Ask The Expert - Foxing - FIZZ Gallery

you wrote a bad story don delilo. it is boring. and stupid.

Key finding Paraphrase - So what does a conscious universe have to do with AI and existential risk? - It all comes back to whether our primary orientation is around - quantity, or around - quality. - An understanding of reality - that recognises consciousness as fundamental - views the quality of your experience as - equal to, - or greater than, - what can be quantified.

• Orienting toward quality,
  • toward the experience of being alive,
• can radically change
  • how we build technology,
  • how we approach complex problems,
  • and how we treat one another.

Quote - metaphysics of quality - would open the door for ways of knowing made secondary by physicalism

Author - Robert Persig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance // - When we elevate the quality of each our experience - we elevate the life of each individual - and recognize each individual life as sacred - we each matter - The measurable is also the limited - whilst the immeasurable and directly felt is the infinite - Our finite world that all technology is built upon - is itself built on the raw material of the infinite

//

• values from different culture are displayed via eeg

-Comment - this display would make an excellent BEing journey to explore perspectival knowing, situatedness and the misunderstandings that emerge from different ways of seeing the world, different meanings attached to the same words, and different saliencies and priorities

• in Korea in 2019, Maurice installed as display using QR codes and Blockchain to explore transactions of values

• another of Maurice's installation uses = EEG headbands

• to give shapes to concepts

• Comment

  • this is quite literally neuroart

• = Maurice Benayoun
• describes his extensive history of cognitive science infused art installations:
• cognitive art,
• VR art,
• AR art and
• art infused by AI (long before the AI artbots became trendy)

• title = What can cognitive science bring to art and museums?

• Comment = Maurice Benayoun has applied cognitive science, VR and AR too many at installations throughout his life.

• two projects sponsored that studies art in the real world in vienna:
  • small at installations on the streets
  • written text in everyday Life

• Cognitive science model of what happens in the brain of a perceiver of art
• The model was first published in 2004 it's cited often in the field of empirical aesthetics
• it tries to explain how we process artworks by claiming that:
  • there are perceptual analyzers followed by
  • implicit memory integrations or familiarity aspects then
  • explicit classifications where the perceiver in his perception perceives the style or the content
  • followed by later stages that we called cognitive mastering

• cognitive science can provide museums and artists with a specific understanding
• of how the interaction between artworks and viewers can operate
• this meeting explores potential applications of cognitive sciences to museums and art

Döring, Tanja, and Steffi Beckhaus. “The Card Box at Hand: Exploring the Potentials of a Paper-Based Tangible Interface for Education and Research in Art History.” In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, 87–90. TEI ’07. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1145/1226969.1226986.

This looks fascinating with respect to note taking and subsequent arranging, outlining, and use of notes in human computer interaction space for creating usable user interfaces.

Döring, T. and Beckhaus, S. (2007) ‘The Card Box at Hand: Exploring the Potentials of a Paper-Based Tangible Interface for Education and Research in Art History’. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, February 15-17, 2007. New York, ACM, pp. 87–90.

Did they have a working system the way Ludeke did?

https://www.cyberneticforests.com/ai-images

Critical Topics: AI Images is an undergraduate class delivered for Bradley University in Spring 2023. It is meant to provide an overview of the context of AI art making tools and connects media studies, new media art, and data ethics with current events and debates in AI and generative art. Students will learn to think critically about these tools by using them: understand what they are by making work that reflects the context and histories of the tools.

Serendipity - Vom Glück des Findens Niklas Luhmann Ulrich Rückriem Jörg Sasse 11 07 15 11 10 15 - Kunsthalle Bielefeld

ᔥ[[Andreas Fasel]] in Niklas Luhmann: Ein Zettelkasten als zweites Gehirn at 2015-06-28<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-13 11:45:39)

Logging some keywords here for later cross referencing.

link to: Eddington quote https://hypothes.is/a/TNV2WqfpEe2Z24NgnWsZCg

understated quote of the day

Hamacher, Duane W. “The Art of Star Knowledge.” In 65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art, edited by Judith Ryan and Marcia Langton. Melbourne, Australia: University of Melbourne Press, 2023. https://www.academia.edu/96537139/The_Art_of_Star_Knowledge.

