Trust Yourself

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Designer James Victore at 99u: 

The first level of trust is having it in yourself—trusting that your opinions matter and are valid. Even believing that your guess is as good as anyone else’s adds a level of personal trust and self-respect. This perspective, allows you the courage to crawl further out on a limb, to take chances and make sure you are not playing safe—or, worse, “giving the people what they want.” It also allows you to listen to your own opinion without the nagging voice of well wishing, but fearful friends (“You’re gonna start a business… in THIS economy?”) whose sincerest wish is to shield you from failure, while only succeeding in protecting you from success. Or, worse, to listen to the tiny critics inside your own head who concoct the wildest scenes possible of failure, carnage and financial ruin. It takes grit to stay on course, to trust yourself, your vision, your calling, and recognize this resistance for what it is: fear.

A perfect complement to the previous post.  

 
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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.

Talking Art In A Capitalist World

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Just know this: realism, in the hard-nosed, nickels-and-dimes business sense, is a way of maintaining the status quo. [...]

Everybody in the music world, I think, subscribes to the idea that music is more than just entertainment, that it is transformative, that listeners should be changed by the experience. But in the face of the encroachment of free-market and capitalist rhetoric and values into every corner of society, that sort of talk about music has been reduced to the level of platitudes. “Music can change the world!” sounds sentimental and unrealistic. But do we believe it or not? Maybe a statement like that isn’t extravagant enough. Art’s realism is no less real than capitalism’s realism, even if the respective vocabularies stand in disparate esteem. The first step toward resolving the disparity might be, literally, to talk the talk. The danger? You might get lumped in with fools. But it’s fools who know the score; and anyone who calls you unrealistic isn’t really interested in anything beyond cosmetic changes anyway.

I continue to be reminded of the Max De Pree quote "We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what way we are."  

(via Michael Sheppard) 

 
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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.

Ballerinas Defined

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The original Italian word “ballerina” just means “female dancer,” but it has become encrusted with layers of mysticism — primarily through the idolization accorded in Russia to ballet’s divas since the 19th century. But to be American is to be ornery, direct, unaffected. Is it possible to be American and this exotic dance vision of transcendence? Can a ballerina represent local or national characteristics in her dancing?

The questions pile up. Does the 21st century even need ballerinas? America is one of many Western societies where women fight for equality in the workplace and can no longer expect men to stand when they enter a room; same-sex marriages are now institutionalized. Ballet had a beginning; it may have an end. In particular, the practice of dancing on point may one day seem as bizarre as the bygone Chinese practicing of binding women’s feet. Do we still need an art form whose stage worlds are almost solely heterosexual and whose principal women are shown not as workers but as divinities?

I ask these questions; I don’t rush to answer them. The future of the form is to be determined not by critics but by choreographers, artistic directors and, not least, by dancers, working together. The answers they are currently providing show us a complex situation for ballet and its women.

 

From the must-read article All-American Goddesses: U.S. Ballerinas Redefine an Art, but What About History? by Alastair Macaulay in The New York Times. Important food for thought as the art form evolves.  

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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 12, 2013

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All the links posted on social networks this week:

