I’m screwed. The flight is full. I need to go where I’m going but there are only middle seats. The guy in the middle is in no man’s land and no one wants to be associated with “no man”. Aisle seat gate keepers refuse to look me in the eye. The strategy seems to be: block the entrance with a briefcase.

No man’s land is a term for land that is not occupied or is in dispute between parties that will not occupy it because of fear or uncertainty.

You’re fighting for real estate with no ability to define your space. There are no clear boundaries; no arm rests dedicated to your seat. Action appears to be at the fringes but the fringes aren’t accessible on your boarding pass; you’re a middle seat guy for this trip.

Without a pass one can only play at the fringes for short periods. You can sit on the aisle but if it’s not indicated on the boarding pass you’ll soon get busted back to the middle. In the middle you are unrecognizable, uncomfortable, ignored, assigned token worth, or dismissed out of hand no matter how very good you are.

Some how you need to reserve that aisle seat; get in that exit row with A/B choices.  Ride the middle for a while but if your a traveler and get the middle seat on every trip, I may suggest you use the exit slide. You’ll need to create an authentic story of a fringe player and live it.

Here are some of the famous “middles”:

Middle America is beloved but horribly abused, misunderstood and misquoted.

Middle class is a proud group but one whose definition is unclear and shifty. My father was one and so am I, but there couldn’t be two more different people in the same category.

Middle Management, even the name sounds unimportant. “Hi, I’m a middle manager” – I can’t imaging a greeting more apt to inspire escape. Having been one once, I know what a lonely position this is. You have all the responsibility with none of the position power or ability to directly affect things on the ground.

Middle Name: It’s rarely used and less often recognized as you. Those without one don’t miss it all that much.

The Middle Aged are typically lost in a crisis of neither starting nor finishing. They’re stereotypically on a bridge to nowhere, upset by their aimlessness while lamenting dreams unfulfilled.

Middle of the Road has a firm reputation for boredom and a dead lock on the inadequately mundane result.

Middle Ground is impossible to defend, but then, no one will attack you anyway since you have nothing remarkable to offer. Well, that is unless you are in the way of some fringe element trying to cross your path.

Middle Passage: Synonymous with death to would be slaves. At the very best it meant months of torture followed by a lifetime of servitude.

The Middle Man is always in danger of being squeezed out; Rumored as worthless. There is even a word for eliminating him: Disintermediation [an economic term for cutting out intermediaries] and is considered a method for gaining efficiencies.

Middle Child: There is a syndrome attached to this position, one defined by a sense of not belonging. Need I say more?

Middle Urinal: As the middle airline seat is to travel, it’s the last resort for queued personal relief. There is an instant calculation upon entering a men’s room: “Which of the remaining spots is least likely to attract a neighbor?”

Everyone should know Seth Godin – there is no disputing he’s perpetually reserving an aisle seat.  If you haven’t seen his presentation from 2003 you must view it. If you have it’s worth a revisit – I’ve viewed it half a dozen times at least.  It’s seven years old but will remain fresh in seven more, with the possible exception of the Hummer – it may not be here but the message is still dead on accurate. He speaks of the middle brilliantly and is guaranteed to make you laugh.

I must have had ½ dozen conversations with musicians, photographers and designers in the last week about artistic soul searching. Perhaps we’re looking for meaning, or overcoming creative block, or simply have too much free time, yet my wager is on the speed of which our cultural environment is changing.  We simply can’t keep up so we are gradually choosing an alternative: finding a place to plant our flag.

When asked about including fret tapping in his playing, one of my guitar heroes answered, “I don’t like the sound enough to spend the time necessary to master it”. To help me out, immediately following my question, I watch as he fret tapped a solo only to abandon the sound in seconds.  Message received: “I’m willing to try anything but I’ve got to have it inside me if it’s going to have meaning”.

The choices are so vast; the horizon is expanding at such a rate it’s as though we are pioneers racing west to find the most fertile land to which we can lay claim. We can only sprint for so long before every square mile passes in hopes of something better around the corner.  At the end of the day, we’re still homeless and looking.

We, the more experienced folks (please accept my generosity), get fooled into thinking our legacy habits are getting in the way of younger seemingly more agile talents.  I’ve watched vigilantly with the wisdom that human capacities don’t change all that much; human is human, look for the patterns they’re consistent through history.

