The Art of Walking into Doors on Radio 4

This fascinating radio programme investigates whether dyspraxic and dyslexic students draw in a different way to others.

"Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Leonardo da Vinci...all of them, it's said, were dyslexic. But was there any connection between that and their work? Chris Ledgard visits the Royal College of Art in London, where he explores the relationship between dyslexia and dyspraxia, and students' ability to draw."

http://bbc.in/1KujXDP

Culture Matters

The Arts Council have made the following film as a reminder of the breadth of arts and culture emerging from England over the years.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwqRGiA_T5Q

Wave - poppies installed at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

My parents live about 20 minutes away from Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP), and pretty much every time I visit my childhood home I like to make a trip to YSP to enjoy the beautiful expansive green grounds and see the current exhibitions.

Over my lifetime, YSP has grown from strength to strength, and last year it was awarded the 2014 Museum of the Year. YSP is one of the four galleries making up The Yorkshire Sculpture Triangle, and with increased recognition, it continues to attract a healthy and varied audience. It seemed particularly busy today, maybe because of the nature of the current exhibition. 

"Wave, a sweeping arch of bright red poppy heads suspended on towering stalks, by artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper, rises up from YSP’s Lower Lake, reaching over the Park’s historic Cascade Bridge.

The sculpture – along with Weeping Window, a cascade comprising several thousand handmade ceramic poppies seen pouring from a high window to the ground below – was initially conceived as one of the key dramatic sculptural elements in the installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London in the autumn of 2014. 

Over the course of their time at the Tower, the two sculptures were gradually surrounded by a vast field of ceramic poppies, each one planted by a volunteer in memory of the life of a British and Colonial soldier lost during the First World War. In their original setting they captured the public imagination and were visited by over five million people."

http://www.ysp.co.uk/exhibitions/poppies-wave

If I am completely honest, I was a little underwhelmed by the piece. Although I didn't see the poppies when they were installed in London, and so am basing my judgement purely on the documentation of the installation in the capital, Wave lacked the impact and intensity of the original artwork. I think with works like this, the wow factor is created through its scale and therefore with far fewer poppies, it is hardly surprising that the impact of Wave is reduced as opposed to when it was part of a bigger whole. 

Regardless of this, the work has attracted a huge audience, including those who have never been to YSP before. One of the questions this raises is whether it is worthwhile to exhibit a smaller part of an installation which has less of an impact in order to prolong its life and increase its reach to a wider audience. 

Remarks about Newcastle University MFA Degree Show by Elizabeth Kane

I've just come across Elizabeth Kane's blog post following her visit to the Newcastle University MFA Degree Show a few weeks ago.

It reads:

"Last Friday I ventured to see 2015 MFA show at Newcastle University. You can find out more about the artists here and The Hatton here.

It was a very humid day. Not an ideal climate for viewing work. I was drawn to Alex Charrington’s prints. Perhaps because of my recent reading about visual literacy and viewer as author. They were beautiful, layered, graphic… reminiscent of so many things. Lots of ways to make my own meaning. The smell of seaweed from Helen Shaddock’s studio revitalized me, love those multi-sensory experiences.

I confess I had terrible urges to ruin the tentative balance of Nigel Morgan’s construction! I resisted but that sense of jeopardy and imminent collapse is quite powerful.Sarah Dunn’s exploration of sorting, collecting, presenting and owning was fascinating but definitely one I felt I skimmed.Finally, I have learnt Yein Son’s Nocturncanvases are made from indian ink but as an observer I pondered if they were made from light sensitive materials.

I need to go back and see more."


https://elizabethkane.wordpress.com/2015/08/24/fine-art-ma-newcastle-university-2015/

SOPHIE MACKFALL: WE EAT AND DRINK AND SIT BY FIRES at NEW STUDIO

Saturday 3 October - Sunday 1 November 2015

(Preview Friday 2 October 6-8 pm)


Open Saturday and Sunday 12-6pm and by appointment

NEW STUDIO
4-17 Frederick Terrace
Haggerston
E8 4EW


NEW STUDIO presents a new series of paintings by Sophie Mackfall in her first solo show in London.

