The perfect combination

In order to create a strong product, it is necessary to blend intellect and creativity simultaneously.  Now what do these terms mean in the context of creating?  Intellect is the information that has been taught to you by text books, teachers, the internet, instruction manuals, etc. that you store in your mind before you begin making something.  Creativity is all on you.  It is the spice that any successful product needs.  It is the personal interpretation one puts in music, the emotion that an actor puts into a script, the colors a painter chooses to use in their painting.  Remember that both creativity and intellect are equally important, even though artists will often time have more of one than the other.

I must say that the article "The Physical Genius" (http://www.gladwell.com/1999/1999_08_02_a_genius.htm)was an impressive read.  The point of the article was to connect the similarities of inteligent and equally cordinated people such as hockey player Wayne Gretzky and a brain surgeon, Charlie Wilson.  The opening paragraphs depict an absolutely amazing story of how Charlie Wilson managed to flawlessly remove a pituitary tumor.  A man that can do such a thing is without a doubt highly educated.  The article even says that Wilson has done nearly three thousand of this same procedure!  This is the intellect part of Wilson's abilities.  He knows his stuff.  He has experience. 

But what's really fascinating is how when Wislon performed his first transsphenoidal pituitary operation back in 1968.  He had no idea how to do the operation since it was very uncommon at the time.  However, Wilson was motivated to do whatever he could to save his patient.  After researching the procedure, having a crash course session with an expert he knew in the San Francisco area, and even travel to Paris to observe one of the best surgeons in the world perform the operation and quickly returning home, Wilson was able to perform the operation successfully.  Talk about being a quick learner!

This is Charlie Wilson's creativity.  I know what most might be thinking: how do you get creative in surgery?  Isn't that dangerous?  Well here's the connection.  Wilson has a "feel" for his craft.  Indeed he is educated, however, his passion for his job distinguishes him from his contemporaries.  With such passion comes a natural flow, a talent, if you will.  This personal expression is really your creativity since it shows who you are.  You can read about the transsphenoidal procedure all you want but if you can't envision it, can't simulate it, can't have a feel for it, then you won't be good at it.  Morever, some of us are perfectionists like Charlie Wilson and some are not. 

I have my own experience with intellect and creativity.  It's very simple.  I am a musician at University of North Carolina School of the Arts where I am focusing my studies in organ performance.  Without my blend of intellect and creativity I doubt I would have made it to this school nor would I have continued studying music this long.  The intellect comes with my knowledge of how to read sheet music, how to understand music theory and chord progressions, how to write music on a staff, etc.  This is key to being a classical musician.  With all the notes on the page, one must know how to understand what to play just like a writer knows how to read literature.  A strong foundation in intellect allows for creativity to ease right on in.

I must stress creativity in music is that of interpretation.  Organist Virgil Fox plays Bach like Virgil Fox, organist Cameron Carpenter plays Bach like Cameron Carpenter, and I play Bach like Chris Engel.  There is no right or wrong way to do it (well I'm sure my music teachers would disagree!) but music needs a kick to it, a bite, if you will.  Only when you are completely submerged into the sounds you are creating, can you express to your audience; if the audience sees you into what you're doing then they'll enjoy it just as if you are clearly not into it, your audience will really not care. 

Learning pages of notes can take many hours, days, weeks, along with many headaches.  But creativity is mostly all natural.  Of course one can perfect their style, but creativity be prominent in the first place.  One must have the intellect to know the notes but one also needs to have a vision for the piece of music that enables it to come alive.  When the two are put together an impressive product is made.

WikiTron

Over the weekend I decided to watch the 1982 film, Tron.  It was a very entertaining movie and had a more complex plotline than most movies, not to mention the very 80's special effects were a hoot!  The invlovement of digital technology in the film kept my mind interested in the bigger picture the film was trying to make.  In fact, once about halfway through the film, I begun to be reminded of the WikiLeaks controversy.

This was very obvious in the characters, not necessarily in their personalities, but in their roles in the movie.  The film's main character Kevin Flynn could be representative of Julian Assange based on his role in the film as the software wiz and hacker.  In the film Flynn has to retrieve his code stolen by a senior executive who is taking credit for his accomplishments and becomes blocked by the Master Control Program that controls a massive software mainframe called ENCOM.  A similar analogy can be made that Tron (a program that will make communications between the Master Control Program more accessable to the world) could represent the WikiLeaks program. 