Probing for artistic soul can make an agile impression but experience easily keeps pace with enthusiasm by avoiding needless wholesale experimentation. Edginess is commonly a dormant tradition, like 80’s fashion, tweaked then labeled fresh.

What I see is an increasingly large group of creatives probing deeper inside to find what they own; what unique individual value can inform their work. In spite of that, we make comparisons to a growing creative class: we see things, hear things, and witness ideas that shake our confidence.

“I would never have thought of doing that.”

The Truth:

Of course not, because it’s not you; why do you expect any “other” to be something you could have done? Look inside, plant the flag and do what’s authentic.

Permission To Suck Manifesto Law #2

The boss is the problem; the puzzle to solve, the idea to create, the crowd to excite, or your soul to satisfy.  Don’t piss off the boss.

Seth Godin had a great post last week about adding value, avoiding factory work, and staying true to your art:

A small island grows sugar cane. Many people harvest it, and one guy owns the machine that can process the cane and turn it into juice.

Who wins?

Go Here for more: Seth Godin – The Sugar Cane Machine

Something well designed is compelling; we are drawn to its efficiency, effectiveness, elegance, beauty, and often it’s cleverness and humor. You’re a designer when you arrange your clothes in an order that gets you out the door faster in the morning, or when you plan a route to the office.

Then why is “design thinking” so hard for so many to understand?

In my view it’s because we have a tendency to think things more complicated than they are; the enigmatic isn’t routinely unpacked but rather labeled something else or believed to be something we understand easier or perhaps ignored completely. Maybe we find the easiest remedy for complexity is to go to the end result and call it design: an iPod, Ferrari, or the elegant kitchen utensil.

Great designers design great things from information architecture to artifacts for living, but the truly great designer finds the right problem to solve that makes a difference and connects emotionally to the end user. They advance humanity by forward thinking with the support of observation and research, empathy for the end user and serendipity in the process.

I put together this 13 minute video with the help of 5 great design thinkers; Matt Munoz, David Burney, John Loftin, Jonathan Opp and Todd Coats.  In it they help us to understand design thinking.

To paraphrase David Burney in this video: Design is a way of life. Designers find solutions to the right problems through the balance of science, analytics, and math + art, spirit and intuition.

[Via Wikipedia:]

Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.^[1] It is the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success. Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the “building up” of ideas. There are no judgments early on in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation in the ideation and prototype phases.

Building Art - James Powderly

In my research for my post on Banksy I stumbled onto James Powderly, an incredible high tech street artist.  James gives us a demonstration in this video [via The Creators Project]. You’ll be shaking your head by the end.

James Powderly:

[via F.A.T. Free Art and Technology]

James was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, U.S.A. in the year of the dragon, 1976. He has been making technology and media at the fringes of robotics, graffiti, space science, tattoos and rock n roll since 1992. James was a Senior Research Fellow in the Eyebeam R&D OpenLab developing creative tools and media to directly enrich the public domain.    more …

http://graffitiresearchlab.com/

http://robotclothes.com/

http://honeybeerobotics.com/

http://research.eyebeam.org/

Powderly’s CV

“There are no accidental masterpieces in painting, but there are accidental masterpieces in photography” – Chuck Close

Here we go – Déjà vu all over again – into the world of vernacular photography. Like colloquial speech is to literature, vernacular photography is any type that isn’t intended as art: keepsakes, advertising, forensic, documentation for records, passport photos, etc. It was made possible by George Eastman when he invented The Kodak Camera and roll film.

The modern disparity is found in history; more specifically – there is a history.  When you bought The Kodak in the late 1880’s there was no strong artistic tradition; no best practices for the flock of newcomers.  Someone first introduce smiling for the camera. “Say Cheese” was unfamiliar.

It’s 1890, photography is suddenly accessible. There is always more film to be had, it wasn’t messy, and it was fun. There is no need to be serious, this isn’t art.

The camera can produce art with little more participation from the photographer than a button push.  The medium is generous and extremely democratic. Yet the product result of a button push can be elevated to an art often by accident.

