LIVE FROM DENVER

This week we're in Denver for the 2012 Jackson Hole Science Media Symposium, and for those of you visiting the news section of our website for the first time, let's recap the headline. Our spherical movie called LOOP is an award finalist! Winners will be announced Thursday evening, September 6.

But competition notwithstanding, check back throughout the week for updates about our adventures in Colorado. Also, if you're in Denver for the Symposium (or even just for a visit to the Science Museum!) Vicky Weeks will be presenting a talk about LOOP and answering questions about making media for spheres at 10:30 on Thursday morning, September 6. The movie will be showing throughout the Symposium on the museum's Sphere, with a special showing scheduled in conjunction with Vicky's talk. We're confident this will be an event you won't want to miss!

Questions, comments? Stop and talk with us in Denver. Wishing you could go, but not likely to make it? Drop us a line! Spheres, rectangles, live events...hey: we do creative of all shapes and sizes! We're 1AU Global Media, LLC. With us your ideas...go farther.

Updates from Denver throughout the week...bookmark us and check back...

--MS

ICONS

Sometimes unexpected events of the day overwhelm the best laid plans. This week's intended blog post was ready to go, when news came over the weekend that Neil Armstrong had died at 82. Perhaps the most famous astronaut to ever have lived, he was, ironically, also one of the most reclusive. The very traits that made him the perfect choice for commanding Apollo 11 disinclined him to seek fame, or celebrity, or the trappings of political power. Very few people in history are known so famously for such a briefly defined sequence of events in their lives, or single utterances made famous beyond all comparison. But there's a reason the title of this blog is what it is: Armstrong was an icon.

Gallons of ink and millions of pixels have taken flight considering every aspect of the man and the legendary mission on which he flew. I find his extraordinary story compelling for many of the same reasons that billions of other people find it extraordinary. But let us not forget the value of his existence beyond mere recitation of one-of-a-kind acts. There's also this: how many millions of people, with no direct connection to science nor technology nor multibillion-dollar government programs, have been deeply inspired––creatively inspired––by Armstrong's one small step? The power of an iconic image is like a crystal. No matter what light enters it, the refractions that scatter around the room can scintillate and surprise. Moments of inspiration take on endlessly surprising trajectories of their own, put in motion by iconic forces. Some see themselves in Armstrong; some dream about emulating him. Others imagine the many internal monologues he told himself, or could have told himself, or the stories others told about him. An icon radiates, and science teaches us that radiation generally flies off in all directions.

Almost everyone is less famous than Neil Armstrong, but that's hardly the reason I'm confident this will be the only posting on the web you read today (and probably ever, I'd wager) to juxtapose the name of another great who died just a few days before the first man on the moon. Remy Charlip was one of the founding members of the Merce Cunningham dance company, but earned a measure of fame and respect from a certain slice of society for his work as a children's writer and dance educator. Known for his inspired, brainy-yet-never-stuffy flights of invention, Charlip drew little distinction among writing, illustrating, dancing, and other forms of art. “It’s one of the hardest things to do — to be free enough to dance, to move around,” he said in the New York Times back in 1997. For him, the act of invention meant letting go of preconceptions about what had been done before, and ranging out into new territory. One of his most famous pieces was something he called the "airmail dance". Charlip would mail drawings of various choreographic poses to dance companies and then see what those companies might create based on his epistolary sparks.

Icon? Maybe to some. I always liked Remy Charlip. I loved his books as a kid. I saw his performance company The Paper Bag Players live at Lincoln Center years ago, and recall the show warmly. Was he as iconic, so to speak, as Armstrong? Who cares? Armstrong's influence on my childhood passion for all things spacey most certainly propelled an interest in science and exploration and ultimately artistic pursuit of the unknown. But Charlip's influence on my imagination similarly, if less famously perhaps, helped shape my genuine belief in abstraction of ideas as a means for pursuing truth. Charlip demonstrated humorous, thought provoking lessons about turning ideas in unusual ways to reveal something unexpected and beautiful, and what I absorbed about his courage to experiment with daring invention propels my life as an artist to this day.

