Art

See Rufus Seder’s talk on “Magic, Art, and Motion Pictures” featuring my work in Boston November 29

Art / Blog / Education

See Rufus Seder’s talk on “Magic, Art, and Motion Pictures” featuring my work in Boston November 29

If you like art like mine -- motion pictures created by your motion, without computers or motion picture projectors -- you know Rufus Seder. He has created, among other things, series of books, cards, and other hands-on physical animation devices. Friends and family constantly bring me his fascinating work, books, toys, and such. On Thursday, November 29, Rufus will speak at Northeastern University in Boston on our type of art; more specifically how and why he does what he does, touching on the history of motion picture devices and toys, his own award-winning independent films, the optically animated art of others, and his ongoing exploration into new ways of making pictures move. He told me he'll feature a piece or two of my work in…

November 20, 2012

Art / Blog / Creativity / Freedom

A refreshing voice on copyright from a hard-core conservative

EDIT: Maybe I should have expected this. The Executive Director of the Committee pulled the document from their site, stating We at the RSC take pride in providing informative analysis of major policy issues and pending legislation that accounts for the range of perspectives held by RSC Members and within the conservative community. Yesterday you received a policy brief on copyright law that was published without adequate review within the RSC and failed to meet that standard. Copyright reform would have far-reaching impacts, so it is incredibly important that it be approached with all facts and viewpoint in hand. As the RSC's Executive Director, I apologize and take full responsibility for this oversight. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and a meaningful Thanksgiving holiday ...…

November 18, 2012

My beautiful eight-minute Shanghai commute

Art / Blog

My beautiful eight-minute Shanghai commute

Speaking about commuting, as I did yesterday, I decided to record my Shanghai morning commute. It's normally about eight minutes. I could probably do it in six-and-a-half without running if I had to. So I brought my camera and took pictures every dozen yards or so sometimes looking forward, other times to the side. What can I say? I consider community more important all the time. I live in a beautiful part of the French Concession. I started with the interior of the old three-story building I live in. People call the building old Chinese style in that people use its common spaces for storage, drying racks, cooking spaces, and so on... a different view of privacy than the U.S. I say a few words…

September 25, 2012

Art / Blog / Creativity / Entrepreneurship / Freedom

Occupy Disney

Back when Occupy Wall Street was making more news and I was writing about it and leadership and on it and responsibility, I had an idea about corporate control of our lives I thought would be interesting. As an entrepreneur and inventor, I felt the control closer to those areas of my life. I've written about how the patent and copyright systems have created monopolies and oligopolies that distorted their effects from promoting invention to stifling it and small business. There's more to things than just one sentence, so I hope you'll forgive my oversimplicity for the sake of brevity. The Occupy Wall Street movement seems to have lost steam, but recent stories about patent fights between Apple and Samsung are turning the stomachs of…

September 14, 2012

Union Square in Motion named Adobe Design Achievement Award Semifinalist!

Art / Blog / Creativity / Education

Union Square in Motion named Adobe Design Achievement Award Semifinalist!

Union Square in Motion made the prestigious 2012 Adobe Design Achievement Award semifinals! The Adobe Design Achievement Awards celebrate student and faculty achievement reflecting the powerful convergence of technology and the creative arts. The competition - which showcases individual and group projects created with industry-leading Adobe creative software - honors the most talented and promising student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, developers and computer artists from the world's top institutions of higher education. Adobe sent us the certificate below, somehow not getting around to naming the artists -- Jaqi Vigil, Hilal Koyuncu, Rose Maison, Josefina Santos, Umut Ozover, and me; and co-producer with me, Anezka Sebek -- or the name of the project: Union Square in Motion. Anyway, I couldn't be prouder of…

September 1, 2012

The Leaders in Software and Art Conference, October 16

Art / Blog / Leadership

The Leaders in Software and Art Conference, October 16

Savvy readers will notice the conference mentioned in the title covers two big topics of this blog -- leadership and art. I've twice spoken at Leaders in Software and Art events, helped host another, and attended many others (a video of my work is currently on the LISA site's front page). The organizer, Isabel Draves, has been building the events, consistently assembling artists and technologists to speak, network, and share about art and technology. (Her husband, Scott, creates just about the most amazing computer-based art I've ever seen.) After many successful monthly salons, she's finally making the first big LISA conference, assembling a great set of speakers. I expect this event will be as Isabel plans -- a TED conference for the overlap of technology…

