I am such a huge superfan of Jonathan Harris. I saw Phylotaxis in 2006 when I was researching unique interfaces and ever since I’ve been entranced by how he tells stories: his own, like The Whale Hunt ; or all our stories, like We Feel Fine or I Want You To Want Me , which I was lucky enough to see at New York’s MoMA in 2008.
This project, Today begun when turned 30, encompasses a simple ritual of taking one photo a day and posting it to his website before going to sleep, along with a short story.
This is a short film about Jonathan’s project, made a few weeks after he stopped it, by his friend, Scott Thrift which I found to be a glorious contemplation on the passage of time and the nature of memory and flexing your remember muscles:
- your greatest creation is your life story
- story as a technique to organize your past
- I’ve grown as a result of this project, but I’m not sure what I’ve grown into
- we need time to create our stories and time to make sense of our experiences
- we need privacy and space to grow
The whole piece and Harris’ thoughts reminded me of a marvelous concept: the Japanese notion “Ma”
Ma (間) is a concept of absence and in-between. Apart from space, ma is applied to the discussion of time as well, revealing that in Japan there was ‘not even a distinction between space and time like in modern Western thought’. The word ‘ma’ essentially refers to ‘an “interval” between two (or more) spatial or temporal things and events. Thus it is not only used in compounds to suggest measurement but carries meanings such as gap, opening, space between, time between…
This spatio-temporal principle of ma underlies all traditional Japanese art forms. However, Like other Japanese aesthetic principles, ma goes beyond just being a ‘way of seeing’, but is a ‘way of life’ as well, for, as Japanese architect Arata Isozaki puts it, it is a ‘fluid term able to encompass many aspects of life in Japan. [Ma] describes both time and space through a notion of interval. (source)
The Taoist philosopher Lao Tse wrote extensively on the concept of Ma including his poem The Uses of Not :
- Thirty spokes meet in the hub,
- but the empty space between them
- is the essence of the wheel.
- Pots are formed from clay,
- but the empty space between it
- is the essence of the pot.
- Walls with windows and doors form the house,
- but the empty space within it
is the essence of the house
I’m a big believer in making the time and space to look at the clouds drift by…and now I know I’m just drinking in the ‘ma’ and letting myself grow.
Filed under: Get Friendly
It’s super easy to be a douchebag.
If you work in creative strategy or planning your daily diet may encompasses exposure to this toxic pyramid:
You are not alone. (thanks to this post Getting Real. For Real which reminded me I probably should say this more often.)
If you’re feeling like this you understand the landscape that you work in very very well.
And as result you might get called ‘difficult’ or ‘unapproachable’ or ‘aggressive’.
It’s really hard not to give yourself permission to let that toxicity out.
But when people are coming to you for education and inspiration and insight how appropriate is frustration? How effective is is? How is it working for you?
Punching people in the face for not understanding is momentarily satisfying, sure. Do you really want to be that guy?
But again, you are not alone in struggling with this.
I am fiery. Shouty. The volume goes up to 11 when I get excited.
Which is why I find this to be pretty helpful this week (edited):
Feel the fire … don’t get burned.
Emphasise with words, not volume.
1. Feel the fire, but don’t get burned. If something really excites you or makes you angry, effectiveness lies in creating comfort. Share your exhilaration or ire with words, not volume.
2. Speak how you want to be spoken to. Doing so will set the tone for the entire conversation. If you start out with an attack, you could end up in a war. If you begin with kindness and clarity, you will have a much easier time.
Filed under: Great Stuff
British designer Samuel Wilkinson and product design company Hulger, have won the Brit Insurance Design of the Year 2011 for their stunning redesign of the low energy light bulb.
Low-energy light bulbs have never been regarded as a stylish product but the Plumen addresses this by creating an aesthetic bulb which works just like any low-energy bulb. Announced yesterday at the Design Museum, Stephen Bayley, the 2011 Jury Chair said of the winning entry ‘The Plumen light bulb is a good example of the ordinary thing done extraordinarily well, bringing a small measure of delight to an everyday product.’
Hell yeah- that’s a mantra:
Do an ordinary thing done extraordinarily well,
Bring a small measure of delight the everyday
Filed under: Great Stuff
This Kinetic Typography project was created by Jacob Gilbreath from the dialogue of Conan O’Brien’s final episode of The Tonight Show on NBC. In this farewell address, he describes his feelings towards the situation at hand, promoting positivity and humor, hard work and kindness.
