What if creative thinking created success?

Some great examples of creative thinking creating success...

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130219101019-5506908-what-if-creative-thinking-created-success

Computers identify what makes abstract art move us

ECSTASY. Joy. Sadness. Despair. The sweeping lines and blocks of colour in abstract art prompt us to respond emotionally in ways that we do not really understand. Now computers are getting in on the act, and the results could add a new dimension to the weird world of artificial creativity.

 

 

 

The pioneering abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky (whose work is pictured) suggested that the emotional effects of abstract art are "objective, determined by the characteristics of the colours and their interactions". If that is true, machines should be able to get a handle on those emotions, too.

It turns out that they can. A team led by Nicu Sebe at the University of Trento in Italy used machine vision to analyse 500 abstract paintings at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto. The system measured how colour is distributed across each work, as well as the occurrence of different shapes or outlines. Using data on how 100 people responded to the paintings, the system then worked out what emotional impact these elements had. For example, black, spiky features tended to correspond to the bleaker end of the emotional spectrum, whereas bright, smooth features were more feel-good.

 

To test the system, the team gave it other artworks to scan and asked it to predict the typical viewer's emotional response on a sliding scale, from extremely negative to extremely positive. Nearly 80 per cent of the time the system came up with a score that matched the average response of 100 volunteer viewers. The study was funded by a CARITRO grant and was presented to the ACM Multimedia conference in Nara, Japan, at the end of October.

 

James Wang of Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, says that the work opens the door to using emotional data in the creation of more advanced machine art. At the conference, he presented a similar system which predicts the emotions that certain images are likely to arouse.

Wang trained his system using a set of photos that had already been tested on viewers to determine the typical emotional response - for example, disgust, excitement, anger or joy. The system analysed the photos for shapes and complexity, and so learned how such features might be associated with those emotions.

 

Simon Colton of Imperial College London, who studies the intersection of creativity and computation, says such projects could help the AI artist that he has developed, called The Painting Fool, add an emotional dimension to its work.

 

Given the ability to recognise what aspects of an image elicit emotion, The Painting Fool could choose a basic theme for a piece, scan the web to find strongly emotional images, then use the results to inspire a swathe of pieces, he says. The system could even analyse its own creations to choose the most poignant piece.

 

Colton says that computer-generated art "can do things that no one can do", like sampling every tweet on Twitter for inspiration. Artificial creativity means that anyone can own original, unique art, he says.

 

Wang has potential applications in mind, too. The work could help us search for images using emotional keywords, and blogs might be supercharged with pictures designed to arouse particular feelings, for example.

 

The work could also protect children using the internet. "You might not want children to look at pictures that contain a lot of anger, fear, disgust or violence," he says.

 

16 November 2012 by Hal Hodson

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628916.000-computers-identify-what-makes-abstract-art-move-us.html

Three Insights from the Cutting Edge of Compassion Research

Several weeks ago, a who’s who of thinkers and researchers convened at a conference in the mountain town of Telluride, Colorado, to explore the science of compassion. Their discussions revealed growing consensus that the biological, physical, and behavioral properties of compassion—the feeling we get when confronted with suffering, infused with the urge to help—have evolved to help us survive.

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/three_insights_from_the_cutting_edge_of_compassion_research

This guys is amazing!

TEN TIPS FOR CREATING WHEN YOU HAVE A DAY JOB - Zaaron Crosby

OVERVIEW

Whether you’re a professional Artist trying to pay the bills or a person working

in a career outside your creative passions, day jobs are part and parcel of most

people’s life experience but they needn’t exist at the expense of a productive,

meaningful life as a creative individual.

Creative work gives us insight and enriches our lives but it comes at a price.

Creating can throw up all sorts of insecurities and anxieties which can lead to

blocks and procrastination hindering our creative flow. Now add a 12-hour

working day, which feels as though it’s robbing you of your sanity and what

little spare time you have.

Creating under these conditions with zero energy is near impossible. So what positive actions can we take to redress this balance, become more productive, create more meaningful work more regularly and maybe even start enjoying our days a little more?

Below are 10 ideas which you can commit to right now.

TIP ONE:

ESTABLISH CREATIVE RITUALS WHICH LEAD TO CREATIVE

HABITS

Establishing an automatic but decisive pattern of behaviour at the beginning of

your creative efforts is a great way to avoid the possibility of turning back or

giving up. By making the start of creating automatic you replace doubt and fear

with comfort and routine.

Get in the habit of creating. Some of the most successful creative individuals

are the most productive. They simply create more often than most. Commit to

“Create every day” and start developing your creative mussels. After a while

you will establish creating as a habit ingrained into your DNA.