The point is, iconic power comes from representation, sometimes described by an event but more often embodied by a person. Too much power invested in icons becomes purely hagiographic, and in my mind ultimately self-defeating. On the other hand, cynical blinders to iconic influence forgoes powerful opportunities for inspiration. But in the middle of these extremes there's something profound, even as it's obviousness hides in plain sight. We should be respectfully aware that people just like ourselves might do extraordinary things that influence the world in unexpected ways, giving each of us license to get up in the morning, rub our hands together, and say to ourselves, "Okay. How am I going to make this a valuable day?"

--MS

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MEDIA NUTRITION

Cheeseburger? Or brown rice and vegetables? YouTube again? Or that stack of books you've been ignoring on the corner of your desk?

Is there such a thing as good media nutrition?

Let me pose the question another way. Is it important to consume some kinds of media over others, even if the "good-for-you" stuff isn't really what you want?

The question by itself immediately provokes intense debate. It calls to mind elitist considerations about a hierarchy of aesthetics: does Mahler matters more than Madonna? Is there such a thing as good taste, and if there is should you even care?

I think there's a better way to approach this. To some extent, it's really a question of overall nutrition versus absolute right and wrong. No single cheeseburger is going to kill you, but eat them three or four times a week and you'll probably be on a first name basis with your cardiologist. Is a cheeseburger necessary? No, and probably never. But sometimes it's desirable. And on this point, I think we begin to approach the first half of the media consumption question. A widely varied diet ultimately provides valuable food for thought, offering a range of sources and senses and inputs that can only broaden creative potential. A steady diet from a narrow range of options, even if your choices are the not artery clogging type, gradually narrows your ability to discern subtle distinctions outside your comfort zone.

But here's the second part. It's too easy to rationalize that easily consumable media is part of a balanced diet. Just like your parents insisted that you at least try the asparagus, it's vital to make intentional efforts to range out and explore aesthetic inputs that may take some work. Why do grown-ups tend to like asparagus more than kids? It's not rhetorical: repeated exposure prompts the development of new appreciations.

Regular readers of this blog know that I've written extensively about the value and importance of music in life and culture. Regarding media nutrition, I turn again to music. How many people these days actually give themselves over to listening––I mean intently listening––to music recorded with actual instruments? It's almost as if the worlds of classical and jazz music have become cultural shorthands; a few notes from the strings section or a few diminished 7th chords from the keyboard are now shorthand stand-ins to represent moods. Why force yourself to dive into something less familiar when a short sample will suffice?

The funny thing is that these genres are not simplistic. There are wide and varied expressions in the classical and jazz pantheons that have shapes and structures and intentions that go deeper than what can be sampled quickly, or audibly quoted. This doesn't just apply to music, either. The same goes for different styles of painting, or performance art and theater and books and decor.

It even applies to movies.

Does this takes some work? In our frenetic, ultra–networked, touch-it-fast-and–keep-moving-age: yes. Is it easier to play the classic rock tunes we all know so well, or the latest flavor of the month pop tune? Of course. It's certainly easier to sing along. But the intentional effort to try something unfamiliar, or perhaps familiar but requiring a little more work, can yield enormous rewards. There are new flavors to discover, new textures, new smells, new implications most of all.

Next week and unusual art film will open in theaters around the world. It's called "Samsara", and in many ways this is the big anti-movie of the year. Filmed entirely in 70 mm--film, not digital!--this promises to be a nonverbal visual feast, propelled by music, inspired by the endless color and energy of Earth's vibrant life and diverse human culture. Anyway you look at it, it's a "big" movie. But it's not likely to break box office records. In its art house niche with a comparatively big budget, it still didn't cost but a fraction of what a tent-pole superhero movie cost this year. Sure, Samsara will likely to draw the usual artsy crowd plus a few folks who will regard it as a novel, once in a blue moon wild-side walk. But as an anodyne alternative to conventional three act Tinseltown dramas, perhaps more people should consider investing the time to see it on a big screen. It ain't gonna hurcha! More to the point, it might provoke a new thought, a new sensation, a new idea.

