Creativity

Hit Record

/ Seth Inman / 4 Comments

I like Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

“I feel like, Socrates, or something,” said actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt while looking out at the crowd framed by the round and columned architecture of Bailey Hall.

That’s why, several months ago, when I learned he was coming to do a show in Bailey Hall at Cornell, I committed to waking up early and facing the failing web servers to buy two of over a thousand tickets that were to sell out in less than half an hour, making the show the fastest to sell out at Cornell in a while. And I only bought two because that was the limit per student — by the time I got through to the webpage only balcony seats were left. Continue reading →

Can A Billion Viewers Be Wrong?

/ Organikos / 2 Comments

Large numbers of people have thought and done all kinds of wrong things.  But as TED recently passed the milestone of one billions views, they took count of their most viewed talks.  This was the single most viewed talk (13,344,405 views on the TED website, another 4,004,785 here on Youtube, and then some…).  And for good reason.

Art From The Insanely Curious

/ Organikos / 2 Comments

Artists of many varieties stay mum about their craft and intent, perhaps for reasons best captured in these words. Whether you are interested in the arts or not, the individual pieces in this video installation provide a unique view into the process of creativity–a subject any of us can make use of, or simply appreciate. Click the image above for the video.

An Award, In A Word: SafetyNet

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Safetynet won this year’s James Dyson Award and is explained on the website of that award program:

Function

The goal of the SafetyNet system is to make commercial fishing more sustainable by significantly decreasing the numbers of non-target and juvenile fish caught during the trawling process. Escape Ring devices form a part of this system, and are currently the focus of the development work. The rings tackle the problem of

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Artful Dodging

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In honor of all those who prepared for what would have been today’s New York City Marathon, we remind you of one of last year’s participants.  If Christoph Niemann cannot put a smile on the face, hope may seem lost.

But even then, it just takes a bit more effort.  He drew and annotated the whole Marathon experience.  He started with the pre-race sleep patterns; continued with a self-critique of the first art of the day; and he was off to the races, so to speak.

We have pointed to his wit on at least one other occasion, but we suspect today in particular there are plenty of people who will appreciate his efforts one year ago today. The visuals and verbals do not fail to entertain (click the image to the left for the whole experience). From sunrise to sunset we see the artist at work, deep in thought and sharp in perspective:

tweet avatar  @abstractsunday Christoph Niemann

Really!?!?? That’s all I could come up with? My goal is to be creative today and this is the lamest start ever. http://t.co/LigcGCOW

Sun Nov 6 5:50:15 via Christoph Niemann

Learning, Thinking, Doing

/ Organikos / 2 Comments

Cornell University President David Skorton, and his renaissance man colleague Glenn Altschuler co-write a blog called College Pros(e) and today they make an argument about college majors, and what matters in choosing them–a perspective we happen to share in its entirety.  Click their image to go to the post, which is worth more than the three minutes it takes to read it:

…Liberal arts majors actually do just fine, with incomes far in excess of the median in the United States. And many of them, like the Cornell graduates surveyed in 2009 (download here), are as satisfied or more satisfied with their lives as their classmates in other disciplines. For them, to quote an English proverb, enough is as good as a feast.

The liberal arts, moreover, also serves as a preferred pathway to rewarding and remunerative careers…

Read the whole post here.

Every Day Moments, Poetically Described

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If you did not know his poetry already, here is as good an introduction as any.  If you knew his work but had not seen or heard him, this is worth the few minutes he commands of your attention.  And if you thought poetry was in decline as an art form due to decreased interest in a multi-media-saturated modern world, you may have been right; or wrong.

What Makes the Baya Weaver’s Nest a Baya Weaver’s Nest?

/ Chi-Chi Lin / 2 Comments

“Pick a nest.”

It was the first day of my architectural design studio class and we were told to pick a nest, any nest. I knew this was going to be a great semester: the first assignment was seemingly random, kooky, and just a little ‘out there.’ I was excited! As an architecture student, I love when things are approached in such a non-traditional way.

I know what you must be thinking: aren’t architects supposed to be designing buildings for people? Why are you looking at bird nests?!

I, too, was confused, but I didn’t question it because I had a really cool nest in mind. Because I spent the summer in India with bird-lover and birder extraordinaire, Ben Barkley, the Baya Weaver Bird, who builds its iconic hanging nests around the backwaters of Kerala, was an obvious choice.

Here are my “comprehensive drawings” of the Baya Weaver Bird that attempt to explain the complex relationships the bird maintains with its surroundings.

2nd Draft of Baya Weaver Nest Comprehensive Drawing (By Karen Chi-Chi Lin)

My 2nd draft of Baya Weaver nest comprehensive drawing (Photograph and drawing by Karen Chi-Chi Lin)

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The Noun Project: A Community Of Say Somethings

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Click the banner above to go to the source:

I am a design technologist living in San Francisco and I have an affinity for iconography. I strongly believe everyone benefits from free, open source creative output and have created a several free icon sets for that purpose.

Fighting Fire With Fire

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This isn’t the first time we’ve applauded local libraries taking a stand to protect their place in public service. But the particular example above is prime in terms collective action lassoing social media.  Kudos to Leo Burnett/Arc Worldwide agency for campaigning the hoax, and hurray for yet another library with the backbone to publicly roar.

Troy Public Library would close for good unless voters approved a tax increase. With little money, six weeks until the election, facing a well organized anti-tax group who’d managed to get two previous library-saving tax increases to fail, we had to be bold. We posed as a clandestine group who urged people to vote to close the library so they could have a book burning party. Public outcry over the idea drowned out the anti-tax opposition and created a ground-swell of support for the library, which won by a landslide.

 

Creative, Effective, Collective Action

/ Organikos / 4 Comments

Thanks to our friends at Colossal for pointing us here:

I can’t speak from personal experience about the political climate in Yekaterinburg, Russia but if we take this video from the ad agency Voskhod at face value it appears the powers that be neglected the city’s infrastructure one day too long. Continue reading →

Why Should Bags Have All the Fun?

/ Amie Inman / 2 Comments

For over a year now we’ve been writing about newspaper bags along with the people and organizations who work with them.  We’ve also written about how newspapers are used in other forms of recycling.   I have recently come upon an additional “closed loop” use for this ubiquitous material.

Dutch designer Mieke Meijer in collaboration with design label Vij5 has created a product called NewspaperWood.  The material has the potential to put a portion of newspaper discarded daily into an up-cycle system bringing paper closer to the wood from which it’s made.

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Purposive Fun

/ Organikos / 5 Comments

He is probably already famous in geek world, but Matthew Inman (if you click through to his profile, scroll half way down the page to the Quizzes, Widgets, & Gadgets links on thoughtful subjects) just came to our attention because of our interest in underdogs, in creative communication, and in humor.  Matthew is, in this regard, a trifecta.  After reading the Tesla “comic” (all the way to the end, you should) click back out to the main site where he says he puts most of his time and energy these days. Brighten your day with a good laugh.

From Feather to Frame

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Painting by: Jane Pompilio George

It was with pleasure that I recently discovered a Cornell “neighbor” who happens to be both an artist and bird lover, who takes inspiration from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s round-the-clock “bird cam” nest images.  (Click on the painting above to go directly to her blog.)

People all over the world have been able to experience (and be inspired by) the nesting of great blue herons and red-tailed hawks near the Cornell campus, as well as Osprey nests in other parts of the United States.

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