I'm generally a fan of many art disciplines from theater to visual art to film. But, as a art buff with a limited budget and never enough time, I've sort of placed music lower on my priority list for things I spend time on. In other words, I've not bought any new music in probably 10 years and I rarely go to see live music.
I'm no connoisseur of music, as I've already stated, but I like OK Go's music. Even more, I do fully appreciate their music videos. For a fun behind-the-scenes, Nerdist (fun podcast for tech and comedy nerds) did a nice podcast with the OK Go guys here.
They've just released their newest video - freakin' gorgeous stop motion toast animation for their song Last Leaf. Check it out:
Last Leaf
OK Go | Myspace Music Videos
Other favorites...
That awesome Rube Goldberg machine one, for This Too Shall Pass:
And then there's that other This Too Shall Pass, the original I believe, featuring the University of Notre Dame's marching band:
Finally, one of the earlier amazing videos, Here it Goes Again:
Showing posts with label process. Show all posts
Showing posts with label process. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Slings and Arrows, for the arts administrator
To ring in the new Gregorian year, I'd like to recommend this series...
I stumbled across Slings and Arrows somehow. Someone along the way recommended it to me (thank you, whoever you are!!) and I've finally finished the three seasons on DVD. A perfect show for those arts administrators amongst us, the delightful comedy extolls the foibles, earnestness, absurdity and glory of bringing arts to the people.
It follows the creative and administrative teams at the fictional "New Burbage Festival," a Shakespeare festival, not unlike our fine state's Oregon Shakespeare Festival (though I believe it's really modeled after the Stratford Festival.) Complete with lots of great Shakespeare, star-crossed lovers, intrigue, ghosts and great accents - thank you Canadians for your most excellent comedy!
I stumbled across Slings and Arrows somehow. Someone along the way recommended it to me (thank you, whoever you are!!) and I've finally finished the three seasons on DVD. A perfect show for those arts administrators amongst us, the delightful comedy extolls the foibles, earnestness, absurdity and glory of bringing arts to the people.
It follows the creative and administrative teams at the fictional "New Burbage Festival," a Shakespeare festival, not unlike our fine state's Oregon Shakespeare Festival (though I believe it's really modeled after the Stratford Festival.) Complete with lots of great Shakespeare, star-crossed lovers, intrigue, ghosts and great accents - thank you Canadians for your most excellent comedy!
Monday, July 12, 2010
on creativity
Here's a fascinating article by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman from Newsweek about the decline of creativity in the US:
The Creativity Crisis
The article uses reports from professor E. Paul Torrance's creativity tests as a jumping off point about measuring creativity, how creativity manifests and why it's important. Early on the author's define creativity (not sure who has "accepted" the definition, as I might wordsmith it some myself):
"The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful, and that’s what’s reflected in the tests. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result)."
On the one hand, the authors posit that "creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom."
"The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded. When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly."
On the flip side, it does seem that artists do have a leg up in the creativity category. Using an example of a study done at University of Western Ontario neuroscientist Daniel Ansari and Harvard’s Aaron Berkowitz, the article highlights the value of right-brain/left-brain process in creativity:
"They put Dartmouth music majors and nonmusicians in an fMRI scanner, giving participants a one-handed fiber-optic keyboard to play melodies on. Sometimes melodies were rehearsed; other times they were creatively improvised. During improvisation, the highly trained music majors used their brains in a way the nonmusicians could not: they deactivated their right-temporoparietal junction. Normally, the r-TPJ reads incoming stimuli, sorting the stream for relevance. By turning that off, the musicians blocked out all distraction. They hit an extra gear of concentration, allowing them to work with the notes and create music spontaneously."
The whole article left me pondering creativity vs. arts and really how we can provide opportunities for more, more, more. This means rethinking everything: arts education, education reform, community development - all of it. To me empowering creativity is empowering individuals to be critically engaged in our world and our environment.
The Creativity Crisis
The article uses reports from professor E. Paul Torrance's creativity tests as a jumping off point about measuring creativity, how creativity manifests and why it's important. Early on the author's define creativity (not sure who has "accepted" the definition, as I might wordsmith it some myself):
"The accepted definition of creativity is production of something original and useful, and that’s what’s reflected in the tests. There is never one right answer. To be creative requires divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result)."
On the one hand, the authors posit that "creativity should be taken out of the art room and put into homeroom."
"The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded. When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly."