TIP TWO:

BRING WORK CONCEPTS TO YOUR CREATIVE LIFE

Our day jobs can teach us some valuable lessons about turning up and getting

the job done. In our day jobs we are remunerated and set tasksand targets to

achieve, we perform these tasks dutifully and in the majority of cases get the

work done. How often can we say that about our art? When was the last time

you spent every day painting, writing, rehearsing or otherwise engaged in your

passions? Turn up daily and get your creative work done.

TIP THREE: GET UP EARLY

Starting your day an hour or two earlier is a fantastic way to get your creating

done before your day jobs starts. It’s amazing how good you will feel knowing

that you have honoured your art and your day can start with a blast of

creativity. You will also take advantage of the creative benefits of dream state

first thing in the morning.

One word of warning; working on your art first thing can sometimes make

your day job seem dull and uninspiring. When you finish creating pat yourself

on the back for a job well done and return to your day ready to experience the

wonders of the world focused on being the best you can be.

TIP FOUR: BE HONEST

If you’re not creating regularly whilst maintaining a day job, then the odds are

you won’t fair much better if you had all the hours of the day available. Life is

always going to be busy. There are always going to be aspects of your life which

seem to invade your creative time, space and energy but your job is to be

honest and look deep into what’s holding you back. Work (and time) is often

just an excuse for a lack of creative endeavour.

TIP FIVE:

UNDERSTAND THE VALUE OF YOUR TIME AND HOW YOU USE IT

Your time outside your day job is incredibly valuable. Know where it goes and

decide how you spend it. A useful tip is to break your day down into 100

points. Some of these points are spent sleeping (33), some are spent working

(33) and others are spent creating (?). With 100 points to spend per day

committing 4 points (1 hour) to watching TV means a comprise needs to be

met. What are your priorities? Where are your points being invested?

TIP SIX: LUNCH TIME ADVENTURES

Everyone has at least 30 minutes for lunch, most have an hour. This is a

perfect opportunity to visit an art gallery, research your next novel, contact a

few agents or anything else which would support and/or develop your creative

work.

TIP SEVEN: COMMUTE TIME

Most people spend at least 20 minutes commuting to work (I spend 1:30 daily).

A good use of this time is listening to audio books or organizing your creative

schedules / plans. I currently drive to work and can get through a book a week.

If you take public transport, pen and paper are essential to catch those amazing

ideas which come and go daily.

TIP EIGHT: STOP THE TV MADNESS

We sometimes find ourselves investing so much time on some very average

programs under the guise of unwinding. Try turning off the TV for a week and

invest the points in your art. It’s amazing how much you can get done. If you

use this time to write two pages of a book every day you will have a first draft

completed within 6 months!

TIP NINE: WORK, ART BALANCE

You do not have two opposing lives in conflict; the office worker and the

actor, the accountant and the painter; you have one life and the challenge to

develop a healthy work, art balance. Try and focus on the positive aspects of

your day job and use your creative nature to make your day more interesting

and productive. Like most things in life, you get out what you put in. If you

want your day job to be more meaningful then put more energy into doing it

well, engage in the challenges that arise and improve your own situation

through the creative gifts you possess. Try to avoid those negative thoughts

which do not serve your situations. They will only develop into negative energy

and resentment towards your day job. If all else fails find a new job! Maybe you

could find something which is more in line with your art or supports your

creative direction by providing flexibility around hours.

TIP TEN:

FIND MEANING IN YOUR ART AND PURPOSE IN YOUR DAY

A day job may not provide meaning but it does provide the means. Viewed as

part of the creative process your day job can provide many opportunities to

engage with people and find inspiration through life experience. Friedrich

Nietzsche once said “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”. The

same could be said for working a day job, your art is your why and your day is

the how.

We generally feel better about ourselves when we’re making a positive

contribution to something beyond ourselves. To feel truly motivated towards

our day jobs, we have to believe what we're doing matters in someone sense.

Purpose is a source of fuel not just for higher performance, but also for

thinking more creatively about how to overcome obstacles and generate new

solutions during our days.

Find meaning in your art and purpose in your day!

ABOUT ZAARON CROSBY

Zaaron Crosby is a Visual Artist interested in all aspects of creative expression,

including painting, photography, sculpture and mixed medium. He has spent

the past 15 years Career Coaching within the recruitment industry and is the

owner and director of the online art gallery, Artless Impact,

www.artlessimpact.com.au, which provides a medium for ethically minded

people to purchase sustainable, ecologically sound, fair trade artworks.

