Seeing Art

I like to imagine myself as not some one who is very artsy but I can appreciate art. Encounters with works of art are unique because everyone connects, relates and interprets a work of art in his unique ways. Art is intrinsically a different viewpoint or a different vantage point to look at the ways of life. History museums offer a view into the lives of people who lived before us, they provide structural pieces that can be put together to understand the cultures, societies, traditions, politics and economics of the world, as we know it. Then there is another variety of art, one that is more fluid, it simultaneously evokes a set of questions or a complete blank, it is open to interpretation. The Krannert Art museum was interesting as it offered both artifacts, the ones that answer questions and the ones that raise questions!

I had been meaning to visit the museum for past one year but I guess in this case I needed an external reason. I visited the Museum one day in advance to identify a piece of art that I found interesting. Honestly I found it a little difficult to identify some work that really appealed to me. I could admire the diverse collection, small pieces giving me a slice of different cultures and eras. There was a wide range of subjects, different stories but somehow none too compelling.

I finally picked up the Cornwall Kirkpatrick, the “Chicago News Paper directory jug, 1879. The use of a jug as the object for the newspaper directory was interesting for me. I could see a symbolism, the pitcher looked symbolic of how all the news items quench the human thirst for knowledge and information. Further at my workplace we had just released an info-graphic (http://www.infobright.com/tmp270812/ ) on the growing volume of digital data in a technical magazine and the jug made me think of the contrasts on our world in terms of the amount of information that we have around. Interestingly the approximately 1.5 feet tall pitcher can provide enough surface area to encompass all the commercial newspapers in that era in the 19th century. I stood and wondered how the news services today fight to occupy our mind space and no pitcher in the world can hold their names any longer. The digital world has moved on from floppy drives, CD drives, cloud storage and one can only wonder what pitcher would be next! I am guilty of seeing the world through my technical glasses.

The next day group activity helped me to come over my biases, my tendency to look for structures and appreciate the art objects around with a more open mind. Going around looking at the objects, talking aloud our impressions, building up from each others helped me have a more enriching experience of the museum. Once we were done looking at the objects we had picked we started to look around for the pieces that looked really abstract and tried to decipher them. We had taken the assignment to a new level now! As we looked at some of the challenging pieces, we tried to give it our own interpretation. Initially I tried to reconcile the side note and the art object and I could not make much progress. I was not comfortable with the ambiguity and abstractness and then I realized how one person in my group could give a totally new spin to each of the art objects because he didn't try to limit himself with the description. He looked at everything with an open mind without reading any side note and was able to appreciate things in a bigger way. 

I would say that this was the biggest learning for me on that day, to be open and comfortable with abstractness and ambiguity. To not look for accompanying directions right from the onset but to try to take in all the information around and process it gently without any preconceived notions or biases. This approach perhaps gives the most beautiful interpretation to things and is the most enriching of experiences.

One Thing

This blog was partially inspired post the Da-Vinci reading. I was overwhelmed with everything that one individual could accomplish in a lifetime, however on deeper reflection it appeared that to really develop a skill, you just need to really learn, 'One Thing'.

In life all we need to know is 'one thing', as simple as it may sound it is the most honest realization that I have ever had. I cannot claim to have explored an exceptionally wide array of experiences in life. I cannot claim to be the medallion at the end of the race. And I ain't no 'Sir Oracle; when I ope my lips, let no dog bark!”. I guess enough self-depreciating disclaimer, however we do grow wiser about some things as we go along.

When I learnt cycling back in first year in college, I would borrow it from my second year seniors and would try learning by myself in the free open spaces we had within the hostel compound. I took to the road only once I had learnt enough so that I wouldn't 'repeatedly' become the victim of cycle-hazing/ragging by the school kids who couldn't fathom how someone could make it to college without knowing something as basic as cycling. This fear wasn't a figment of my imagination; I learnt the hard way that you take to the road only when you can confidently be decently inconspicuous there! However this learning wasn't the 'one thing' that changed the course of my life. More basic than the fear of taking to the road was the challenge that I couldn't balance my cycle. I would focus on the wheel to make sure I wasn't banking either way and try to adjust the handle only to fall each time. Seeing me struggle 'the oracle doth spoke- child take your eyes off the wheels and look straight ahead...just don't look down.' He was the hostel guard; 'baba-ji' and he just shouted across to me from his watch tower and went back to smoking his bidi. Honestly that was the only fear I had to overcome, I didn't have to fight any rowdies or intimidation. I didn't have to learn to focus and align my eye, hands and feet and the wheel, I just had to learn to look away and look straight ahead. The rest would fall in place.

Yes it was that simple, just one thing to get the wind talking as I rode along in my purple ladybird!