August 21, 2012

I love the West Village

Art / Blog / My Favorite Posts / Stories

I love the West Village

Greenwich Village, my home, is the best place on Earth. You may love a place more. I love the beauty of raw nature, untouched by human hands, that New York City no longer offers. But I love people and the art, music, culture, and community we create too and I've never seen the equal of the West Village. After living abroad and visiting amazing growth, ancient cultures, new cultures, and new ways of seeing, I wondered how coming home would feel. Coming out of the subway to my home, seeing my neighbors, the neighborhood, the buildings, the restaurants, the people of the Village, and whatever visitors are here overwhelmed me with its diversity and vibrancy. I write prose on life and leadership, not creative writing.…

August 17, 2012

An old building in North Korea

Art / NorthKorea

An old building in North Korea

I believe a king lived here and that the building dates from around 1400, but I don't remember. Still, it's one of the few historical buildings they have or architectural references to a leadership other than the Kims. Sorry I don't remember the details (perhaps a reader who knows can remind me), but you start tuning out the guides and the stories glorifying the Kims and their regime sometimes, even when you're looking at something unrelated. The full building Detail of the interior of the top Upstairs (the sunlight overexposed the bannister) Detail of a corner Detail of the top of a pillar The ceiling of another building in the complex The ceiling of the previous picture from a different view The ceiling of the…

August 10, 2012

Art / Blog / Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

More on becoming a superstar

I wanted to comment on a quote in yesterday's post about becoming a superstar that illustrates an aspect important for the aspiring star -- you. And, again, superstardom can mean breakout success in any area -- starting a company, making CEO, being a superstar boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse, etc. A musician I quoted yesterday commented that American Idol's shooting-the-moon style isn't really about music. It's about all the bad aspects of the music business — the arrogance of commerce, this sense of 'I know what will make this person a star; artists themselves don't know.' I've only seen a few minutes of the show, but it looks like the judges speak authoritatively (not that they have authority, just that they speak that way) on what…

August 9, 2012

Art / Blog / Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Leadership

How to become a superstar

This post is about breakout success in any area -- starting a company, making CEO, being a superstar boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse, etc -- but I'll put it in the language of entertainment superstardom. I'll leave translating it to the language of the field you want to succeed in as an exercise. But I guarantee it applies. Superstars make it look so easy. They dress how they want, say what they want, and do what they want and the world loves them for it. Everyone else has to think about what they say and do all the time -- and then gets judged for it. How do they do it? Building a solid foundation I'm conservative about hitting it big. This quote on a Bruce…

August 8, 2012

Art / Creativity / Education / NorthKorea

More on North Korea’s art

From my notes while I was there in April: North Korean performance art: technical perfection while appearing effortless ... emote wonder and hokey joy ... layer it on ... add difficulty. Zero subtlety. That just about describes it. I also noted the following. Something tells me that the technical perfection in North Korean arts reflects middling ability in its leadership to prove its self-worth. Maybe I extrapolated too far, but someone is driving their artistic and athletic direction. Since North Korea controls personal expression so much, they can't motivate their artists to express themselves how they want, so how can they promote something like art? They can promote easily quantifiable and measurable results. North Koreans can justifiably say they're better than nearly anyone else on…

August 7, 2012

North Korean children’s nearly unbelievable performances

Art / Creativity / Education / NorthKorea

North Korean children’s nearly unbelievable performances

The pictures below don't even approach showing the almost unbelievable performance ability of North Korean children. Joseph's pictures showcase their talent better. But no images can show the professionalism, dedication, and raw talent these kids have. The pictures below are from the Children's Palace, which trains children to perform and create art and puts on incredible performances. After their performance last time, my travel groupmate who was starting a school to train opera singers, reacted with disgust at the performance. As I understood, he saw their type of performance -- technical perfection that could only result from repeated drilling and repetition devoid of personal expression -- as destroying everything he valued about art -- personal expression and emotional exploration. He saw children whose artistic world…