On the flip side, it does seem that artists do have a leg up in the creativity category. Using an example of a study done at University of Western Ontario neuroscientist Daniel Ansari and Harvard’s Aaron Berkowitz, the article highlights the value of right-brain/left-brain process in creativity:
"They put Dartmouth music majors and nonmusicians in an fMRI scanner, giving participants a one-handed fiber-optic keyboard to play melodies on. Sometimes melodies were rehearsed; other times they were creatively improvised. During improvisation, the highly trained music majors used their brains in a way the nonmusicians could not: they deactivated their right-temporoparietal junction. Normally, the r-TPJ reads incoming stimuli, sorting the stream for relevance. By turning that off, the musicians blocked out all distraction. They hit an extra gear of concentration, allowing them to work with the notes and create music spontaneously."
The whole article left me pondering creativity vs. arts and really how we can provide opportunities for more, more, more. This means rethinking everything: arts education, education reform, community development - all of it. To me empowering creativity is empowering individuals to be critically engaged in our world and our environment.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Seth's Quake
Here's a short story I wrote a few years ago. I had developed this exercise inspired by some work Matt and I were doing at the time. "Oppstacles" we called them - opportunity-obstacles. I created four buckets to inspire some flash fiction - 1) Word/Object, 2) Place, 3) Relationship/Character, and 4) Song (lyrics). For this particular piece, my randomly chosen items from these oppstacle buckets were: quake, parking lot, obsessed, Bizarre Love Triangle.
Seth's Quake
Seth was sick and tired of being the “bad” brother. Sure, Osi was righteous and all that, but geez can a brother get a break? Osi has a beautiful wife and a son, and what about Seth? Nothing. Torrents. Terror. Destruction. Again, he’s lonely sitting here at the Costco parking lot for the 100th day in a row. Why? To see if Isis will appear again. She doesn’t show herself often, but Seth knows that Isis can hardly resist the wholesale quantities like a crate of fresh strawberries or that 24 pack of toilet paper. Seth has loved his brother’s wife since third grade when her voice cut through the torrent of anger and humiliation he endured as Osi yet again found victory at the school spelling bee. Isis told Seth, “You spell fine, but your real talent is to move the earth with your heart.” And from that point on, Seth did just that. His first natural disaster was a landslide in Peru. 18,000 died. Another kicker was the monsoons in Thailand. 10,000 died. Seth felt great power and shame. Osi, meanwhile brought food to drought stricken Ethiopia. He clothed poor in China. He built houses for homeless in Guatemala. Seth and Osi were like two sides of the same coin. One couldn’t exist without the other. It’s just that Seth’s side got such a bad rap. How can being so good at something be so bad? Finally, in the 23rd hour of the 100th day of waiting, lovely Isis appeared with her perpetual baby boy in a sling. Seth slowly rose up from his waiting spot in parking space 301. Each movement from Seth snowballed into a thundering rumble and shaking of the ground, as he reached forth to his unrequited. Before he could reach her to tell her of his undying love, she fell through the cracks of the broken ground slowly floating, like a feather in the wind. She waved as she always did, the broken record of missed connection between one who loves and one who is loved.
Day 8 NaBloPoMo done. Quarter of the way there.
Seth's Quake
Seth was sick and tired of being the “bad” brother. Sure, Osi was righteous and all that, but geez can a brother get a break? Osi has a beautiful wife and a son, and what about Seth? Nothing. Torrents. Terror. Destruction. Again, he’s lonely sitting here at the Costco parking lot for the 100th day in a row. Why? To see if Isis will appear again. She doesn’t show herself often, but Seth knows that Isis can hardly resist the wholesale quantities like a crate of fresh strawberries or that 24 pack of toilet paper. Seth has loved his brother’s wife since third grade when her voice cut through the torrent of anger and humiliation he endured as Osi yet again found victory at the school spelling bee. Isis told Seth, “You spell fine, but your real talent is to move the earth with your heart.” And from that point on, Seth did just that. His first natural disaster was a landslide in Peru. 18,000 died. Another kicker was the monsoons in Thailand. 10,000 died. Seth felt great power and shame. Osi, meanwhile brought food to drought stricken Ethiopia. He clothed poor in China. He built houses for homeless in Guatemala. Seth and Osi were like two sides of the same coin. One couldn’t exist without the other. It’s just that Seth’s side got such a bad rap. How can being so good at something be so bad? Finally, in the 23rd hour of the 100th day of waiting, lovely Isis appeared with her perpetual baby boy in a sling. Seth slowly rose up from his waiting spot in parking space 301. Each movement from Seth snowballed into a thundering rumble and shaking of the ground, as he reached forth to his unrequited. Before he could reach her to tell her of his undying love, she fell through the cracks of the broken ground slowly floating, like a feather in the wind. She waved as she always did, the broken record of missed connection between one who loves and one who is loved.
Day 8 NaBloPoMo done. Quarter of the way there.
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