I haven't seen it yet (as of the time I'm posting this), but I plan to. That doesn't mean I'm about to sell my adolescent comic book collection, nor skip this fall's latest James Bond adventure. I like a cheeseburger once in a while myself. But as the summer winds down, I cannot but be aware that there are so many wonderful tastes and smells to experience out in the great big world, and I'd hate to stay with just the ones I already know.

--MS

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KEEPING YOUR COOL

"Cry havoc!"

Or, at least, sound the alarm.

One of the great challenges in creative pursuits is the seemingly simple act of getting to the next day intact. Doodles on cocktail napkins, to cite cliché, all look full of promise and potential. But when they're reduced to real work--to physical labor, to spreadsheets and invoices and deadlines--those darling doodles rapidly fade from memory. Big ideas fully enjoined can suck up every last moment of the day and every ounce of strength on a team.

But as anyone knows who makes his or her life about bringing new ideas into being, creative pursuits rarely take place when convenient. They tend to pile up, forcing Solomon-esque decisions about limited resources, dwindling energies, and shifting priorities.

Havoc indeed.

In Upton Sinclair's great novel "The Jungle", the protagonist Jurgis Rudkus repeatedly declares, "I will work harder" when confronted with unrelenting challenges. By the middle of the book he's worn down, beaten up, dismissed and dispirited. It's sad, but it's honest. In the story Jurgis suffers the depredations of a corrupt political and corporate ecosystem. It's not exactly the same as trying to keep the wheels on the car in a successful artistic enterprise. (That's us.) But the parallels obtain. Sometimes the reckless momentum of the world, the relentless spin and swirl in an effort to get to some undefined next level can simply knock you out. Some days it's hard to keep going.

It would be reductionist bromide to declare that one ought to just work harder to push through challenging demands. It just so happens, however, that it's the truth. The trick is to find sympathetic vibrations in competing demands on time and energy. Do subtle observations made while pursuing one project shed light on some intractable problem dogging another? Does a conversation with one client spark a moment of invention to solve a dilemma elsewhere? Can you shoot B-roll on one location for two unrelated stories?

Not always. But when the volume gets turned up to 11––and it doesn't matter what you do because it always gets turned up to 11 once in a while––it's essential that the din of battle does not overwhelm your nerves. You need to see the forest and the trees simultaneously. If you survive the journey, the calm of morning may afford a strength and clarity that makes it all worthwhile. Managing chaos is not out of the ordinary; it's to be expected if your heart is set on living a life that matters.

LOOP: FINALIST for NATIONAL AWARD!

This just in: our latest movie for Spherical surfaces called LOOP was selected as a finalist at the Jackson Hole Science Media Awards. Big cheers all around! The team of competitors are strong, the work they present impressive and compelling. In short, we're proud to be part of such an august crowd.

LOOP continues to play on spheres around the country. Drop us an email if you'd like to learn more -- about LOOP, our other spherical movies, or how we can help you tell your own story in ways that will captivate audiences.

Go farther...with 1AU Global Media.

THE GIGS YOU DON'T ENJOY

They happen. Just as sure as a sink full of dishes always follows a great dinner you cook for friends, you're going to get a gig now and again that makes your shoulders slump.

Should you say "No"? Should you try and sidestep it, deflect it, get along without it, look elsewhere?

Not if you're serious about your craft.

The thing about being creative, no matter what your business, is that you can't always choose how and when to bring the lightning. Sometimes the dishes simply need to get done. Sometimes you simply have to take a job because someone likes what you have to offer, even if you don't particularly like what they're asking for. Plus, there's always the feast-or-famine reality of life in the creative world. Sometimes you'll wish you'd taken the job you didn't particularly enjoy because it sure beats no job at all!