Trained as a Creativity Coach, Zaaron runs the Creativity Coaching practice

“think.feel.dream”, www.thinkfeeldream.com.au and is passionate about

working with creative individuals and the creative process. His main work as a

creativity coach is based around Artists with day jobs and people who work in a

career outside their creative passions but still wish to pursue a productive

creative life.

zaaron@thinkfeeldream.com.au

http://www.thinkfeeldream.com.au/

http://creativitycoaching-thinkfeeldream.blogspot.com/

http://www.artlessimpact.com.au/

New Creativity Web Page - A must for all creative souls!!

I was recently asked to write for a new web page run by Eric Maisel, Leading Creativity Coaching.  For all those interested please have a look at http://ericmaisel.com you can also see some excellent Advice from Creativity Coaches around the world at

http://ericmaisel.com/ten-tips-library/ ..

This site is a must for all those creativity people wishing to explore the world of creativity more deeply.

What you see is not what you get

For all those Visual Artists interested in how we see the world this article is a must..

The grand delusion: What you see is not what you get

16 May 2011 by Graham Lawton

Your senses are your windows on the world, and you probably think they do a fair job at capturing an accurate depiction of reality. Don't kid yourself. Sensory perception - especially vision - is a figment of your imagination. "What you're experiencing is largely the product of what's inside your head," says psychologist Ron Rensink at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. "It's informed by what comes in through your eyes, but it's not directly reflecting it."

Given the basic features of your visual system, it couldn't be any other way. For example, every 5 seconds or so, you blink. Yet unless you're thinking about it, as you probably are right now, you don't notice the blackouts because your brain edits them out.

Blinking is just the tip of the iceberg. Even when your eyes are open they're only taking in a fraction of the visual information that is available.

In the centre of your retina is a dense patch of photoreceptor cells about 1 millimetre across. This is the fovea, the visual system's sweet spot where perception of detail and colour is at its best. "When you move away from the fovea, visual acuity falls away really quickly, and colour vision disappears," says Rensink. About 10 degrees to the side of the fovea, visual acuity is only about 20 per cent of the maximum.

What that means is you can only capture a tiny percentage of the visual field in full colour and detail at any one time. Hold your hand at arm's length and look at your thumbnail. That is roughly the area covered by the fovea. Most of the rest is captured in fuzzy monochrome.

And yet vision doesn't actually feel like this: it feels like a movie. That, in part, is because your eyes are constantly flitting over the visual scene, fixing on one spot for a fraction of a second then moving on. These jerky eye movements are called saccades and they happen about 3 times a second and last up to 200 milliseconds. With each fixation your visual system grabs a bite of high-resolution detail which it somehow weaves together to create an illusion of completeness.

That's remarkable given that during saccades themselves, you are effectively blind. Your eyes don't stop transmitting information as they lurch from one fixation to the next, but for about 100 milliseconds your brain is not processing it.

Look in the mirror and deliberately flick your eyes from left to right and back again. You won't see your eyes move - not because the movement is too fast (other people's saccades are visible), but because your brain isn't processing the information.

Given that you perform approximately 150,000 saccades every day, that means your visual system is "offline" for a total of about 4 hours during each waking day even without blinking (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 12, p 466). Yet you don't notice anything amiss.

Exactly how your brain weaves such fragmentary information into the smooth technicolour movie that we experience as reality remains a mystery. One leading idea is that it makes a prediction and then uses the foveal "spotlight" to verify it. "We create something internally and then we check, check, check," says Rensink. "Essentially we experience the brain's best guess about what is happening now."

In conjuring up this "now", the visual system has to do something even more remarkable: predict the future. Information striking the fovea cannot be relayed instantaneously to conscious perception: first it has to travel down the optic nerve and be processed by the brain. This takes several hundred milliseconds, by which time the world has moved on. And so the brain makes a prediction about what the world will look like about 200 milliseconds into the future, and that is what you see. Without this future projection you would be unable to catch a ball, dodge moving objects or walk around without crashing into things.

There's another huge hole in the visual system that can render you oblivious to things that should be unmissable. The jerky movements that shift your fovea around the visual scene don't happen at random - they are directed by your brain's attentional system. Sometimes you consciously decide what to attend to, such as when you read. At other times your attention is grabbed by a movement in your peripheral vision or an unexpected noise.

The problem with attention is that it is a limited resource. For reasons that remain unknown, most people are unable to keep track of more than four or five moving objects at once. That can lead your visual system to be oblivious to things that are staring you in the face.

The most famous demonstration of this "inattention blindness" is the invisible gorilla, a video-based experiment created by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Viewers are asked to pay close attention to a specific aspect of a basketball game, and around half completely fail to see a person in a gorilla suit walk slowly across the screen, beat their chest and walk off again.