Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Monday, August 27, 2012
The Creative Art of Animation and Motion Graphics - YouTube
Animation has been captivating audiences for more than a hundred years. From classic forms like hand drawn and stop-motion, to cutting-edge techniques like motion graphics and CGI, animation has a long history of creating style and poetry unachievable through live action filmmaking.
It is a tool for educating, a place for experimentation and play, and a way of telling personal stories that reach the viewer with powerful visual metaphors.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Billy Childish - Prolific UK Writer and Artist - Dyslexic
He founded the Stuckism Art Movement.
In a twenty year period he has published over 40 collections of his poetry, recorded over 100 full-length independent LP’s and produced over 2000 paintings.
Born in 1959 in Chatham, Kent. Billy Childish left Secondary education at 16 an undiagnosed dyslexic.
Refused an interview at the local art school he entered the Naval Dockyard at Chatham as an apprentice stonemason.
During the following six months (the artist’s only prolonged period of employment), he produced some six hundred drawings in ‘the tea huts of hell.
On the basis of this work he was accepted into St Martin’s School of Art to study painting.
However, his acceptance was short-lived and before completing the course he was expelled for his outspokenness and unorthodox working methods.
With no qualifications and no job prospects Childish then spent some 12 years ‘painting on the dole’, developing his own highly personal writing style and producing his art independently.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Dyslexia and the Arts: My Suggested Interview Questions
I am particularly interested in hearing from Dyslexic people who are in the Creative and Performing arts, in whatever capacity.
My understanding is that the Creative and Performing Arts contain a higher proportion of Dyslexic people because of their ability to visualise and innovate in a non-literal form.
The other possibility is that the Creative and Performing Arts acts as a sanctuary and natural safe harbour for like-minded people, where literacy is less relevant.
I have short list of Questions that may help you tell your story and describe how you feel about You, Dyslexia and the Arts.
Thank you for your input. Add your comments below or send me an email at dyslexiauntied@gmail.com
QUESTIONS
Discovery
When did you discover you had
Dyslexia?
How did this change your
outlook on life?
Exclusion and Inclusion
How does Dyslexia affect
making friends and maintaining relationships?
What support did you get from
family, friends, teachers, boy or girlfriends when they know you have Dyslexia?
Advantage
What do you believe are the
advantages of having Dyslexia?
How spontaneous are you
compared to other people?
Transitions
How difficult is it to move
from familiar circumstances to a new one? Example: School, House, Job,
relationship, etc.
What other support or help
did you want or need at the time?
Career Openings
How has Dyslexia affected
your career decisions in life?
What made you go into the
performing arts?
How suitable is it for
Dyslexic people to take up the arts?
What do you get from the arts
that you can’t get elsewhere?
Self Image
How well are you understood,
as a Dyslexic person?
Looking Back
What would you say to a
younger self, about friends, school, family, jobs, etc.?
What was the best piece of advice about Dyslexia you were given?
What was the best piece of advice about Dyslexia you were given?
Awareness
How has the world become more
aware and helpful to Dyslexic people?
What is left to be done?
Other
What other stories are left
untold that you are keen to tell?
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Dyslexia: Is It Closely Lined to Creativity?
Good news for those who can spell, the answer is no. It appears that more dyslectic people simply elect to work very committedly in the non-linguistic creative professions.
To be successful, dyslectic people actually have to work harder to overcome their linguistic challenges.
Fortunately, the best predictor of anyone's performance is not their IQ or personality, it is the amount of time one spends on a particular task.
Dyslexia is hereditary and, fortunately, one can learn to live with even severe dyslexia. A dyslectic person may not be well suited for teaching English or working as an editor in a publishing house, however, it does give them a distinct advantage in other creative professions.
Having struggled with reading and writing, the dyslectic person has failed early and often, thereby teaching them to persevere.
As Winston Churchill, another famous dyslectic and creative individual, noted: "Never give up - -never, never, never give up."
Advantages
What then are the advantages, if any, of being dyslexic in overcoming challenges? The early age confrontation of apparently insurmountable challenges teaches the dyslectic person to persevere in the face of difficulty and failure.
