Art, Design, Aesthetics, Culture, and Philosophy
Creativity and Innovation in Action
There’s a lot of talk about innovation, design, creativity and community in San Diego (and elsewhere). In the five years I’ve lived here I haven’t worked with a culture and community of people better demonstrating how to do and live those things. They make stuff and they stuff happen. With limited financial resources and a lot of ingenuity. No one else even comes close.
Style Defined.
Style, like most poorly understood things, often gets a bad rap. We spend a lot of time engaging in style making behavior and even more time enjoying experiences of style, yet we have difficulty in describing what that "does" for us. It operates on a level difficult to define and measure, but it’s an incredibly rich source of many of the things we enjoy in life.
The Metaverse. Design in Reverse
As technologists, designers and the general public imagine what this virtual future might look like there is an equally powerful design process happening. The imaginings of this possible virtual world are influencing the way we are reimagining our present physical world.
There is nothing more democratic than consensus-driven reality.
It’s physically, semantically undeniable, collectively created. It’s the linguistic, meaning making space we define through agreement and disagreement.
Everyone is a constituent, an elemental fiber a boundary defining stitch. Involuntary participants.
Collectively, we dream this dream together. Walk through each others dream, manifesting all and whatever this is.
“Creativity is like poetry, and everyone fucking hates poetry.”
NYTimes: We Have a Creativity Problem
Outwardly, we praise innovation. Inwardly, we harbor a visceral aversion to it, studies have found.
“People actually have strong associations between the concept of creativity and other negative associations like vomit and poison,”… “Agony was another one.”
Culture, Cruelty, and Contradiction
As a creative, I embrace the idea that humans are emotional and irrational decision makers. Many people would like to believe that humans are rational and logical, but this simply isn't true. It's just another example of our constantly playing "pretend".
Hip Hop’s Cultural Imperative
If hip hop is good at anything, it’s making you feel invincible, a cultural imperative for a people who have always been vulnerable.
“Who Gon Stop Me Now?”
Cottage Cheese
I’m not sure about the origin of — nor have I bothered to look it up — but “cottage cheese” certainly sounds nicer than some of the possible alternatives: cabin cheese, cabana cheese, halfway house cheese, shanty cheese…
What is This Woman Holding?
An example of visual proxy from the cover of a 70s Playboy Magazine.
Literal interpretations — like “a stack of magazines” — are the quickest way our conscious minds process what we see while visual metaphors slip into that space just below the threshold of awareness.
REFLECTIONS
“It’s only cannibalism if we’re equals.”
—Sherman
“Bad taste is the root of all evil.”
—Sherman
“Culture is the difference between seduction and abduction.”
—Sherman
“Art is the name we give to our response to the mystery of existence”
—Sherman