Henri Lartigue is a great example of amateurism (he made a living as a painter) producing occasional brilliance while the majority of his large quantity of work reached art status merely through our draw to nostalgia. His work represented the vernacular of his time until they became documents of longing. His playfulness with photography brought us a new type of art.

Photographic artwork is rife with nostalgia – it seems impossible to take a serious fine art photo of something new. Our homesickness for the past lifts everything old to an artistic prospect; signs along old Route 66, peeling paint, abandoned warehouses, old general stores – even old people become fine art when recorded by a camera more frequently than those of living less than 4 years.

Mom at Museum - Hipstamatic Photo

An iPhone App called the Hipstamatic Camera gives us democratized digital nostalgia – “digital photography never looked so analog”.  Its whole purpose is to replicate faded films exposed through second or third rate optics.  The result is instant art.  I posted snapshots on Facebook and got excited comments eager to discover my magic tool.  Old meets new; our nostalgia is now digitized. Is camera art done if a digital “look” never passes for future nostalgia?

Gradually the camera became more generous; more accidental master-pieces are posted to Flickr sites. The beauty of old processes before The Kodak invention are now the sandbox of vernacular photography; Déjà vu all over again.

Below is a segment from a BBC presentation on The Genius of Photography.  It’s thought provoking in that we get a glimpsed reminder of how similar the introduction of The Kodak is to the adoption of digital imaging by the vernacular picture taker.

If you want to continue the series The Genius of Photography by the BBC go here.

If one more person relates the K.I.S.S. principle like it’s a revelation I swear I’ll throw them in the middle of Time Square at rush hour and yell: “OK Smart-ass keep THAT simple.” Nearly impossible, Jason Fried would  do it.

Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37 signals, an open source web application company specializing in cloud computing. Their website from the late 90’s was super simple – small dots of navigation on an all white field if I accurately recall; the forefront of usability.

Contrasting a venture funded company to a self funded company, in another part of the Big Think interview, Fried points to the opening goal of the former is to spend while the latter is to make money. The skill set and priorities are straightforward from the start when self funded but more to the point, I think options are fewer; opportunities tend to be more focused when funds must be earned before spent.  Avoid the complex whenever possible.

Overwhelmed by big ideas, his advice for entrepreneurs is equally as valid for artists, writers, photographers or musicians – have a big idea, cut it in half. It’s easy to get beleaguered which – still easier – leads to half the excitement, half the message getting lost, or half your effort being wasted.  Do the small things well, make the smallest thing fresh and new, succeed at the basics and you’ve made a difference.

Jason Fried [via BigThink.com]
Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals, the Chicago-based web-application company. He has co-authored all of 37signals’ books, including the upcoming, “Rework,” as well as the ‘minimalist manifesto,’ “Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application” He also helps to maintain the company’s popular blog, Signal vs. Noise, and is regularly invited to speak around the world on entrepreneurship, design, management, and software.

[via 2009 Creativity 50]

Saying goodbye to bloat is at the heart of 37signals, a software company that has raised eyebrows in the business world for its products—and philosophies—promoting efficiency in the workplace. Driving all this is the company’s principled and often outspoken CEO Jason Fried. His nine-year-old web-design-turned-software company has maintained a steadfast insistence on core principles of flexibility and simplicity, embodied in its manifesto, a 37-point straight talk about web design. Fried later elaborated on those ideals in a full-fledged tome on efficient application-building, Getting Real.

Mid 1820 we saw the first photoetching and heard Paul Delaroche’s “death of painting” proclamation.  The death of painting was actually a fading of uniqueness for some artists as photography democratized art through technology.  From a distance, it’s easy to see that photography didn’t kill painting but liberated it.

Previsualization – more or less – remained even though art took physical form with new tools; technology brought with it options, opportunities, freedoms and a new diversity.  Ignited with this discovery was a love – hate affair between artists and technology.  Undeniably technology leaves a strong wake out of unyielding innovation; the response to a good idea is a better one.

Film delayed gratification long enough so those behind a camera needed to see the image in their minds eye and exhaust possibilities to make it happen at the moment of exposure.  Particularly in color, manipulation was limited. Technology has changed that – call it postvisualization.

We’re familiar with digital imaging yet in relatively short order it will be possible to record segments of life in such detail that post capture choices of lens focal length, depth of field, and even a crop of the smallest section of the frame will yield unimaginable resolution and variety.  Perhaps generations ahead of us will record their whole life enabling a search for the art of life’s moments years in the past.

