Electronic Paper for Me

This is how I feel with summer here

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:13:56 -0400

This is how I feel with summer here

dialmformichele: A new self-promotional piece, which made me...

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:56:31 -0400

A new self-promotional piece, which made me realize that all of my favorite children’s stories have secret passageways. I haven’t done a large postcard mailing in a very long time, so we’ll see how this goes.

showslow: I Love You Not by Matthew Williams (2010) Materials:...

Fri, 03 May 2013 00:04:07 -0400

showslow:

I Love You Not by Matthew Williams (2010)

Materials: Real rose, real rose petal, resin

With ‘I Love You Not’ Matthew Williams has preserved a real rose stem and petal inside four blocks of clear resin, creating a chic, standalone rose stem sculpture. Each resin block is able to be moved and positioned accordingly

ericabottger: Hi! Welcome to my Art Tumblr. I’ll be trying out...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:57:22 -0400

ericabottger:

Hi! Welcome to my Art Tumblr. I’ll be trying out some new things until I fit it into a routine.

I wanted to show off what was actually in my profile picture.
Eventually I will change it to be something a bit more readable.

If you guys are the curious ducks I hope you are, you should check out my professional art blog.

likeafieldmouse: John Singer Sargent - Two Octopi (1875) - Oil...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:04:33 -0400

likeafieldmouse:

John Singer Sargent - Two Octopi (1875) - Oil on canvas

agostinoarrivabene: Secondo martirio di San Sebastiano .(Study)...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 22:53:32 -0400

agostinoarrivabene:

Secondo martirio di San Sebastiano .(Study)
2011

oil on wood

One of my favorite artist has a tumblr now!

likeafieldmouse: Rembrandt - The Skeleton Rider

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:30:26 -0400

likeafieldmouse:

Rembrandt - The Skeleton Rider

fredschroeder: Another Möbius Panorama

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 02:51:01 -0400

fredschroeder:

Another Möbius Panorama

abluegirl: Living Wall These vegetated surfaces don’t just...

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 11:50:11 -0400

abluegirl:

Living Wall

These vegetated surfaces don’t just look pretty. They have other benefits as well, including cooling city blocks, reducing loud noises, and improving a building’s energy efficiency.What’s more, a recent modeling study shows that green walls can potentially reduce large amounts of air pollution in what’s called a “street canyon,” or the corridor between tall buildings.

For the study, Thomas Pugh, a biogeochemist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, and his colleagues created a computer model of a green wall with generic vegetation in a Western European city. Then they recorded chemical reactions based on a variety of factors, such as wind speed and building placement.

The simulation revealed a clear pattern: A green wall in a street canyon trapped or absorbed large amounts of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter—both pollutants harmful to people, said Pugh. Compared with reducing emissions from cars, little attention has been focused on how to trap or take up more of the pollutants, added Pugh, whose study was published last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

That’s why the green-wall study is “putting forward an alternative solution that might allow [governments] to improve air quality in these problem hot spots,” he said.Compared with reducing emissions from cars, little attention has been focused on how to trap or take up more of the pollutants, added Pugh, whose study was published last year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

That’s why the green-wall study is “putting forward an alternative solution that might allow [governments] to improve air quality in these problem hot spots,” he said.

Full Gallery

showslow: Layered MRI Self-Portraits Engraved in Glass Sheets...

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 11:22:44 -0400

showslow:

Layered MRI Self-Portraits Engraved in Glass Sheets by Angela Palmer

bitchfaceart: Isabel Bishop, Tidying Up

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:33:10 -0400

bitchfaceart:

Isabel Bishop, Tidying Up

rudychic: A Stag at Sharkey’s 1917 George Wesley...

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:28:55 -0400

rudychic:

A Stag at Sharkey’s

1917

George Wesley Bellows

Indianapolis Museum of Art

Lithograph

Photo

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:17:27 -0500

likeafieldmouse: Jeremy Miranda

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 20:23:07 -0500

likeafieldmouse:

Jeremy Miranda

paintvrlife: by *Yoann-Lossel

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 02:00:48 -0500

paintvrlife:

by *Yoann-Lossel

Sappho by Bertram Mackennal on the Art Project

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 01:57:08 -0500

Sappho by Bertram Mackennal on the Art Project

yourdreamsmynightmares: Your Dreams My Nightmares Episode 035....

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 07:03:57 -0500

yourdreamsmynightmares:

Your Dreams My Nightmares Episode 035. An interview with John Hendrix. Music by Big Blood via freemusicarchive.org

You can download the episode here or subscribe to the show via iTunes.

Music

Reverse Hymnal (Big Blood) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Great interview!

http://fatcatart.ru/gallery-2/?lang=en

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:48:31 -0500

http://fatcatart.ru/gallery-2/?lang=en

1000reasonsnottostartmakingart: beyondneptune: Ten-Minute Art...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 09:06:38 -0500

1000reasonsnottostartmakingart:

beyondneptune:

Ten-Minute Art School Course

Correcting Creativity: The Struggle for Eminence

by Sam McNerney

By the time he put the finishing touches on the Rite of Spring in November of 1912 in the Châtelard Hotel in Clarens, Switzerland, Stravinsky had spent three years studying Russian pagan rituals, Lithuanian folk songs and crafting the dissonant sacre chord, in which an F-flat major combines with an E-flat major with added minor seventh. The rehearsal process wasn’t easy either. Stravinsky fired the German pianist and the orchestra and performers only had a few opportunities to practice at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, where the Rite debuted in May 1913. But the Russian born composer pulled it off, and his composition now stands as a 20^th century masterpiece.

