They all have a few key elements in common, but they also have a lot that differentiates them from each other.  Here’s some of the commonalities:

• Raw.  They’re real performances put on by exceptional people. They’re not cut and glamorized official music videos that seem sterile and antiseptic. The raw feel makes the artistic provocations more real, more edgy.
• “Environmental aura.” That phrase popped into my head.  It seems to fit.  The environment that these performances take place in is just as important as what the actors are actually doing.
• Narrative structure. There’s a story going on.
• Good music with a strong baseline.

To dig into each of these, in order of complexity…..

(i’ve made up these titles for descriptive purposes)

Magic Headphones

The setting appears to be a gas station or a small convenient store. But it could’ve just as well been any place where people are walking around through their day-to-day.  The narrative focuses on a pair of headphones left outside, where 3 unknowing individuals discover them, and try them on. The headphones act as the muse of the performance.  And it’s funny, this gimmicky device somehow evokes a strong sense of the magic of discovery and serendipity.

I love the people walking in an out of the store.  They may have been planted, but it doesn’t matter too much.  It’s believable.

Dance of Desolation

It starts with a simple overture of driving through what appears to be a healthy middle america (gas for $2.59!)

Now, I can’t be sure, and I don’t want to sound like a high school literature teacher that reads into things way too much, but when i first watched this, I got the feeling there was something being said about hard economic times.  Notice that the car drives into a well lit, bright and clean gas station (gas stations seems to be the place to dance).  But then the scene fades to a rundown, dusty, deserted gas station. It’s desolate and lonely.

The music is soft and strong. The performer’s attire is the clothing of a working class, rural male — he’s got the vibe of a hustler.

These elements really resonate well.  And the video seems quite impromptu. Almost like the guy had his camera with him, decided to stop at this location, let the film roll, and said “this is how I feel now.”

Notice some of the details: the camera view is slightly off, he’s fairly far away which brings out the environment, and the car door is on the screen.  I consider these enhancements to the raw, real life feel.

I don’t know if it was by design, and I almost hope it wasn’t, but I think this video is artistic brilliance.

Sinister Showdown

I find this one mind blowing.

Really in your face. Sinister. Cocky. Mischievous.

The setting is some sort of ornate hall with columns and chandeliers — something I saw in a history book. The performers are wearing clown masks, somewhat like they used to wear in old plays long ago.  This causes the performers to seem anachronistic, ahead of their time, and a bit alien. Like they came from some other dimension where people are brash and dance really well.

The actors are a bit threatening.  Almost like they wouldn’t be afraid to rob you, but that’s probably because they remind me of the Joker’s thugs.

Enjoy.

 
-Kevin
9.24.2011
 

(I’m still growing into the video medium.  Lots of ways I could make my video content more compelling, but I’m always more interested in listening to what you have to say. )

The bullet points of this video post:

• Just finished listening to the audio version of Stephen King’s memoirs on writing.
• Great listen
• Very interesting to understand his creation process.
• He does not start with a plot and fill in the details.
• He uses a “generative” approach.
• Here’s the post I refer to: Understanding the Design Process: 4 Key Methods

Watch the video for more.

-Kevin
6.12.2011

Abbreviated Text Version:

I’m currently reading Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. In the book, Mihaly makes an incredible powerful statement.

Mihaly states  in order to live a more satisfying life, we must strive to become increasingly more complex individuals — where complexity is defined by differentiation and integration.

So what does this mean?

We need to become increasingly stronger individuals with a clear role and domain and mastery.  But at the same time, while making ourselves more distinct, we must also become more strongly connected to others.

The reason this is so powerful is that it’s the perfect articulation, the perfect abstraction of the goal of our personal development.  So the real question is: how do we become more complex?  And how do we accelerate the process?

This is something I’d like to discuss further, so my question to you is: how have you become a more complex individual in your life? what have you actively done to further this process?

As always, looking forward to your thoughts.

-Kevin
5.28.2011

Note: The idea of complexity in human development gets right to the heart of many concepts I’ve written about on how we can become more effective and happy people.  See if you can start seeing the connections.

Image by doug88888 via Flickr

I had a post on Greenhorn Connect earlier this week about different design processes (Understanding Design: 4 Key Methods).  I thought I’d repost here for my thoughtful readers, as I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.  Leave a comment or just shoot me an email.  One of these days I’ll write a much more involved piece on this concept, as I think it’s a very important framework to develop.