Editing nightmare aside, an artist’s intent alters with postvisualization.  Her imagination is dormant until possibilities explode post capture.  With no previsualization a prime dimension is removed.  As obvious as this seems, nuances in the moment of capture editorialize the visual communication.  A story of imagery starts with the eyes and the intent of the photographer; there is no “fix in post”.  For similar reasons, video and still visualization can’t reliably alternate.

Ansel Adams was a pioneer of previsualization; it’s what we see as the magic of his photography.  He created a system born of technology that eliminated variables that might interfere with his vision.  It was a mastery of craft but his clarity of vision is what we see.  [[Show as slideshow]]

Go here for more:

The Ansel Adams Gallery

Roy Firestone interviews Ansel Adams

Rangefinder Interview with Ansel Adams part II

There’s no faulting authentic cause marketing.   Doing the right thing by committing funds is inspiring.  A perfect example is the Ronald McDonald House supporting families of hospitalized children.  It represents everything we’d like a corporation to do with their profits: give some back to the community that buys the product.  All positive public relations are genuinely well deserved.

Pepsi Refresh feels similar.  The soft drink company uses the internet to field ideas and award favorites monthly with large sums of cash to finance a cause.  Excellent.  Spread the love and the goodness of a brand.  The Publicity is good; the causes are great and they used new social networking techniques to make it even more powerful – awesome.  Much better than a one run Superbowl networks 30 sec. spot.

Let’s take a moment to sincerely thank them for this approach.  Honest – no sarcasm intended but it’s hard to write this stuff without it sounding that way.

OK – that said, let me risk more by sounding overly cynical and ask about statistics regarding ROI for cause marketing.  It must be impossible to measure.  Maybe it’s not necessary to measure.  Building a brand by making members of a cause and their benefactors love it, how can that fail?  Pay it forward, right? Everyone will love Pepsi and buy their product because they’re doing the right thing. [Well, that’s a little sarcastic]

While Pepsi’s approach was inspired, it feels like a dead end and outside the brand to me.  Each cause is individually separate and disconnected from anything to do with Pepsi as a refreshment maker other than cash outlay, a brand mark, and a slogan.

I think about those times my parents gave me money for college.  I am eternally grateful but that’s not why I love them.  I also received a partial scholarship from someone but I’d have to go back and dig through papers to find out whom… I forget.  In fact, attach strings to payments and recipients may get resentful: a girlfriend’s Dad once offered $1000 to her for quitting cigarettes – you can guess how that turned out.

A better approach would be to create a product that inspired it’s own cause and its own marketing.  Let’s pretend Pepsi Co. created a delicious tablet that, when dropped in water would give a day’s worth of nutrition in a thirst quenching drink while simultaneously clearing foul water of harmful bacteria.

• The tablet tasted better than sports drinks of the wealthiest fit minded communities.
• The tablets are so effective that it could be distributed to earthquake victims in Haiti and Chile to help solve drinking water shortages.
• Pepsi would be marketing the same tablet everywhere; one which would give 50% profits to groups dedicated to quench the thirst of the world.  [Insert Pepsi Refresh cause marketing here].
• Track profits from areas of the globe and where they go through online mapping – create a competition between shopping segments – who can generate more thirst quenching for drought stricken areas.
• Perhaps a live video feeds from the areas being helped or of people buying the product that will be shipped to the truly thirsty.

These thoughts are incomplete and raw but I think you get the idea.  Everything from the product to the financing to the cause and the outcome are all Pepsi.  The product is the marketing and everything to do with it perpetuates the brand and its thirst quenching essence.  It offers consumers something genuinely healthy to purchase and one that did good tangible things across the globe as well as an opportunity to pick up another Pepsi products sold next to the tablet while at the store.

I know, I know,  the tablet may be a technological fantasy but something isn’t that would fit the scheme.  I’m just sayin’ – Pepsi is doing good stuff but I think they missed an opportunity on this one.

I live for the thrill – a captivating moment in the creative process when engagement turns exciting.  Nothing else matters but refining how it sounds, looks, reads, feels.  My concentration is off the immersion chart.  Volume is past 11 on the engagement control.

