Presentation for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners on the topics of "universals, originality/progress, and uncertainty." Examples from the visual arts are used.
1. A [Brief] HISTORY OF THE [Digital] FUTURE Dr. Lori Kent • a visit to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners Please email me with questions or comments LORIKENT@GMAIL.COM
2. GOAL: To look at objects and stories that shape culture –– past, present, and future…with applications to your digital growth. (and a contributor to a more positive future)
15. Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow. • Langston Hughes (1902–67)
20. Greek Krator for mixing water with wine. Classical Greek period was 5 th to 4 th centuries bce
21. “ We can begin a discussion of art making by noting that from very early (as long ago as 200,000 years), humans have been naturally attracted to the extraordinary as a dimension of experience and that at some point they seem also to have been moved to make the ordinary extraordinary—that is, to shape or elaborate everyday, mundane reality and thereby transform it into something special, different from the everyday.” - Ellen Disssanayake
25. “ All that you can imagine you already know.” • Sit Stephen Spender (1909-1995) British poet, novelist, and essayist. He was concerned with on class struggle.
36. Picasso’s Vase, Bowl and Lemon (1907) Matisse’s Still Life with Blue Tablecloth (1908)
37. Matisse’s gouache sketch for Bathers in the River (1907)
38. The first Cubist painting. Picasso (1907) Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
39. Matisse’s goauche sketch for Bathers in the River (1907)
40.
41. “ Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.” • Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
42.
43. Psychologist Robert Weisberg applied the term bifurcation to the notion that new ideas branch off (or build on) existing ones. It is that alteration into a newer form that can be called a creative act.
47. The concept of the roaming gnome and his international escapades dates back to the "traveling gnome prank that began in the 1980s, later reflected in the 2001 French film Amélie.
48. “ Those who cannot remember past are destined to repeat it.” • George Santayana (1863-1952) Born in Spain. A “man of letters” and Pragmatist philosopher who was friends with William James.
54. “ You cannot step into the same river twice.” • Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος Hericlitus (535–475 bce) Heraclitus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who is known for his views on change in the Universe.
62. “ Everything has been thought of before, but the difficulty is thinking it again.” • Johann Wolfgang van Goethe (1749–1832) Goethe is considered one of the greatest minds that Germany has ever produced.
82. GOAL…isolate the five senses and turn memories/associations into either: • a question for further discussion (related to work) • the identification of a new problem • [a step towards] a solution to current work problem Every group gets ONE sense to work with. Work to gather memories related to the given cultural artifact. Follow specific directions. Have fun. See you in 10-15 minutes.
Notes de l'éditeur
Welcome. Story of Pissarro, as a professor of Visual Studies, it is my job to explore the word, past, present and future. I am not from your ad world. I live in the past and the future through the filter of my imagination.—my experience as a researcher, artist, and student of critical and creative thinking…my urban view.
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82 sides presented at an adult level, touching many domains. Most newspapers aim for about the 5 th grade.
Where do ideas come from? What are the optimal conditions for the shaping of new ideas? Find problems and solve problems….EVEN IF THIS TAKES STARING AT CLOUDS.
technology allows people to do more tasks at the same time, the myth that we can multitask has never been stronger. But researchers say it's still a myth — and they have the data to prove it.
Will make links between the past and future under these organizers. – what is common to human experience across culture and time? UNIVERSIALITY – example of Berlin.
Will present stories and beliefs related to creativity. Questions such as what is original?...progress, where do creative thoughts come from?
Will make links between the past and future under these organizers. Culture conditions of “change” and “uncertainty” and what it does, how it feels?
Philosophical questions embedded in this term. What does it mean to be human? What do we share with all humankind? What is predictable about human behavior?
30,000 years ago…why did humans do this? Dissanayake thinks we have an innate need to “make special” Visit to the caves…little boys in Dordogne adventure lost their dog ROBOT, Sept 1940, sniffed a hole. They thought they had found treasure, see link
We have been searching/shaping expressions of meaning and experience—this becomes culture for over 30,000 years but probably longer
Art was invented in the period which saw the invention of recorded time…linking the process of material creation to immortality. In ancient discoveries, we piece together histories for more answers to “Why we create”
Stonehenge: granite-like and weighing 50 tons, at the heaviest, over a distance of 200km (124 miles). We can cooperate? We are driven to ritual? Is there a ritual about your daily existence,.community, is there belonging?
There is what artists leave behind…What we share as a universal? The voice of another’s experience that teaches us, touches us.
What we share as a universal? (How does this impact the culture of advertising)
What do we share as universal? Our thoughts can be grouped into emotions, desires, intellect, drive, etc.
Why make functional things look beautiful in the context of basic survival? COMMON – beauty.
