scientists, and increased attendance to the Rutgers Arts Center where he had truly begun his professional career. Since then Antonio has been an early adopter and innovator merging technology and marketing with his passion for art, culture and entertainment. For a more in-depth look at those passions, visit SmarterCreativity.com.