Tech­nol­ogy & the Arts… and maybe other fields?

Posted on October 30, 2011

When I started my first busi­ness, HotScarves, I had to learn about the Inter­net and it’s pos­si­bil­i­ties for mar­ket­ing. The graph­ics art enthu­si­ast in me enjoyed the idea of com­pos­ing, design­ing, and writ­ing for my hum­ble web­site. It was the begin­ning of a long, excit­ing voyage.

A dif­fer­ent busi­ness later, Buf­foon­ery Work­shops, and deeper into the web­site world, I came face to face with Social Media. That’s where I felt com­pelled to draw a line. I’m an ARTIST! I can’t do this! I’ll be on the com­puter too much! I don’t want to do this!

But I did. I had to. Oth­er­wise, I would be miss­ing out on excit­ing mar­ket­ing tools, and ways to con­nect to the global world. A few years later, I’m a social media zealot, and even coach oth­ers who were like me at the beginning!

The fol­low­ing arti­cle, how­ever, dis­cusses another level of con­nect­ing with oth­ers on the Inter­net. “Crowd-​Sourcing” is a phe­nom­e­non that can excite the input of many oth­ers for a vari­ety of projects. And, I don’t think it is lim­ited to just the arts. What do you think?

Here’s a lit­tle video to help define crowd­sourc­ing before you read the article:

Crowd­sourc­ing Creativity

By Naina Singh

At a TED talk ear­lier this year, Aaron Koblin, an artist “spe­cial­iz­ing in data and dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies”, began his talk by draw­ing atten­tion to a tweet from a media the­o­rist: “19th cen­tury cul­ture was defined by the novel, 20th cen­tury cul­ture by cin­ema, the cul­ture of the 21st cen­tury will be defined by the inter­face.”

Now let’s deter our­selves from con­tem­plat­ing how we live in a world where tweets have become the new medium for philo­sophic apho­risms. Instead, let’s con­tem­plate the inter­face, which means “a com­mon bound­ary or inter­con­nec­tion between sys­tems, equip­ment, con­cepts, or human beings.” Some thought­ful sec­onds later we can begin to com­pre­hend the impor­tance of the inter­face and how it has pro­vided the world with numer­ous plat­forms for com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the most impor­tant of them being the Internet.

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Being Con­nected …decreas­ing envy & sabotage?

Posted on October 24, 2011

How unpleas­ant is it to work beside some­one who pre­tends to get a long with you, but ulti­mately is send­ing a deep green cloud drift­ing your way?

I am not unfa­mil­iar with that feel­ing of some­one close by mak­ing things dif­fi­cult because of envy. I just didn’t real­ize it at the time. “Who would be envi­ous of ME?! Good grief!” When those same peo­ple became hap­pier, and even joy­ful, when I was going through a rough period, I knew this was NOT nor­mal! Even worse, when ges­tures of sab­o­tage were deliv­ered with the goal of spoil­ing a good moment occurred, it was time to zoom away.

“Buf­foon­ing Envy…”

A chal­lenge if you are stuck work­ing with some­one of this nature!

Years later, I think, what if we had “buf­fooned” or played together in some bois­ter­ous way? Would that have improved our “togeth­er­ness” and ulti­mately our work­ing relationship?

Do you have expe­ri­ences of this nature? How were they solved?

The fol­low­ing arti­cle got me pon­der­ing the ben­e­fits of play­ing with our workmates!

Envy Begets Sab­o­tage in a Dis­con­nected Work­place: Study

By Eve­lyn So, Epoch Times:

Man­agers take note! Envi­ous employ­ees are more likely to engage in work­place sab­o­tage if they have low social iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with their co-​workers, new research from North Amer­ica suggests.

“We often hear that peo­ple who feel envi­ous of their col­leagues try to bring them down by spread­ing neg­a­tive rumors, with­hold­ing use­ful infor­ma­tion, or secretly sab­o­tag­ing their work,” study co-​author Karl Aquino of the Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia said in a press release.

Read rest of the arti­cle by Eve­lyn So, Epoch Times

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Con­vic­tion… before cre­ativ­ity and innovation…

Posted on October 19, 2011

HotScarves or Buffoonery?

