Class 24

We presented our YTU's to our small groups

I presented progressive rock, one of my favorite genres of music. If I were to actually a genre of rock myself I would be progressive rock. Ultimately progressive rock tried to turn traditional rock and roll into an art form. On every occasion it tried to grow an appreciation for the literal instrumentation of music, as well as the narratives and story being told by those instruments. It has often been described as the Victorian age of rock'n'roll; stage performances were crazy with elaborate costumes and flying pianos, and the songs stretched for long lengths of time often focusing on sci/fantasy themes. You can find my Powerpoint presentation on progressive rock here:

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Class 23

Today we discussed Twayla Tharp's book: "The Creative Habit" Here was the blog post we had due, I think it best describes/summaries some of the authors main objectives and my opinions:

What were the three take home messages that you got from the book?

1.) The first one that I got was the fact big ideas are in fact combinations of other ideas, all of them. This is important because this means that in order to get big ideas we must constantly be accumulating smaller ones to take and combine in different ways. She does this by suggesting to physically have a box to put stuff in—namely stuff that inspires you. This creates momentum to overcome the sometimes overwhelming blank canvas.

2.) The second point that I took away from the book was that we must be willing to dedicate time to your craft to fully realize our creativity within a certain area of focus. I think this is really an honest suggestion. Someone can dream to build a beautiful a car but if they refuse to practice welding, machining, etc. than the most creative parts of their design will never be fully realized.

3.) The third point I took note of was that a creative environment does not foster perfectionism but a fluid dedication towards a particular solution. While a work schedule should have a spine, as she mentions later in the book, the doesn’t mean all details are or should be accounted for in the beginning, in fact, doing so disallows further learning and any type of luck from occurring. I’m glad she mentioned luck, (though I don’t necessarily agree with that word choice) because there are certain design projects I’ve worked on that have been most successful when I myself to figure out things at the appropriate time and not all at once.

Take one of the messages or tips Tharp gives and tell how you would apply it in your life.

Tharp suggests that to find your creative DNA, or your driving creativity force, that you should consider giving up something important or seemingly necessary to your life for a week. I’ll use the example of giving up a clock and apply it. At first this seemed like an absurd challenge to me, but I began to think about what a clock is. Clocks are simply a reference point in relation abstract idea (time). So then I started thinking about how I could use other things as reference points to tell time, like perhaps when I see other people (if I see them consistent enough), when I see buses, or see restaurants or business open or close. I wouldn’t be able to look at the clack on phone ever, but it seems that I could creatively find out the time if I really wanted and I think doing so would force be to pay attention much more closely to the world around me as well.

Class 22

Today we took a creativity test that challenged where we were creatively. Personally, I though it was kind of ironic that we were 'tested' for creativity in a a highly conventional way , but i thought that a few of the questions were kind of neat. One of the questions inquired as to what the downsides to flying would be. Ill be quite honest, as creative as I thought I was, I stumped me. I wouldn't naturally associate anything negative to being able to fly and I thought it was a neat exploration. Here was what I put:

• If everyone could fly than maybe traffic?
• flying into buildings, radio towers?
• other people would want to experiment on you. Ew.

Class 21

Jasper- Brewing beer

• Talked about the process of brewing beer and the possibility of brewing beer in your own house.
• process of fermenting a grain with yeast after being soaked in water
• been around since 6th millennium BC

Rose- Lady Gaga

• Gave brief history of the artist and explained how she uses creativity in her musical performances and songwriting
• runs her own clothes production called Haus of Gaga. Extravagant style. Loves fashion.
• Bad Romance global sinlge

class 20

YTU #2 to class

Joe: entrepreneurs/businesses

• explained how business use facebook for self promotion
• facebook has surpassed google in visits per day

Jonathon: Scamper method to customize low rider bikes, and gave a couple examples, like a car steering wheel instead of handle bars

• Substitute
• Combine
• Adapt
• Modify/distort
• Put to other purposes
• Eliminate
• Rearrange

I give you the conference BIKE!!!

Ryan: photography

• talked about photo lenses and the technical jargon and what it means
• showed us examples of the equipment
• talked about how photoshop can be used for photo manipulation

I decided to do my own! (i made the chair for another class but found a picture of a baby online and put him in the chair.

class 19

YTU to small groups
Rene Magritte: I presented on this Belgium surrealist painter. Below is my powerpoint :)

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Beach Boys- Christina presented on the beach boys

• Lead singer went insane
• Pet sounds is one of the top 10 best selling albums of all time
• Took the lead singer over 20 yrs to release his final album

Chinese calligraphy

• Based of symbols
• Made our own symbols
• 
  
  

Johnny Cupcakes

• Guy who made his own shirt with the words "Johnny Cupcakes"
• Caught on and got immensely popular
• t-shirts were popular than his band
• sold at bakery themed stores

class 18

Bio-creativity Presentations

Heres the stills from our presentations, note the Ant-sulation pun. Tim's a genius. Our idea was to basically insulate/make a sustainable house using a controlled population of termites. Since they perfectly heat/cool their environment, then why not ours?