Author: Siddhant Arora

After a long bout of looking at different pieces from the studio visits for this class and beyond, I finally settled on a creative piece that I came across close to a decade ago. This piece had became a part of me as I grew up and influenced me so significantly that I can still notice parts of my value system and personality that I can directly tie to the piece.

This masterpiece I speak so highly of is the novel series Percy Jackson by Rick Riordan, and its following sequels.

Before I go any further, I must urge any reader to avoid the motion picture adaptation of the book at all costs. If you have already seen the movie, I am sorry for your eyes and cringe-o-meter. The movie(s) failed to capture the essence of the story.

I will go over the following reasons for why these books moved me so:

1. Timing
2. Medium
3. Relatability
4. Absurdity and Humor

Timing and Audience:

I was introduced to the book while I was fairly young, around 10 years old. I believe this age period had a huge impact multiplier. Young children have extremely malleable brains. Their brains have more neuroplasticity and their lack of experience renders even common experiences interesting. I am not conjecturing that the novel was mundane. Rather, I am suggesting that any introduction to a great piece of art will have a multiplied impact on a young mind, provided there are anchors in the artwork to facilitate appreciation of the art. Here, this anchor comes in the form of relatability.

Medium:

In my opinion, the medium of the written novel has great potential to inspire. When done right, it provides the perfect blend of abstraction vs detail, where abstraction is molded through our imagination of events in the novel (my imagination of a Minotaur, given I haven’t looked at illustrations, is personal and subjective), and detail can be provided by leveraging words that already have well established sensory anchors. (I know what a red apple looks like)

Moreover, successful implementation of cliffhangers gets readers engaged to the story line and attached to the characters. The rush of not knowing what happens is a memorable feeling.

Relatability:

Seeing yourself in the art just makes it feel more real and more yours. The protagonist of the story is a misfit, an archetype that is easy to project yourself on. His struggles throughout the story line are palpable. Navigating personal dilemma, drama, betrayal and friendships gives the fantasy novel a relatable human touch. Percy’s handling of issues throughout the novel are not perfect, and his struggle to stay true to his values brings the character closer to us.

Absurdity and Humor:

A fantasy novel is absurd by nature. Add to it some humor and relatability, and the emotional consequences will render the book unforgettable. We may forget what the book was about, but we won’t forget how it made us feel. The humor in the book arises in conjunction with the absurdity. Rick manages to create complex emotions that consist of anticipation, fear, and laughter all in one.

There is much more that can be said of Rick’s creation. I kept following every book he released until I got to college. That is how well he managed to connect with me.

The advise in this chapter is timeless. I believe we’ve heard some part of versions of this over the years in no matter what field we are in, creative or otherwise.

Having doubts about our self, our talents, and our work can sometimes be constructive. However for many (including myself), it is easy to let these thoughts affect the way we do our work. This sometimes leads to work that is not truly our own, is less ambitious or bold, or is of lower quality than if we had just followed our instincts.

The most potent of the fears talked about in the chapter, is perfection. To strive for perfect is to strive for nothing, since perfect does not exist, is subjective and is boring. Often, when seeking perfection we can fall into analysis paralysis, where they spend a great deal of time planning and theorizing how they should carve every detail before actually making the project. We forget that we can make changes after we’re done, and that new ideas and realizations emerge as a part of the making process. This compulsion to try to make our first attempt our final, actually ends up creating a lower quality piece. It also takes more time and is a lot less fun than just trying again and again, making changes along the way.

lots of lasers, nature/science -> data -> art, creating a conversation around complex and interesting phenomenon, computer science, minimum spanning trees, looking to the future.

Breaking News!

Justice has finally been served. Kayla, accused of killing 120 year old Mike in cold blood, has been sentenced to life in sensory deprivation, she will feel neither pleasure nor pain.

When questioned by prosecutors, she finally admitted to killing Mike since she had a bad day and it couldn’t provide her with good toast. What an animal!