But in my mind these are actually mediocre reasons to take uninspiring gigs. They're real, to be sure, and they matter. But the best reason to take a job you don't love now and again is that it keeps you sharp. It forces you to come up with solutions to keep yourself engaged. Goofy gigs often also come with requirements you might not ordinarily have selected if left to your own devices. Brushing off rusty ways of thinking has a surprisingly powerful effect of reminding you about your own values, your own best abilities, your own power. You remember your own power, right? The enterprises you were going to pursue, the adventures you were going to travel, the castles you were going to build? When something annoying takes you away from the goal that fired your soul, you can either complain uselessly, or your can re-commit yourself to chasing that spark as soon as you get the job done.

Here's the biggie: the world isn't smooth. There are no ideal realities anywhere. As they say, there are only perfect lives in the movies, and if you're the person making the movie rather than living inside the movie, you're going to be traveling the bumpy roads of reality. That's why embracing periodic potholes rather than completely avoiding them can make you a better driver overall. You learn how to navigate and compensate; you learn how to innovate and rise above. You don't get thrown.

The trap into which too many people fall is that dull gigs can quickly become stock in trade; they can become ordinary, the rule rather than the exception. The gigs you handle out of grumpy necessity can drain your energy from the work you really want to pursue. Take too many, and you stop doing the thing that matters.

And then life gets away from you. You get older, but not better. Life runs out.

But once in a while? Don't fret. If you're paying attention to the most authentic forces driving your creative spirit, you'll come to see the occasional gig you didn't enjoy as an opportunity to grow in ways you might not have expected could use the practice.

And you know what? Feel free to cheer when they wrap.

--MS

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YIELDS FROM THE AETHER

Generating ideas can be like catching fish in a river: you can get better at snagging 'em, but you can never control the entire process. As a team, ideas are the fuel that propel our actions. We spend a lot of time cultivating ideas, nurturing them, helping them become constructions worthy of resources and action.

They're like children, come to think of it.

But ideas do not immediately yield results. They do not entirely behave like the creations they grow into either. Creations come from hard work, perseverance, and craftsmanship. Ideas are about letting go.

This summer the team is deep into the idea-generating business. With long days of sunny weather, the promise of extended weekends, and big summer movies tempting us away from projects at hand, idea cultivation runs the risk of withering on the vine. But looking closer, the big challenge seems not to be the generation of new ideas, but the transformation of those ideas into results.

That's always the great duality. Ideas shimmer in translucent light; they generally do not stand up dressed in bold, primary colors. Work, on the other hand, accumulates like bricks, like opaque, matte objects that need to be fitted together into larger structures. Ideas radiate, work stands firm.

One of the most lethal challenges to a good idea are the many explanations people tell themselves about why it won't work. People tell themselves why their ideas are impractical, why they don't have the resources or the time or the opportunities to make them come alive. Plus, there are always endless distractions. After all, work takes work. Life tempts us with other ways to spend our time.

But ideas, properly nurtured, can overcome inertia. Good ideas can turn mountains of work into acts of creation. That's why coming up with good ideas are probably not something you want to leave to chance. Once in a while a good idea will simply pop into mind, but over the long term, it's better to be proactive rather than reactive. But of all the concrete, constructive suggestions for generating new ideas, there's one that rises above all others: let go of what you know.

Letting go of what you think the world is supposed to be is like opening your car's window on the highway. Ideas rush in without restrictions. The world becomes an engine of invention. You suddenly notice how trees grow, how traffic moves, how bread rises, how satellites orbit. You'll suddenly see familiar things you've seen your whole life in bold, new lights. You'll observe and you'll drift and then WHAM! you're crashing right into a new idea.

It's not as easy as it sounds, and believe it or not it takes some practice. We all have presuppositions surrounding us, some far more entrenched than we realize. It takes practice to let the world flood in. But consider an inversion of the old saw: apres le deluge, vous.

But don't forget: after ideas germinate, you gotta get down to work if they're gonna grow.

--MS

PS — To our regular readers, please take 20 seconds (or thereabouts) and retweet, cross post, or otherwise pass the link for this blog–and its 1AU Global Media home–onto your own readers and friends! Call it karma, call it kismet: we’ll just call it cool! Cool?

