One of the absolute highlights of TED 2009 was this 10 minute piano performance by the gifted Eric Lewis. When I heard he was covering Evanescence I was prepared for something cringe-worthy, but Lewis’s performance is the most engrossing act of music I have ever seen. It’s humbling to watch someone connect with their art so intensely.
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Design is about commitment: if you want to have a nine-to-five existence, become a civil servant. We’ve already noted that the life of a designer is privileged — but there is a price to be paid for this privilege and that price is unflinching commitment. You have to be prepared to make sacrifices.Adrian Shaughnessy, How to be a graphic designer, without losing your soul. (via ideasonideas)
Creative people don’t want to “do it right.” They want to share the excitement you had when you yourself didn’t know how to do it right. Creative people are unconsciously attracted by the parts that make no sense.Bruce Sterling (via ronenreblogs) (via brocatus)
How to Procrastinate Like Leonardo da VinciLeonardo [DaVinci] rarely completed any of the great projects that he sketched in his notebooks. His groundbreaking research in human anatomy resulted in no publications — at least not in his lifetime. Not only did Leonardo fail to realize his potential as an engineer and a scientist, but he also spent his career hounded by creditors to whom he owed paintings and sculptures for which he had accepted payment but — for some reason — could not deliver, even when his deadline was extended by years. His surviving paintings amount to no more than 20, and five or six, including the “Mona Lisa,” were still in his possession when he died. Apparently, he was still tinkering with them.
Leonardo was the kind of person we have come to call a “genius.” But he had trouble focusing for long periods on a single project. After he solved its conceptual problems, Leonardo lost interest until someone forced his hand. Even then, Leonardo often became a perfectionist about details that no one else could see, and the job just didn’t get done.
If creative procrastination, selectively applied, prevented Leonardo from finishing a few commissions — of minor importance when one is struggling with the inner workings of the cosmos — then only someone who is a complete captive of the modern cult of productive mediocrity that pervades the workplace, particularly in academe, could fault him for it.
Productive mediocrity requires discipline of an ordinary kind. It is safe and threatens no one. Nothing will be changed by mediocrity; mediocrity is completely predictable. It doesn’t make the powerful and self-satisfied feel insecure. It doesn’t require freedom, because it doesn’t do anything unexpected. Mediocrity is the opposite of what we call “genius.” Mediocrity gets perfectly mundane things done on time. But genius is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. You cannot produce a work of genius according to a schedule or an outline. As Leonardo knew, it happens through random insights resulting from unforeseen combinations. Genius is inherently outside the realm of known disciplines and linear career paths. Mediocrity does exactly what it’s told, like the docile factory workers envisioned by Frederick Winslow Taylor.
Artists turn what is only imaginable to some, into that which could otherwise be unrealized.
In other words: “we shall lose that life which remains unarticulated” - Lewis Hyde
And my fascination with dream-like imagery
Daily Routines: Michael Lewis
How do you begin writing? Fitfully. I’ll write something, but it won’t be the beginning or the middle or the end — I’m just getting an idea out on the page. Then, as the words accumulate, I start thinking about how they need to be organized.
What is in front of you when you begin to write? Nothing, except for the computer screen. I write from memory, as if I were writing a novel. When I finish a day’s writing I go back and check the text against my notes to make sure the facts and quotes are right, and that I haven’t inadvertently made anything up. The quotes are almost always accurate because by that point I’ve gone over the material so many times in my head.
Is there any time of day you like to write? I’ve always written best very early in the morning and very late at night. I write very little in the middle of the day. If I do any work in the middle of the day, it is editing and what I’ve written that morning.
What would your ideal writing day look like? Left to my own devices, with no family, I’d start writing at seven p.m. and stop at four a.m. That is the way I used to write. I liked to get ahead of everybody. I’d think to myself, “I’m starting tomorrow’s workday, tonight!” Late nights are wonderfully tranquil. No phone calls, no interruptions. I like the feeling of knowing that nobody is trying to reach me.
Is there anywhere you need to be in order to write? No, I’ve written in every conceivable circumstance. I like writing in my office, which is an old redwood cabin about a hundred yards from my house in Berkeley. It has a kitchen, a little bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room, which I use as as study. But I’ve written in awful enough situations that I know that the quality of the prose doesn’t depend on the circumstance in which it is composed. I don’t believe the muse visits you. I believe that you visit the muse. If you wait for that “perfect moment” you’re not going to be very productive.
(via Daily Routines)
Modcult: Art & Fear
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts
from Art&Fear
(via Kottke)
As John Cage says: the only rule is work.
Seth’s Blog: The power of an algorithmIdeas that spread, win. Sometimes ideas get changed in transmission, and sometimes those changed ideas spread even farther and with more impact than the ideas that came before them.
In business, if you lock down ideas, make them difficult to change and spread and have impact, you fail. If you accept the fact that change is real, that there is competition for your ideas and that amplifying the good stuff works, you can grow and thrive.
Seeing the algorithm in action (which the Net makes easy) helps you understand the notion of failing fast, of exposing ideas to the real world with a posture of perpetual beta. The clothing store Zara doesn’t have clothes for a particular season, they launch clothes for a particular fortnight. They watch and measure and adjust and then repeat.
Your organization (and your career) either embraces change and turmoil and sudden shifts in the rules or you fear it. In times of rapid change (that would be now), embracing the algorithm of the evolution of ideas and systems is a significant competitive advantage.
Ring around the clever - Core77
Two neat ring concepts spotted on cool hunting:
Designer Yoon Jung Yun’s Inner Message Ring is meant to leave an impression, literally.
A few years ago a Korean singer wrote a song about the sunburn mark that he found on his finger after he broke up with his girlfriend and removed a ring he had been wearing for a long time. This is the story that inspired Jungyun Yoon to make ‘Inner message’, a ring with hidden letters on the inside. Inner message is a ring that leaves an impression on the finger. Imagine that your lover giving you a ring that on the surface seems plain, but later when you take the ring off; it says, “Marry me.” Or imagine that even though you take off the ring to clean your hands you are still wearing an impression of the words, ‘always’.
On the other hand (no pun intended), the Two of a Kind Ring…
…is a minimalist piece of jewelry that still packs a sweetly sentimental punch. Designed by Dutch designer Frederik Roije and produced by Droog, “in breaking the ring an engagement with each other will exist.” We can’t think of a more elegant interpretation of a ring’s symbolism, though we imagine this one’s more suited to wearing on a chain than on a finger due to its size and fragility.
