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[ by Charles Cameron — Nancy Fouts, sculpture, juxtaposition, essence of creativity, pocket universes, Arthur Koestler, Mark Turner ]
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Nancy Fouts is an American artist based in London. I ran across her work a while ago thanks to Michael Weaver on Google+, and was immediately struck by the intensity of her images, each one of which seemed like a landmark from a larger geography, more precisely focused and dense with meaning than our own world usually appears to be.

First impression:

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The first image I saw was of a snail on the straight edge of a razor blade (above, left) — an image out of the script of Apocalypse Now to be sure, but presented by Fouts in sharp detail and unadorned by any other context, visually, direct from eye to mind and heart.

This may be the image many people first see of her work — very, very striking, exquisite, terrifying if you allow it to be so, and yet as clear and simple, almost, as a single drop of water on a leaf.

Singer and song:

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But it was this next image that conquered me:

The juxtaposition is impeccable: sewing machine, record on turntable – and the overlap between the two, the link, the vesica piscis between them, is the needle.

The music of Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi — particularly on harpsichord — has been disparagingly called “sewing-machine music”. If that phrase gave rise to this marvelous image, perhaps the slight can be forgiven.

The sewing-machine? It’s a Singer. And in what must surely be an ironic, gender-influenced choice coming to us from an artist so assured and exacting — the music that the needle draws from the groove of the record is, as you can tell from the record label, the music of His Master’s Voice.

Philosophical aside:

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I have pointed before to this diagram from Mark Turner‘s The artful mind: cognitive science and the riddle of human creativity, based on those in Arthur Koestler‘s The Act of Creation (eg those on pp 35 and 37):

It shows the essence of the creative act — the “release of cognitive tension” that occurs when some form of analogy, similitude, overlap allows the mind to join conceptual clusters from two fields in a “creative leap”.

Nancy Fouts’ work doesn’t merely make use of such twinned field overlaps, it makes twinned fields with overlap the defining quality of her works.

She is aiming right at the heart of the creative process. And it shows.

Moving further afield:

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In that earlier post of mine, I talked about Ada, Countess of Lovelace, and noted that her analogy between Charles Babbage‘s Analytical Engine and Jacquard‘s mechanical loom, famously expressed by her thus:

The Analytical Engine … weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.

was precisely the creative leap that led to the us of punched card systems in computation from Babbage to Watson…

I could give other examples. The Taniyama-Shimura conjecture which formed the basis of Andrew Wiles‘ proof of Fermat‘s Last Theorem, bridges two previously distinct branches of mathematics precisely by showing that for every elliptic curve, there is a related modular form…

And no, I don’t understand the mathematics. But I understand the concept of twinned fields, and the power of their overlap.

Some favorite tropes:

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Back, then, to Nancy Fouts:

One thing that interests me about her work is that she has a few simple “essences” that she returns to time and again: in this case, bees, forms that resemble honeycombs, and by implication, honey.

In my own work, making similar connections between what we might paradoxically call “kindred ideas in unrelated fields” — I might set Nancy’s honeybees across from the verse from the Upanishads [Brihadaranyaka, fifth Brahmana, 14] which says:

This Self is the honey of all beings, and all beings are the honey of this Self.

Another of Nancy’s tropes connects nature and music…

The piercing:

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And thimbles, those miniature emblems of armor and protection, are another recurring theme:

Let’s take a look at that last image, of the thimble transpierced by a needle.

I believe it has a history — again, accessible via an associative leap. Here are three images of the “wounded healer” motif, two of them specifically images of the Inuit shaman who has harpooned himself — a motif which the anthropologist and zen roshi Joan Halifax writes “captures the essence of the shaman’s submission to a higher order of knowing”:

Armor, the defenses we have in place to protect our selves, and vulnerability, the ability to to allow our selves to be wounded, so that the “self” which is “the honey of all beings” may shine through us. The paradox of Selflessness and Self.

Koan and sacrament:

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Among wounded healers, we might count the crucified Christ, his side pierced by the spear of a Roman soldier — and here I might suggest that Fouts contrasts (image below, left) the self-sacrifice at the heart of Christianity with the pugilistic approaches of some proponents of his message:

And the image of Christ (right) balancing on a high wire?