REVISITING THE PAST, CREATING THE FUTURE

On a recent family road trip we stopped to visit the high school my mother attended in the 1950's. Located in the crumbling outskirts of Newark, New Jersey, Weequahic High School stands as a testament to the one universal truth: everything changes.

In the middle decades of the 20th century, Weequahic was regarded as one of the 10 best public high schools in the entire country. Philip Roth went there; Albert Einstein lectured there; the curriculum taught Chinese and Swahili there before most Americans ever thought there would be a reason to learn things other than Romance languages.

Everything changes. Located amid the depressing ruins of what used to be one of the nation's great cities, the front of the school faces Chancellor Avenue now like the broken friezes at Abu Simbel face the Egyptian desert. Inside the front door, the proud, inspiring post-modernist murals that met the historically extraordinary student body decades ago hide now behind cheap plexiglass shields to forestall abuse and degradation. The hallways show cracks and off-kilter locker doors. The lighting sputters and flickers for want of fresh bulbs. The paint peels. The sentiment that immediately floods a visitor is one of sadness, of lost opportunities, of societies beat up and beat down.

Students still attend.

My mother still speaks of her days there with reverence and respect. The aging alumni with whom she's still in contact--and they are a spectacularly accomplished bunch--still hold up the image of the place as if it were a light in the darkness of a descended city. They still talk about obligations to the future, and responsibilities for the past, and deep values locked in the DNA of a great idea.

Why write about this for a blog that purports to be about creativity? After visiting this remarkable, uniquely American place-- sharing stories, listening to legends, considering the implications-- a deeply resonant thrum begins to flood in. Those feelings yield to thinking. Thinking turns to cognition.

To wit: good ideas are not enough. The history of civilization, from its technological advances to its cultural inventions to its wide and endlessly surprising art, all spring from good ideas. But plenty of good ideas have come to naught. The great civilizations of middle America in the last millennium routinely slaughtered endless lives as human sacrifices even as they turned back the jungle and fed hundreds of thousands, building astounding cities and mathematical frameworks and orderly societies.

How many screenplays have rattled around people's heads without finding enough traction to make it to completion? How many paintings and dances and poems have simply crumbled beneath the realities of making those works whole, of bringing resources of time and clarity and money to bear on their completion? The continuity of good, profound ideas sometimes does not overcome the inertial forces of desert sands grinding those ideas down.

Even great civilizations crumble.

But ideas endure. Those murals still exist inside the front atrium of Weequahic High School. There are inspirations still embedded in the fading paint, capable of inspiring new students. That is, the potential for inspiration still obtains if the power of good ideas can be nurtured and cultivated, supported and reinvigorated.

Things always change. If we adopt this as a true statement, then we also open the potential for great things to rise from seemingly irretrievable pieces. Sometimes things change for the better.

We should therefore commit to engaging the world in an endless process of creation.

-MS

PS -- To our regular readers, please take 20 seconds (or thereabouts) and retweet, cross post, or otherwise pass the link for this blog--and its 1AU Global Media home--onto your own readers and friends! Call it karma, call it kismet: we'll just call it cool! Cool?

RESETTING

Our chief technologist and master editor Vicky Weeks has a knack for getting right to the center of the coconut. When we're deep into production or out on the road and everyone needs to take a few hours to go over plans, break down, clean up, or otherwise find their brains, she says it's time for us to "reset".

Clearly the term draws cultural connections to the ubiquitous ghost in the collective machine. We're all so tethered to our myriad devices; the very idea of resetting ourselves seems to be an extension of the machines we use. By investing our identities with this mechanical process, it's almost as if we've capitulated free will to some sort of Borg collective, as if "resetting" ourselves is simply a standard procedure for living as part of a larger hive mind.

But I fear I'm heading down a digressive path.

Beyond a cultural analysis of machines-versus-humanity, Vicky's expression always makes me smile for it's perfection. In elegantly simple language it suggests an awareness that big actions and important decisions are often made best when someone is stable, solid, and whole. To "reset" is to find a center point, a moment of equilibrium in what may have been roiling seas. It is to have a moment's clarity, or at least a moment's peace amid the jangle of reality.