Now the motivations may be indeed different between Flynn and Assange but the end results are similar in creating a better digital nation, at least in their views.

In my understanding of the WikiLeaks controversy it is all about a man (Assange) and his followers who feel good exposing secrets to the public. In other words they feel as if they are doing the people a favor to let them in on the behind the scenes action going on in the world.  I agree to certain exposure of documents such as corruption of governments, worldwide problems, abuses of power, however I disagree strongly with any documents that make the U.S. military look bad. Such as for example, the video footage WikiLeaks has of the military killing civilians in Afghanistan.  How much is true? Were the U.S. soldiers being attacked by the cilivians?  Were the soldiers defending themselves?  Were the cilivians caught in the crossfire between U.S. forces and Afghani forces?  What's the point of turning the U.S. people against their own military?  Then what? 

There is much power is the way a document is titled.  This is how everyone in the media can sway opinions.  For example, if a video is released entitled "U.S. forces kill innocent lives in Afghanistan", it immediately gives the public something to expect in the video and are more able to take the media's point of view of portraying the military to be savages even if the opposite happens to be true.  With internet users using methods of skim reading on the internet, it is actually embarressing to hear the parroting of controversal statements spread all around the internet without people fully grasping the facts. 

As far as I'm concerned the difference between Flynn, the hero of Tron and Assange, the spokesman of Wikileaks is that Flynn was just trying to get credit for his success that was taken from him; Assange is trying to, on one speculated extreme, provoke people to turn against their governments and military, or on another viewpoint, criticise government actions based on revealed documents.  Now I strongly believe that the people of a society need to be aware of their elected officials' actions but to what degree is Assange provoking the public is the question.

When the word gathering comes to mind I immediately think of going on the internet to a search engine, preferably google, and just typing in the topic.  I don't find this to be a bad thing but I have learned additional steps to search on the internet from the U.C. Berkeley library site such as searching synonyms, being aware that I am performing a broad search versus a narrow search, and being able to know whether the source is accurate.

Sometimes a topic will be a specific term that you may not get all the info on the first few searches so using a broader search can supply more information.  For example, if I am doing a research paper on "mitochondria" and I am having a hard time gathering information, I might want to search the term "organelles", which could give me some key, yet generic information that can be helpful to the overall understanding of the term "mitochondria". 

Being able to determine the accuracy of articles is also an important skill to notice.  This is especially important when gathering information on the sciences.  For example, timely news articles that come out with new scientific studies can be proven incorrect in the future. 

Finally, I learned that searching a synonym for a word could lead to more or different results when you are not pleased with information you are being provided.  In other words typing in a less complicated word for a larger, more scientific word can lead to more articles, whereas typing in a more complicated and scientific word can lead to less, but more specific articles. 

Framing is a way of getting ideas together and putting content into perspective. It is a very important process for DMA (which stands for Digital Media for the Artist) since digital media must be planned out. In other words, one who decides to put out information digitally must have a strong foundation in the experience of technology as well as being able to string thoughts together in an organized way.

In my diagram above I put in names of certain content I have viewed in DMA so far that I enjoyed. The Peter Bogdanonovich graduation speech and TED video presentation had me interact with an imaginative frame of mind since I had to follow closely along with the experiences told in each gentleman's speech. This had my mind do most of the visualizing. On the contrary, the longer videos such as "Ecological Design: Inventing the Future" and "Digital Nation" had my mind go along for the ride since images were used abundantly to clearly support the main ideas presented in the video. In the end I decided to connect all four together in the diagram since all had to do with technology. Yes, even the Peter Bogdanovich speech because if it wasn't for the video to be digitally posted on the internet I would have never seen it!

Of course we all use framing to interpret media even though we unaware that we are doing such a process, however it is very obvious to ourselves when we use framing as a way to organize. Before practicing music, I find it very helpful to frame the goals and objectives of the session to ensure I won't be wasting time and that all that needs to get done gets done. I am always constantly re-framing my schedule in which I practice because I have different amounts of music to work on each week. This helpful tool of framing is applicable to everything. In fact, framing is everything; to plan a product and to interpret (put content into context) a finished product.