Part of an emerging generation of British artists, Mackfall demonstrates an expanded approach to painting by embracing the scale and surface of the spatial situations in which she works. Her approach takes its cue from 20th century philosophical ideas around human existence and creativity, alongside utopian notions of abstraction. Informed by an ongoing critical investigation of social movements including Anthroposophic theory and her own experiences of Steiner education, Mackfall creates encounters between material, colour, form and environment to point towards an indefinable quality of lived experience.


Often suspended across a room, or applied directly to a wall, Mackfall’s works draw upon a range of ‘to hand’ materials, from paper and glass to fabric, string and wicker, to create rhythmic installations that hover between domestic intimacy and a broader architectural landscape. For NEW STUDIO Mackfall presents a new series of paintings on glass fragments. Cut to shapes that evoke the curvature of the human body they are collectively assembled as a sculptural installation in direct response to the gallery interior.

http://www.newstudio.org.uk/sophiemackfall/

Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015

'The Jerwood Drawing Prize is the largest and longest running annual open exhibition for drawing in the UK.

Selected from original drawings, the Jerwood Drawing Prize has established a reputation for its commitment to championing excellence, and to promoting and celebrating the breadth of contemporary drawing practice within the UK.'

Artists can deliver their submissions to one of various collection points around the UK, and a courier delivers the artworks to the Jerwood Space in London where they are judged, and the unsuccessful submissions are returned to the collection points to be picked up by the artists.

Earlier in the year I was involved in this process, working at the North East collection point based at Newcastle University. It was certainly challenging, but very interesting to see what people were entering, and intriguing to find out which artworks were chosen from the North East. I was curious to discover the full complement of artists and artworks that form the 2015 exhibition.

'A total of 60 works by 58 artists, including one collaboration, have been selected for exhibition by the panel; Dexter Dalwood, artist; Salima Hashmi, artist, curator and writer; and John-Paul Stonard, art historian.

The Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015 artists are: Elisa Alaluusua, Ian Andrews, Robert Battams, Frances Blane, Hannah Blight-Anderson, Pia Bramley, Pete Burke, John Close, Julie Cockburn, Daniel Crawshaw, Gerry Davies, Cinzia Delnevo, Sammy Dent, Emma Douglas, Bryan Eccleshall, Pennie Elfick, Susan England, Exchange + Draw, Mark Farhall, Craig Fisher, Nina Fowler, Thomas Gosebruch, Thomas Harrison, Roland Hicks, William Hughes, Julia Hutton, Mehr Javed, Ben Johnson, Ali Kayley, Nigel Kingsbury, Lois Langmead, Gary Lawrence, Juliette Losq, William Mackrell, Sean Maltby, Grace McMurray, Anouk Mercier, Mary Millner, Joonhong Min, Paul Peden, Lee John Phillips, Ruth Philo, Giulia Ricci, Annette Robinson, Jenny Ross ,Gabriela Schutz, Sarah Seymour, Caroline Shadbolt, Soheila Sokhanvari, Charlotte Steel, Hanna ten Doornkaat, John Thole, Caroline Truss, Alan Turnbull, Ronis Varlaam, Rosie Vohra, Roy Willingham, Martha Zmpounou.

Speaking about the winning works, Professor Anita Taylor, director of the Jerwood Drawing Prize project, said: “The commitment and endeavour of artists and designers, emerging and mature, to use drawing as a vital means of creativity and as a means to explore and understand the world anew, is significant. The award winners deploy drawing in various forms to both document and to question our perceptions.”

Jerwood Drawing Prize 2015 continues at Jerwood Space, London until 25 October 2015.

The exhibition will then tour to venues across the UK, including Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum: The Wilson (21 November 2015 – 31 January 2016), Sidney Cooper Gallery, Canterbury (11 February – 9 April 2016), and Falmouth Art Gallery (23 April – 25 June 2016).'

http://www.jerwoodvisualarts.org/jerwood-drawing-prize-2015

https://www.a-n.co.uk/news/singapore-view-wins-jerwood-drawing-prize-2015

Matthew Darbyshire: An Exhibition for Modern Living at Manchester Art Gallery

This major exhibition by British contemporary artist Matthew Darbyshire is the artist’s largest solo public exhibition to date and will include ten of his large-scale environments from the last decade, as well as new sculptural works for the Gallery’s grand 19th century entrance hall.

