musings of the lost; smiles of the found

explore-blog: Essential reading/viewing: Arianna Huffington on...

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:24:54 -0400

Essential reading/viewing: Arianna Huffington on redefining success.

How I Lost Faith In The "Pro-Life" Movement

Wed, 22 May 2013 16:24:29 -0400

How I Lost Faith In The "Pro-Life" Movement:

For those of you who don’t know, abortion is illegal in my country and right now it’s a scalding-hot topic, so it’s pretty hard to escape and ignore. I don’t normally blog about politics or ethics or morality issues and I apologise to those of you who would rather not see this kind of stuff from me.

But I’m very staunchly pro-choice. And this article, blog post, story… whatever you want to call it is one of the most interesting pieces I’ve read about the whole issue of pro-life versus pro-choice, and so I wanted to share it. It’s not going to do much in terms of pushing Ireland towards legalising abortion, but it might help some people get their heads in order over the issue.

hahamagartconnect: HOLLIS HART’S CARDBOARD ART The work of LA...

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:25:41 -0400

hahamagartconnect:

HOLLIS HART’S CARDBOARD ART

The work of LA - based artist, Hollis Hart. It’s Seussically Burtonesque and there’s the turn on…if you’re into that sort of thing.

Her Instagram is a wonderland of her current and past projects – one of which, The Barfday Project is a picture series of her gouging herself on cardboard cake surrounded by cardboard balloons and then subsequently ‘barfing up’ colorful piles of cardboard. You see where I’m going with this right?

After she photographs her creations they’re up for bid on her Etsy, Marveled Savage.

*image credit: Hollis Hart

**STORY was originally written for ARTNERDNY & ARTNERDLA - where you can check out my weekly artnerd obsessions.

"If your degree was focused upon one particular area, don’t let that stop you moving in another..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:24:51 -0400

“If your degree was focused upon one particular area, don’t let that stop you moving in another direction. If college hasn’t worked out for you, don’t let that put you off…. If you spot an opportunity early on and are really excited by it, throw yourself into it with everything you have got. Be ambitious. There probably won’t be another time in your life when you have such freedom of opportunity. Grasp it with both hands.”

- Richard Branson’s advice to graduates, echoing Debbie Millman’s fantastic commencement address on courage and the creative life.

Pair with Don’t Go Back to School.

(via explore-blog)

explore-blog: Be realistic, ask the impossible. Put even more...

Tue, 21 May 2013 15:22:17 -0400

explore-blog:

Be realistic, ask the impossible.

Put even more beautifully: Imagine immensities.

artdawdlings: Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth....

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:36:33 -0400

artdawdlings:

Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth. Currently at 43. Very cool - I mean interesting.
Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.

Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

explore-blog: Early sketches for The Great Gatsby cover by...

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:36:04 -0400

explore-blog:

Early sketches for The Great Gatsby cover by Francis Cugat. Pair with the most intelligent meditation on the recent Gatsby cover controversy.

"A good life is still a life. It must involve a full share of suffering, loneliness, disappointment..."

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:35:46 -0400

“A good life is still a life. It must involve a full share of suffering, loneliness, disappointment and coming to terms with one’s own mortality and the deaths of those one loves. To live a life that is good as a life involves all this.”

- Truth. (via explore-blog)

hahamagartconnect: A PICTURE WALK THROUGH PHILADELPHIA’S MAGIC...

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:32:59 -0400

hahamagartconnect:

A PICTURE WALK THROUGH PHILADELPHIA’S MAGIC GARDENS

There’s nothing quite like Isaiah Zagar’s (award-winning mosaic mural artist) mosaic playground… last night I popped over to the Magic Gardens for Garden Sips - a great night out to support PMA’s annual Street Festival ART/GAGE: Celebrate Philly Creativity.

As the sun started going down, and the Garden lit up, I took the opportunity to take some great shots. Enjoy… And if you’re in Philly, make sure you stop by and experience the Gardens for yourself. Maybe even treat yourself to a Mosaic Mural Workshop with Isaiah himself.

Philadelphia Magic Gardens / 1020 South Street / Philadelphia, PA

-Ginger

tylerknott: Typewriter Series #415 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:31:58 -0400

tylerknott:

Typewriter Series #415 by Tyler Knott Gregson

2013yearoflettering: Day 136: There’s a lot of beauty in...

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:25:08 -0400

2013yearoflettering:

Day 136: There’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point? -Pam, The Office Series Finale

"Maybe you have to believe in the value of everything to believe in the value of anything."

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:24:42 -0400

“Maybe you have to believe in the value of everything to believe in the value of anything.”

- A beautiful read by Jon Mooallem. (via explore-blog)

curethriftshop: um… new favorite thing to decorate with.

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:17:57 -0400

curethriftshop:

um… new favorite thing to decorate with.

Here and Now and Then

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:08:55 -0400

bisonjack:

.

Old wind groans as a playful breeze

snakes through the glassless windows

of an abandoned factory. At the end

of a corridor choked with neglect,

the skeleton of a large dog guards

a room where haint blue paint curls

from the walls like petals turning

toward the sun.

explore-blog: Wonders of life

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:05:09 -0400

explore-blog:

Wonders of life

tylerknott: Red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky at...

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:14:28 -0400

tylerknott:

Red sky at night, sailors delight, red sky at morning, sailors take warning. I can still remember my granddad teaching me that in the early parts of mornings on the beach of Shell Island.

literaryjukebox: The grand scheme of a life, maybe (just...

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:06:54 -0400

literaryjukebox:

The grand scheme of a life, maybe (just maybe), is not about knowing or not knowing, choosing or not choosing. Perhaps what is truly known can’t be described or articulated by creativity or logic, science or art — but perhaps it can be described by the most authentic and meaningful combination of the two: poetry: As Robert Frost wrote, a poem “begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.”

I recommend the following course of action for those who are just beginning their careers or for those like me, who may be reconfiguring midway through: heed the words of Robert Frost. Start with a big, fat lump in your throat, start with a profound sense of wrong, a deep homesickness, or a crazy lovesickness, and run with it.

Debbie Millman in Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design

Song: “Satisfy Your Soul” by Jamie Leonhart

iTunes :: Amazon :: Back to Brain Pickings

tylerknott: Typewriter Series #416 by Tyler Knott Gregson

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:03:39 -0400

tylerknott:

Typewriter Series #416 by Tyler Knott Gregson

tylerknott: Sometimes you take a photo and it feels like light....

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:55:27 -0400

tylerknott:

Sometimes you take a photo and it feels like light. Sometimes like strength. Sometimes like grace and delicacy and the emergence of Hope. Sometimes, all of them at once.

"I want to feel it, the breathtaking certainty, that comes when you’re loved."

Mon, 20 May 2013 20:55:03 -0400

“I want to feel it,
the breathtaking certainty,
that comes when you’re loved.”

-

Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregson

(via tylerknott)