COMPLAINT filed with Jury Demand against Stability AI, Inc. Getty Images (US), Inc. v. Stability AI, Inc. (1:23-cv-00135) District Court, D. Delaware

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/66788385/getty-images-us-inc-v-stability-ai-inc/

How Dall-E works

[Cicero], and Harry Caplan (1896-1980). Ad C. Herennium de Ratione Dicendi (Rhetorica Ad Herennium). Loeb Classical Library, 403. Harvard University Press, 1964.

this is reminding me of the cave allegory

Example of someone who reports printed photos and even memes in their zettelkasten.

Is this why we have more art that alludes to space than the deep sea? If so, why are we more willing to travel via sea rather than space?

In reading this piece from Imbler and the overarching tone and movement of her article, I couldn't help but think of a discourse in the series Ted Lasso (Jason Suedeikis, AppleTV). Over a game of darts, Lasso talks about the need to "be curious, not judgmental." A simple suggestion, not dissimilar to the one put forth by Imbler, but one that points towards a deeper, more intentional engagement with the beings that we are confronted with.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160325224838/http://www.nic-las.com/

Sometimes having examples of others' work can be helpful. In your case, perhaps perusing some zettelkasten work by previous users within the art/image space? In this respect some of the work by Aby Warburg may be interesting to you. I might suggest starting with his archive here: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verknüpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials

After generation, results need evaluation

Is this also a role of the prompt engineer? In the digital photography example, the artist spent 80 hours and created 900 versions as the prompts were fine-tuned.

https://hcommons.social/@ryanrandall/109677171177320098

Bacon, Bennett, Azadeh Khatiri, James Palmer, Tony Freeth, Paul Pettitt, and Robert Kentridge. “An Upper Palaeolithic Proto-Writing System and Phenological Calendar.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal, January 5, 2023, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774322000415.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/an-upper-palaeolithic-protowriting-system-and-phenological-calendar/6F2AD8A705888F2226FE857840B4FE19

There may be questions as to whether or not this represents written language, but, if true, this certainly represents one of the oldest examples of annotation in human history!

cc: @remikalir

Abstract marks have appeared on rock walls and engraved into robust bones as artificial memory systems (AMS) and external memory systems (EMS).

parturition<br /> the action of giving birth to young

<Y> potentially one of the first written "words"

I gave some examples of uses in arts/media a while back that you might find interesting for your use case: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/xdrb0k/comment/iofo5vv/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

In particular, a more commonplace book approach or something along the lines of Chapter 6 of Twyla Tharpe's book may be more useful or productive for your use case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxus

Example of Brian Eno using ITunes as a digital music zettelkasten. He's got 2,800 pieces of unreleased music which he plays on random shuffle for serendipity, memory, and potential creativity. The experience seems to be a musical one which parallels Luhmann's ideas of serendipity and discovery with the ghost in the machine or the conversation partner he describes in his zettelkasten practice.

Example of Brian Eno using combinatorial creativity using cards to generate music.

This sounds similar to a process used by Austin Kleon which I've noted before.

We should do better at teaching and training creative behavior in schools. We say that we encourage exploration but somehow do it in all the wrong ways such we discourage it wholly.

"process not product"

Zettelkasten-based note taking methods, and particularly that followed by Luhmann, seem to focus on process and not product.

https://meso.tzyl.nl/2022/12/04/a-two-month-experiment/

https://www.dalekeiger.net/untitled/

Dale Keiger is tap dancing his way into a definition for the underlying traits for encouraging and expanding on creativity. There's definitely something here worth pursuing further and giving a specific name to.

