TED 2011: The Rediscovery of Wonder

Time to check in on TED to see what's coming up at the annual conference that started yesterday. The focus this year is on wonder, which--as anybody who's ever sat in any of my classes for more than five minutes knows--is the beginning of philosophy. But it's also the beginning of creativity, because curiosity is one of the primary characteristics of creative people. The blurb on the site offers a preview:

For 2011, we are assembling a cast of characters capable of stirring the imagination as never before. Explorers, storytellers, photographers, scientific pioneers, visionaries and provocateurs from all parts of the globe. And we won’t be forgetting the other, harder-edged meaning of wonder -- where “I wonder” equals “I ponder.” We’ll be adding in strong servings of thoughtful insight, so that the possibilities we dream of are anchored in reality.

Not many of us have the 500 smackeroos it costs to "attend" the conference online, but a peek at the schedule will give you an idea of what we can look forward to over the next couple of years, since the annual conferences are where the posted videos come from.

The talks are arranged by sub-topic ("Worlds Imagined," "Beauty, Imagination, Enchantment," "If Only, If Only"), and include speakers who're identified (among many others) as physicists, artists, filmmakers, photographers, bone diggers, and (my favorite) a "wrongologist."

Kathryn Shulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (she has blog, too: The Wrong Stuff), will be one of the speakers. As will Bill Gates, Julie Taymor, film critic Roger Ebert, New York Times columnist David Brooks, and singer Bobby McFerrin.

Shulz is particularly interesting to me because I'm a faithful practitioner of the art of being wrong. I absolutely love it when I get it wrong. Maybe not so much as when I occasionally get things spot on, but I've always preached that one should embrace the process rather than the product. Being wrong leads us toward getting it right in the end, and stirs up our creative juices like like a shot of jalapeno juice in a fruit smoothie.

Not that simply trying is enough. I certainly don't fall into the "it's the effort that counts" camp. Rather, being wrong means you've not only tried, but that you've gotten somewhere. Maybe not where you wanted to get--but to a place from where you can begin to map out a new path. The first solution isn't always the best, but you learn from doing the work to get to it. That's why I like to call projects for my classes "problems," because all the possibilities aren't always apparent when you start, and there is seldom only one solution that works.

May I take this opportunity to request, however, that when you embark on said projects, that you take the time to read the instructions carefully, and design a plan of attack. That way, you can direct your energy toward potentially fruitful outcomes. Even if your plans don't work out exactly as you expect them to, you may be pleasantly surprised in the end. Not only that, but you'll have something suitable to turn in week 10.

Image credit: I hope this is legal. I pinched it from the "photos" section of the TED site. It depicts some of the featured speakers.

Art, Science, Storytelling, and Life

I'm adding another TED lecture to your repertoire this week, namely one by Scott McCloud of Understanding Comics fame. Almost all of you should have encountered him by now, if not in your intro to design classes, or storyboarding, then in Writing II (or is it I?).

At any rate, I came upon it by accident when I was looking for TED lectures that might reference the Renaissance (one of the tags on the video, but not really referring to the actual period in art history). This turned out to be one of those wonderful moments of serendipity the web makes possible, because it's relevant to our class in several ways, even though it doesn't really have anything to do with the Renaissance.

One of the first things he does in his talk is to map out three kinds of vision: blind faith (things you believe in but can't see); stuff that's physically visible and thus manifest precisely because we can see it; and what's possible: what we can en-vision. These distinctions are useful, because they can help us talk about art through the ages, and begin to understand how people perceived art in different contexts.

Better yet are his principles for using vision: learn from everyone; follow no one; watch for pattern (where visions of the future begin to manifest themselves); work like hell.

Essentially what this leads to is a path toward innovation--making the new connections that make new stuff happen. In other words, it leads to creativity.

Later, in his discussion of the relationship between art and science, he notes a connection between vision and meaning that points directly to my lecture on the origins of writing: the rebus. Remember the rebus I showed you when we were talking about the origins of alphabets?


Well, this is a good example of the visual made audible--and the achievement of sound through vision. When you think about it, hieroglyphic writing systems depend on this marriage of the aural and the visual in order to make the transition that actually divorces sound from object.

One more thing: if you ever want confirmation that I'm not completely off my noodle about those infamous "rules of technological development," McCloud affirms at least one of them when he reminds us of the error Marshall McLuhan warned about: putting the content of new technology in the shape of the old. Or, according to Uhlmeyer's rule #312, "New technologies often follow the form of the old."

This video is longer than the previous one (about 17 minutes), so grab a snack and sit down for a few minutes. It's a bit dated (filmed in 2005), but quite enlightening nonetheless. Feel free to comment on interesting points you notice, or connections you make as a result of having watched.

Now and Then

Sometimes the connections between past and present are brought home to us with vivid clarity--as they were when I watched this TED video by Jacek Utko on designing newspapers. As he tells you what he does, pay attention to the graphics; think about how his innovative newspaper designs use the principles of manuscript illumination.

Yes, the guy has an accent (Polish), but so do you (Texan). Get over it. And for the attention-spanned challenged among you, the video is only six minutes long.

After you watch it, talk amongst yourselves. We'll chat in class week 8.