If you know anything about media production, reality jangles. It rips and snorts and bucks like a bee-stung bronco. To hope for anything different is to be a fool in a warrior's game. But even samurai understand the value of sitting quietly. Sometimes the very act of quiet breathing, of carefully coiling the extension cords and repacking the equipment bags can make all the different in the world for successfully completing tough shooting days.

Some people fall into the trap of thinking they need to reset too often. It's one thing to be organized, but to reset too often is to give yourself an excuse for not actually getting anything done. Real engagement with creative work--with life, really--requires us to stay in the game and figure out how to find balance through movement. In the fast-moving obstacles and challenges of a busy day, balance is less a stable position than it is a confident sequence of footfalls that resist panic as they lightly hop from position to position. In aggregate, those hops should be moving you forward.

Resetting is different. It's a system downshift, a reboot, an intentional pull of the power plug. It can be something designated for a few hours, or it can be something designated for many, many days. You don't do it when you're tired; for that you should just get some rest. Resetting is for finding your center again, with the specific goal of heading out for unknown horizons. It's not something to take lightly, even as it can dramatically lessen the force of gravity for a precious period of time. In some ways it's a sacred thing, and like all powerful techniques, something that should be intensely respected, infrequently employed, and done with mindful intention.

It's okay if you enjoy it, too. I know I do.

--MS

PS -- To our regular readers, please take 20 seconds (or thereabouts) and retweet, cross post, or otherwise pass the link for this blog--and its 1AU Global Media home--onto your own readers and friends! Call it karma, call it kismet: we'll just call it cool! Cool?

NOT DONE YET

My sister sent me this link. Unless you're an Aaron Sorkin fan, the specific contents of the video might not mean much to you, but I'm not posting it here to reminisce about West Wing, The Social Network, or other walk-and-talk dramas from Hollywood's number one dialogue master.

What really got my attention was the repetition over the years of these so-called "Sorkinisms". Is he plagiarizing himself? Is he lazy? Has he forgotten to back up his hard drive over and over and over again?

No, and I suspect he's only barely in touch with the answer himself. Love him or hate him, Sorkin is an artist. He creates because the act of creating helps him figure out his world. He revisits similar characters over and over again because those are the kind of characters that help him refract his own life. In visiting the same kind of people repeatedly in his scripts, Sorkin plays with familiar lines over and over again just like a painter plays with similar colors and shapes and concepts. Matisse repeated the same two-dimensional paper cutout dancer shapes many times; the abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell revisited a crudely bulbous and angular design over and over again. We recognize Pete Townsend's guitar playing with just a few notes; Mozart sounds like Mozart.

Artists create to make the world whole. Or, perhaps more accurately, artists create in often mighty attempts to make their own worlds whole. Repetition of various themes are just efforts not quite perfected, not finished being poked, not quite out of mind. Sorkin finds his artistic voice through familiar rhythms and emotions he puts into the mouths of his dramatic proxies. Others try other themes.

The funny thing is that even as we may collectively smile sometimes, even deride, repetitive been-there-done-that thematic references from specific artists, I find that if someone doesn't have a distinct enough voice to be recognizable, they may very well not have a voice worth listening to closely. Certainly there are plenty of risible creations by wannabes who endlessly continue to take pictures of pretty swans floating serenely beneath stone bridges at sunset, but I'm speaking about something else. That something else is, of course, intangible; there's never a solid dividing line between the repetitive artist when he or she has run out of things to say, and repetition because an artist is still speaking about an idea that continues to produce fruit, that's not done growing yet.

Either way: Sorkin. Fascinating, creative, gutsy, nuts-y. And yes, my DVR is set to record The Newsroom. Who cares if he's said it all before? It's what he's talking about and the way he does it that really grabs me.

--MS

PS -- To our regular readers, please take 20 seconds (or thereabouts) and retweet, cross post, or otherwise pass the link for this blog--and its 1AU Global Media home--onto your own readers and friends! Call it karma, call it kismet: we'll just call it cool! Cool?