My joined 2

Darbyshire’s work critically examines the language of design, sculpture and our relationship to lived environments. The artist explores the concept of collecting, not only in terms of an institutional critique, but also the way we amass objects for the home, shop or office and what these objects say about us. These ideas are explored in Darbyshire’s work that gives the exhibition its title, An Exhibition for Modern Living(2011). A highlight of British Art Show 7, this work is inspired by the landmark 1949 exhibition of the same name at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The 1949 exhibition collected the best of modern ‘design for living’ in the context of the rapidly changing society of post-Second World War America. The show set an example of how design could be made available for the masses and achieved legendary status due to the site-specific custom room installations. At Manchester Art Gallery, Darbyshire will present a contemporary equivalent that is somewhat more anxious than the 1949 exhibition, presenting an environment packed with objects varying from valuable collectors’ pieces and handmade sculptures to readily available high street items. The work succinctly questions the political and economic agendas that inform our taste and value judgements today.

Standardised Production Clothing - Version 7

While the work An Exhibition for Modern Living examines the nature of how and why individuals collect, Oak Effect (2012) addresses how museums and galleries acquire artworks. For this piece, Darbyshire displays original wooden objects in a room made from contemporary pieces of flat-pack furniture. The artist has re-worked this installation with curators and conservators at the gallery to present a diverse range of hand-made artefacts fashioned from natural wood from the city’s collections, challenging us to think about the provenance and display of our collections in a very different way.

Dyson5

More recently, Darbyshire has begun to explore industrial prototyping and 3D digital printing to create sculptures using pristine white polystyrene for his Bureau series (2014). The artist has subsequently built on this research and techniques developed to recreate classical and contemporary sculptural forms from layers of hand-cut, multi-coloured polycarbonate as part of a series entitled CAPTCHA. A sculpture from Darbyshire’s CAPTCHA series is currently a highlight of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. Two sculptures have been created specifically for the exhibition as part of this series, which will be positioned in Manchester Art Gallery’s impressive Doric entrance hall.Doryphoros and Dyson will take the place of traditional bronze and marble figurative sculpture on either side of the grand stone staircase, set against the backdrop of casts from the Parthenon frieze given by George IV to decorate Manchester’s very own temple to culture.


http://manchesterartgallery.org/exhibitions-and-events/exhibition/matthew-darbyshire-an-exhibition-for-modern-living/


https://www.artrabbit.com/events/matthew-darbyshire-an-exhibition-for-modern-living?utm_source=Website+subscribers&utm_campaign=1732d90a66-ArtRabbit_Openings_in_the_UK9_23_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0542a9a093-1732d90a66-229848997

Scratching The Surface - final exhibition by Creative Arts Practice MA students

Congratulations to the Culture Lab students who have created an interesting and innovative exhibition using new media and interactive technology. The show consists of work by a variety of artists, designers and musicians who have come to the end of their one year Creative Arts Practice MA course at Newcastle University. They "explore new media to challenge the role of electronic arts, disrupting the relationships between artwork, audience and interaction."

Exhibiting artists: Barti Sena, Clive Wright, Cuong Dao, Edmund Nesveda, Meteor Liang, Qingchan Li, Tan Zou, Wenya Chen and Yousif Abdulghani unveil an exciting exhibition consisting of audio-visual interactive installations, live hacked CCTV, performances and interactive objects.

Bartira Sena

In a burgeoning momentum of excessive technological consumerism and electronic mediation, Bartira Sena's work attempts to juxtapose notions of nature, spirituality and technology. Her installations create situations in which we experience alternative cultural representations. For this show she presents ‘Ceremonial Hardware’ the result of a collaborative session where participants responded to the imaginary scenario ‘ Spiritual e-tools from the future, excavated in our present time’. The engulfing device imprints multi-touch gestural frustration while multi-mouthing attempts a surrogate to multi- touching interaction.