Some it is very akin to the ideas behind combinatorial creativity of working (dancing in Kelly's case) on the mundane with precision and drive and perhaps at least a soupçon of obsessiveness, but openness to the new.

How can we sharpen this set of ideas to settle on the right list of "ingredients"? Is there a way to hone in on this sort of creation of flow within a certain creative area while simultaneously not getting bored? Is it the small string of creative breakthroughs in the process of practice which open up new avenues and help create the flow to prevent boredom?

How might relate to Anders Ericsson's work on on deliberate practice or plateau principle coming into play, particularly to prevent boredom to encourage one to continue on with their practice?

I haven't put my finger on it but there were hints in it from a Yo-Yo Ma ad for Masterclass I saw the other day (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbjgHkj-syM)..

https://www.eyemagazine.com/blog/post/house-of-the-risograph

This seems to fit in with Malcolm Gladwell's observation about Paul Simon see: https://hypothes.is/a/Kd7X4lvPEe250Gvn57Pbdg

To add some other intermediary services:

• ko-fi (site for contribution)
• GitHub sponsors (for GitPages)
• itch.io (for games)
• Gumroad (for sites and repositories)
• Patreon (for fan interaction)

To add a service for groups:

• Open Collective

To add a service that enables fans to support the creators directly and anonymously via microdonations or small donations by pre-charging their Coil account to spend on content streaming or tipping the creators' wallets via a layer containing JS script following the Interledger Protocol proposed to W3C:

• Web Monetization

If you want to know more, head to Web Monetization or Community or Explainer

Disclaimer: I am a recipient of a grant from the Interledger Foundation, so there would be a Conflict of Interest if I edited directly. Plus, sharing on Hypothesis allows other users to chime in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv7epY75Wa0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies

So much to unpack here.

Similar to experiments I've seen by Henry James Korn (esp. The Pontoon Manifesto), John Irwin, etc.

Similarities to means of forcing Llullan combinatorial creativity, but in alternate form.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Eno

Brian Eno's experiments in generative music mirror some of the ideas of generative and experimental fiction which had been in the zeitgeist and developing for a while.

Certainly the fictional ideas were influential to the zeitgeist here, but the technology for doing these sorts of things in the musical realm lagged the ability to do them in the word realm.

We're just starting to see some of these sorts of experimental things in the film space and with artificial intelligence they're becoming much easier to do in all of these media spaces.

In some of the film spaces, they exist, but may tend to be short in nature, in part given the technology and processing power required.

see also: Deepfake TikTok of Keanu Reeves which I've recently run across (algorithmically) on Instagram: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/unreal-keanu-reeves-ai-deepfake/

Had anyone been working on generative art? Marcel Duchamp, et al? Some children's toys can mechanically create generative art which can be subtly modified by the children using axes of color, form, etc. Etch-a-sketch, kaleidoscopes, doodling robots (eg: https://www.amazon.com/4M-Doodling-Robot-Packaging-Vary/dp/B002EWWW9O).

https://benfry.com/traces/

What a spectacular visualization of Darwin's On the Origin of Species.

Richard Carter will love this if he's not seen it.

https://www.jeremycherfas.net/blog/a-morning-of-joy

We don't talk about the art of reading or the art of note making often enough as a goal to which students might aspire. It's too often framed as a set of rules and an mechanical process rather than a road to producing interesting, inspiring, or insightful content that can change humanity.

Blake, Vernon. Relation in Art: Being a Suggested Scheme of Art Criticism, with Which Is Incorporated a Sketch of a Hypothetic Philosophy of Relation. Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1925. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Relation_in_Art/BcAgAAAAMAAJ?hl=en

Suggested by

"Relation in Art" by Vernon Blake (1925), because it put art criticism on a quasi-scientific footing, articulated what was great about the art of all epochs (including the Greeks), and intelligently criticised the decline of art in the 20th century.