August 4, 2012

Art / Blog / Creativity

Great Bruce Springsteen article in this week’s New Yorker

I just finished reading and enjoying an article on Bruce Springsteen in this week's New Yorker. I recommend it, especially if you like the long New Yorker articles. This one is over 15,000 words. I've mentioned Bruce before. Growing up in the 70s and 80s in Philadelphia you couldn't miss him. I remember a radio promotion on one of the stations I listened to quoting a fan yelling, I guess outside a Springsteen concert "He's the best. He's Bruce. He's the Boss!" Greetings from Asbury Park was one of the first cds I bought when the medium came out. And the older brother of the first love of my life -- my high school girlfriend -- was a huge fan, with cases of concert bootleg…

July 30, 2012

Art / Blog / Creativity / Tips

Do you overvalue originality at the expense of getting the job done?

Society values originality and creativity in problem solving instead of getting the job done. I'll illustrate how. Imagine you have a problem you need solved. For concreteness let's say you need plumbing work done in your house, but it could apply to any problem, personal, professional, or otherwise. Say you ask two plumbers how they would fix the problem to decide whom to hire. The first plumber says "I have the most creative idea for how to solve your problem. No one has ever seen a solution like this one. I will get your plumbing to do things no plumbing has done before. You will marvel at the originality and creativity in your plumbing." The second plumber says "Oh, I've solved problems exactly like this…

July 28, 2012

My first tilt-shift: North Korea

Art / NorthKorea

My first tilt-shift: North Korea

Okay, this post has almost nothing to do with North Korea, but I learned how to do the trick to make images look like miniatures, called tilt-shifting or miniature faking. I did it with an image of Pyongyang from the Juche Tower. The top, though low resolution, shows the original. The bottom shows the retouched version. Click for larger versions. Anyway, it's just for fun and practice. I think the trick has been played out on the web, but I wanted to try. You can see more of Pyongyang too -- unoccupied and unmaintained buildings, Soviet style, public spaces that could be beautiful. Many buildings had pastel colors that reminded me of Miami Beach, but I don't think so many had such pretty colors in…

July 20, 2012

Art / Blog / Education / Leadership

A leadership dream

Since posting on lessons leaders can learn from method acting, I've been thinking about parallels between acting and leadership -- in particular how acting changed when Constantine Stanislovski led changing the art to expressive and internal from impressive and external. "Impressive and external" means the actor tried to impress the audience with outward showiness. "Expressive and internal" means the actor tries to find emotions inside and express them. You know what acting before looked like. Jon Lovitz and John Lithgow mocked that style on Saturday Night Live in its Master Thespian sketches in the late 80s (this transcript of a sketch made me laugh after all these years). I haven't studied the history of acting, but I think the comedy sketch gets some of the…

July 8, 2012

Art / Awareness / Blog

You don’t have to accept anyone else’s hierarchy of taste

I posted on another board in a discussion on taste Is classical music better than punk? Museum art better than street art? Haute cuisine better than burritos? Is the op-ed page better than stand-up comedy? Is classical philosophy better than folk wisdom? My life improved when I learned I didn't have to accept anyone else's hierarchy of taste. Most people may consider one better than another, but I've learned to see them as meeting the values of a community better, not being absolutely better. Classical music meets the values of some communities better than punk. But punk meets other communities' values better than classical. I prefer evaluating things by the values of the communities that practice it. Then I appreciate more things and judge less.…

July 5, 2012

Xian!

Art / Blog / Creativity

Xian!