Clive Wright looks at disrupting the notion of mass surveillance presenting us with an installation that provokes and questions our current beliefs.
‘Surveillance Discourse’ presents us with an eclectic mix of live hacked CCTV footage from around the world, from dystopian looking landscapes to places of worship, we glimpse a first hand view of who and what is being looked at through these faceless pieces of technology.

Clive Wright

By underlining the characteristic of Studio Ghibli fans, Cuong Dao’s work describes the essential role played by a fan-made fiction. Ghibliary, an approach to fan art, will be presented as a closer analysis, which will investigate how a fan uses natural constitutions and spiritual themes from original movies as metaphors to expose cultural values to people and society.

Edmund Nesveda's interactive video installation explores the relationship between the public and the private in the context of surveillance in contemporary society. It plays on the ambiguous role of technology in the process, and underlines the tensions emerging from the blurring of lines between public and private lives. In the UK alone there are more than 6 million CCTV cameras, forming a huge surveillance network, many are unsecured, leaving a window open into people's lives. Someone might be watching, indeed someone might be watching right now.

Qingchan Li explores the possibilities of a totally open and free environment in interactive narratives by producing multiply alternative life of Adolf Hitler in a game style. This project mainly consists of historical images, text, along with impressive sound effect, providing various options and branches in every stage in Adolf Hitler’s life for audience to choose, leading to more than five different endings.

Tan Zou

“To-be” Garden is Tan’s interactive installation design, which consists of “Music Garden” and “Weather Garden”. “Music Garden” is a multisensory interactive installation controlled by infrared sensors.“Weather Garden” is a creative design based on weather change. Tan's work aims at providing a multisensory and emotional digital world for participants.

Bencharmony – Yousif Abdulghani
The bench is an everyday functional and familiar object. It satisfies variable needs and provides a platform for human communication. Although it can accommodate multiple occupants with a close proximity, it has been observed that they rarely connect to each other in the public spaces. This piece was created to investigate the ability of collaborative music making to demolish barriers, and stimulate connectivity between strangers in the public spaces. With its minimalist and accessible interface design, it allows occupants to explore and create musical patterns and textures collaboratively, which results in various levels of human connections with unpredictable outputs and interactions.

http://dm.ncl.ac.uk/usifaghani/

http://www.thecrackmagazine.com/view-event/25724/2015-09-22/19

http://narcmagazine.com/news-scratching-the-surface-culture-lab-newcastle/



The exhibition is open 22nd - 25th September 9am - 5pm

Culture Lab Space 4/5
King's Road,
Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU

Interesting drawings by David Ernst

http://davidfoughtgoliath.tumblr.com

ERSATZ
Ballpoint + Ink
50 x 70 cm

Ink on colored paper

21 x 25 cm

I Work Like a Gardener: Joan Miro

It's been nearly a week since I moved into my current house, and I am settling in well. Today I was filled with joy as I was able to sit outside in the back yard and enjoy the sunshine. I ate my lunch while listening to the birds and appreciating the wealth of herbs, plants and produce that are being grown. I get a great deal of satisfaction from growing things and I find gardening relaxing. But results do not come quickly, and plants require care and attention.

Artist Joan Miro recognised the time needed for ideas to develop, and the dedication that goes into making artwork.

"In an age when the vast majority of our cultural material is reduced to “content” and “assets,” factory-farmed by a media machine that turns creators into Pavlovian creatures hooked on constant and immediate positive reinforcement via “likes” and “shares,” here comes a sorely needed reminder that art operates on a wholly different time scale and demands a wholly different pace of cultivation.

"https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/09/17/i-work-like-a-gardener-joan-miro/

Miró defies this factory-farming model of art with the following metaphor:

"If a canvas remains in progress for years in my studio, that doesn’t worry me. On the contrary, when I’m rich in canvases which have a point of departure vital enough to set off a series of rhythms, a new life, new living things, I’m happy.

I consider my studio as a kitchen garden. Here, there are artichokes.There, potatoes. Leaves must be cut so that the fruit can grow. At the right moment, I must prune.

I work like a gardener… Things come slowly… Things follow their natural course. They grow, they ripen. I must graft. I must water… Ripening goes on in my mind. So I’m always working at a great many things at the same time."

