Idea Generator

So I am playing around with this, check it out, try it out.  Hopefully something great or at least entertaining comes from it.  If you are so inclined, comment with some feedback.

Not Sure Yet

So this entry is going to be a thinking entry, at present I do not exactly know what I am going to write about, however, it will be related to my most recent creative thinking work.  I set the task for myself to first investigate any apps at apple's App Store that had to do with creativity  and when that was only so-so I looked up thinking, less that so-so  The two quality apps I found were WordMpress and Ulysses.  The reason I liked Word Press is because it gives one a variety of tones, styles and whatnot to create posters and they are generally designed to fit together so that no matter what you do it will look like good design.  This being said after you make neat posters it really doesn't do much more and if you are slick enough with Photoshop one could  do it on one's own.  Ulysses intrigued me more because because it offered writers a wide variety of tools that I suspect are going on in writers heads' as they write.  One can write and you will get different prompts for word choices, definitions and research on the spot.  My impression that it allows one to multi-task without leaving one window.  Pretty slick, but I don't write and I probably will not write.  Thinking did not present much in lines of aids for thinking but the process lead to me contemplating programs like Mind Node and then another I saw later in John Medea's talk on TED where a company structure could be mapped out and one could view not only the connections between departments but also keep track of the kinds of correspondence (in electronic form) that a member of a company has with that person.

Sine this did not push my thoughts too far forward I went onto another task I set for myself and was to watch at least two talks on TED about creativity and this time keep notes hoping to find confirmation of my existing ideas, or realize new things that others are doing, thinking about or reveal.  I watched for like the fifth time Sir Ken Robinson's lecture about schools and creativity, John Madea's discussion of design, technology, art and leadership and finally Issac Mizrahi's discussion on his own creativity.  Several things came to my mind but I am only going to discuss one right here.  As I said before this is a thinking entry so what follows is unstructured but hopefully helps me reveal an idea to myself.

Movement as a creative thinking process.
The thought process started from here.  Ken Robinson discusses in a joking fashion that university professors use their bodies as transports for their heads and that these people live almost entirely in their head.  My mind started churning and I will copy verbatim what I wrote in my notebook:  Professor - head - body is only a transport   Then can we say that action should be encouraged as thinking?  If so how can we use action as a creative thinking tool?

I am going to reach back into my history and memories and recall something I heard said in a cabin at a YMCA camp.  One of the lead male councilors was discussing his love of sport and they way he described it was like this:  When a person moves, completes an action like a dunk it is perfect artistry, the manipulation of the muscles to create in time something that is both useful and beautiful   In regards to professional sport even the usefulness of it is inconsequential.  While we make take very seriously how our favorite baseball, basketball or football team does, this has little effect on matters of the world.  So in essence that dunk is art for art's sake.  It's the creation of something beautiful simply for the purpose of performing the act.

So how do we turn movement into a tool for thinking.  Personally, I have only weak ideas.  One of my drawing teachers had the class exercise before beginning a studio drawing.  Simple Qi Gong which I am not embarrassed to say worked exceptionally well.  At times I have had my own students get up and move around to get the blood flowing, hopefully to the correct part of the brain that gets them excited about work.  I've often told them to pat their heads and rub their bellies because it feels good and moves the blood around and will get them energized for drawing, painting or even just thinking.  Most the time I get rolled eyes or laughter but the occasional student will oblige.  I've never collected research on how this works.  Another instance comes from my training in Wing Chun.  I will by no means claim to be an expert in this field, but from what I have learned we are studying movement and sensitivity, as force comes in, roll away from it and into its source, as it retreats follow it towards its source, attack the center of your opponent.  I also tell my students this, sit square to your work, focus on it, always go straight for its center.  But most of what I have just written is about approach to working not thinking.

So how? I am hoping my friends who teach drama or my friends who dance can enlighten me.  My ideas are that when given a way to think and then asking the body to speak that way, the individual will be revealed new connections, ideas and can translate that to completing a thought or solving a problem or making art.  I am anxious to see what becomes.