Years ago, after a back oper­a­tion that stopped me work­ing part-​time as a cos­tume set super­vi­sor, I started a lit­tle busi­ness called HotScarves. I’d send you to the web­site, but… it ran away to the outer world of lost web­sites. I had worked hard on my cre­ation, a heated fleece scarf, but after many scarves my energy was wan­ing and my “con­vic­tion” was dropping.

Teaching Buffoonery at VFS

Teach­ing Buf­foon­ery at Van­cou­ver Film School

I was doing it for the wrong rea­sons. Money. And, that’s not enough.

I had a lit­tle chat with myself, and dug deeper into my soul. I returned to my love of act­ing, of direct­ing and designed the work­shop I now offer. Buf­foon­ery Workshops.

Okay.. that’s the reader’s digest ver­sion, but that’s all you need to know, for now. What is impor­tant here is that my con­vic­tion for my ser­vice is a hun­dred fold more than my cozy fleece. I’m excited, pas­sion­ate, and I love stir­ring up the Buf­foon­ery in every one. It’s a free­ing activ­ity, and even soul­ful. My atti­tude and stay­ing power is strong, and I believe it’s all about that word in the fol­low­ing bril­liant arti­cle: Con​vic​tion​.It is the dri­ving force to our creativity.

Is your con­vic­tion strong in your work­ing life? And, what is it?

Why con­vic­tion dri­ves inno­va­tion more than creativity

By Doreen Lorenzo, pres­i­dent, frog

In busi­ness cir­cles, “cre­ativ­ity” has become a buzz­word to describe a desired trait among employ­ees. But to inno­vate, con­vic­tion is more important.

FORTUNE — In busi­ness cir­cles, “cre­ativ­ity” has become a buzz­word to describe a desired trait among employ­ees. It’s widely believed that hav­ing cre­ative thinkers on staff will boost over­all team lev­els of inno­va­tion. Yes, cre­ativ­ity can lead to a sur­plus of orig­i­nal ideas. But when it comes time to sell those con­cepts inter­nally, and then later take those ideas to mar­ket, cre­ativ­ity is not enough. More impor­tant is conviction.

Look at the most-​admired busi­ness lead­ers today. They tend to resist com­pro­mises, even when faced with wide­spread skep­ti­cism or even com­plaints from cus­tomers. Mark Zucker­berg, Facebook’s young founder, is known for the exact­ness of his vision, which dri­ves each design or soft­ware tweak of the social net­work­ing soft­ware that he cre­ated, despite the now-​requisite uproar each change incites among Facebook’s 750 million-​plus users (whose own con­vic­tions, it should be noted, help drive sub­se­quent iter­a­tions and pri­vacy poli­cies of Facebook).

Read the rest of the arti­cle by Doreen Lorenzo at CNN.Fortune

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To Play or Not to Play.… that is the question?

Posted on October 17, 2011

Recently in Van­cou­ver, Canada, a big con­tro­versy arose because of– quote from arti­cle: The Van­cou­ver Sun: “ping-​pong, air hockey, foos­ball, archery, bocce, shuf­fle­board, Fris­bee golf, vol­ley­ball, bas­ket­ball and the Fris­bee game Ultimate.”

And more:

“Other sug­ges­tions included play­ing games like Pic­tionary or Scat­ter­gories, learn­ing to play the Chi­nese tile game mah-​jong, going for a hay ride or a trail walk, or relax­ing and chat­ting at a campfire.”

(Sounds like a lot of fun…. oops)

These actions took place, or were encour­aged to take place dur­ing the Pro­fes­sional Devel­op­ment Days for the Eric Hum­ber School of Van­cou­ver. It did not go over well with B.C. Teach­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion. And, accord­ing to the Van­cou­ver Sun, was deemed “regret­table” by B.C. Teach­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Susan Lambert.

When I read this arti­cle, my heart sank, and then I laughed at the absur­dity of the seri­ous­ness of it. If the B.C. Teacher’s Fed­er­a­tion had read Stu­art Brown’s book, “Play– How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imag­i­na­tion, and Invig­o­rates the Soul“, they might have been prais­ing the choices of Eric Hum­ber School. I sure would have.