Again I’m reminded of the language of shamanism. The anthropologist Barbara Myerhoff studied the religious beliefs and practices of the Huichol or Wixaritari of the Mexican Sierra Madre Occidental, with Ramon Medina Silva, a mara’akame or shaman of the tribe.

In her book, Peyote Hunt: The Sacred Journey of the Huichol Indians, she describes a feat of balance that Ramon performed, which appeared to serve a “sacramental” function for his people – providing them with what Cranmer‘s Book of Common Prayer calls “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”:

One afternoon Ramon led us to a steep barranca, cut by a rapid waterfall cascading perhaps a thousand feet over jagged, slippery rocks. At the edge of the fall Ramon removed his sandals and told us that this was a special place for shamans. We watched in astonishment as he proceeded to leap across the waterfall, from rock to rock, pausing frequently, his body bent forward, his arms spread out, his head thrown back, entirely birdlike, poised motionlessly on one foot. He disappeared, reemerged, leaped about, and finally achieved the other side. We outsiders were terrified and puzzled but none of the Huichols seemed at all worried. The wife of one of the older Huichol men indicated that her husband had started to become a mara’akame but had failed because he lacked balance.

It’s easy to read the description — but by no means as easy to keep one’s balance — something that Fouts’ image perhaps suggests more vividly than words easily can.

Richard de Mille describes the mara’akame‘s function in Huichol society as to “cross the great chasm separating the ordinary world from the otherworld beyond,” and suggests that Medina Silva’s feat of acrobatics on the barranca that day is to be understood as offering “a concrete demonstration in this world standing for spiritual balance in that world.”

Myerhoff herself was never entirely sure whether Medina Silva was “rehearsing his equilibrium,” or giving it “public ceremonial expression” that afternoon: it is clear, however, that for the Huichols, such feats of balance possess a resonance and meaning that extends beyond the “merely” physical.

Bringing the viewer into the picture

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I may of course be projecting some of my own ideas onto Nancy Fouts’ work — and indeed, perhaps that’s the point.

She has some pretty fierce observations to make concerning matters religious — Christian, Buddhist and other — and I’ll leave those who are interested to make their own discoveries on her website. I don’t doubt there are places where her sympathies and my own overlap, and others where we differ.

Fouts speaks a direct and visceral language of images — and her juxtapositions, carefully chosen and choreographed as they are, provoke us to feel and think.

Thank you, Nancy.

No need to reach for the gun, fellas — but that’s art.

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credits for images of Harpooned Shaman: Charlie Ugyuk (left); David Ruben (right).

[ by Charles Cameron — instinct, rationality, creativity, complexity and intelligence ]
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Guy Claxton, Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

You might think, taking a quick glance at their titles, that these two books would be in substantial agreement with one another about the speeds of thought. But consider these two comments, in one of which the deliberative, logical mind is “slower” than the intuitive and emotional — while in the other, it is the rational mind that is “faster” and the intuitive mind which is “slower”. Brought together, the two quotes are amazing — it would seem that either one or the other must be wrong:

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Happily, I don’t believe either one is wrong — I think it’s more a matter of there being three speeds of thought, and the two books in question using different terminologies to emphasize different distinctions between them.

Here’s a more extended version of Guy Claxton’s position:

Roughly speaking, the mind possesses three different processing speeds. The first is faster than thought. Some situations demand an unselfconscious, instantaneous reaction. … Neither a concert pianist nor an Olympic fencer has time to figure out what to do next. There is a kind of ‘intelligence’ that works more rapidly than thinking. This mode of fast, physical intelligence could be called our ‘wits’. (The five senses were originally known as ‘the five wits’.)

Then there is thought itself — the sort of intelligence which does involve figuring matters out, weighing up the pros and cons, constructing arguments and solving problems. A mechanic working out why an engine will not fire, a family arguing over the brochures about where to go for next summer’s holiday, a scientist trying to interpret an intriguing experimental result, a student wrestling with an examination question: all are employing a way of knowing that relies on reason and logic, on deliberate conscious thinking. … Someone who is good at solving these sorts of problems we call ‘bright’ or ‘clever’.