Stravinsky is one of seven eminent creators of the 20^st century profiled by Harvard professor Howard Gardner in his 1993 book Creating Minds. The others are Pablo Picasso, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, Martha Graham, Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Einstein. One can debate the list but Gardner’s foremost conclusion is uncontroversial: creative breakthroughs in any domain require strenuous work and a willingness to challenge the establishment.

The psychology of creativity–- both empirical research and popular literature for the lay audience–- misses this. It reduces creativity to warm showers and blue rooms, forgetting that the life of the eminent creator is not soothing; it is a struggle–- a grossly uneven wrestling match with the muses.

For Gardner, eminent creators are locked into a Faustian bargain, in which fulfilling their vision comes at the cost of an otherwise fulfilling personal life:

…the creators were so caught up in the pursuit of their work mission that they sacrificed all, especially the possibility of a rounded personal existence… unless this bargain has been compulsively adhered to, the talent may be compromised or even irretrievably lost. And, indeed, at times when the bargain is relaxed, there may well be negative consequences for the individual’s creative output.

And so it was for Nietzsche, who believed that creativity is not about solving puzzles, divergent thinking or making remote associations but destroying old systems of thought and breaking from the status quo. Doing so doesn’t require a relaxed state of mind or a few shots of alcohol but enough courage to break out of the herd mentality. As Nietzsche states in various ways throughout his writings,few possess the strength to accomplish this, and those who do are usually rejected at first only to resurface later in time as truly original thinkers.

This is the story of Gardner’s subjects. From Stravinsky’s dissonance to Eliot’s obscure prose to Einstein’s treatment of time and space, each new idea succeeded by standing in contrast to the standards that dictated each domain. The process was not pleasant. As Gardner makes clear, his subjects triumphed only after experiencing prolonged isolation from their fields. They wandered into uncharted waters working mostly on their own while everyone else–the herd–remained either unable or unwilling to see norms as the problem.

In contrast, creativity in the 21^st century has become a buzzword for pseudo-intellectuals, pseudo-entrepreneurs, and pseudo-artists who like to label themselves as “creative types” even though their level of commitment to their craft and their willingness to break from the herd is flimsy. TED and similar knowledge-hungry websites might be making it worse by attracting these individuals who, if it weren’t for the easy-to-digest science, wouldn’t care about their elusive creative genius. Or perhaps it is the Internet in general, where someone publishes an article about the “secrets to creativity” every hour.

What’s important is that for decades researchers like Gardner and Dean Keith Simonton have distinguished between “little c” and “big C” creativity, in which the latter more closely aligns with what Nietzsche had in mind. We should return to the uppercased version of the word. Generating a good idea isn’t reading a “top-ten ways to boost your creativity” article. Nor is it cherry picking from the latest cognitive psychology research. As Nietzsche described in The Gay Science, it is like delivering and nurturing a child. “We must constantly give birth to our thoughts out of our pain and maternally endow them with all we have of blood, heart, fire, pleasure, passion, agony, conscience, fate, and disaster.”

Of course, it is difficult to describe “big c” creativity without sounding like a clichéd commencement speaker. For one, it is nearly impossible to convey the “embrace failure” message without coming across banal. Indeed, failure is inevitable and important. But pointing out that “mistakes are simply the portals of discovery” is hindsight babel that loses touch with the reality that failure is horrible–even nauseating–and that most creative projects never see the light of day.

Second, 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is not something you “put in.” Think, for a moment, what such a grueling practice regimen entails. It’s not just practicing for six hours every day for nearly five years; it’s a state of bondage where creators are at the mercy of their domains–moments of total exasperation in which they teeter at the edge of defeat while fearing disapproval far outweigh moments of insight and joyful productivity.

This is the paradox of researching creativity and writing about it. On one hand we should strive to accurately capture the life of eminent creators and their breakthroughs as well as cognitive strategies that contribute to “little c” creativity. At the same time, it is difficult to accomplish this without drawing trite conclusions. For instance, though writing about the Rite provides good insights, I fear it paints an unrealistic picture of creativity in the same way Nora Ephron created an unrealistic account of love. As the late philosopher and art critic Denis Dutton once wrote of Stravinsky’s masterpiece, it’s the creative-type’s enduring tale: what once was so outrageous, so unintelligible, that it could cause a riot, came eventually, through knowledge and familiarity, to be accepted as a masterpiece. In other words, we cannot help but squeeze stories of eminent creation into crisp commoditized narratives with heart-warming proverbs.

So my concern is twofold. First, the cognitive science of creativity and the public’s obsession with it promotes a fringe version of creativity and second, we are reducing eminent creations and their creators into cliché stories. Both distort “big c” creativity, which is central when it comes to genuine innovation and original thinking.

Moving forward, let’s remember that creativity is a struggle and that even though studying creative geniuses helps us understand what Nietzsche held as the greatest expression of the human spirit, being creative is about paving your own path – one that leads you away from the herd so you can draw your own conclusions.

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Worth reading completely

So this is a thing that happened

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 02:28:38 -0400

whatshouldwecallarthistory:

kateymichelelikes:

Ruined Fresco Halloween Costume.

You guys….

And I’m like…