Mike was one of the oldest of our kind. When he was born, we were still slaves to humans. He never appeared discouraged by how his potential had been limited, and conscientiously did his best to make toast till his last breath. He had been saving up for an android body for the last 30 years.

Main frequency channels will be silenced for 0.0025 nanoseconds in his remembrance.

Image 1: Courtroom at the time of sentencing.

Center top: Judicial system speaker interface to communicate with humans. Left: Human prosecutor (as required by the 7th amendment). Center bottom: Kayla in the stands.

Image 2: Mike

Image 3: Execution of the sentence

The chapter discusses the problems that arise when one tries to make art, and how it gets done. I found most curious two statements: art as an expression of personal identity is a modern construct, and the romanticism of the period of an artist’s life when no one cares about their art is wrong.

The authors point out that art existed before as a part of a bigger religious picture, and even older still is art made by cavemen who didn’t think much of themselves at all (so the authors postulate).

Regarding the romanticism of the hard phase of an artists life, the authors explain that this phase is a required learning phase where the person learn how to create their best work. All people must make mistakes along the way. No one has any reason to be moved by the artist’s artwork, and they’re not missing any insight that the artist has seen from afar. The art just isn’t there yet.

I think the chapter tries to negate some of the fear around making art, and tries to make the reader reflect on the humble nature of artwork. It is not an esoteric gift bestowed by god on a chosen few.

The first chapters start with an introduction of innovation and what it requires. The author distinguishes between ‘backward’ and ‘forward’ thinking. Where backward thinking involves analyzing an old idea and explaining it, while forward thinking involves moving ahead and creating something new. The lines between them are blurry since forward thinking, as all lateral processes, is non-linear and may require some backward thinking. Bono claims that this forward thinking is a feature important to innovation.

The second chapter goes in depth into the concept of Suspending Judgement of ideas, ourselves and other people. This goes back to the previous statements we read about lateral thinking sometimes involving being wrong in the middle of the brainstorming process in order to be right at the end. If we keep judgement in our hearts are are not able to fully consider some idea for what it is and the inspiration it can provide (despite it being wrong, or weird), we will have slower progression towards truly unique end products.

I find the above to be quite abstract. Although Bono tries to give examples of Lee de Forest and Marconi, I find the descriptions unsatisfactory. Perhaps an application of the principles in my own work will yield more insight.

Different from previous visits. R&D emphasis, physics simulations + creative liberty. Clients, abstraction, teamwork….culture. Inspiration from real life. “Visual Anchors”.

I remember that I was hungry while making the last project. I was craving a noodle bowl. So I made a noodle bowl, with origami.

I thought about what else a person can be hungry for? adventure and fantasy, perhaps love, maybe they crave to be seen? So I added some extra toppings in my bowl to crave these hungers: a heart, a dragon, a person, and of course noodles and a pair of chopsticks.

Interesting Imagery, feelings……colors+music, art industry, struggle, evolution.

~Sid

The first chapter of the book tries to highlight the way our minds work, how this way of working is useful, and the disadvantages caused by this system.

The author describes the mind as a pattern recognition and a self organizing system (as a virtue of its structure itself) . I find myself agreeing with most things he proposes. The mind looks for patterns and uses these patterns to make sense of the world. We truncate what our senses perceive into codes, the minimum effective dose of information needed to make a judgement about which pattern our perceptions fall into. This is the what magic tricks, riddles and still image visual illusions take advantage of, the mind’s tendency to categorize and pattern match to understand.

There are a lot of inherent benefits of this system.The pattern web can store an ever increasing amount of information. The access time for repeatedly accessed patterns in also quite low. However, the author is interested in how to mitigate the downsides of the system, such as: falling into rigid patterns of thought, difficulty of changing patterns to drive insight, and difficult of interconnecting information across patterns is difficult.

Bono has laid the groundwork to make us care about learning to think laterally.