Charting Creativity: Signposts of a Hazy Territory NY Times, Patricia Cohen, May 7, 2010 Grab a timer and set it for one minute. Now list as many creative uses for a brick as you can imagine. Go. The question is part of a classic test for creativity, a quality that scientists are trying for the …
Category Archives: Research Blog
Art Power
Boris Guys, Art Power (MIT Press: 2008) “Art becomes politically effective only when it is made outside the art market — in the context of direct political propaganda.” “Of course, one can easily argue that such propaganda art is simply political design- and image-making….They are making advertisements for a certain ideological goal — and they …
About Culture Push
Culture Push is about hands-on learning, group problem solving, serious play and creating connections. The mission of Culture Push is to create a lively exchange of ideas between many different communities; artists and non-artists, professional practitioners and laypeople, across generations, neighborhoods, and cultures. Culture Push serves a diverse international community of thinkers and do-ers from …
Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley
“…in terms of success, it really became more than just the art project that’s sitting on the wall. It became something that people wanted to engage in and talk about the wider implications.” “We actually wanted to give our work to the audience and let them play with it.” At the time of our interview Britta …
If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough – you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal.
-Richard Stallman
Carol Tavris – Mistakes Were Made
Audio Interview at Carol Tavris – Mistakes Were Made | For Good Reason. Carol Tavris describes dissonance theory and how self-justification and self-deception often keep people from changing their minds even in the light of compelling contrary evidence, because the evidence is often dissonant with one’s self-image. She details the implications of dissonance theory for …
Hip-Hop Word Count™
Hiop-Hop Word Count by Tahir Hemphill: We have developed a rubric that estimates the education level needed to understand each rhyme as well as, rates the artistic sophistication employed through the metaphors, similes, cultural references, consonantal/vocalic alliteration and overall pattern of each rhyme. We calculate the final score by averaging the syntactic (readability measures) and …
Why Metrics Are Killing Creativity in Advertising
“Thing is, you cannot truly quantify creativity. And in ever-increasing fashion, our clients’ (and our own) rote dependence on the dusty world of metrics is exactly why creativity is going to hell. When marketing decisions are based on numbers, we lose completely the desire to “waste” time being creative. And heaven forbid we ever again …
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Sublime Accidents
A public service ad for a seatbelt campaign in the UK, gone viral with lots of press too. Nice tension between beauty and horror. But if I didn’t before, will I wear a seatbelt now? Or does this serve the function of reinforcement? Or merely an e-mail forward as banal statement of concern? Hard to …
Provisions Library Blog
Signal Fire is the blog of Provisions Library, a non-profit learning resource for arts and social change. Provisions Library.
God Hates Flags
The infamous westboro baptist church visited San Francisco. WBC’s hate-promoting signs were answered by multiple signs of randomness, nonsensical yelling, and even a unicorn. A portable stereo blared Lady GaGa, while press and people passing by ignored the WBC signs and took pictures and videos of the more entertaining signs. I was also there and …
Al Gore on Creative Activism
Click to play or download here: Al Gore On Creative Activism.
A promise not satisfied
“Aesthetic art promises a political accomplishment that it cannot satisfy, and thrives on that ambiguity. That is why those who want to isolate it from politics are somewhat beside the point. It is also why those who want to fulfill its political promise are condemned to a certain melancholy.” Jacques Ranciere, “The Aesthetic Revolution and …
badpaintingsofbarackobama.com
just look at it: badpaintingsofbarackobama.com.
Again, the truth doesn't matter
A smart lefty is frustrated that the right is getting ahead by asserting lies and the left sticks to the truth. We know the answer here don’t we? Use the truth but tap into the same outrage? Or? An excerpt from the folks at Poplicks: I know that there will always be fierce opposition to …
Underwear Gnomes
Someone mentioned this to me. This still frame is from an episode of South Park where gnomes are stealing kids underwear. When asked why, they explain “stealing underwear is just phase 1.” Profit is Phase 3. But apparently, none of the gnomes know what Phase 2 is and apparently they never thought about it. Phase …
New Anti-Smoking Ads Warn Teens 'It's Gay To Smoke'
New Anti-Smoking Ads Warn Teens ‘It’s Gay To Smoke’
Excerpt from: The Culture Crash by James Panero
While the argument Singer is making here is about philanthropy, one could extend that to any effort made at all. Why make art when you can volunteer at a soup kitchen and make a real difference? The author’s rebuttal I find a little lacking and I think our artists have made a much better case. …
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Eve Mosher
In a few short years, Eve Mosher went from being an abstract sculptor who cared about the environment to an artist making powerful, engaging, and interactive public works about the climate crisis. Kitra Cahana/The New York Times Eve is an artist and interventionist living and working in New York City. Her work has been profiled …
Bottle Bank Arcade
OK, it’s essentially an off-beat ad campaign by Volkswagon, but it does say something about modeling social behavior through fun. Bottle Bank Video
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