Here are the major types of design that can be observed in most development processes:

Shotgun Design.

This seems to be the M.O. of people that fall on the highly creative spectrum.  If there are many inspirations, the “designer” is compelled to make many things.  Many musicians, inventors, and artists even take strategies of doing many works every day until they produce something that was “properly inspired”.  Supposedly, George Gershwin, the famous musician and pianist, wrote six pieces every morning “just to get the bad ones out.”   (There’s an important corollary here:  not everything you make will be good.)

Evolutionary Design.

We see this in nature–over generations, a species learns from its environment and adapts to it.   Evolutionary design is a powerful process.  In fact, if you zoom out far enough, most development looks like an evolutionary process, whether it’s a core technology, a product, personal habits, or a startup.  

When Steve Blank  and Eric Ries talk about the “customer development model” or “agile development,”  they’re really talking about best practices in applying evolutionary design to building a company.  If you spend time talking to your customers, you learn from your environment.  And if you have faster iterations that incorporate these learnings, your company will adapt to the environment faster, survive, and hopefully prosper.

Pure Design.

This is what happens when someone with a high level of expertise sits down, puts pen to paper, and specs out true value.  The nuance here is that what they design actually works, and they can do this consistently.  If it exists at all, it seems to be quite rare.  Nikola Tesla claimed to be able to design his inventions in his head, every single measurement and piece of minutiae, and never make a mistake.  Mozart is often depicted as being able to sit down and write music so flawlessly that it seems he was copying it from the astral plane.  Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent, paces around and, once he’s ready, sits down and writes flawless code(Wired, “The Bittorrent Effect“).

Unfortunately, the creation process is often exaggerated by people to make it seem like Pure Design when it really isn’t, so when you hear of these stories, I’d approach them with a bit of  skepticism.  I’ll avoid going too much into the psychology, but most people aren’t interested in hearing about regular people.  We want to hear about “geniuses”,  giants, and heroes.  (Do people watch golf or Tiger Woods?  Basketball or Lebron?)  The desire to see superstars makes us vulnerable to tall tales and causes us to overlook the focus and honest labor that goes into accomplishment.  

Gary Kasparov, the chess grandmaster, illustrates our lust after stories of Pure Design in his essay, “The Chess master and the Computer“:

“[The result of the tournament], though startling, fits with my belief that talent is a misused term and a misunderstood concept. The moment I became the youngest world chess champion in history at the age of twenty-two in 1985, I began receiving endless questions about the secret of my success and the nature of my talent. Instead of asking about Sicilian Defenses, journalists wanted to know about my diet, my personal life, how many moves ahead I saw, and how many games I held in my memory.”

Introspective Design.

This one is a bit curious.  This is simply creating something you personally desire.  Not just acting on an idea that’s yours, but actually making something so you yourself can have it.  

Personally, I find introspective design to be the strategy I most often employ.  Personal desire is extremely powerful.  But to make something valuable, it requires the maker to have clear purpose, strong awareness of the environment, and strong sense of self.  To make something you want, you need to first know what you want.

By having an understanding of these design processes, you’ll probably find making things much easier.  You’ll likely be able to formulate a better strategy for one. But, it goes beyond just that. Making something is an emotional process, it’s a reflection of you.  Consequently, understanding  design is valuable for managing yourself.  Ever been frustrated by the fact that you knew your essay just wasn’t right?  Worried your product lacked vision?  Or upset that so many of your creations just didn’t meet your expectations? Understanding the design process will help you solve these issues and deliver better work.

-Kevin
2.13.2011

People talk a lot about creativity, how to get more of it, and how important it is.  It’s one of those things that probably gets talked about more than it’s actually used. However, most of these discussions yield little because people misunderstand the fundamentals of creativity.

We don’t understand the cognitive processes that generate creativity.  And much Like the human brains that contain it, creativity is incredibly diverse.  Nonetheless, we can recognize it.  Creativity is defined by what it creates. Creativity is expressed as an act that is done differently from others that provides value.