— Codex OS (@codexeditor) November 5, 2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage

The synthetic party, a Danish political party with an AI generated program from all Danish fringe party programs since the 70s. Aimed at the 20% non-voting Danes. 'Leder Lars' is leading the party, which is a chatbot residing on a Discord server where you can interact with it. An art project.

This quote is art... :)

France, Anatole. L’Île Des Pingouins. Project Gutenberg 8524. 1908. Reprint, Project Gutenberg, 2005. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8524/pg8524.html

Death by Zettelkasten!!

(Coming soon to a theater near you...)

In the preface to the novel Penguin Island (L'Île des Pingouins. Calmann-Lévy, 1908) by Nobel prize laureate Anatole France, a scholar is drowned by an avalanche of index cards which formed a gigantic whirlpool streaming out of his card index (Zettelkasten).

Link to: Historian Keith Thomas has indicated that he finds it hard to take using index cards for excerpting and research seriously as a result of reading this passage in the satire Penguin Island.<br /> https://hypothes.is/a/rKAvtlQCEe2jtzP3LmPlsA

Translation via: France, Anatole. Penguin Island. Translated by Arthur William Evans. 8th ed. 1908. Reprint, New York, NY, USA: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1922. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Penguin_Island/6UpWAvkPQaEC?hl=en&gbpv=0

Small changes in the translation by me, comprising only adding the word "index" in front of the occurrences of card to better represent the historical idea of fiches used by scholars in the late 1800s and early 1900s, are indicated in brackets.

The walls of the study, the floor, and even the ceiling were loaded with overflowing bundles, paste board boxes swollen beyond measure, boxes in which were compressed an innumerable multitude of small [index] cards covered with writing. I beheld in admiration mingled with terror the cataracts of erudition that threatened to burst forth.

“Master,” said I in feeling tones, “I throw myself upon your kindness and your knowledge, both of which are inexhaustible. Would you consent to guide me in my arduous researches into the origins of Penguin art?"

“Sir," answered the Master, “I possess all art, you understand me, all art, on [index] cards classed alphabetically and in order of subjects. I consider it my duty to place at your disposal all that relates to the Penguins. Get on that ladder and take out that box you see above. You will find in it everything you require.”

I tremblingly obeyed. But scarcely had I opened the fatal box than some blue [index] cards escaped from it, and slipping through my fingers, began to rain down.

Almost immediately, acting in sympathy, the neighbouring boxes opened, and there flowed streams of pink, green, and white [index] cards, and by degrees, from all the boxes, differently coloured [index] cards were poured out murmuring like a waterfall on a mountain-side in April. In a minute they covered the floor with a thick layer of paper. Issuing from their in exhaustible reservoirs with a roar that continually grew in force, each second increased the vehemence of their torrential fall. Swamped up to the knees in cards, Fulgence Tapir observed the cataclysm with attentive nose. He recognised its cause and grew pale with fright.

“ What a mass of art! ” he exclaimed.

I called to him and leaned forward to help him mount the ladder which bent under the shower. It was too late. Overwhelmed, desperate, pitiable, his velvet smoking-cap and his gold-mounted spectacles having fallen from him, he vainly opposed his short arms to the flood which had now mounted to his arm-pits . Suddenly a terrible spurt of [index] cards arose and enveloped him in a gigantic whirlpool. During the space of a second I could see in the gulf the shining skull and little fat hands of the scholar; then it closed up and the deluge kept on pouring over what was silence and immobility. In dread lest I in my turn should be swallowed up ladder and all I made my escape through the topmost pane of the window.

https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/items/detail/card-file-robert-morris-11090

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/robert-morris-1931-2018-card-file

card file as art!

Sophie Stévance and Catrina Flint de Médicis. “Marcel Duchamp’s Musical Secret Boxed in the Tradition of the Real: A New Instrumental Paradigm.” Perspectives of New Music, vol. 45, no. 2, 2007, pp. 150–70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25164661

Reading and studying it all without any regard to the Indigenous culture. Steve Martin is using Western perspectives to attempt to understand non-Western art which has a different basis.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/steve-martin-indigenous-art-national-arts-club-2180438

one of my favorite artists!