Filed under: Great Stuff
Lovely message, relevant to us all from Sebastián Baptista
We are starting the new year with some new projects, new goals and new challenges.
Whatever you do, always try to be the best you can be. Spread the word.Good luck!
Filed under: Digital Strategy
A lovely piece of work from the Soap Creative team.
This isn’t the holy grail; but rather a road-tested ’cheat sheet‘ for quick wins on your Facebook page
Click on any of the images to link directly to the Fan pages they’re referencing.
It reminds me of the work of Dr. BJ Fogg of Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab.
They infer that to change human behavior you must merge three factors into one moment: motivation, ability, and triggers—e.g., prompts and calls to action. Essentially:
”Put hot triggers in the path of motivated people”.
Defining a hot trigger as something one can take immediate action on, this concept easily translates to the world of online marketing tactics such as “Click this link, hit this button to share, or enter your information here.”
Or “like” bait.
The trigger is characterized as hot because you can take this action now, versus cold triggers, which are calls to actions you can’t act upon immediately.
Filed under: Great Stuff
It’s funny how we can only associate growing with pain. Take a couple of minutes to watch Jesse Rosten‘s lovely piece above. Maybe if we all took things a little more slowly…..
Philosophy helps. From Thinking Aloud:
Philosophy, as the great American philosopher Stanley Cavell puts it, is the education of grownups.
It is my view that philosophy must form part of the life of a culture. It must engage the public and influence how a culture converses with itself, understands itself, talks to other cultures and seeks to understand them. It has been enormously gratifying to see this pursuit flourishing in today’s agora — the virtual one — confronting, engaging and even embracing the fluid, ambiguous and frenetic nature of the electronic public realm.
But more importantly, this paragraph reminds me of meals around my family table growing up:
… philosophy is a shared activity, it is dialogue. And dialogue is not the simple exchange of opinions, where I have my faith, my politics and my God and you have yours. That is parallel monologue. One of the goals of dialogue is to have our opinions rationally challenged in such a way that we might change our minds. True dialogue is changing one’s mind.
And growing.
Filed under: Great Stuff
I hope you’re sharing something lovely with people you care about today.
Filed under: Great Stuff
Tim Minchin’s stunning performance of his beat poem ‘Storm’ Eloquently and wittily honouring reason, science and life appreciation and debunking homeopathy, psychics, alternative medicine, religion etc.
Love Tim Minchin. Love.
Filed under: Digital Strategy
click through to Visual Loop for full size
Filed under: Great Stuff
Sometimes questions are better than facts:
“The most important maxim for data analysis to heed, and one which many statisticians seem to have shunned, is this: Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise”
Tukey
Filed under: Digital Strategy
Last night at Digital Citizens I asked the panelists who presented three responses to briefs:
#digicitz with respect my q to all is: what is the difference between a list of tactics and a strategy
Check out the live stream to find the responses
My call is (in this context)
a list of tactics is what could be done, the strategy is what should be done
Filed under: Digital Strategy
Jye has asked me to recreate a Coffee Morning rant. I’ll do my best….
We were talking about ‘social media experts’.
Now I no opinion on what people to choose to call themselves in the workplace. I’m no big fan of titles or labels but do agree that it would be very nice if people would curtsy when they’re introduced to you…anyhoo.
The notion I want to explore here is: “Is it possible to be an expert in social media?’
We’re trying to talk about an emergent discipline. We’re all still making up the language as we go. This means there’s a lot of new nonsense, heaps of obscure semantics, and quite a bit of confusion as our taxonomy is not set, we haven’t agreed on the discourse…we’re all still a bit muddled and unordered in our thinking because what (I think) we’re doing is in the Complex and Chaotic realms.
In the light of this my answer on the possibility of expertise is: No.
To add to the verbiage mentioned above, here’s my supporting case. I’m a huge fan of Dave Snowdon’s Cynefin framework which puts forward some really interesting thinking on how to make sense of complex environments
- It would seem to me that you could only be an expert in systems that are ordered, where cause and effect are repeatable and the relationship between cause and effect can be known
- This is better explained by Dave himself in his story about how expert fought against the idea of Longitude
- It would further seem to me that social media sits in the unordered realm, where cause and effect are coherent only in retrospect and where results are unpredictable
- You couldn’t be an expert in a Complex environment as no good or best practice documentation can be handed over to another practitioner with the guarantee that they will get the same results for any tactic/experiment
- What I believe you can be is a ‘practitioner with experience’, someone who understands the ‘probe-sense-respond’ agility that is required in this non-linear unpredictable (superfun!) environment
- There is no frickin’ spoon- try it it will make your life quite a bit easier.