An important part of what makes us human is the creative capacity of our intellect.  However, the error we often commit is thinking of creativity only as a mental faculty, and consequently forgetting that creativity requires action.  By viewing creativity as a set of actions that produce value, by acknowledging Creativity must actually produce to truly exist, things become clearer:

The Key to Creativity is being a strong individual.

The Key isn’t a special mental ability. Many people have creative thoughts.  But thinking is the easy part, and by itself, it does not give us the ability to create. To be creative, we must be willing to act, and do something that may be completely different.  We also need to be ready to catch a lot of criticism and meet strong resistance.  Most people can’t operate under these conditions.

Creatives wear this willingness to be an individual on their sleeves.  Their individuality emanates from their natural tendency to think and act for themselves in accordance with their own minds.

When I look at the people that we consider to be some of the most creative individuals in history, people that changed us, I cannot deny this.  I see people that are fiercely individual and deeply genuine.  They will never be replicated:

Salvador Dali

Albert Einstein

Martin Luther King

Muhammad Ali

Gandhi

Thomas Edison

Daft Punk

In my experience, this ability to act as an individual is the real sticking point.  I’ll write more about this later.  Until then, let me know what you think of the claim (and suggest more pictures for me to add to the list above!)

-Kevin
12.5.2010

HDR photography is wild.  They’re like a punch in the face from the world’s visual information (they actually make my eyes hurt).  Even a picture of a dirty building with a motorcycle looks incredible.

Got any links to some good galleries?

-Kevin
8.17.2010

Up close, Sagrada Familia looks like a mash of stuff.  And it is really.  A lot of people say it looks like it’s melting.  There are many ornaments and just a lot of stuff going on.

On the side of the cathedral I’m describing, there are many statues depicting scenes from the birth of Jesus: the roman soldiers killing on the newborns, the Three Wise Men, the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, the birth in the stable, and so on.

The design of the building as captured in the pictures above isn’t particularly appealing (although it is unique, which can be enjoyable) .  I’d say it looks complicated and messy.  However, if you’re looking at the cathedral in person, and you’re able to look at it as a whole, it’s marvelous.

It took me a while to unravel why this was.  In design–whether it’s music, architecture, or a story–people desire unity and structure.  There needs to be a sense of closure and fulfillment.  And this mass of stuff does provide closure and coherence, but it does it in a more novel manner: it does it through narrative.

Anyone can quickly tell that there is a story being told through the stone scenery; you don’t need to know anything about the Christian religion.  Each scene is fairly modular and is arranged according to a hierarchy of importance.  The most important parts of the story are front and center.

The scenes quickly give the observer a feeling of “what’s this story being told”?  It’s almost the same feeling and communication one gets when reading a graphic novel.  You can see that there is something happening. The hierarchical structure of the arrangement (which isn’t linear like a graphic novel) gives the scenes a sense of order.

But, and most importantly, the hierarchical structure draws the observer to the center and points towards the sky, and the story culminates with a green cedar tree surrounded by doves–a symbol of peace and salvation and rebirth.  The story then slowly fades into the heavens.

-Kevin
7.7.2010

A while back I wrote a post on Complexity and Simplicity in relation to Design (Complexity vs Simplicity).  I also wrote a short post illustrating the difference between Complexity and “Complicatedness.”

The overall message: simplicity is not the full story and good design isn’t necessarily simple, but it is elegant.

However, I failed to mention what the real use of complexity is.

If you make something extremely simple, people will often say, “well that’s quite nice,” and they’ll move on and give it little thought.  It’s obvious. But, if you correctly provide a dose of complexity, you’ll give them something to ponder.  You’ll give them the feeling that there is something more.

-Kevin
7.5.2010

I love descriptive phrases that are used to describe people.  Here’s a few, see  if you can guess who they are (some are the same person of course):

“The Dark Knight”
“The Man of Steel”
“The Boy Wonder” (okay, this one actually really sucks…too bad for this character…)
“The Webbed Wall-Crawler”
“The Masked Manhunter”
“The Clown Prince of Crime”
“The Man of Tomorrow”
“The Caped Crusader”

Most of these are excellent.  They couldn’t be used to describe any other character.  At the same time, they’re simple words we understand, and they guide us to the correct mental image that we should associate with the character.