They may not necessarily specifically include Luhmann-esque linking, numbering, and indexing, but some broad interesting examples within the tradition include: Comedians: (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten for references/articles) - Phyllis Diller - Joan Rivers - Bob Hope - George Carlin

Musicians: - Eminem https://boffosocko.com/2021/08/10/55794555/ - Taylor Swift: https://hypothes.is/a/SdYxONsREeyuDQOG4K8D_Q

Dance: - Twyla Tharpe https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SEOWBG/ (Chapter 6)

Art/Visual - Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verkn%C3%BCpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials

Creative writing (as opposed to academic): - Vladimir Nabokov https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/the-notecards-on-which-vladimir-nabokov-wrote-lolita.html - Jean Paul - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00168890.2018.1479240 - https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC34721 (German) - Michael Ende https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Endes-Zettelkasten-Skizzen-Notizen/dp/352271380X

https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verkn%C3%BCpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials

Knowing about Aby Warburg's zettelkasten use, I'd noticed that the Mnemosyne Atlas looked suspiciously like a visual version of a zettelkasten, but with images instead of index cards or slips. Apparently I'm not the first...

https://www.klitsa-antoniou.com/art-excerpendi.html

syndication link

I wonder if any of the zettelkasten fans might blow their slips up and decorate their walls with them? Zettelhaus anyone?

Tracy and I would've been more interested in seeing more depictions of the negative aspects of religion which weren't addressed enough. A good example of this would've been possibly the Salem Witch Trials and the Last Judgement.

In his youth, while selling drugs on the side, Jay-Z would write down material for lyrics into a green notebook. He never took the notebook around with him on the streets, but instead would buy anything at a corner store just for the paper bags as writing material. He would write the words onto these paper bags and stuff them into his pockets (wearable Zettelkasten anyone? or maybe Zetteltasche?) When he got home, in long standing waste book tradition, he would transfer the words to his notebook.

Jay-Z has said he hasn't written down any lyrics since his first album, but warns, "I've lost plenty of material. It's not the best way. I wouldn't advise it to anyone. I've lost a couple albums' worth of great material."

https://ondemand.npr.org/anon.npr-mp3/npr/fa/2010/11/20101116_fa_01.mp3

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/T3Z38uDUEeuFcPu2U_w_zA (Jonathan Edwards' zettelmantle)

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/pamela-colman-smith-rider-waite-tarot-2163627/amp-page

Fish in water effect

esta apresentação sobre pintura zen é muito interessante

https://www.luannudell.com/

via Jon Udell

Perhaps an artist to commission for constructing interesting mnemonic devices?

reply to GnauticalGnorman

Don't frown at cardboard. Everyone starts their journey with a single card and a humble box. Filling up a first box is an accomplishment that gives you time to dream about the box you want to have.

Of potential interest, the cost of index cards to fill these files will be almost the investment in the box itself. Is this similar to the rule of thumb in the art world that the price of the frame should reflect the investment in the artwork?

https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA15380511&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00945404&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=cens39029

Google translation:<br /> Systematic instructions for the theory and practice of mnemonics: together with the basic lines for the history and criticism of this science: with 3 copper plates.

First published in 1810 in German

http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n83008343/

Mnemonics for the places or pictures used by his predecessors. The historians of Mnemonics, especially Aretin, Reventlow, and the learned and famous bibliographer, Edward Marie Oettinger, in Leipzic, to whom I owe the above-mentioned and some of the following details on the history of Mnemonics, give a dozen other names of authors on Mnemonics belonging to this epoch.*

Edward Pick mentions Conrad Celtes in passing for having "made the great discovery that the alphabet could be substituted in Mnemonics for the places and pictures used by his predecessors. He doesn't provide a textual source for the information.