Solutions
They learn early to look at problems from multiple angles and use other skills to succeed.
Dyslectic people often colour-code information to aide their learning, using three-dimensional drawings to solve algebra problems and come up with intricate mnemotechnical cues to improve retention.
Working on small creative tricks to overcome challenges may help make them better prepared to solve problems.
It has been said that "luck is when opportunity meet preparation" and dyslectic people could thus appear to be "luckier" problem solvers.
Are people who are actually good at spelling be at a disadvantage?
Since reading, writing and arithmetic are given a high priority in most school systems and IQ and other standardised tests favour people with linguistic skills, perfecting what one is being rewarded for can narrow one's development in other areas where there was also the possibility to excel.
One of the secrets to life is to avoid repeatedly chastising oneself over what is not done well.
A dyslectic may never become the best speller; however, a person can live happily with being mediocre in this area and simply delegate the more demanding writing tasks.
Being content with being average in one area, dyslectics are freed up to invest the over 10,000 hours required to become an expert in another area.
They can then leverage their inborn abilities and turn those abilities into a strong competitive advantage in an area in which they excel.
The Creative Economy may be the fastest growing segment of the Western World and creativity is now, more than ever, the source of this progress.
By encouraging people early on to find and grow their unique natural abilities to innovate and appreciating them for what they create, rather than for what they consume, we will have created yet another novel way of spelling success.
Credit this article to Soren Petersen
To be successful, dyslectic people actually have to work harder to overcome their linguistic challenges.
Fortunately, the best predictor of anyone's performance is not their IQ or personality, it is the amount of time one spends on a particular task.
Dyslexia is hereditary and, fortunately, one can learn to live with even severe dyslexia. A dyslectic person may not be well suited for teaching English or working as an editor in a publishing house, however, it does give them a distinct advantage in other creative professions.
Having struggled with reading and writing, the dyslectic person has failed early and often, thereby teaching them to persevere.
As Winston Churchill, another famous dyslectic and creative individual, noted: "Never give up - -never, never, never give up."
Advantages
What then are the advantages, if any, of being dyslexic in overcoming challenges? The early age confrontation of apparently insurmountable challenges teaches the dyslectic person to persevere in the face of difficulty and failure.
Solutions
They learn early to look at problems from multiple angles and use other skills to succeed.
Dyslectic people often colour-code information to aide their learning, using three-dimensional drawings to solve algebra problems and come up with intricate mnemotechnical cues to improve retention.
Working on small creative tricks to overcome challenges may help make them better prepared to solve problems.
It has been said that "luck is when opportunity meet preparation" and dyslectic people could thus appear to be "luckier" problem solvers.
Are people who are actually good at spelling be at a disadvantage?
Since reading, writing and arithmetic are given a high priority in most school systems and IQ and other standardised tests favour people with linguistic skills, perfecting what one is being rewarded for can narrow one's development in other areas where there was also the possibility to excel.
One of the secrets to life is to avoid repeatedly chastising oneself over what is not done well.
A dyslectic may never become the best speller; however, a person can live happily with being mediocre in this area and simply delegate the more demanding writing tasks.
Being content with being average in one area, dyslectics are freed up to invest the over 10,000 hours required to become an expert in another area.
They can then leverage their inborn abilities and turn those abilities into a strong competitive advantage in an area in which they excel.
The Creative Economy may be the fastest growing segment of the Western World and creativity is now, more than ever, the source of this progress.
By encouraging people early on to find and grow their unique natural abilities to innovate and appreciating them for what they create, rather than for what they consume, we will have created yet another novel way of spelling success.
Credit this article to Soren Petersen
Monday, July 16, 2012
On Creativity - George Lois - YouTube (Strong Language)
Legendary designer, author, and contrarian George Lois, often regarded as the greatest art director of all time and called, much to his disgruntlement, “the original Mad Man.”