Here’s something else interesting about descriptive phrases:
We have phrases that we would use to privately describe ourselves (self-image).  We could also come up with phrases for ourselves that we would use to describe how we think other people would describe us (perceived image).  Strangely enough, self-image and perceived image are almost never the same.  The difference is significant and depends upon an individual’s personality–how we judge ourselves and how we think we portray ourselves.  (In fact, there are some psychological tests, such as the Predictive Index, that are based on this idea.  Perhaps more on that one tomorrow…)

So what are my descriptive phrases for myself? Well, I haven’t thought a whole lot about this, but I’ll share some of mine if you share some of yours.  That way I don’t feel so stupid. Here’s a few that I would use:

“The Hillbilly Hill-Climber”
“The Visionary Cowboy”
“Thunder Wrapped In Skin”

Now, I don’t think I can rightfully claim all of those right now. But, if someone were to describe me that way, I think I’d be fine with it.  These are “self-image” phrases.  My “perceived image” phrases would probably be different.

Alright, so what’s some of yours?

-Kevin
5.18.2010

p.s.  I don’t actually feel stupid about sharing any of this.

I had an interesting chat yesterday with a guy that thinks about the Web probably as much as I do (or more).  The subject of the conversation was Open vs. Closed systems, a very prevalent discussion right now.

On the Web, there seems to be different universes forming with different fundamental laws governing them.  The most prominent of these “universes” being Apple’s media ecosystem, the Twitter-verse, and Facebook.  People enter these universes and interact differently with the Web and other users.

Defining Open and Closed is a bit of a discussion in itself, but I’d describe Twitter as being completely Open.  The Twitter API is like electricity; Twitter powers any piece of software that is designed to use it. But, it provides such a fundamental functionality, it can power many things (just as electricity delivers energy).

Apple maintains a high level of control over their system through their vertical integration from hardware, software/media, to distribution. They have certain rules for what can be done on their devices.  You manage and obtain shows, music, and apps through iTunes.  This is a closed system.

The major question posed during this conversation was, “How do Open and Closed systems affect innovation”?

Here’s my answer after this conversation (thanks to Brad for framing it within the context of evolutionary processes):

Early in their formation, closed systems produce the most innovation and value. With a closed system, if the designer gets it right, clearly defined rules and uses allow people to immediately build within the system and harness it.  If the system really gets it right (and I think Apple did), it will be the optimal system at that point in time. Consequently, Apple’s universe exploded very quickly.

Early in the development of open systems, people aren’t really sure exactly what it really is for and what it can do. Twitter started as a micro-blogging system with an open API (other programs could interact with it), so you could post short messages like, “I’m eating soup.”  However eventually people started doing very interesting things with this system, people started to figure out what it really was, Twitter developed more capabilities, and people started better understanding the laws of the Twitter-verse and how to operate within this universe.  Then Twitter suddenly had a trove of openly available data.  This further enhanced the platform.  The platform (Twitter) and the users co-evolved.  It took a long time for this to come about.

Intelligent design of closed systems is much faster at producing growth, and optimal in the short term.  Thus, closed systems can really hit the nail on the head and deliver in a short burst.  However, they suffer long-term risk. Apple has to get things right since they impose constraints. They don’t leave it to others to find their way.

Open Systems don’t have constraints, and the agents within can pursue whatever they desire within a loose set of fundamental laws. Open systems evolve and take longer.  But in the long term, evolutionary processes are very powerful.  In the beginning things are a mess, but once people start to get it, and since people can pursue whatever they desire, the activity grows explosively. Consequently, innovation comes about by sheer brute force of having so much activity.  And when selective pressures come along, something will stand.  There is less long-term risk.

You could think of a closed system as an arrow. If it’s on the mark, it’s beautiful and elegant. But if it’s off target, it produces nothing.  You better have someone skilled shooting the arrow.

Open systems however are more like a shotgun, once the powder is ignited (think of an old gun that takes a long time to load), it fires, and hurls a mess of small projectiles at the target.  It’ll hit something.  Although it’s not nearly as pretty or elegant, almost anyone could hit the target to some degree.

Not a perfect analogy, but it’s the best I could do in a limited amount of time.  It’s difficult without having two similar systems (Apple and Twitter do different things).  Here’s one that could provide a model: Encylopedia Britannica and Wikipedia.  Once Wikipedia got going, it blew encyclopedias out of the water.

Thoughts? Clarifications for me?

-Kevin
5.7.2010