Notes & Links by Casey A. Gollan on
art, design, creativity and technology on
work

 
To live in the world of creation — to get into it and stay in it — to frequent it and haunt it — to think intensely and fruitfully — to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation — this is the only thing.

Henry James via Wallace Stevens via Rob Greco. cf. “If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!” —Søren Kierkegaard

(via bobulate)

Balanced people don’t usually change the world. If you want to be balanced, go and work at the bank and live for happy hour. Or maybe you make something other than your work a priority, and that’s totally fine too.

But the other thing to think of, it’s that being unbalanced (for lack of a better word) doesn’t mean you have to go into destructive genius mode. I don’t know if it’s your family or your health, but if you really want to head off in pursuit of a big dream, something’s gotta give. It’s up to each of us to determine what that’s going to be and how we’re going to allocate our energy.

Chris Guillebeau (via Bobulate)
Great design does not come from great processes; it comes from great designers.

Fred Brooks, in an interview with Wired

That being said, Brooks offers one piece of universal advice:

The critical thing about the design process is to identify your scarcest resource. Despite what you may think, that very often is not money. For example, in a NASA moon shot, money is abundant but lightness is scarce; every ounce of weight requires tons of material below. On the design of a beach vacation home, the limitation may be your ocean-front footage. You have to make sure your whole team understands what scarce resource you’re optimizing.

(via David)

I need to be effective, not efficient.

If I don’t fight the compulsions, I’m doing myself and everyone else a disservice.

I’m creative. I should create at least as much as I consume.

It doesn’t matter if someone gave me the responsibility or not, I should take it. If I could have made it better and it remains unchanged, I’m responsible for mediocrity.

Randy J. Hunt, Pay Attention and Give a Shit

So I know that this is the third time* I’ve posted this exact quote on here, but I found myself reciting it in conversation last night and I feel the need to remind myself/share it with everyone I know every few months.

* first time, second time

It took me a minute to realize that this is a photo of a real thing. That is amazing. CP+B has a way less glamorous but also awesome version of this that tracks the projects for their larger company.

mrgan:

The Panic Status Board - one of the things I’ve been working on lately. Read Cabel’s writeup!

“We procrastinate when we’ve forgotten who we are.” —Merlin Mann

Samurai Tree 1M, 2006, by Gabriel Orozco

For a year, from late summer 2004 through early fall 2005, Orozco worked “shoulder to shoulder” with Picoli, who had not been trained as a painter. But once Picoli’s skills were finely honed, and the project of turning the Invariant diagrams into paintings had been firmly established, Orozco departed. The work of painting is now one that he delegates to Picoli in Paris and Christian Macia in Mexico City.

All the genius mythology that once went together with the studio—isolation, inspiration, struggle, ecstasy, despair—is absent in the making of Orozco’s paintings.

—Ann Temkin

Craft is defined in its excess—in the element of work that is not required or demanded, but through which the maker makes a gift—unsought, unreciprocated—to others.
Mandy Brown — On craft / from a working library (nicely paraphrasing The Craftsman by Richard Sennett)

Carey Young - Everything You’ve Heard is Wrong
1999

This piece is a video of a performance by the artist held at Speakers’ Corner, London in the midst of the traditional Sunday mayhem of speakers and onlookers. Dressed in a smart business suit, the artist gives a skills workshop on successful corporate-style communication. The video records her impassioned performance as well as the reactions of the temporary crowd of onlookers.

Speaker’s Corner has a long history in the public imagination, whether as a popular site for political demonstrations or as a symbol for unregulated free speech. It is a location renowned for entertainment, madness, and outrage, but particularly for extremes of religious or political belief. Today it appears somewhat an anachronism, with the almost biblical feeling of a souk. Passion, anger and laughter run high among this temporary community. Emotion and conviction are on the surface in a rather unfashionable way: this is not the apathy or irony of the times. Yet despite this sense of a backwards connection with history, the site is a model for the sort of free speech supposedly so central to the ‘information age’. Communication flows freely here, without the mediation of machines.

Third panel from Gary Gilpatrick, Insulator, 2008 by Sharon Lockhart
Three chromogenic prints; 24 3/4 x 30 3/4 inches (62.9 x 76.2 cm) each framed

(via Gladstone Gallery)