To celebrate his 81st birthday, here’s a wonderful short film by On Creativity, in which Lois reflects on the combinatorial nature of creativity and echoes insights we’ve already heard from other great creators — the power of cultivating a personal microculture, the idea that to invent is to choose, the importance of “being-in-the-world-ness,” the notion that to create is to discover and connect rather than “invent” out of thin air.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Student overcomes challenges with dyslexia to excel in art
Lizzie Snell, senior in fine arts, was in third grade when she was diagnosed with dyslexia. It was, for the longest time, a source of embarrassment for her.
The fear of being different was often a burden too heavy to bear, and Snell said she often worried about being made fun of as a child.
“When I was younger, I always kept it to myself because I thought people would treat me differently,” she said. “I didn’t even tell my best friends about it.”
Snell is one of the millions of Americans who have been diagnosed with dyslexia. The condition, which was originally documented as “word blindness,” affects an estimated 15 percent of the U.S. population, according to a February 4 article in the New York Times by Annie Murphy Paul.
The National Center for Learning Disabilities defines dyslexia as a “language processing disorder” which can “hinder reading, writing, spelling, and sometimes even speaking.” NCLD experts also state on their website that the neurological disorder causes the brain to “process and interpret information differently.”
“The way I think of it, is it makes it harder for me to retain information,” Snell said. “I’m capable of doing things like math and reading, I just have to work like 10 times harder to get there.”
Snell’s mother, Kerri, said that despite the challenges she faced, she never held Snell to a different standard than her other three kids.
“We always expected each of our four kids to do their very best,” Kerri said. “Lizzie always worked 100 times harder than her siblings did on school work. I never lowered my expectations for Lizzie.”
The fear of being different was often a burden too heavy to bear, and Snell said she often worried about being made fun of as a child.
“When I was younger, I always kept it to myself because I thought people would treat me differently,” she said. “I didn’t even tell my best friends about it.”
Snell is one of the millions of Americans who have been diagnosed with dyslexia. The condition, which was originally documented as “word blindness,” affects an estimated 15 percent of the U.S. population, according to a February 4 article in the New York Times by Annie Murphy Paul.
The National Center for Learning Disabilities defines dyslexia as a “language processing disorder” which can “hinder reading, writing, spelling, and sometimes even speaking.” NCLD experts also state on their website that the neurological disorder causes the brain to “process and interpret information differently.”
“The way I think of it, is it makes it harder for me to retain information,” Snell said. “I’m capable of doing things like math and reading, I just have to work like 10 times harder to get there.”
Snell’s mother, Kerri, said that despite the challenges she faced, she never held Snell to a different standard than her other three kids.
“We always expected each of our four kids to do their very best,” Kerri said. “Lizzie always worked 100 times harder than her siblings did on school work. I never lowered my expectations for Lizzie.”
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Synesthesia: Laughter on the Canvas
Laughter is an uncontrollable emotion that brings joy. It's not, however, something you'd normally see depicted graphically in a painting.
Sonja Landis, 35, is a Carlsbad artist who brings laughter to life with the stroke of a paintbrush and some help from sound engineers.
Sonja Landis started The Painted Laugh about three years ago, when she heard her son laugh and saw colourful sound waves swirling around him.
She has a documented but not widely understood condition called Synesthesia. It's a neurological condition where two senses involuntarily cross. Her type allows her to see sound in the air.When Landis first painted the sound waves of laughter, she did it for herself and hung a piece above her mantel.
Once people saw the painting, everyone wanted one. It eventually evolved into a business and she has been distributing them all over the country ever since, and plans on selling internationally.
After the paintings became popular, she decided to add actual sound. This way, parents and grandparents could hear their children's laughter whenever they wanted.
A button is placed behind the canvas of her paintings. Push it and it plays a recording of your child's laugh.
"There is a universal truth to laughter that doesn't need an explanation between cultures and between languages," Landis says. "And that's what I love about this the most."
Landis has partnered with Crayola, and has experimented with laughter therapy for children's hospitals.
Click here to watch a YouTube video made by The Painted laugh
Sonja Landis also has a project running that is trying to create or develop a Painted Laugh APP for Smartphones and iPad devices.
The video below outlines her thinking on this.