The other anecdote isn't this prehistoric, this one is more recent. As I ran along the beach in Rio, I was jealous of all the people who could get into the waters and play with so much ease and absolutely no care for the world around. At that point swimming didn't just look like a physical activity it looked like a cultural hallmark. In India I felt our relationship with water is ostensibly sanctimonious or a little hypocratic in some ways. I have always loved the waters but I had never experienced this freedom and ease before. I'll have to admit that I have never been to Goa, and everywhere I did go I found myself around people who would walk gingerly along the shore secretly wishing they could throw themselves in the water with no care for the world. As a society we soak in so many inhibitions that we are afraid to be seen all free and wet and frolicking in water! All this critical realization wasn't the one learning that I needed in order to woo the waters when I went swimming this summer. 
I didn't enroll for any professional help and went all cultural. And what a cultural learning it was, my Chinese roommate was kind enough to religiously coach me for the first two days. Her Chinese bunch of friends took me under their wing and I was learning 'frog style' just as all Chinese kids in primary school! The south East Asians were the only persistent swimmers, the Americans loved to take a quick dip and then sloth and float in the summery sun. The learners, the having fun and the lazing crowd all shared the same lane and you could strike instant comradeship with the exchange of few smiles and sheepish grins. I persistently went every alternate day, initially just playing around and then slowly pushing myself a little harder. I observed others swim almost effortlessly but for me the waters were like a strong opponent that I had to fight with my hands, legs and my breathing. I had some what learnt to move my legs and hands which had some resemblance to the swimmers around me, but my breathing was killing me. I couldn't time it, and would end up coughing out or drinking in the water. I knew I was doing something wrong, I was missing something. One fine day after admiring for long a Korean guy who swam past me every time I was gaping for breathe I asked him for a helpful tip. He was caught a little off guard and in that slightly awkward exchange of English sentences mid water I could only pick up the word 'rhythm'. Yes that is the 'one' thing about swimming, following your own rhythm. 

The hands, legs, breathing all need to follow a rhythm and when you get one, the waters sing along.

Ah I feel so inadequate at times, learning to do all the things that most people seem to know since birth. And may be this should be a consolation for me that fundamentally I am just missing out on ‘one thing’ before I can join the elite club. So I tell myself it’s just ‘one thing’ that I really need to know before I can drive someday. Inshallah!

The Da Vinci Code

"The genius of Leonardo resides not just in what he created but in what he can inspire us to create

1) Curiosita: Approaching life with insatiable curiosity and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning

2) Dimostrazione: Committing to test knowledge through experience, persistence and a willingness to learn from mistakes

3) Sensazione: Continually refining the senses, especially sight, as the means to enliven  experience

4) Sfumato: Embracing ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty

5) Arte/Scienza: Balancing science and art, logic and imagination - ‘whole-brain thinking’

6) Corporalita: Cultivating grace, ambidexterity, fitness and poise

7) Connessione: Recognizing and appreciating the interconnectedness of all things – ‘systems thinking’"

I saw a certain unity in the seven attributes discussed through the book. I have my own theory of 'One Thing' (http://sk-driftwoodstories.blogspot.com/2012/08/one-thing.html-the link takes to the original post on my public blog)and as  I mulled over the seven key things discussed in the book. I tried to synthesis them into one guiding principle.

As we sat down in a group discussing about the different aspects of the book, we again came back to  putting the message across in one statement. And perhaps that would be 'to immerse in life' and explore each day a new question, a new experience.

Not sleepwalking!

I had 20 minutes before my creativity class and so i just went and sat outside the library to soak in the sun. And I just became a part of the game between the sun and the cloud.
For a brief 10 minutes I was aiming my camera at the shining sun and the clouds floating beautifully at a distance. Perhaps that was just part A of the celestial game. The winds of change soon came over, I felt a cold chill run through. The brightness around disappeared in a fraction of time as a big dark cloud overshadowed the sun. I angrily aimed my phone camera at the arrogant cloud.
They say 'every dark cloud has a silver lining', Thank God for cliches they do come true!
I encouragingly smiled at the sun peeping from between the clouds and walked back for my class.

This post was after the Da-Vinci reading and 'Not sleepwalking' is the takeaway I took from the book and his life. To constantly look out, appreciate, question, explore... that's the pursuit!

Curiosity and Problem Finding

I ended up rushing through my presentation in class because the problem that I had in my head was still sketchy. I had images, videos that revolved around the theme but the idea wasn't crystallized enough as a problem statement. I would like to share here the cues that I had observed and collected over the week.

Starting with the initial problems that I considered.

Good bye Wires: Wireless power transmission
The presence of wires is intensely conspicuous in all three images. I wonder how much of wiring we have installed in the entire physical world. Our work places, housing facilities modern cities are all a mesh of wires. Nature on the contrary seems to be a master of everything wireless. Right from solar energy to rain, everything around is wireless.