Indeed there are many stud­ies that prove that “play­ing” is a healthy neces­sity for our sur­vival, and a big boost for employ­ees, revealed in much more pro­duc­tiv­ity. Hmmm…. And, as Geoff John­son from the Van­cou­ver Sun pointed out in his arti­cle, “Play Day for Teach­ers Not Out of Place in Big Busi­ness World“, the cor­po­rate or busi­ness sec­tor are real­iz­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties their com­pa­nies have if they allow their employ­ees to play, and ulti­mately get more innovated.

Check in with some of the com­pa­nies who like to play and see how they’re doing. Google, Microsoft, Van­cou­ver local 1 – 800-​GotJunk embrace and reap the benefits.

“Pro­duc­tion mat­ters now, but cre­ativ­ity is the source of all growth.” “Play is the mother of invention.” – Stuart Brown, from his book “Play…”

Do you have oppor­tu­nity for play in your work? Would love to hear about it!

Happy Par­tic­i­pants in Buf­foon­ery Workshops

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Just Show­ing Up & Creating…

Posted on October 8, 2011

The below inter­view caught my eye. I sup­pose it did because of a pact I made with myself ear­lier this year. June 3rd to be exact. I was on the plane head­ing back East and to what I knew was going to be a chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tion. My par­ents, both unwell, needed help. I am an “only child” so it was going to be tough.

I pre­pared myself men­tally on the plane. I asked myself what I could do to help keep me grounded and still feel­ing like me. “Write.” A voice told me to write every­day, no mat­ter what. “And, write a poem every­day, no mat­ter what.”

And that’s what I did. It was ther­a­peu­tic to show up to my nightly rit­ual, but a lit­tle tougher to show up to the poem. But, I did it. And, it helped as I swirled around with my par­ents in a mix of doc­tors, hos­pi­tals, social work­ers, psy­chi­a­trists, home care, nurses, care facil­i­ties, and angelic friends. Some­times it was one in the morn­ing, in com­plete exhaus­tion that I arrived at my journal.

Actu­ally, I’m sur­prised I ful­filled my pact. (Most of the poems are prob­a­bly crap, but, you know, what? Some of them are kind of good.)

But more impor­tantly, despite every­thing, is that I proved to myself that no mat­ter what, if we just show up, we can cre­ate. Even if we don’t feel like it.

It’s time for me to return to that dis­ci­pline. Want to join me? What do you think?

Cre­ativ­ity Is Hus­tle: Make Some­thing Every Day

“Doing some­thing start to fin­ish each day not only helps you get over the fear of start­ing a project, but also the fear of fin­ish­ing one,” explains Mike Winkel­man, an ani­ma­tor and VJ known as Beeple, and cre­ator of Fly­ing Lotus’s “Kill Your Cowork­ers” music video. On May 1, 2007, he decided he was going to com­plete an art project every day. He hasn’t missed a day since — he calls his projects “every­days.”

Read the rest of the arti­cle by: Kasia Cieplak-​Mayr von Baldegg

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Laugh­ter.. how could it not be good for you?!

Posted on September 15, 2011

I was so happy to stum­ble upon the fol­low­ing arti­cle thanks to the fab­u­lous Daniel Pink‘s tweet.

Any study that pro­motes laugh­ter as a good thing makes me happy. I grew up with a good sense of humour, and lots of gig­gling as a result. I am grate­ful I was “eas­ily amused” as was told many times by friends. (I didn’t care as I had way more fun than them, any­way!). Unfor­tu­nately, a lot of us lose our easy humour as we grow older. (not every­one) So… going out of your way to re-​discover those laughs is a good thing! Buf­foon­ery any­one? Haha!

Would love to know what makes you laugh? And how often do you laugh?

An irresistable bouffon!

An irre­sistable bouf­fon! (photo by Chara Berk Photography)

Sci­en­tists Hint at Why Laugh­ter Feels So Good

Laugh­ter is reg­u­larly pro­moted as a source of health and well being, but it has been hard to pin down exactly why laugh­ing until it hurts feels so good.