Susan Sontag adds “Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art… Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.”

Unsensed opening at The Hatton Gallery

The Hatton Gallery is taken over by seven contemporary artists who reveal the unseen and unnoticed facets of our everyday environment.

Matthew Flintham

Matthew Flintham presents a new installation revealing the hidden, virtual geometries of military airspaces that are all around us.

Rachel Garfield screens the second film in her trilogy The Struggle, commissioned by Beaconsfield, acknowledging unspoken ideologies saturating society.

Aaron Guy draws attention to how the layers of our environment are being shaped by invisible forces, changing the way we interact with the urban landscape.

A series of prints by Autumn Richardson and Richard Skelton trace the origins of familiar words to unearth their forgotten roots in the British landscape.

Matthew Tickle’s What the eye can’t see the heart can’t grieve for samples background radiation from the big bang which washes over and through our bodies.

Yelena Popova

Commissioned to accompany Unsensed, Yelena Popova uses the Hatton Gallery as a stage to present an installation of new ‘invisible’ paintings evoking the transience of visual images in the digital age

https://hattongallery.org.uk/whats-on/unsensed

Don't be a Party Pooper and Grabber

 

    

Don’t be a Party Pooper

Acrylic rod, card, party popper ribbons 

This work was created having made Grabber (see below). I felt as though I needed an artwork high up near the ceiling, and one with similar subtle qualities as to those of Grabber. The party poppers ribbons are a similar colour and tone to the jelly, the silver card is akin to the mesh. The acrylic rod has the same vibrancy, albeit of a different colour. 

At times the acrylic rod can be fairly discreet, and the work could be missed (were it not for the floor plan), but in other lights, the rod glows brightly and attracts the viewers attention up the wall.

When positioning this work, I was also considering its relation to Strut Your Stuff which stands on the ground, and suggests an upward force whereas the party popper ribbons hanging down are governed by a downwards force. I positioned the two so that they do not touch each other, but could be said to be reaching upwards and downwards respectively.

 

Grabber
Acrylic rod, jelly, wire mesh, elastic band, grabber 

Grabber is the work that marks a shift in the way that I started to create artworks. I had been experimenting with jelly, and had lots of different colours, shapes and sizes in the fridge, but had not known what I wanted to do with them. 

One day, when I was in the Chinese supermarket, I came across a plate grabber, and was immediately fascinated by it, and I must admit, was rather perplexed (and still am), by its function. I was trying to work out how to pick something up using the grabber, when I came across the wire mesh. It then became clear to me that I was to insert the jelly.

Shellsuit

This work began as an experimentation into screen printing. 

I had produced some drawings from silicone, and scanned them before exposing them to a screen. I then created a number of screen prints on various papers in a range of colours. 

As the prints were drying, I saw them layered on top of one another, creating depth and forming interesting colour relations.

The colours of the prints remind me of a specific item of clothing that my Mum owned in the 1980s/ early 1990s. 

The item of clothing in question was a Reebok shellsuit. I vividly remember Mum wearing it every Monday evening when she went to the sports centre to play badminton.

I recall the rustling sound it made and how the fabric felt to the touch. Just seeing the combination of colours in the screen prints brought back many memories.

Bruce Mau's An incomplete manifesto for growth

A friend recently reminded me of Bruce Mau's 'An incomplete manifesto for growth'. It is my intention to read it regularly, and take the advice on board.

1. Allow events to change you.
   You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good.
   Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome.
   When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
   Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep.
   The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents.
   The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study.
   A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift.
   Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere.
   John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader.
    Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas.
    Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.
12. Keep moving.
    The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down.
    Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool.
    Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions.
    Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate.
    The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ____________________.
    Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.
18. Stay up late.
    Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor.
    Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks.
    Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself.
    If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools.
    Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
    You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software.
    The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk.
    You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
    Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages.
    Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
28. Make new words.
    Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind.
    Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty.
    Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’
31. Don’t borrow money.
    Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully.
    Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips.
    The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster.
    This isn’t my idea — I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate.
    Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat.
    When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge.
    Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
    Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces — what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference — the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals — but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields.
    Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh.
    People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember.
    Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people.
    Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.