Pick indicates that his primary sources were Edward Marie Oettinger, (Johann Christoph Freiherr von) Aretin, and (Carl Otto) Reventlow who may have more detail on Celte's potential influence on the major system as well as potential alternate names from that era.

see also: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eduard_Maria_Oettinger<br /> - History of Mnemonics by J. Ch, Baron von Aretin

Feels like Tales From The Loop-y era Simon Stålenhag. Previously.

Or framed differently:

The art in writing is knowing that it is really a craft.

3.3 Appreciate the art of thoughtful disagreement.

Ancient statuary wasn't white as we often see now in museums, but was brightly colored. Statuary that was outside would have been sun bleached over time as well as subject to other weathering to mute or entirely remove color.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/12/1109995973/we-know-greek-statues-werent-white-now-you-can-see-them-in-color

Le probleme du son dans les white cubes

Rendre visibles les invisibles

L'oralite dans l'oeuvre d'Anne Le Troter et son rapport aux premieres luttes de la poesie sonore.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/magic-mirror-cincinnati-art-museum-2146551/amp-page

https://www.pasadenanow.com/main/new-mural-turning-heads-in-altadena

The associative emblematic worldview prevalent prior to the seventeenth century began to disappear within Western culture as the rise of the early modern period and the beginning of the scientific revolution began to focus on more descriptive modes of thought and representation.

Have any researchers done specific work on this shift from emblematic to the descriptive? What examples do they show which support this shift? Any particular heavy influences?

This section cites:<br /> William B. Ashworth, Jr. “Natural History and the Emblematic World View,” in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westfall, eds #books/wanttoread<br /> which could be a place to start.

Note that this same shift from associative and emblematic to descriptive and pedantic coincides not only with the rise of the scientific revolution but also with the effects of rising information overload in a post-Gutenberg world as well as the education reforms of Ramus (late 1500s) et al. as well as the beginning of the move away from scholasticism.

Is there any evidence to support claims that this worldview stemmed from pagan traditions and cultures and not solely the art of memory traditions from ancient Greece? Could it have been pagan traditions which held onto these and they were supplemented and reinforced by ecclesiastical forces which used the Greek traditions?

Examples of emblematic worldview: - particular colors of flowers meant specific things (red = love, yellow = friendship, etc.) We still have these or remants - Saints had their associative animals and objects - anniversary gifts had associative meanings (paper, silver, gold, etc.) We still have remnants of these things, though most are associated with wealth (gold, silver, platinum anniversaries). When did this tradition actually start? - what were the associative meanings of rabbits, turtles, and other animals which appear frequently in manuscript marginalia? (We have the example of the bee (Latin: apes) which where frequently used this way as being associated with the idea of imitation.) - other broad categories?

Tools which allow for flexibility and creativity are better for knowledge workers than those which attempt to crystalize their tasks into ruts. This may tend to force the outputs in a programmatic way and thereby dramatically decrease the potential for innovative outputs. If the tools force the automation of thought without a concurrent increase in creativity then one may as well rely on manual labor for their thinking.

This may be one of the major flaws of tools for thought in the educational technology space. They often attempt to facilitate the delivery of education in an automated way which dramatically decreases the creativity of the students and the value of the overall outputs. While attempting to automate education may suit the needs of institutions which are delivering the education, particularly with respect to the overall cost of delivery, the automation itself is dramatically at odds with the desire to expand upon ideas and continue innovation for all participants involved. Students also require diverse modes of input (seen/heard) as well as internal processing followed by subsequent outputs (written/drawn/sculpted/painted, spoken/sung, movement/dance). Many teachers don't excel at providing all of these neurodiverse modes and most educational technology tools are even less flexible, thus requiring an even larger panoply of them (often not interoperable because of corporate siloing for competitive reasons) to provide reasonable replacements. Given their ultimate costs, providing a variety of these tools may only serve to increase the overall costs of delivering education or risk diminishing the overall quality. Educators and institutions not watching out for these traps will tend to serve only a small portion of their intended audiences, and even those may be served poorly as they only receive a limited variety of modalities of inputs and outputs. As an example Western cultures' overreliance on primary literacy modes is their Achilles' heel.

