Great art and great science involve a leap of imagination into a world that is different from the present. The rest of society often views these new ideas as fantasies without relevance to current reality. And they are right. But the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real and create a new reality. At the same time, this “escape” is not into a never-never land. What makes a novel idea creative is that once we see it, sooner or later we recognize that, strange as it is, it is true.
Most of us assume that artists – musicians, writers, poets, painters – are strong on the fantasy side, whereas scientists, politicians, and businesspeople are realists. This may be true in terms of day-to-day routine activities. But when a person begins to work creatively, all bets are off.
This month at work we created the promotional materials for the American Music Festival. This is the big labor day event so we got to do not just a poster, but a ton of ads, a billboard, brochure, even 20ft high banners for the actual event. It was really fun to work on and we got to see Billy Idol! I had hoped to meet him and get an awesome photo, that didn’t happen – he was awesome though, wouldn’t have believed he was 52. Also, his hair was not blonde.
Bathtime Planetarium – I preface with this is Japanese and I can’t have it, you can’t have it either. Can be aimed up or down into the water, doubles as a sealife/aquarium projector. Via a new favorite blog.
This new newsreader from MSN (wtf, innovation?) is a major visual upgrade on all other feed readers out there. Drawback is I think it only gathers real news, not the stuff I read.
The golden ratio and it’s occurrences in nature, math, geometry and art is interesting stuff. As far as math goes, the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio are so easy to wrap your head around:
In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller. The golden ratio is approximately 1.6180339887.
A distinctive feature of this shape is that when a square section is removed, the remainder is another golden rectangle, that is, with the same proportions as the first. Square removal can be repeated infinitely, which leads to an approximation of the golden spiral.
It’s said that aesthetically people prefer shapes that employ the golden ratio for proportion. I’ve never tried using this number in design, but last week I came across the Phiculator, it’s a simple flash application that does the math for you. You enter in a dimension and it will calculate the corresponding dimension based on the golden ratio. I know it’s not hard math to do (divide your larger side by 1.618), but the calculator makes it funner.
This post was going to be a list of things to do with my new and different lonely life. I couldn’t come up with enough things worth talking about, so this post turned into another “All the things I’d like to share with you”…
For the record, this is what I plan to do with my time: Finish all the projects I’ve promised to friends. Read some books. Paste Rocky Balboa’s face onto the body of H.W. Plainview (followed with a venn diagram of similarities and differences: deaf, bastard from a basket, blank stare). Do good work at my new job (and try not to talk so much). Make local friends!