  • Paula Scher: Once you know what you're doing, it's not as good ◉
  • 6 Things Mozart Can Teach Entrepreneurs ➞
  • Why you’ll share this story: The new science of memes ➞
  • Why Teaching Makes You Smarter ➞
  • Tale Of A Top-10 App, Part 1: Idea And Design ➞
  • Fantastic: A menagerie of mechanical animals ➞
  • Take a tour of Thomas Jefferson's Monticello home with Google Street View ➞
  • Creativity, math, and 12-tone music ➞
  • 10 Greatest Ideas in the History of Science ➞
  • How clutter affects you and what you can do about it. ➞
  • A Tribute To Alfred Hitchcock ◉
  • A fascinating look at the history of aspect ratios ➞
  • What Makes A Journal Entry Historically Interesting? ➞
  • Check out the winners of 2012-13 FPO Awards ➞
  • Gorgeous: Flowers X-Ray Photos - Two Ways ➞
  • The Big Fat List of Documentaries About Photography ➞
  • So great: The Anatomy of a New Yorker Cartoon ➞
  • Knowledge + Taste = Meaningful Judgement ◉
  • Perspective: The Capacity of an iPod Visualized as Vinyl ➞
  • Del Close's Eleven Commandments of Improvisation ◉
  • Creativity Top 5: Week of July 8, 2013 ◉
  • NPR's The Songs Of The Summer, going back to 1962. ➞
  • The 100 Best First Lines from Novels ➞
  • Explore Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley On Google Street View ➞
  • The Innovative Mosaic Of American Symphonies ➞
  • 25 Free Charlie Chaplin Films Online ➞
  • David Bowie Narrates Sergei Prokofiev’s Children’s Symphony Peter and the Wolf ➞
  • Introducing the Wired Map Lab: Our Quest to Find, Explore, and Make Maps ➞
  • 11 Famous Works of Art That Were Never Actually Completed ➞
  • A Radical New Way to Look at Facebook. Matt Buchanan at The New Yorker looks at Graph Search. ➞
  • Is There A Scientific Definition Of "Design"? ➞
  • Gorgeous: Spectacular Tiny Sculptures Made of Recycled Watches ➞
  • Absolutely engrossed by Miranda July's new art project around email. ➞
  • Building Our New Shrines ◉
  • The Hut Where the Internet Began ➞
  • How to Be a Genius ◉
  • 60 of the world's happiest facts ➞
  • What Lies Beneath: Epic Scenes From NYC's Magnificent Underground Tunnels ➞
  • The Public Theater Launches New Collaboration with Local Communities ➞
  • Jim Jarmusch's 5 Golden Rules (or non-rules) of Moviemaking by Jim Jarmusch ➞
  • 2012-13 FPO Awards Winners ➞
  • Siri’s Creators Demonstrate an Assistant That Takes the Initiative ➞
  • Mick Guzauski On Mixing Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories" with Universal Audio ➞
  • The Surprising History of the Pencil ➞
  • Gorgeous: Flowers X-Ray Photos ➞
  • Why Immersion In Storytelling Is Not Wasted Time ◉
  • Why Genre Rules e-Books, and What the Big Publishers Are Doing About It ➞
  • The Placing Literature App Lets Your Map Scenes From Novels ➞
  • Why Should Children Study the Arts? ➞
  • Being a Lifelong Bookworm May Keep You Sharp in Old Age ◉
  • Resources for Mac and iOS Developers ➞
  • 6 Scientific Tactics to Stop Procrastinating ➞
  • Another cool Google Doodle, this one a mini game commemorating the Roswell incident. ➞
  • 20 Things You Might Not Know About Your Favorite Liquors ➞
  • Falling short: seven writers reflect on failure ➞
  • Why Did Einstein Play the Violin? ➞
  • All of Terry Gilliam's animation bits from Monty Python's Flying Circus ➞
  • 3 Tips on Overcoming Learning Plateaus from David Foster Wallace ➞
  • Fearlessness is not the same as the absence of fear ➞
  • Cavernous Subway System Transformed Into Vibrant Art Gallery ➞
  • The Science Of How Applause Spreads In An Audience ➞
  • Remembering Doug Engelbart ➞
  • Thirteen Tenets Of User Experience ➞
  • DOUGLAS C. ENGELBART, 1925-2013: Computer Visionary Who Invented the Mouse -NYTimes.com ➞
  • Watch Douglas Engelbart Give The Greatest Presentation In History ➞
  • Great resource: PortKit: UX Metaphor Equivalents for iOS & Android ➞ /@khoi
  • So good! - Who Made That? The Magazine’s 2013 Innovations Issue ➞
  • UI Animations: Celebrating animations of interest in software user interfaces. ➞
  • Amazing: Jimi Hendrix "All Along The Watchtower" Isolated Guitar Track ➞ /via @theloop
  • The Right Mindset for Creativity ➞
  • Google uses Big Data to prove hiring puzzles useless and GPAs meaningless ➞
  • The graphic art of Harry Potter ➞
  • Can Brain Scans Really Tell Us What Makes Art Beautiful? ➞
  • 8 Things We've Learned Lately About Thunder and Lightning ➞
  • What Scientists Now Know About Repairing Memories ➞
  • A Look Inside Mel Blanc’s Throat as He Performs the Voices of Bugs Bunny and Other Cartoon Legends ➞
  • Introducing Wireless Philosophy: An Open Access Philosophy Project Created by Yale and MIT ➞
  • Yes! Watch His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks’ Classic Screwball Comedy Starring Cary Grant, Free Online ➞
  • Why the Tomato Was Feared in Europe for More Than 200 Years ➞
  • Mr. Magoo’s Cartoon Version of William Shakespeare’s Comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream ➞
  • Every Night You Lose More Than A Pound While You're Asleep (For The Oddest Reason) ➞

Recommended This Week:  

 
 
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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.

A Tribute To Alfred Hitchcock

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Fantastic short film by Jean-Baptiste Lefournier. 

 
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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.