Tools for thought should actively attempt to increase the potential solution spaces available to their users, while later still allowing for focusing of attention. How can we better allow for the divergence of ideas and later convergence? Better, how might we allow for regular and repeated cycles of divergence and convergence? Advanced zettelkasten note taking techniques (which also allow for drawing, visual, auditory and other modalities beyond just basic literacy) seem to allow for this sort of practice over long periods of time, particularly when coupled with outputs which are then published for public consumption and divergence/convergence cycles by others.

This may also point out some of the stagnation allowed by social media whose primary modes is neither convergence nor divergence. While they allow for the transmission/communication portion, they primarily don't actively encourage their users to closely evaluate the transmitted ideas, internalize them, or ultimately expand upon them. Their primary mode is for maximizing on time of attention (including base emotions including excitement and fear) and the lowest levels of interaction and engagement (likes, retweets, short gut reaction commentary).

Tiago Forte frames the creative process in the framing of divergence (brainstorming) and convergence (connecting ideas, editing, refining) which emerged out of the Stanford Design School and popularized by IDEO in the 1980s and 1990s.

But this is just what the more refined practices of maintaining a zettelkasten entail. It's the creation of profligate divergence forced by promiscuously following one's interests and collecting ideas along the way interspersed with active and pointed connection of ideas slowly creating convergence of these ideas over time. The ultimate act of creation finally becomes simple as pulling one's favorite idea of many out of the box (along with all the things connected to it) and editing out any unnecessary pieces and then smoothing the whole into something cohesive.

This is far less taxing than sculpting marble where one needs to start with an idea of where one is going and then needs the actual skill to get there. Doing this well requires thousands of hours of practice at the skill, working with smaller models, and eventually (hopefully) arriving at art. It's much easier if one has the broad shapes of the entirety of Rodin, Michelangelo, and Donatello's works in their repository and they can simply pull out one that feels interesting and polish it up a bit. Some of the time necessary for work and practice are still there, but the ultimate results are closer to guaranteed art in one domain than the other.

Commonplacing or slipboxing allows us to take the ability to imitate, which humans are exceptionally good at (Annie Murphy Paul, link tk), and combine those imitations in a way to actively explore and then create new innovative ideas.

Commonplacing can be thought of as lifelong and consistent practice of brainstorming where one captures all the ideas for later use.

Link to - practice makes perfect

If the creative process has timeless principles found throughout history, why aren't they written down and practiced religiously withing our culture that is so enamored of creativity and innovation?

As an example of how this isn't true, we've managed to lose our commonplace tradition and haven't really replaced it with anything useful. Even the evolved practice of the zettelkasten has been created and generally discarded (pun intended) without replacement.

How much of our creative process is reliant on simple imitation, which is a basic human trait? It's typically more often that imitation juxtaposed with other experiences which is the crucible of innovation. How often, if ever, is true innovation in an entirely different domain created? By this I mean innovation outside of the adjacent possible domains from which it stems? Are there any examples of this?

Even my own note taking practice is a mélange of broad imitation of what I read combined with the combinatorial juxtaposition of other ideas in an attempt to create new ideas.

https://wayneforte.com/

https://fortelabs.co/blog/wayne-lacson-forte-on-my-way-to-me/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEjbE688EVw

In The Creative Habit, dancer and choreographer Twyla Tharp has creative inspiration and note taking practice which she calls "the box" in which she organizes “notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of me working alone in my studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me”. She also calls her linking of ideas within her box method "the art of scratching" (chapter 6).

related: combinatorial creativity triangle thinking

[[Twyla Tharp]] [[The Creative Habit]] #books/wanttoread

I really appreciate that he's actively using examples from across a variety of domains to indicate the depth and breadth of areas which can benefit from commonplacing and note taking domains.

https://xeiaso.net/blog/site-update-hero-images