Exercises in making sense

Human beings are sense-making creatures. We continuously process all the information we can gather from our environments – internal and external – and try to put the information together somehow. I think we use two particular sets of skills to do this, and they’re related.
The first skill is pattern spotting.
What do we think when we [...]

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Creativity – the Partick frog

Taken from the train passing through Partick…..

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Creativity – stop-motion photography: the Olympus PEN ad

What an incredible video!
Not just creative, but think of the planning, the organisation and the sheer hard work! Wow!

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Photo-etching

Last week I stepped well out of my comfort zone. As you’ll know if you’ve browsed this blog, I am a keen photographer. However, that’s really the limit of my artistic endeavor. I have no sense of myself as an artist and drawing, painting and other creative arts feel as foreign to me as foreign [...]

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Learn to yearn

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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Mr Mistoffelees!

You ought to know Mr. Mistoffelees!
The Original Conjuring Cat -
(There can be no doubt about that).
Please listen to me and don’t scoff. All his
Inventions are off his own bat.
There’s no such Cat in the metropolis;
He holds all the patent monopolies
For performing surprising illusions
And creating eccentric confusions.
[...]

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Jupiter Artland

I took a walk around the Jupiter Artland garden at Bonnington House last Saturday. Take a look……
In the gallery next to the ticket office amongst other exhibits there’s this

This is a collection of bottles of Bach flower remedies where each label has a vertical inscription of the name of the flower used to make the [...]

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The importance of imagination – Brian Eno

I caught this tiny snippet of an interview with Brian Eno on BBC Radio 4 this morning.
eno (click his name!)
The subject of the piece was his curating of the Luminous festival at Sydney Opera House.
Here is Eno arguing that not only do we need imagination more than ever now that we have hit these crises [...]

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Carrying a camera

I’ve posted before about the value of carrying a camera everywhere. I’ve got two cameras (well, three if you count my mobile phone), a Nikon D70 which takes wonderful high quality photos, and a Nikon Coolpix S10. The D70 is BIG. It’s a conscious decision to take it with me, and, usually, I do that [...]

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Emotional traffic lights

I stopped at a junction in Aix en Provence. The traffic lights in France include a set fixed at car level, as well as a set higher up. This particular set has been enhanced by someone with a sense of humour.
Emoticons on the traffic signals, huh?
Nice idea!

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