The answer, reports Robin Dun­bar, an evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gist at Oxford, is not the intel­lec­tual plea­sure of cere­bral humor, but the phys­i­cal act of laugh­ing. The sim­ple mus­cu­lar exer­tions involved in pro­duc­ing the famil­iar ha, ha, ha, he said, trig­ger an increase in endor­phins, the brain chem­i­cals known for their feel-​good effect.

His results build on a long his­tory of sci­en­tific attempts to under­stand a decep­tively sim­ple and uni­ver­sal behav­ior. “Laugh­ter is very weird stuff, actu­ally,” Dr. Dun­bar said. “That’s why we got inter­ested in it.” And the find­ings fit well with a grow­ing sense that laugh­ter con­tributes to group bond­ing and may have been impor­tant in the evo­lu­tion of highly social humans.

Read rest of the arti­cle by James Gorman

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The Power of Day Dream­ing… & no electronics..

Posted on May 28, 2011

Do you ever allow your­self to just sit and stare? Years ago, I used to love long bus or train rides for day dream­ing and let­ting my mind wan­der. It was def­i­nitely a favourite pastime.

Witnessing nature stare

Wit­ness­ing nature stare… Ucluelet, BC

These days it seems harder to find those moments as there is always some­thing to DO, and always some­thing close by to DO it with. Even my short bus rides into Van­cou­ver can be filled with email­ing, catch­ing up on a phone call, or read­ing. Even on the toi­let there is some­thing close by to read if you are in there for a longer moment.

When do we actu­ally stop, and do NOTHING? And, does “noth­ing” have to be a bad word? I know I have this under­ly­ing guilt if I’m not being pro­duc­tive, so sit­ting becomes more chal­leng­ing. Arg.

The fol­low­ing arti­cle is con­fir­ma­tion, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that sit­ting, day­dream­ing, and allow­ing the muse to finally slide into your oth­er­wise bizeeee brain is a very impor­tant, and good thing!!

Switched-​on world is killing cre­ativ­ity, expert warns

By Claire Connelly

  • Switched-​on world is killing our creativity
  • Anthro­pol­o­gist says we need boredom
  • “Cre­at­ing a space for cre­ative thought”

MOBILE phone use and instant access to the inter­net from almost any­where could be sti­fling cre­ativ­ity, accord­ing to Aus­tralian born cul­tural anthro­pol­o­gist, Genevieve Bell.

“I won­der if it means we don’t have enough time to imag­ine things”, Ms Bell told news​.com​.au.

“I think there’s some­thing really pow­er­ful about one’s own imagination.

“We do a lot of con­sum­ing but where’s the moment where you develop your own point of view?

“Where’s the moment where you syn­the­size what you’ve been think­ing about, where’s the moment where you react to it, where you cre­ate some­thing that echoes it or that chal­lenges it”.

“That’s a much harder thing to do.”

Read the rest of the arti­cle by Claire Connelly…

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Can humour also be con­sid­ered art?

Posted on May 18, 2011

This is a great ques­tion, and I’m look­ing for­ward to your feed­back. How do you view humour as in the “art” cat­e­gory? When I look at the Oscars, and how dra­matic movies tend to bask in the lime­light, I can’t help sur­mise that maybe humour isn’t high on the artis­tic list.

Buf­foon­ery as an Art?

Such a shame.

When I wit­ness the jour­neys my stu­dents (in my buf­foon­ery work­shops) under­take to attain the truth of their bouf­fon, and then mir­ror the world around them, includ­ing “their own human”, I believe they should receive the art stamp. Humour at it’s best usu­ally makes us look inwardly and see a sit­u­a­tion in a whole other light. Isn’t that art?

The fol­low­ing arti­cle is a fab­u­lous door opener to this sub­ject. What do you think? What are some sig­nif­i­cant humor­ous moments that have impacted your life, or day?

No one said art couldn’t be funny

By David Quantick

Despite hav­ing won every acco­lade going, Woody Allen still doesn’t see him­self as any­thing spe­cial. “I con­sider myself a hugely lucky film­maker,” he said at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val last week. “I’ve never con­sid­ered myself an artist. I’ve aspired to be one, but I’ve never felt that I have the depth or sub­stance or the gift to be an artist.”

