Category: 2023

I absolutely enjoyed today’s visit and Markus’s talk. I loved how he’s so passionate about his work and how he constantly highlighted the importance of being driven. He also emphasized the need to put in the extra effort so that one could stand out among their peers. I was also fascinated by the idea of using perfumes as an inspiration to make music, that’s a pretty good example of thinking outside the box and not limiting oneself to the constraints of the convention. 

However, there were a few things I don’t quite agree with. Firstly, he talked about how our goals should be clearly defined and set beforehand. Just yesterday, Kermit discussed the idea of not knowing the destination when starting the journey and figuring everything out on the go. I think when it comes to art especially, this is how it should generally work. Also, I believe that the distinction between artists and content creators was too sharp. I think that artists are types of content creators too, just with more creative freedom. (See diagram below)

“What do you want?” was one of the most frequent questions that Markus Popp, aka Oval, asked us during our visit to him. He’s an interesting artist, and appears to hold strong opinions about the creative process.

There were many aspects of his process that I agreed with. He says that independent artwork often requires more grit and perseverance than working in a cubicle. In addition, one must constantly innovate and look for alternatives, since if you don’t, the number of people with similar talent, grit and ideas as you will shadow your work.

However, there were some ideas that I did not resonate with. He believes that you must have something that you’re after, a driving goal or ultimate desire of sorts, in order to push you to create good work. I believe that every artist has their own journey, and that journey does not always need a destination. Good art should be possible just through the virtue of curiosity, and shouldn’t require goals (like fame).

I found most of Markus Popp’s point resonating to me. First, I also believe that seeing the big picture in every way is important for everyone to not loose track in his or her life. Having a goal can justify one’s question about the purpose of life and not involving too much, meaning solely involving in his or her career path and point of interest, can make him or her a full person. Seeing the big picture also means being an observer. When standing in a third-party perspective, I can see the development and trend of a field in a more comprehensive way. I took this class for similar reasons as an engineering student. For me, I would love to engage in work such as research and product development engineer but not as a pure researcher or task-oriented engineer as I want to engage in actual solutions that can make people’s life better step by step. Engaging in creative activities can let me think outside the box and see new things in new perspectives that a normal task-oriented engineer would never see. I like to see my contributions adds their effects to the world as a whole. Second, I reckon that developing the previously said “big-picture” way of thinking can help add your touch to the field you are interested in. For example, his familiarity with perfumes and scent can aid his music composition and “signs” his albums with tangible themes uniquely to him such as scents, romance, etc. Third, he also emphasized the importance of punchline thinking, triumph moments, and moments that surprises yourself. These can reassure you that you are on the track you original envisioned to accomplish when feeling too dragged by necessary technicalities and details (e.g. Marcus uses these to mediate his music making process when being drawn to sit at a laptop for 16 hours due to the detailed work of using the music software).

However, I was initially a little baffled and now partially disagree with his drastic distinction between the artist and content creator. To me, although people, in terms of their goals, may aim more towards answering to his or her own instincts or to create content when asked by others, everyone should be the mix of the two. They complement and develop on each other. For example, some content creators may find it useful to add his or her personal touch to a content creating process and some artists are also creating content for this world to some extent in order to live. They may also share the same goal but work towards it in different ways. I also partially disagree on his current position on avoiding the AI until there exists an established effect of AI on the creation of music. Although I believes that using AI purely may let the artist tend to use it for the whole creation process, losing the small propulsion and sense of achievements from the regular triumphant moments as well has the creator’s soul, uniqueness and aim for perfection, completely avoiding AI is not a good practice. AI can be an aid for lateral thinking, it is like having an friend that has perspective and thinking process completely different from anyone you can find (obviously because they are wired completely differently from any human). Using AI for hints and brainstorming or gathering inspiration can actually be quite helpful in my opinion.

One thing that struck me that I really agree with in this comedy Ted Talk, is two things, first, Kermit explaining how creativity is inherent to all of us, and is not only a things artists have and others dont, he explains how days to day activities, how the economy and other important factors of human (and non human) life has been heavily fueled by creativity, which is fully true. The second thing that he said that struck me was the term “ridiculous optimism” which is what i feel whenever I want to create something, wether it be a dance video, finish an assignment or even take on a project. Other than the skillsets needed to acquire a certain goal, I truly believe creativity is key to all of it because if you listen to this creativity it tells u about innovative/more fun ways for you to achieve this goal and u believe that u will succeed and find a way make your thoughts come to life. Overall, as funny as Kermit is, with his jokes, i agree with everything he says about creativity and the creative process one has to go through in order to achieve something creatively, i especially agree with the “ridiculous optimism” term he used as i believe it is really essential to acknowledge it and allow it to drive you further into your creative process. 

There were a lot of ideas swirling around this topic for me. There are 3 concepts that readily jumped out:

1. Space between objects.
2. Outer space
3. space between people (not the physical kind)

I decided to use a picture I took while I was on the S5, on my way to our housing in Berlin, as a base. This was the first time I the concept of ‘space’ came to my mind in Berlin. I am used to cities being crammed, and this was my first realization that Berlin was not such a city. The buildings and architecture were ‘spaced’. There was a lot of space to walk, to run, to ride and to see.