P.s. As I was searching for the right photo for this entry the figurative lightbulb went off over my head.  I chose a photo of someone who may be myself and friend making graffiti in Beijing.  I like this photo (which maybe someone who is my girlfriend took) because when drawing on the wall, especially bit letters, movement is quite important and it is in movement that form revelas itself, not all my graffiti is planned out, I just center myself and release.  Ah here is a key.  More exploration ahead.  And while on the subject also when playing the trombone, moving the arm is an art that effects the art of sound and Yoko Ono's word piece "When one is playing the violin, which is incidental, the sound or the movement of the arm"

This painting is from some time ago, but since I have not photographed any of the recent painting I've executed this will have to do.  I placed it here because in the past month and a half I have been painting a lot of pine trees (some other varieties as well).  The reason has a bit of a explanation.  I recently moved back to the USA after nine years in China and one in Korea, by far China has the stronger influence.  I was quite struck by some contemporary Chinese paining (by this I mean ink and wash painting, you know the classic style of birds and flowers and landscape etc. but the painting I was looking at was of a contemporary subject matter).  The power of the black ink was almost palpable.  That week I purchased paper and brushes and ink and had a go.  A complete fail but there was potential and I adopted it to how I was working.  Shortly thereafter I moved to China and after about six months I started studying the traditional techniques and I spent about a year and a half with two different teachers.  Another year or so after I stuck to the tradition, then it faded.  About three years ago I began to take it up again and this leads to the painting above as well as why I've been painting pine trees so much recently.

After I accepted the job in Georgia I began making plans to use the Georgia countryside as inspiration for traditional Chinese paintings.  Even though I am in the city (Atlanta) there is no shortage of pine trees (and others) to serve as inspirational pieces.  This past week I was on a school trip (I'm a teacher by profession) and lucky for me we spent the week at a YMCA camp where I had ample opportunity to view and draw.  I bought a brush-pen and sad to say I am complete shit with it but that's ok, the shape of the trees and leaves are there so now it is just the work behind working it out with a brush, and I am quite looking forward to this work.
      P.s. - the first attempt was also shit but I am working on it.

For those of you who are still reading I'll give a brief description of some of the techniques I use. You are welcome to give them a shot and let me know how you get on.  Some of the traditional rules to follow: Compose square-ish painting in a kind of C shape and long-ish paintings by an S shape.  There should be good rhythm between black and gray tones.  There should not be too much black.  By the way the Chinese can never be pinned down by how much is enough and how much is too much.  Unfortunately the trend seems to be whoever is talking to me always has the correct amount and I never do.  Anyway - whatever.  The brush is supported between the thumb on one side and the other four fingers opposite the thumb.  Once I saw in the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco) that there should be the distance of an egg between the palm of the hand and the shaft of the brush, but none of my Chinese teachers ever said that.  Paint with the paper flat on the table or floor the the brush, more or less perpendicular, at least when you start.  The reason for this positioning is because the combination of wrist, elbow and shoulder give you every available angle from which to make a mark.  The beauty of Xuan Zhi (rice paper - which oddly enough has little to no rice in it) is that despite its fragility it can really take a lot of ink and water and color.  For instance you can paint in some gray, then add color, then let it dry and add black, then add some more color.  Or - this is one of my favorite techniques - make a nice think inky line and then wash the brush and add water right to the mark allowing it to bleed.  This effect is something that is looked for in 'good' paintings.  Another nifty trick (anything that entertains me I equate with good) is to load the brush with both color and ink in different parts of the brush then make a mark - cool two-tone effect.  Among my favorite strokes, and one you can see in the painting above, is the wavy, downward  line (my own description not an official term, my Chinese was pretty poor when I was taught this and I never learned the proper terminology).  Set out the edge of a shadow on a mountain or cliff and then alternate gray colored ink, water or even a little color in a wavy, downward stroke.  Another fun stroke is the hatchet (I now this one because my teacher drew me a picture of a hatchet when he demonstrated).  This one works best with think, black ink.  Load up the brush and turn it sideways against the paper and then with force shoot the brush in either direction that gives a full width streak.

When approaching a Chinese style painting (the Japanese and Koreans do this too) the Western style general to specific, light to dark method will not serve you well.  Just get yourself in a quiet mindset and go at it with no fear - like a Samurai - There will be varying levels of success at first but when you reach that place where you can actively make decisions without having to think will yield some pretty wicked paintings and a good experience for you.  If you are going to go the traditional route work on parts of the painting that are nearest the viewer and work your way back into space.  If you are doing non-traditional subjects then fuck all, just see what works for you.  These techniques are really applicable to all subject matter, I really like to paint octopuses and jelly fish and one never finds those in Chinese painting.  I have no problem with this seeing as I am not even a little Chinese, I'm all American in blood at least.

