Recently I came across a very interesting woman, Paula Scher. I saw a Tedtalk from a few years ago where she talked about design, play and being serious. In that talk she differentiates between being solemn and being serious. Differentiating between those words is not natural for me, because I have a general feeling of… Continue reading Serious about Creativity
Tag: aesthetics
An Aesthetic Experience
[youtube width=”500″ height=”400″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dxTqbJxGwE[/youtube] Ken Robinson on Aesthetics and An-Aesthetics: An aesthetic experience is one in which your senses are operating at their peak. When you are present in the current moment. When you are resonating with the excitement of this thing that you are experiencing. When you are fully alive. An an-aesthetic is when you… Continue reading An Aesthetic Experience
The Physical, Aesthetical and Moral Stage of Development
In letter XXIV of his aesthetic letters, Schiller mentions three stages of development. He says there is a development that each individual, as well as the whole of humanity, has to go through. It is also a development that has to happen in a certain order. Each stage can be longer or shorter with each individual,… Continue reading The Physical, Aesthetical and Moral Stage of Development
Polarisation and That what is Inbetween
I was planning to write a post about ‘the medium between law and necessity’, another phrase in the aesthetic letters. But looking at the subject, I realised it was something I have been writing about again and again on this blog. Not using the same words, but the essence of those posts was mainly the… Continue reading Polarisation and That what is Inbetween
The Instinct of Play
The previous post was about two different instincts, the sensuous and the formal instinct. Two instincts that are opposed and that make us struggle to integrate in our human nature. This is again a post about The Letters on Aesthetic Education of Man from Friedrich Schiller, like a few of my previous posts. I am… Continue reading The Instinct of Play
Sensuous and Formal Instinct
At the end of part two of the Letters on Aesthetics, Schiller talks about two opposite roads that depart us from our destination. He calls it false roads and says that only the beautiful can bring us back from this twofold departure. In the beginning of part three (letter 12) he talks about those two… Continue reading Sensuous and Formal Instinct
Creativity beyond Praise and Criticism
Still reading the letters on aesthetic education, I tried to understand the beginning of part two. In that part, Schiller paints a picture of how the individual is blinded by the age in which he lives, the society in which he is born. But also about the struggle of that society itself. That has this… Continue reading Creativity beyond Praise and Criticism
Form becomes Independent of Meaning
Being distracted by the art of language and the definition of art in my previous posts, I now continued reading Schiller’s Letters. At the end of part one, Schiller goes a long way to describe the influence of the culture on the individual. The individual who loses the contact with the whole. The inner union… Continue reading Form becomes Independent of Meaning
The Developing Definition of Art
Art is a difficult word to define. Wikipedia defines it as ‘a product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects the senses, emotions and intellect’. It also says that the word art was traditionally used for skill or mastery, but later as an intention to stimulate thoughts and… Continue reading The Developing Definition of Art
The Art of Language
I love it when suddenly things start to make sense, when thoughts come together. I was again reading the book On Creativity, because I was searching for the definition of some concepts. Those of creativity, aesthetics and art. All my previous posts about aesthetics point to the importance of those concepts as an essential step… Continue reading The Art of Language
Free Will Between Inclination and Duty
So I started reading Schillers letters on aesthetic education. But it is not what I would call an easy read. If I was not determined to understand what he has to say, I would have already quit. But before I started reading from the beginning, I had a quick overview. And in that overview I got… Continue reading Free Will Between Inclination and Duty
Between Instinctive and Moral Behavior
Lately I am fascinated by the concept of aesthetics. What exactly does it mean? Is it subjective or objective? How important is it? I already wrote about the view of Kant, Adorno and Bohm in the posts Beauty is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder and The Worldview of Aesthetics. And that of… Continue reading Between Instinctive and Moral Behavior
From Aesthetics to An-Aesthetics
Last week I saw another video of Ken Robinson. He had a TED-talk some years ago about how schools kill creativity, which I watched several times because I thought it was great. Well, he had another talk (Changing Paradigms) of which RSA made an animation. Which I also love, I really like to see a… Continue reading From Aesthetics to An-Aesthetics
The Concept of Water
Seeing the theme for this years Blogactionday made me think of a story in the book I was reading. The book, On Creativity, is about the importance of creativity. How we all have this inner desire to discover and create something new that is whole, harmonious and beautiful. It is not something rare, it does… Continue reading The Concept of Water
The Worldview of Aesthetics
With my previous post I compared different views on aesthetics. It were the views, as I understood them, from Kant, Adorno and Bohm. But I did not compare their totality. Now that is too difficult for me to do, as I only have a very general understanding of each of their views. But even if… Continue reading The Worldview of Aesthetics
Beauty is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder
Creativity has to do with recognizing differences and similarities. Recognize patterns that have a certain appeal to us, patterns in which we see beauty. Now it is often said that beauty is subjective. That beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But according to David Bohm in On Creativity, beauty is not purely subjective.… Continue reading Beauty is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder
Recognizing Patterns from an Underlying Reality
Maybe I can better change the subtitle of this blog. Since reading the book Science, Order and Creativity, creativity seems to be the main focus of my blog. But while thinking about that, I realized it always was the main focus of my blog. Of all the blogging I did so far. My focus was… Continue reading Recognizing Patterns from an Underlying Reality