Business brought me to the lovely city of Xian, not that far from Shanghai. My hosts brought me to a central area they covered with LEDs, I guess for tourists. I couldn't help take pictures to post here. It was borderline garish, but just this side of too much. I don't know if the pictures capture it. It almost felt like daytime at night. The city lit up a whole area with statues, pillars (wrapped in LEDs I couldn't help by overexpose in the pictures), municipal and art buildings, etc. Lots of people were enjoying themselves. Anyway, if you are near Xian, visit. Tomorrow I'll post on the famous terra-cotta army, also not far away. A couple friends who visited here told me to visit…

June 21, 2012

Art / Blog / Leadership

Leadership lessons from method acting

Leadership and acting have a lot in common. Both crafts require practitioners to be aware of and to manage their emotions and those of people around them. They evoke different emotions -- leaders generally don't try to get people to cry and actors generally don't get people to work weekends -- but their crafts overlap nonetheless. I've linked to Inside the Actors Studio before and I'll keep linking to them. I'm in the middle of watching the host, James Lipton, interviewed by the great comedian (and apparently friend), David Chappelle for the 200th episode of the show. I'm only half through the episode and I'm already seeing the parallels and learning from them. They show some deeply personal clips of the emotions and techniques to…

June 11, 2012

Art / Blog

Seeing movies in theaters reminds my why I don’t like watching movies in theaters

Since I remembered liking the Dukes of Hazzard as a kid and like Johnny Knoxville, when I got free tickets to see the movie Dukes of Hazzard New York City premiere, I was excited to see a movie I had a reasonable chance of enjoying. It ended up being the first movie that, at zero cost, I paid too much to see. I decided to avoid watching movies in theaters. I don't oppose theaters, but three things -- conscious decisions by the theaters they could change -- ruin theater-going for me. The sound is too loud -- wearing ear plugs makes the sound level about right for me. Otherwise they're painfully loud. Theaters are too cold -- I have to bring a coat to see…

June 7, 2012

Art / Blog / Creativity / Education / Humor

My comedy sketch script

I've meant to post this script for a long time. In business school I wrote a script that ended up in Follies, Columbia Business School's student-run sketch comedy and musical production at the end of each semester. In my time there, Follies produced some of the best sketch comedy and musicals, including Every Breath Bernanke Takes, which got us press and a letter from the White House. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipJTqCbETog[/youtube] The sketch I wrote ended up a very funny piece. Getting to be on stage for a piece I wrote, including a line or two that got the 500 people in the audience to laugh on cue, with the type of laugh -- I don't know of anything that made me feel better than those moments and…

June 4, 2012

Art / Blog / Creativity

Joshua Spodek mentioned in Tate Modern lecture

I came across the online notes of a symposium mentioning me at the Tate Modern on "Pervasive Animation" by George Griffin, who lives around the corner from me and whom I met in person a couple years ago. Okay, he mentioned me only briefly, but it's the Tate Modern and he's important. So there!

May 21, 2012

Xu Bing’s gallery show at the Shanghai Gallery of Art

Art / Blog / Creativity

Xu Bing’s gallery show at the Shanghai Gallery of Art

I enjoyed a show by an artist named Xu Bing at the Shanghai Gallery of Art. He created a book using only symbols so that anyone could understand it, no matter what language they spoke. The show showed the book and the four-year process he took to create it. The simple, blocky images telling a story suggested to me that taking simple, direct pictures of them would tell the story of the show. I hope I achieved my goal. I hope you'll forgive my making the images a bit too big for the blog design, but I wanted to show more of the art. Hovering over the image pauses the slide show, which I recommend doing when you see individual pages of his work (clicking…

May 20, 2012

The Forbidden City

Art / Blog

The Forbidden City

You can't visit the Forbidden City in Beijing without posting pictures! It wasn't as crowded as the Great Wall, but plenty of people were there. Here are a few pictures.

April 24, 2012

Art / Blog / Tips

Learning from performers to live in the moment

I learned something profoundly helpful watching a friend perform music on stage. You might find it obvious, but it helped me. The moment a musician makes a mistake while performing, it's in the past. You can't change it. The best thing you can do for a great performance is to keep playing regardless of what happened. That doesn't mean you believe it never happened, but changing something now, like stopping playing, doesn't change what happened then. You can later look back and learn from the mistake, but not while you're playing. This observation has helped me through many crunch times.

April 18, 2012

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