#creativity

ramil_rodaje@diasp.org

https://vimeo.com/283716447

gift

Gift

http://www.passionriver.com/gift.html

Creative documentary inspired by Lewis Hyde’s The Gift. Chronicling gift-based cultures around the world and challenging the logic of global capitalism, the film provokes the question: is life about getting, or giving?

Gift is a feature-length documentary and crossmedia project inspired by Lewis Hyde’s classic bestseller The Gift: “a brilliant defense of the value of creativity and it’s importance in a culture increasingly governed by money and overrun with commodities.”

Gift invites us to question our fundamental economic values, proposing the possibility of a new collective narrative. Following its characters and the challenges they encounter, it explores the questions and contradictions involved in giving and receiving - and inspired by Hyde’s approach, asks what it might mean to “share our gifts” in more meaningful ways. As the film unfolds, it explores the openness and receptivity required to receive our gifts-the things willpower alone cannot produce.

“My concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.”

― Lewis Hyde, The Gift

#Gift #documentary #film #life #sharing #generosity #kindness #openness #receptivity #capitalism #giftivism #gift-based #cultures #gift-giving #values #creativity #crossmedia #project #RobinMcKenna #LewisHyde #TheGift #IntuitivePictures #GaudeteFilms #docu-films

kennychaffin@diasp.org

Well I despised the last E. O. Wilson book I read - "The Social Conquest of Earth" because I found him completely off base

But

His recent book on Creativity which I'm currently reading is Wonderful and Everyone should read it! And then about 1/3 in I come across this which says even more, Everyone Should Read this Book:

"Why then are the humanities kept on starvation rations? Partly because so much of our available resources are appropriated by organized religions. The vast majority of people around the world belong to one particular religious faith or another, which is defined not so much by a belief in God as by its idiosyncratic creation myth. Each member is committed to believe that his religion’s creation myth, accounting for the supernatural origin of the universe and humanity, is superior to all others. The problem is that all the myths cannot be correct; no two can be correct; and almost certainly none is correct."

E. O. Wilson - The Origins of Creativity

#books #nonfiction #creativity #human_nature #evolution

wist@diasp.org

A quotation by Taylor, A. J. P.

Men write history for the same reason they write poetry, study the properties of numbers, or play football — for the joy of creation; men read history for the same reason they listen to music or watch cricket — for the joy of appreciation.

A. J. P. Taylor (1906-1990) British historian, journalist, broadcaster [Alan John Percivale Taylor]

“The Historian,” Manchester Guardian (5 Aug 1938)

#quotation #quote #creativity #enjoyment #historian #history

More notes and sourcing on WIST: https://wist.info/taylor-ajp/48411/

garryknight@diasp.org

Divergent Association Task

The Divergent Association Task is a quick measure of verbal creativity and divergent thinking, the ability to generate diverse solutions to open-ended problems. The task involves thinking of 10 words that are as different from each other as possible. For example, the words cat and dog are similar, but the words cat and book are not. People who are more creative tend to generate words that have greater distances between them. These distances are inferred by examining how often the words are used together in similar contexts. Still, this task measures only a sliver of the complex process of creativity. See the frequently asked questions for more details.

See how creative you are and take the test. I bet many of you could beat my score.

#psychology #thinking #vocabulary #language #creativity

https://www.datcreativity.com/

orauzel@diasp.org

Beijing Playscape Community Center

What is architecture and what is engineering? Is architecture something that reifies aesthetics where engineering does not? If that were the case, this would be an entirely engineered structure. It's driven by determinist developmental psychology and serves that precise purpose for social engineering. Imagining oneself as a child moving about the space, and then growing up and having memories of the space; one can't help but think how these children would become engineers, not theorists; psychologists, not artists.

Creativity is a wholly subjective term whose quantitative value cannot be defined and whose qualitative value demands lack of definition, for otherwise it would be mundane and defined, and thus not creative. The creativity claimed to be fomented by the designers of this urban landscape is that creativity as understood by the designers, by psychologists, maybe by architects, definitely by engineers. The steep slopes with forgiving surfaces intended for "maybe" being scalable by tiny ambitious legs encourages trial and error, a freedom for experimentation, whilst teaching lessons on failures. But it does so in a socially controlled environment. The surfaces are forgiving. The slopes are not walls. The visually confining pipes are curved -- a comparative rarity in urban corridors -- and lead to open grates, not dead ends, where other children might be waiting to teach harsh social lessons. Certainly, no one should be expected to experience such backward and outdated childhood experiences simply because some of us older individuals did, but at what point do we draw the line between cosseting children into manufactured experiences that do not replicate adult life versus meaningfully mediated experiences between adult life and the extreme protection of uterine dependence? Surely this is somewhere between cosseting and meaningfully mediated. In that there is some hope. It's not a tour de force of "architecture" and its engineering claims, because they are social, are plausibly dubious.

But it is not a bad piece of architecture or engineering. It is also not a great piece of architecture or engineering. Indeed, the one aspect in which this structure excels is its mediocrity. Now don't take the term mediocrity for its intense derogatory fog that our modern terminology has unrighteously placed on that word. Mediocrity is also the ability to be a moderate in a time of great extremes. This structure could have been MUCH brighter. It could have been deafening, blinding. It could have been more deuce, sweeter, prettier, saccharine to the point of decadence. Shapes could have been sharper. Curves could have been curvier. This structure does not shout. It may speak to adults a mendacious social conceit, but to children, it is simply a fun place to play. It does its job. In fact in that sense of mediocrity, it is a superbly Chinese expression. It does the work asked of it and no more. It's creativity is sanctioned creativity.

That might sound insidious to western ears. But western ears have also grown accustomed in the last few decades to a cacophony of individualism in our society that has fomented narcissicist tyrants. Again, extremism drives the problems that this structure attempts to solve (unfortunately with mediocrity). To say it is a very Chinese expression is also to remind us that the people of China, not the government that claims to speak for the people, mediate their lives between their strict regime and the necessity of freedoms required to live a moderate life of some measure of significance. Chinese lives are mediocre. Western lives are often not (especially American lives). And it's certainly debatable about which of those might be preferable (neither gets my vote). It's an interesting question we should all ask ourselves about where we find ourselves needing to be between the drivers and impetuses of our lives versus our own personal philosophies and individual will.

And so in that sense, while I still might maintain that this is largely an engineering structure, it holds architectural merit. As always, it doesn't hold merit for the reasons intended by the creator. Such is the nature of creativity. The creators create. Society interprets. The interpreted architectural merit by this former child, as we all are, is that this structure is not a soaring exemplar of developmental determinism. It's a moderately hopping plausibility of mediocre intentions, and the tension that provides for our minds is enough to jump up and down on, a metaphorical mini-tramp. It's fun. Delight might just be out of reach. But it is fun.

https://www.designboom.com/architecture/waa-warehouse-beijing-experiential-playscape-children-06-05-2021/

#architecture #social-engineering #engineering #mediocrity #creativity