Here is the original picture:

A few years ago, I spent a some days in Sariska, Rajasthan, India. Sariska is a dark site, and as such is a great place to look at the stars. I edited the sky and ground in the image to a picture of a star trial (this is similar to a few pictures I captured, but alas I couldn’t find them in time). While incomplete without the context of creation, I wanted this image to signify space between people. People can live next to each other, even know each other, but at the same time be light years apart. This led us here:

When I was in elementary school, I didn’t care about school at all, all I cared about is making the time in class pass so that recess would feel to me like it was sooner, because of that, I would play a bunch of different games w my classmates that sat around me in class, one of them would be a game nostalgic to all of us in my school : the time traveller, so I decided to share the game with you guys and hopefully show you have to time travel from the comfort of your classes without making the professor realize you left!

The Colors of the Week:

In this synesthetic realm, Monday greets us with a warm embrace of orange, resembling Tuesday but with a touch of subtlety, not as bright and exuberant. Tuesday, shines a bright sunny yellow, reminiscent of the number 22, buzzing bumblebees, and the sweetness of honey. As we venture into Wednesday surrounds us in a refreshing green, evoking the imagery of rainforests and the crisp scent of fresh air. Thursday is navy blue because it just makes sense (though for now, it finds itself in indigo hues which also makes sense). Friday ignites with a passionate red, screaming  untamed energy and wild spirit. Saturday is cyan because Saturday is time spent by the beach and the sound of crashing waves shadowed by the hoots of joy and laughter from children nearby, but we are sticking to the rainbow color spectrum so it steals Thursday’s blue. Finally, Sunday, a day of rejuvenation and new beginnings, acts as a reset button. It radiates clean and new, much like a fresh blank canvas. Though it is white without a doubt, we accept it as violet, which also somehow fits the essence of Sunday if we make it so.

For my creation, I decided to create a rainbow for the year 2022 with each day of the week being a different color (the color it embodies). Here below is the rainbow that is 2022 in colors

Creativity is a very flexible term that can be seen in so many different ways. In this video, I found Charles Bouldevaire’s take on creativity/genius being childhood recaptured at will the most fascinating of these definitions. It really spoke to me and added an extra layer of interest to the whole discussion. Another thing that piqued my interest is Kermit’s advice on collaborating during the creative process. I think this is by far the most important aspect of creating because at the end of the day creativity can be constrained by limited perspectives, even on a subconscious level. As explained by Linda Alcoff (in Race and Epistemology of Ignorance), most of what we know comes from making judgment calls within specific contexts, rather than relying solely on logical deductions or direct observations. That is why every person who has to make such judgment calls brings their own personal experiences into the mix. These experiences are influenced by many things like their social environment, personal identity, what they pay attention to, and their individual interests. This means that everyone sees things differently, even when looking at the same thing. Incorporating these different perspectives adds valuable elements to the creation and allows it to reach a wider audience base.

52.5381726,13.4100656,17 potion
prep time: 1h – 8h
serves one person

fly from munich to berlin specifically. leave your house at 7pm but before the sunset because for the first time your sun is setting at 9pm. [forgot to mention that it must be summer.] for 2min, walk towards the greenest area you can see. gather your first leaves from the ground. come back to get an umbrella. [forgot to mention that it must be drizzling.] walk in the opposite direction of the first time because you must go to a mall. stare at the ground closely as the green become less frequent. be tempted to pick up beautiful flowers but don’t – your ethics code is to only collect the ones that have already fallen down. disrespect yout ethics code once or twice. close your umbrella when you see that you’re the only one in the street holding one. bend over in the middle of the sidewalk to collect your fallen leaves. realize that you’re lost. ask other people for help and find the mall that is already closed anyway. forget that you were collecting plants in the first place. go back home.

Listening to Kermit is a creative process in itself. We’re imagining that an inanimate puppet, moved and voiced by someone whose identity is not the puppet, is an actual ‘person’. This leap of imagination is creativity. A full immersion into the concept of Kermit, so much so, that throughout the talk we do not even doubt his person hood.

I am looking at the talk from the perspective of creativity in the pure sciences, since that is the background I happen to most readily connect the talk to.

There are 2 concepts that resonated with me the most:

1. Having a Beginner’s Mindset / A Child’s mindset: This encapsulates everything Kermit said earlier about the creative process. It all boils down to not caring in the least about how things have been done, and being curious about how they could be. When we first learn something, we often try (and fail) at even the most basic parts of the art; but eventually our unique exploration consolidates into an understanding that is slightly different from the rest of the world. This is often how I try to see math, it’s the process of playing around with the theorems and proofs that ends up creating new information. It is not necessarily useful information, but it adds personal flavor to the picture.
2. Mistakes/Useless stuff today might be innovation tomorrow: Often pure math and physics are chalked off as having no real world value. The concepts are too esoteric. Almost always, the writers of these concepts also have no intention of their work having practical applications, it is a creative (and intriguing) expression for them. Einstein himself said that his work on Nuclear Magnetic resonance had no practical applications. But a little later, his work became the foundation of the MRI machine and went on to save millions of lives.