Filed under: Experience
I was thinking just how much of our best work gets done when you don’t colour in inside the lines, and this has lovely tension with the notion “a picture tells a thousand words, but you can’t control the order”.
It’s always a challenge to try to tell the story, to create a jumper out of all the wooly information you might have.
Forget the blank page. Bring your scrapbook, let people into your process, put forward building blocks of stimulous and create the destination together.
Filed under: Get Activist
It’s very easy to forget how privileged I am.
Recently I sat in my father’s kitchen in Mexico defending against the idea that the world is a darker and crueller place.
I had to laugh. I’d travelled across continents alone to be there, stopping along the way to have my voice heard and opinions sought. For me it isn’t dark. I have economic, intellectual, sexual and social freedoms not afforded to almost the entirety of womankind ’till now. But that only means that I have the responsibility to share a bit of the light to those that need it most.
I vividly remember my mother having to get my Dad to co-sign the loan on her first business. As a result every Kiva loan I have supports a woman in the developing world trying to support her family by her skills brought to fruition through having access to a sewing machine.
‘Because I am a Girl’ is Plan’s global campaign designed to fight gender inequality, promote girls’ rights and lift millions of girls out of poverty. Across the globe, girls are at the bottom of the social ladder, deprived of the same opportunities as boys. For example,research has shown that girls are more likely to suffer from malnutrition; be forced into an early marriage; be subjected to violence or intimidation; be trafficked, sold or coerced into the sex trade; or become infected with HIV.
The campaign is based on a series of reports titled Because I am a Girl: The State Of The World’s Girls. To be published between2007–2015 from Plan International, these reports examine the rights and needs of girls throughout their childhood, adolescence and as young women – and how they are uniquely placed to break the cycles of intergenerational poverty gripping many people in developing countries.
Six of the eight Millennium Development Goals – the goals set by the world’s governments in 2000 to halve world poverty by 2015 – are unlikely to be achieved unless there is a greater international commitment to the fight against gender discrimination.Plan recognises that we have to address gender discrimination as a priority if we want to tackle the root causes of child poverty.Therefore we have made the commitment to ‘address gender inequality and the numerous ways in which the rights of girls and women are particularly denied and violated’ (Plan Program Framework, 2009–2013). This is the focus of the ‘Because I am a Girl’ campaign and will better enable Plan to achieve our overall mandate as a child-centred community development organisation, committed to child poverty eradication and all children accessing their rights.
You can download the 2010 Because I am a Girl report, ‘Digital and Urban Frontiers: Girls in a Changing Landscape’
You can find out how to support Because I’m a Girl here
And you can remember. You can be aware that the ease and access you enjoy now was built by the strength and sacrifice of generations before you. You can’t repay them but you can acknowledge your debt by lighting bridges of hope, access and equality for others. Shiny.
Filed under: Great Stuff
So apparently, our psychological state allows us to see only what we want/need/feel to see at a particular time.
I’ve checked this out...
On Friday I saw: naked, lust, crush,
Today I see : secrets, malice, rage, deed
What do you see?
Filed under: Digital Strategy
from i love charts– mmm daily goodness
Click the image to watch The Unseen Sea by Simon Christen– it’s intensely beautiful.
This collection of time lapses taken around the San Francisco Bay Area was roughly shot over the period of one year. It got me thinking about ebb and flow. About our own unseen seas. (thanks Stig)
I’m fascinated by people choosing to live their lives with passion, truth and rigour. Setting sail on uncharted waters but with an internal lodestone and a clear eye on the imagined destination. Charting by the stars. People who take the time to know themselves and have the courage to be themselves.
Mark shared a link to this wonderful story of the journey that TK recently went through to reduce the gap between his desired and current realities the process of making a principled and conscious life decision:
If you squint at the picture, you’ll see the rough process that he followed:
- Starting by answering “What are my values?”
- Based on my values, then “What do I want my life to be about?”
- Thinking hard about what the first two columns meant and elaborating on the things that had the likelihood of being buzz-wordy, undefined, or just plain untrue.
- You can’t see this part in the picture, but I then thought through where I am now in my life and reconciled the differences between what I want and where I am today.
- Finally, I formulated a plan that would allow me to make the changes I need to make to my life to get to what I want in and out of my life.
Happy sailing my friend.