But below this, there is another mental register that proceeds more slowly still. It is often less purposeful and clear-cut, more playful, leisurely or dreamy. In this mode we are ruminating or mulling things over, being contemplative or meditative. We may be pondering a problem, rather than earnestly trying to solve it, or just idly watching the world go by. What is going on in the mind may be quite fragmentary. What we are dunking may not make sense. We may even not be aware of much at all. As the English yokel is reported to have said: ‘sometimes I sits and thinks, but mostly I just sits’. […]

That third mode of thinking is the one Claxton identifies with “wisdom” — which is interesting enough. Just as interesting, though, is his identification of this slowest mode of thought with “wicked problems”:

Recent scientific evidence shows convincingly that the more patient, less deliberate modes of mind are particularly suited to making sense of situations that are intricate, shadowy or ill defined. Deliberate thinking, d-mode, works well when the problem it is facing is easily conceptualised. When we are trying to decide where to spend our holidays, it may well be perfectly obvious what the parameters are: how much we can afford, when we can get away, what kinds of things we enjoy doing, and so on. But when we are not sure what needs to be taken into account, or even which questions to pose — or when the issue is too subtle to be captured by the familiar categories of conscious thought — we need recourse to the tortoise mind.

I haven’t read either book, and I’d hope that Kahneman as well as Claxton actually addresses all three speeds of thought. But my immediate point is that the slowest of the three forms of thought is the one that’s best suited to understanding complex, wicked and emergent problems.

And that’s the one that can’t be hurried — the one where the Medici Effect takes effect — and the one which provides Claxton with one of his finest lines, with which he opens his book, a western koan if ever I saw one:

There is an old Polish saying, ‘Sleep faster; we need the pillows’, which reminds us that there are some activities which just will not be rushed. They take the time that they take.

More on that front shortly, insha’Allah and the creek don’t rise.

[ by Charles Cameron — art, religion, and violence ]

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Al Farrow, the San Francisco-based artist, finds and shows us that violence which is one pole of religion — what I think of myself as the landmines in the garden, where the garden is pardis, pairidaeza, paradise, the opposite pole of religion — perhaps inseparable from the violence, perhaps separable — the pole of peace, eirene, salaam…

He show us this uncanny juxtaposition by building. meticulously, a cathedral out of guns and bullets:

His work leaves me impressed, but ill at ease, and for that I am grateful: he makes me think.

Take a close look at one of those flying buttresses… and compare it with its cousins at Notre Dame:

That detail really brings the power of Farrow’s work home to me.

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William Blake suggested that it is the artist’s function to “cleanse the doors of perception” — to give us fresh eyes, to see the world anew for us.

Al Farrow does this: it is as though in his cathedral, Catholic and Protestant Ireland meet.  Indeed, in an exhibit of his works — he has built mosques and synagogues of guns and bullets too — Christianity faces off against Islam, Judaism confronts its demons.

But there’s something more here, perhaps – the clash of war and peace, of hate and love — and how hatred can at times work with “love” as a protective shield…

Farrow himself says:

I am perpetually surprised by the historical and continuing partnership of war and religion. The atrocities committed in acts of war absolutely violate every tenet of religion, yet rarely do religious institutions speak against the violations committed in the name of God. Historically, Popes have even offered eternal salvation to those who fought on their behalf (The crusades, etc.).

In my constructed reliquaries, I am playfully employing symbols of war, religion and death in a facade of architectural beauty and harmony. I have allowed my interests in art history, archeology and anthropology to influence the work. The sculptures are an ironic play on the medieval cult of the relic, tomb art, and the seductive nature of objects commissioned and historically employed by those seeking position of power.

There’s considerable further irony, therefore, in the way in which Farrow’s already ironic work can be juxtaposed with it’s utterly non-ironic equivalent – Saddam Hussein‘s concept of the Mother of All Battles Mosque:

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Farrow’s work does not instruct us to be warriors, nor to be pacifists – it draws our attention to the blend of violence and peace of which our human dreams and lives are made. As Farrow says in this video clip from an exhibit of his work in Washington:

I use real bones, real bullets, real guns, because fake bones wouldn’t shake anybody up, nor would a fake gun. The purpose of my work is actually to get people to think about that complex relationship between war and religion – or any violence and religion. And a lot of violence is committed and has been through history in the name of religion, and that’s an ongoing thing, in any part of the world you look.

And yes, I think it’s fair to say Farrow’s juxtapositions of religion and violence clearly lean us towards peace.  War does the same, no?