I discussed the idea of wireless transmission with my office colleague who saw me complain about the clutter of wires on my work desk. He introduced me to Tesla.
However it was not until that I accidentally opened the following Oatmeal comic strip forwarded by a friend that I came to realize the genius of Tesla.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

The next idea that I toyed around can be guessed from the following images:

I thought about jet lag and time difference. I realized that I couldn't possibly do anything for the jet lag as the body clock is the premise of nature's design. However the watch that I wear could definitely be designed with GPS facility and perhaps with some more features to make it smart. 

The whole idea seemed to have a 'James Bond' kind of a feel so I abandoned it for a more  'Planet Earth' scope.

Problem Background:

I am concerned about environmental issues perhaps because I grew up in close proximity to nature-lived in a small hill station and spent my winter break in my farmhouse. As a society we are growing into being more lavish and wasteful of the natural resources and this concerns me. The following Tedx talk highlights the growing risk and problems arising from existing consumption habits. I didn't play this video as part of my presentation, however I have embedded it here for viewing at one's leisure.

The issue of sustainable consumption has become a subject of growing public and government interest; there have been dispersed efforts to promote sustainable consumption but the overall consumption patterns still leave much to be desired. I could start with identifying my own consumption patterns in the past two days that are unsustainable. I am well aware that single-use bags, both paper and plastic, represent a huge threat to the environment. This threat is not only related to the sheer volume of them ending up in landfill, but also to the resources needed to produce, transport and (occasionally) recycle them, and the emissions resulting from these processes. However while buying monthly groceries from Wal-Mart I used over 20 plastic bags when I could reduce the usage by carrying a personal reusable bag.

Another Cue: The fresh stimulus that made me reflect on this question was a video that we watched during a class presentation for new product development. The presentation was on customer creativity and consumption patterns and we saw the following video.

Thought Process:
The belief behind this campaign is that the easiest way to change people's behavior for the better is by making it fun to do- The fun theory. Fun games look like an interesting way to initiate a change I was impressed with the concept however in the next instance I was wondering whether such changes are truly sustainable. What frameworks, incentives, campaigns would prove to be effective over a long term . I have myself never taken any psychology classes so my understanding of this problem is not very clear but I am willing to learn.I do not have the answer to this question but I would like to investigate and analyze this concept further.
To sum up: Looking at the problem I realize that conscious effort is required to reduce our plastic consumption. I cannot aim to discover a breakthrough ecofriendly replacement for plastic but I would like to identify ways in which usage patterns can be altered through creative conditioning exercises (campaigns) and identify models and frameworks that can sustain these changes. 

Scaffolding ideas

The name of the blog is a play on the words 'creativity' and 'travelogue'. I envision the blog as a 'creativelogue' compiling thoughts, ideas, inspirations,insights,understandings as I hike along the new turns and twists of life with an inquisitive soul.
The other purpose of the blog is to serve as my final submission for a Personal Creativity Archive(PCA) assignment for ENG 598-Creativity Innovation & Vision, fall 2012 class.
Since early childhood I have been in the habit of  writing my thoughts in a diary but later I switched to writing a blog so that I could share my scribblings and half baked thoughts with my friends and develop them better. Due to the ease of access and sharing and linking with my already existent blog, I decided to turn in the submission in the form of a blog.
The post title draws from the first concept about creativity that we discussed in the first class. A visual image can help draw the analogy between creativity and scaffolding. As I look at the intricate scaffolding to hoist just a two flight staircase, it makes me see the parallels more clearly!

It takes a conscious effort to move away from the natural process of category recognition that the brain is conditioned to follow.
It takes a conscious effort to step back from jumping to finding solutions and instead try to understand the problem in hand.
It takes a conscious effort to hoist multiple ideas-seemingly unrelated to develop the framework for a truly creative and innovative solution.
And this blog is part of this very conscious effort to develop this alternative approach. Build up a storehouse of ideas which can be juxtaposed to solve real life problems.

The class moves from discussing concepts to in class activities to better develop insights as we listen and talk of the ideas brimming in our heads. The one point that we all seemed to agree upon was to start with 'What is the problem?'
The one thought that stayed with me as I left the class was the 'First Do no harm' principle from doctor's Hippocratic oath. Of all our best intentions we might actually affect more damage than good. The question when and how to help seems to have a philosophical undertone. The question also highlight the need to develop a creative solution that takes into account the context and culture. Solution developing is not about grafting a solution independently of its environment which is bound to create more havoc but to think broadly about the ecosystem at large.

The creative context continues as in the next class we talk about juxtaposition.This is a slightly different blogging experience for me since I have a timeline and a definite source of content for my next blog!