This had a little decoration and a simple form….
But advanced to this…Ancient writers prescribed that a mixing ratio of 1:3 (wine to water) was optimal for long conversation, a ratio of 1:2 when fun was to be had, and 1:1 was really only suited for orgiastic revelry, to be indulged in very rarely, if at all. Universality of butt grabbing?
She is an ethnologist. UNIVERSAL: making the ordinary extraordinary.
Need to make objects and events special…ritual. (How will that continue into the future?) what you make in advertising is what forms the pop culture that is integrated into most aspects of life.
Why think about these things? Is it practical? It’s never a waste of time to know the past (within reason)
Is there anything new? What is progress and does it still function in the same way as the distant past?
HOW ARE THINGS BORN INTO THE WORLD? Original to culture vs original to you.
Picture a cow in your mind.
A cow.
Many Europeans see this cow in their imagination.
Picture half cow half SIFACA (which is a small mammal).
Picture a cow plus SIFACA
The lesson is that we invent new things based on our earned “schemata (not nothingness)” How can you shape a new digital world based in knowledge and invention? THINK OF YOUR NEW digital education initiative as a sifaca
Humans have a need to learn new things so that they can be re-combined into the novel. We share common brain structure. It is good to fill up your brain to capacity with images, trivia, stories, …because you never know what you might re-shape into an advertising idea.
More thoughts on originality... Is there a such thing as “new” or “original” If not, what do those terms really mean in practice?
Picasso as case study: 50,000 objects! (104m at auction) At 18, he will have 74 working years. 675 objects per year. (Are we all capable of two artworks a day for a lifetime?)
Picasso’s childhood sketchbook. Looking at his world, questioning, making meaning, documenting (how many of you have a notebook that you carry at all times?) Picasso did. (what is your visual record?)
Picasso met Matisse in 1905-06 and by 1907 had taken on his subject matter and vice versa.
Matisse
Was Matisse first or Picasso?
Matisse
It is well documented that Matisse introduced Picasso to African artifacts sold in the markets of Paris. 1911 the Mona Lisa was stolen and Picasso was a suspect…but he confessed to the “purchase” of Iberian (classical) statues.
“Art in the age of mechanical reproduction”
Originality? What IS Uniqueness. Draw a perfect circle. Your circle has never existed on earth before. It is a result of your mind/eye and hand working in collaboration, your knowledge of concepts (circle) tool (pencil) ex ofJames McNeil Whistler’s circle.
Again creativity has a process based on experience, 7 year rule, of Gladwell’s 10,000 hours.
Disney used early 20c Japanese erotica for his models of animated females.
Progress? All of our collective, global lives, we are moving forward? Why hunger? Why is there still war? (How did Hitler emerge out of the pain of WWI?)
Why is there still war? (How did Hitler emerge out of the pain of WWI?) Should we end the space program?
Progress is too large of a subject…but it is the basis for a consumer-driven world. How can we better understand progress ---through the lens of digital TOOLS? (What you are learning in the ED program.)
What does it mean to live in the postmodern age? The metaphor of the moving platform. – Saul Ostrow
Modern period timeframe differs by discipline. When did people begin to live like us? Industrial age. Machine age? (or as argued earlier – very early in our history) 1144 abbott sugar and the cathedral of st denis.
The average educated person in the renaissance would never have been exposed to as much information in a LIFETIME as contained in a single Sunday NY Times. Faster by Gleik, info overload anxieties.
Almost 2000 years ago, people were thinking about change just as we do.
Our our technologies forcing us to rethink what is human? Is anything certain? Are there any constants?
Mechanical Maria. What will the world be like in the near future?
Is the world moving beyond our perceptual capabilities?
Technology? The good and the bad.
How many ideas are not realized? How many quickly fade into oblivion ? NOTHING IS STABLE OR CERTAIN. Where is my JETPACK?
In your generation, you inherit beliefs that can help you shape a future…some were not so lucky.
Many promises came with industrialization…it shaped new social structures. Diderot.
Sometimes promises were broken
Are we living to our potential in “in between times.” Turn of the century Alabama classroom.
We have developed an strong positive regard for technology…Turkle at MIT: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other”
As an agency person, you will shape experience filtered through digital technology…no hiding (even in a basement)
Are we thinking about utopia and + possibilities as in previous generations?
And steering our courses…
Whatever that utopia consists of….Series by mid 19 th century Hudson river school painter . Large, rich oils, almost cinematic.
Arcadian….Pastoral poetry
US under Clinton?
In the dynamic times we live, we look to examples of what and what not to do….How many wars are going on worldwide as we sit.
What does history tell us might happen?
If you know about the past, you can make better guesses about the near and distant future.