Friday, November 25, 2011
The Actual '73 Giving Tree Movie Spoken By Shel Silverstein - YouTube
Shel Silverstein is one of the most beloved children’s authors and illustrators of our time, his masterpiece The Giving Tree one of those rare gems of children’s literature with timeless philosophy for grown-ups.
Every Thing On It is a lovely new book of 137 never-before-seen poems and drawings, only the second posthumous anthology published since Silverstein’s passing in 1999.
A spider lives inside my head
Who weaves a strange and wondrous web
Of silken threads and silver strings
To catch all sorts of flying things,
Like crumbs of thought and bits of smiles
And specks of dried-up tears,
And dust of dreams that catch and cling
For years and years and years . . .
To celebrate the new release, here is a 1973 animated adaptation of The Giving Tree, read by Silverstein himself — a priceless memento of one of our era’s most wholehearted creators.
Every Thing On It is a lovely new book of 137 never-before-seen poems and drawings, only the second posthumous anthology published since Silverstein’s passing in 1999.
A spider lives inside my head
Who weaves a strange and wondrous web
Of silken threads and silver strings
To catch all sorts of flying things,
Like crumbs of thought and bits of smiles
And specks of dried-up tears,
And dust of dreams that catch and cling
For years and years and years . . .
To celebrate the new release, here is a 1973 animated adaptation of The Giving Tree, read by Silverstein himself — a priceless memento of one of our era’s most wholehearted creators.
Friday, September 23, 2011
Dyslexia: Mother and daughter continue to triumph
Sara Jane Williams and her daughter Ashleigh both received BA Honours degrees in contemporary applied arts from Hereford College of Art and Design in July.
Now Sara Jane, who left school with no qualifications, has had her work selected to appear in several galleries, with one - the Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre, in Wales - selecting her as one of the top 13 applied arts graduates in the UK.
Meanwhile Ashleigh has also enjoyed success, with her work being selected for display at The Fold, in Bransford. She has also been asked by other galleries to produce some work for the Christmas period.
“It seems that our work is in demand, which is really pleasing for both of us,” said Sara Jane. “When Llantarnam Grange selected me as one of the top graduates I could not believe it. I was surprised and delighted and it made me quite teary when I saw my work up on the wall.
She added: “All my work is based on dyslexia and is, I hope, raising awareness of the condition. Maybe this will encourage someone else out there to have a go at doing something.”
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Creativity and Art therapy
The idea that people with Asperger's, autism and dyslexia might be gifted in mathematics or engineering or mechanical pursuits may be difficult to reconcile by many but the suggestion that some people with autism might be creative or artistic should make intuitive sense.
A new study of 'divergent thinking' i.e. the ability to generate a variety of new solutions to a problem, in people with brain damage hints at why some individuals with autism and dyslexia may be highly creative.
Though this is one of the first scientific studies to address the phenomenon of creativity in people with autism, it adds some scientific support to articles in the popular press that posthumously diagnose autism in long-dead thinkers and artists.
A 2004 book, Autism and Creativity, kicked off this trend by alleging that Einstein, Freud, Wittgenstein and the artist Andy Warhol would all probably merit a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism.
Other researchers have made similar claims about Warhol, the composer Bartok, the poet William Butler Yeats and other luminaries.
Some individuals with autism are also credited with 'visionary art,' created by those who have never received formal training and who may suffer from neuro-psychiatric diseases.
Roger Cardinal, who coined the term 'outsider art' in 1972, discussed six case histories of talented visual artists with varying degrees of autism in a 2009 article. Some of their work is highly lauded and hangs in museums today.
In the midst of this, how do we reconcile the 'insistence on sameness' characteristic of autism with the kind of divergent thinking that defines creativity?
In the new study, researchers showed 40 people with lesions in different regions of the brain pictures of 30 circles drawn on a sheet of paper. They gave each participant five minutes to draw as many pictures as they could of meaningful objects incorporating one of the circles.
Participants with damage to the left hemisphere, which is responsible for language processing, turned out to be more creative than healthy controls, producing more pictures in various designs. By contrast, people with damage to the medial prefrontal cortex, a right hemisphere region involved in planning and decision-making, are less creative than healthy controls.