The route to vibrant creativeness may be tough to find and even harder to finish; putting pencil to paper and drawing the first line or writing that first sentence, it’s classically agonizing.  Similarly, slogging through an ultimate final edit for the 10^th time is plainly mundanely dutiful.  Yet, those moments in the darkroom chasing a fine b+w print for the first time, photographing an expressively electric target rich scene or expressing a new idea with elegant phrasing makes the process compelling beyond any accomplished artifact.

It feels as though we – the artist – are in a frantic improvisation inside ourselves when “yes …. And” can’t come fast enough, yet it does.  It’s a feeling of comparatively little effort and high output.  He’s on fire; she’s in the zone; I’m in profound flow.

On stage improv is fundamentally an additive process that rides flow like a snowboarder.  The Grateful Dead meandered aimlessly in sloppy hunt for improvisational synergy that – once found – inspired a loyal horde.  It’s nothing like drilling for oil – more like sharing demonstrative dreams at 20 – 20,000 MHz.

This is what can happen in well orchestrated collaboration: open source projects, teamwork in progressive companies or creative agencies, and productions with unusually talented performers. The outcome is inevitable – the project concludes – but creative performers push it to surprising places.

As Maria Schneider says in this clip, “When it works at the end of a performance, the performance belongs to all of us. … There is a meeting place that makes something rich if it’s done right.”  To paraphrase further: In the end, the music is where you and I meet rather than waiting for a perfection that never conforms to my vision.

Maria Schneider’s Biography [Via Wikipedia]:

Schneider was born in Windom, Minnesota. She moved to New York City in 1985 after attending college at the University of Minnesota, the University of Miami and the Eastman School of Music. She studied under Bob Brookmeyer and Gil Evans, working on various projects with Evans, including the film The Color of Money and Absolute Beginners. Her works share many characteristics with other jazz composers influenced by Gil Evans, including Lou Marini, and Grammy Award winning composer Bob Belden.

Schneider formed The Maria Schneider Jazz Orchestra in 1993, appearing weekly at Visiones in Greenwich Village for five years. Her orchestra performed at many jazz festivals and toured Europe.

Schneider was one of the first artists to use ArtistShare to produce an album. Her 2004 album, Concert in the Garden, became the first Grammy Award-winning recording sold exclusively via the Internet. It was named Jazz Album of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association, which also named Schneider Composer of the Year and Arranger of the Year and named her group Large Jazz Ensemble of the Year.

Schneider’s ensemble is now titled “The Maria Schneider Orchestra”. Their new album, Sky Blue, was released in July 2007, also via ArtistShare. Schneider’s composition “Cerulean Skies,” from Sky Blue, won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition in 2008. Schneider is an avid birdwatcher and enlisted band members to contribute bird calls on “Cerulean Skies.”

I’ve always loved the Art-O-Mat concept.  It’s fun and feels contemporary and retro at the same time.  It’s the ultimate in cool to have a machine in your venue.

The story behind Art-o-mat®

The inspiration for Art-o-mat® came to artist Clark Whittington while observing a friend who had a Pavlovian reaction to the crinkle of cellophane. When Whittington’s friend heard someone opening a snack, he had the uncontrollable urge to have one too.

The year was 1997, the town was Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Whittington was set to have a solo art show at a local cafe, Penny Universitie (now Mary’s Of Course Cafe). This is when Whittington used a recently-banned cigarette machine to create the first Art-o=mat. In June 1997, it was installed, along with 12 of his paintings. The machine sold Whittington’s black & white photographs for $1.00 each.

This art show was scheduled to be dismantled in July 1997. However, Cynthia Giles (owner of the Penny Universitie) loved the machine and asked that it stay permanently and machine remains unaltered in its original location to this day. At that point, it was clear that involvement of other artists was needed if the project was going to continue. Giles introduced Whittington to a handful of other local artists and Artists in Cellophane was formed.

Artists in Cellophane (A.I.C.), the sponsoring organization of Art*o*mat® is based on the concept of taking art and “repackaging” it to make it part of our daily lives. The mission of A.I.C. is to encourage art consumption by combining the worlds of art and commerce in an innovative form. A.I.C believes that art should be progressive, yet personal and approachable. What better way to do this, than with a heavy cold steel machine?