War, after all, destroys places of worship, along with many and varied other places – munitions dumps and churches, mosques and homes:

But just as religion has its landmines, so too it offers us its gardens – and just as a mosque or church or temple may be a rallying point offering a divine sanction to violence, so too it may be a focus for peace and reconciliation.

Out of the ashes of destruction: creation, renewal, rebuilding…

For more on Al Farrow’s work, visit the Catharine Clark Gallery page.  And feel uneasy by all means, meditate — the koan I am sitting with this month is “Stop the War” — and ponder…

Dr. Von weighed in on Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From with an extensive book review last December( I posted on Johnson here. On a related note, read Charles Cameron’s comment about the limitations of linear thinking here):

Where do New Ideas come from?

….But what exactly are innovation and creativity? The dictionary definition of innovation is ‘the introduction of new things or methods,’ while creativity is ‘the ability to create meaningful new ideas, forms or methods’ that are original and imaginative. So the key notion is the development of new ideas in whatever field one is working. A question naturally develops, which is where do new ideas come from? How do we begin preparing children now to be creative and innovative in the future? In the past, many would have first thought about the arts as being the training ground for creativity. Now, we realize that the development of the abilities and mindsets and skills necessary to be creative in every field of study is necessary.Steven Johnson’s new book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, provides the argument that there are seven common themes that have led to the vast majority of great ideas throughout history. He gives numerous examples of such ideas, ranging from Darwin’s development of the theory of evolution to the of the GPS system, from Google to the creation of the first mechanical computing devices centuries ago, and so on. It is an interesting read.Here is a summary of the seven themes that lead to good ideas. Keep in mind there is certainly some degree of overlap and relationships between the themes, but overall they can be thought of as distinct concepts.1. The Adjacent Possible: Even if you have an interest in some topic or problem, if there is not a good environment conducive to presenting the necessary pieces to solve the problem, good ideas will almost certainly not develop. You may be brilliant with some of the information (i.e. pieces of a puzzle) in your mind that is necessary to solve a problem, but if your surroundings are not able to provide the remaining pieces of information or experiences, you will endlessly search for them to no avail. If you are isolated from others who know something about your problem or issue, or if there is no means of gathering further information (which is becoming less of a problem with the advent of the Internet), or if your environment does not provide the physical infrastructure or supplies to finish building a new physical device, you will be unable to develop the Idea or solution to your problem.

2. Liquid Networks: Great ideas can develop when information is allowed to flow through a larger network. One possible network is a social network, or often and more specifically, a professional network. The focus of this is the ability to collaborate to solve problems. It turns out that there are almost no great ideas throughout history that have been developed in isolation or by an individual who did not need any help in the development of that great idea. One may think Newton or Einstein did their work in isolation, but this is not entirely true. Those two individuals come about as close as you can get to not needing a network to develop the laws of motion or relativity, but they relied on some level of feedback, reading others’ work, and ultimately talking and discussing issues with close colleagues and friends.
An interesting study was done that looked at how research groups reach the coveted ‘Eureka!’ moment, where a new discovery is made. It turns out that these rare moments of discovery or problem solving almost never happen in the lab! Instead, the ‘Aha!’ are yelled out at the conference table, where members of the group are throwing ideas around and sharing results of their latest work over the past week. The person who figures it out needs to have input they have not thought about from the larger group or network, before the grand idea is formed….

Read the rest here.

This is very good. And it is fast.

I have enjoyed several of Steven Johnson’s previous books, Emergence and Mind Wide Open and his latest one, Where Good Ideas Come From looks to be a must read, though I think those of you who have read Wikinomics or works like Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi will find some of Johnson’s points in the video to be familiar as will those long time readers who have seen my views on horizontal thinking   and  insight.

My students watched this and reacted by defining themselves as those who were creative mostly through social collaboration but a decided minority required solitude and an environmental filter to think clearly and creatively – not a catalyst of a series of  social-intellectual stimuli. For them, the cognitive load generated by the environment amounted to an overload, a distracting white noise that short-circuited the emergence of good ideas.

This suggests to me that there are multiple and very different neuronal pathways to creativity in the brain and a person’s predisposition in their executive function, say for example the classic “ADHD” kid at the back of the class, may have different requirements to be creative than a peer without that characteristic. It also means that creativity may be subject to improvement if we can cultivate proficiency in several “styles” of creative thinking.