The researchers speculate that the deterioration of language abilities in people with left hemisphere brain damage opens up possibilities of non-linear, divergent thinking i.e. creativity. Though the study did not include individuals with Asperger's or autism, language impairments associated with some forms of the disorder might produce a similar effect.
The experience of a 15-year-old Oklahoma girl diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at age 8 shows that art can also be therapeutic. Before one of her teachers handed her a paintbrush, Amanda had trouble concentrating on her school work and connecting with her peers.
Art helped her focus and express herself, her mother told a reporter. Her paintings are beautiful and received a great deal of positive attention from her parents, teachers and the community at large. "Art was probably the best thing that ever happened to Amanda," her mother said. "It just changed everything about our life."
A new study of 'divergent thinking' i.e. the ability to generate a variety of new solutions to a problem, in people with brain damage hints at why some individuals with autism and dyslexia may be highly creative.
Though this is one of the first scientific studies to address the phenomenon of creativity in people with autism, it adds some scientific support to articles in the popular press that posthumously diagnose autism in long-dead thinkers and artists.
A 2004 book, Autism and Creativity, kicked off this trend by alleging that Einstein, Freud, Wittgenstein and the artist Andy Warhol would all probably merit a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism.
Other researchers have made similar claims about Warhol, the composer Bartok, the poet William Butler Yeats and other luminaries.
Some individuals with autism are also credited with 'visionary art,' created by those who have never received formal training and who may suffer from neuro-psychiatric diseases.
Roger Cardinal, who coined the term 'outsider art' in 1972, discussed six case histories of talented visual artists with varying degrees of autism in a 2009 article. Some of their work is highly lauded and hangs in museums today.
In the midst of this, how do we reconcile the 'insistence on sameness' characteristic of autism with the kind of divergent thinking that defines creativity?
In the new study, researchers showed 40 people with lesions in different regions of the brain pictures of 30 circles drawn on a sheet of paper. They gave each participant five minutes to draw as many pictures as they could of meaningful objects incorporating one of the circles.
Participants with damage to the left hemisphere, which is responsible for language processing, turned out to be more creative than healthy controls, producing more pictures in various designs. By contrast, people with damage to the medial prefrontal cortex, a right hemisphere region involved in planning and decision-making, are less creative than healthy controls.
The researchers speculate that the deterioration of language abilities in people with left hemisphere brain damage opens up possibilities of non-linear, divergent thinking i.e. creativity. Though the study did not include individuals with Asperger's or autism, language impairments associated with some forms of the disorder might produce a similar effect.
The experience of a 15-year-old Oklahoma girl diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at age 8 shows that art can also be therapeutic. Before one of her teachers handed her a paintbrush, Amanda had trouble concentrating on her school work and connecting with her peers.
Art helped her focus and express herself, her mother told a reporter. Her paintings are beautiful and received a great deal of positive attention from her parents, teachers and the community at large. "Art was probably the best thing that ever happened to Amanda," her mother said. "It just changed everything about our life."
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Friday, September 24, 2010
Brain-hacking art: Getting your wires crossed
What's the colour of a trumpet blast? David Hockney, Wassily Kandinsky and other synaesthetes could tell you
LETTERS, words, numbers, sounds, touch, pain and smell all trigger flashes of colour in Carol Steen's mind. The New York-based artist first discovered she could paint her synaesthetic visions after a visit to her acupuncturist.
"Each time a needle went in a colour flashed in front of my eyes," she recalls. "When all the needles were in it was like watching a movie. I rushed home and realised I could recall enough to paint a part of what I had seen."
Other synaesthetic artists include David Hockney and Wassily Kandinsky, who painted the piece below, entitled Blue. There is still some speculation over whether Kandinsky actually had synaesthesia or was simply influenced by reports of the phenomenon in other people.
But to Christopher Tyler of the Smith-Kettlewell Brain Imaging Center in San Francisco, who has analysed Kandinsky's work, it is obvious.
"It's very explicit in his work and his writings. He went to a performance of Wagner's music and then wrote about how vivid the visual impressions of the horns were and the colour that the music evoked in his mind. That's synaesthesia," he says.
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