So there you are, a ramble about something I have contemplated for the last ten years.  I'll post some of my current paintings as soon as I get an SD card for my camera.

In China one of the ideas I got from her (Tracy, who was visiting my school yesterday) was that artists are arguing about globalization in art and retaining Chinese-ness. There is a question about whether or not China should stick to its old way of doing things, teaching art making skills, so as not to loose it Chinese-ness. I think China is also feeling like someone is trying to take it over (China has been terrified of that since WWII) the Chinese, always very, very nationalistic, don’t want to be accused of toadying or copying other powers. I told her that China has a good system because it teaches skills but it lacks because they don’t teach anyone how to think. This is a big problem in China. This is why I am excited about punk rock here because that is the group of people in China that have had it with being told how to do things and are expressive, they may lack skills but they make up for it in creativity. The trick is how to get these programmers (computer programmers are a very avant garde group here), punk rockers and hip-hop-pers into the visual arts fold; or extend visual arts beyond, what it is right now in China, an elitist club. The articles I’ve studied about post-modernism have argued such a shift, even Andy Warhol was getting away from that as far back as the sixties, and since in China visual arts is still a select group, it is very difficult to do. We need more exhibitions like the Fuck Off exhibition at Li Liang’s gallery in 2000. This isn’t to say things have to be extreme, but they can be anything so long as its researched, expressive and done on purpose. And if we could blur the distinctions between who gets to participate in high art and who doesn't then I feel that we in China would really be creating a new idea.

Above photo is from Eastlink Gallery's Fuck Off exhibition. There is some really wild stuff there and while very little of it is salable, the exhibition was a visual success.
http://www.eastlinkgallery.cn

Conceptualization of Personal Expression

A quick note about what follows: This is a unit I am creating for a Visual Arts class. In order to better focus the content I take the concept that I will be teaching and running it through four different criteria for understanding, or as we say at BCIS "Areas of Interaction". There is a some education vocabulary in here but it is accessible to everyone and I would like anyone to have a look and add opinoins.

Method of expression is an indication of how the artist sees the world

I.Community and Service
Different types of art art accepted and understood differently. Islam for example more or less only accepts things that are abstracted, no images of anything, it’s pattern and design. In the west and the new east the visual structure of popular culture is dominate. International students in China are in a very unique position. Chinese culture is simultaneously taking a large hold in the world and absorbing cultures from outside. China is very happy to show its ancient culture and it is interested in taking things from outside its boarders that are of scientific or cultural value. Students now are bringing their culture here to open recipients as well as being asked to accept the existing culture.

II.Health and Social Education
Visual art is generally scene as the philosophy of sight. Contemporary artists are conceptualizing and expressing what it is that we as humanity think of the world through visual mean. Art in its present tense has always done this and the students should be looking the view of the world an how that is reflected in expression. Visual arts has by and large taken a philosophical view but it has, as in the case of Dadaism and the rise of journalistic art, contemplated social issues, think of the photo journalist that captured the ship breaking series, these were simultaneously a bookmark in history, a social comment on the lives of Bangladeshis and visually appealing photos. A student’s expression could very well be a comment on not only prevailing attitudes but also the state of the world in all its complexities

Environments
The significant concept as it relates to the Environments AOI can be multi-leveled. I think particularly in the realm of time frames. As human thought has progressed, so has its means of expression. Most acute now is the difference between the previous modern view that there is angst about the blurred distinction between order and disorder, and the postmodern view that there is no difference between order and disorder and thus no angst. The students would be understanding that the modes of expression are in relation to the world view. However in the unit what I want the students to be thinking about is their own place in the world and how they can vary their expression in a way that is particular to their own environment

Human Ingenuity
Knowingly or not artists use their mode of personal expression to present what they think of the world, normally a small corner of it, what it is they see. This expression is then normally translated to the rest of the world through historians (in contemporary times gallerists and collectors). If the artist is making strong enough of an expression, then the message gets spread world wide and over time as well. It is the artist’s bold or new thought that is now influencing our behavior. In a more global sense it isn’t just one artist but the sum of what all artists are producing that influence our thinking