It brought to mind the words of another gen­uine artist, Oscar Wilde, when he said that “art is use­less.” But that was just him up to his old tricks. He wasn’t telling peo­ple that art has no prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion so much as annoy­ing con­tem­po­raries who felt that art, like indus­try, empire and other attrib­utes of healthy, vir­ile Vic­to­rian cul­ture, should be use­ful –rather than dubi­ous, louche and merely enter­tain­ing, like Wilde and his work.

Read the rest of the arti­cle by David Quantick at The Van­cou­ver Sun..

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Say­ing Thanks Goes A Long Way…

Posted on May 16, 2011

How are things where you work, or with the clients of your own busi­ness? Does your boss thank you, appre­ci­ate you, allow you to play, sur­prise you with a bonus now and then? And, if yes… how does that make you feel? If you are a CEO, how does it feel to give your employ­ees a lit­tle extra? And, as an entre­pre­neur, do you treat your­self some­times as a way to thank your­self for all your hard work?

When I worked in the film indus­try as a cos­tumer, I could always tell when we were work­ing for a good pro­ducer (boss). The cast and crew were happy, and would go an extra mile.

A nice thank you from producers on "The Highlander"

A nice thank you from pro­duc­ers on “The Highlander”

And, maybe it only took a sur­prise dessert on the cater­ing truck to do it! And, lots of thank yous! Or, maybe just a sim­ple “how are you doing today?”.

What com­pa­nies do you know have nur­tured a rep­u­ta­tion for being “good to work for”?

I like the fol­low­ing arti­cle by Bar­bara Bowes that addresses this subject.

Just say THANKS Employee appre­ci­a­tion enhances pro­duc­tiv­ity, creativity

There is a well-​known say­ing that sug­gests employ­ees who leave an orga­ni­za­tion do so because of their managers.

What these man­agers are doing to drive employ­ees away is often not well defined. How­ever, my expe­ri­ence sug­gests that many employ­ees leave because they do not feel appre­ci­ated and do not receive suf­fi­cient recog­ni­tion from their man­ager. This feel­ing of not being appre­ci­ated eats away at one’s morale and if not dealt with, the sense of despair and dis­sat­is­fac­tion will even­tu­ally act as a major fac­tor in the deci­sion to leave.

Read the rest of the arti­cle by Bar­bara Bowes

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Being cre­ative is good busi­ness sense…

Posted on May 5, 2011

The arts, being cre­ative, think­ing out­side the box, brain­storm­ing, throw­ing ideas around, not judg­ing, play­ing, try­ing things on, invent­ing, engi­neer­ing, dream­ing, med­i­tat­ing… all verbs that bring us to inno­v­a­tive ideas that can turn your busi­ness around, bloom high returns, and even save your busi­ness if you are in trouble.

buf­foon­ery work­shop drawings

Unfor­tu­nately, there is a world out there that doesn’t seem to want to teach, or guide our young (and older) this way. The results or pend­ing results are not promis­ing. If we don’t have dream­ers who are per­mit­ted to drift off into poten­tial bril­liance, or employ­ees who, in play, dis­cover just the right answer for a seri­ous busi­ness quandary, then we are stuck.

The fol­low­ing arti­cle addresses this sub­ject in rela­tion­ship to Amer­ica, but I believe this dilemma runs around other parts of our world, includ­ing Canada. Espe­cially after our very con­ser­v­a­tive elec­tion, we need to pay extra attention.

By Laura Seargeant Richardson

Play Power: How to Turn Around Our Cre­ativ­ity Crisis

The divi­sion between work and play is a myth. If Amer­ica is going to teach its youth to inno­vate, we need to unite the two.

Nearly a decade ago, John Howkins wrote a book called The Cre­ative Econ­omy: How Peo­ple Make Money From Ideas. Sim­i­larly, Richard Florida iden­ti­fied the “cre­ative class” and sug­gested that inno­va­tion would come from a “super cre­ative core.” But some­how, even with this knowl­edge, we have fallen fur­ther behind.

Read the rest of the arti­cle by Laura Seargeant Richard­son for the Atlantic

For more on the sub­ject I encour­age you to read Daniel H. Pink’s “A Whole New Mind”

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