creativity
-
Eureka moments are a myth 💡
•
2 min read
In 1726, an Apple dropped from a tree and hit the elder physicist Isaac Newton on the head. It was then he discovered insight into gravity. Or so the story goes. In reality, he had already done a lot of his thinking while staring at the surrounding apple trees. Newton’s friend and biographer William Stukeley…
-
Where it sings
•
1 min read
A mind running on the “factory setting” defaults to organizational distraction. Everydayness overtakes what was inherent fascination. A mind surrendering to the television or the internet sits stuck in a ludic loop of changing the channels or flicking to the next app. A mind in search of its stimulation stumbles upon daydreams and mind wandering.…
-
Material to hone
•
1 min read
It starts with something to play with. Then it builds into an enormous flower of connections and surprises. The problem isn’t speeding up — it’s calming down the circuits of the brain that are overworked and over-wired. A prompt here, a rough sentence there, stock phrases, we inject certainty onto the page. But the dominance…
-
London-based artist Julie Cockburn discovers old prints of primarily faces and landscapes and uses hand embroidery, ink, and paint turn them into neat-looking collages. Once I have committed to the designed image, the needlework has to be perfect — there is no longer room for play or error. The result is that each embroidered motif…
-
Bending meaning with Max Ernst
•
1 min read
Twists and turns, intended distortions, randomness and the irrational all stitched into a collage. Abstraction makes it compelling. Becoming interested in its weirdness makes it less strange. To break the rules is human. Thinking different frees one from the cage of conformity and dumps water over a fire of paralysis. Max Ernst flirted beyond painting,…
-
A still inchoate creator
•
1 min read
The blank page doesn’t write itself. It stares at you, pleading for you to quit and move on to something else. Those who persist pace themselves into unfamiliar territory. A big bang does no artist any good. What matters is not the end result, but pushing through in a gradual approach. Slow and steady wins…
-
About those light bulb moments
•
2 min read
Ideas spawn as soon as you stop thinking about them, and only after you experimented and done your research. After the work’s been done, the best thing you can do is allow your ideas to bake. Sleep on them. Turn your focus to something else while your brain connects all the neurons and turns them…
-
Back of the envelope…for starters ✍️✉️
•
2 min read
It doesn’t matter where or how an idea emerges. What matters is that the concept exists somewhere on paper, a napkin, an envelope, a Tweet, or a blog post. We can’t begin to assess and dissect our thoughts unless we can see its basic framework and bones visually. I’m not writing it down to remember…
-
Are video games design objects?
•
2 min read
Do video games belong in the museum? I remember checking out the old Tetris and Pong video games at a MoMA exhibit in 2013. They certainly seemed to fit as artistic artifacts. The world’s leading museum of art and design in London, V & A, is making its new exhibit Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt even more contemporary. The show’s curator…
-
Give it time to simmer
•
1 min read
Nothing ever gets wasted. It just needs time to ‘simmer.’ Gather everything you need to know, facts and crazy ideas, and then let them have sex while you do other stuff, even procrastinating. Revelations follow not when you’re always on but when you let the unconscious mind go to work. Being overly wake, in other…
-
Learning to think again
•
2 min read
Humans are thinking creatures. Otherwise, the only difference between humans and other animals is that we have bigger brains that also allow us to speak. But we use less brainpower every day because we use calculators, Google, and self-driving cars. We’re not lazy.; we just prefer to do the things we want so we can carry on with the…
-
Writing is the best app
•
2 min read
I have a brain training app — it’s called writing and it’s the hardest thing I do. The code of writing is practice. You can’t possibly get writer’s block if you force yourself to publish something every day. “Writer’s block is a phony, made up, BS excuse for not doing your work.” Jerry Seinfeld, Reddit AMA…