Creativity Archives - Mark Goldthorpe

December 12, 2018

msb ~096 Climate hope

Climate hope

Climate scientist Peter Kalmus writes about how “to think daily about climate change and any of its dire implications can be a crushing psychological burden. Each of us is just one mammal, with all our mammalian limitations — we get tired, sad, irritated, sick, overwhelmed — and the climate crisis wields the force of 8 billion humans with infrastructure, corporations, capital, politics, and imaginations heavily invested in burning fossil fuel.” Continue reading “msb ~096 Climate hope”

December 6, 2018December 7, 2018

msb ~092 Imagination: not just the mind’s eye

Imagination: not just the mind’s eye

A Mile in My Shoes, Katie Hodgkins on the mind's eye — A Mile in My Shoes: the mind’s eye?

I’ve been listening to the Empathy Museum’s A Mile in My Shoes podcasts. It’s refreshing to get these short empathy bursts: insights into others’ lives, in their own words. Katie Hodgkins’s podcast introduced an experience that maybe seems unimaginable. Katie herself couldn’t imagine it if she weren’t experiencing it. As she says, “I have something called aphantasia. It means I’ve got no imagination, and there’s no pictures in my mind … So I struggle with putting myself in other people’s positions, and I don’t have a very good memory because of it … I need to see something to remember.” As she says, “It’s really amazing that people have full-on images in their heads!”

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November 29, 2018

msb ~087 Our entangled future

Our entangled future

“To access and activate our most radical potentials as a storytelling species,” the AdaptationCONNECTS project has issued an innovative call for short stories of ‘our entangled future’: stories to engage our imaginations with ‘quantum social change’ in the face of our accelerating climate crisis. “We need stories that confront the limitations of a dualistic, deterministic, and inanimate worldview and instead offer insights into a reality that is connected, entangled, uncertain, and ripe with possibility – a world of complementarity, non-locality, and potentiality.” Their call places an important emphasis on “the power of language, meaning, and metaphors to create a new reality.” Continue reading “msb ~087 Our entangled future”

November 27, 2018

msb ~085 On edge and in-between

On edge and in-between

Melancholia, by Lars von Trier: in-between states

Titling your Physics World post ‘This article is based on fictional events’ does make it stand out. And David Boyt describes an event I’d wish I’d been to; as part of London Mathematical Laboratory’s Science on Screen series, statistical physicist Valerio Lucarini discussed how Lars von Trier’s 2011 Melancholia “inspired in him a new way of thinking and provided the missing piece of the puzzle for his research.” Continue reading “msb ~085 On edge and in-between”

November 26, 2018

msb ~084 Hurricane bells

Hurricane bells

I just posted this moving radio programme to ClimateCultures’ Views from Elsewhere, but there’s more to explore in artist Peter Shenai’s hurricane bells and stories of Hurricane Katrina. Cast in shapes reflecting Katrina’s evolving wind speed, they bring dissonant and consonant voices that turn data into art: nature, recast by human climate disruption, in turn, reshapes human artefacts: nature-cultures powerfully entwined. Continue reading “msb ~084 Hurricane bells”

November 19, 2018

msb ~079 The ghost of a flea?

The ghost of a flea?

Of all the images William Blake produced, the strangest and most appealing to me is The Ghost of a Flea (1820). It’s on display at Tate Britain: a small, dark, oddly menacing object, tempera and gold on wood. As this short Atlas Obscura article recalls, Blake claimed the ‘ghost’ itself came to him in one of his visions and “posed for him as he sketched it. He was able to ‘communicate’ with the monstrous being, who revealed that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of men who were ‘by nature bloodthirsty to excess.'” Continue reading “msb ~079 The ghost of a flea?”

November 14, 2018

msb ~076 Climate data: climate art

Climate data: climate art

Climate Symphony Lab 2017: noisy data — Climate Symphony Lab; noisy data

A conversation today reminded me of a workshop I joined last year, where we created audio art from climate data. Climate Symphony Lab tapped into public interest in, but confusion with, science to make new ways to internalise what environmental change ‘looks’ (or sounds) like. Climate data: climate art. Actually being in on debates on what to include and exclude, which available technologies to use (instruments, laptops, voices, feet, breath, tearing paper?) was unusual, enlivening and unsettling. It brought a direct, participative responsibility to what can be seen as quite distant, individualist artistic practices — and even more distant, communal practices of science. Continue reading “msb ~076 Climate data: climate art”

November 12, 2018

msb ~074 Negative Capability revisited: not knowing

Negative Capability revisited: not knowing

not knowing: youths clashing with police, Paris — not knowing: “located somewhere at the edge of the world”

I’ve enjoyed this article where Paul Tritschler revisits poet John Keats’ idea of Negative Capability via psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. “Bion said that one discovers truth, the ingredient essential to psychic growth, on the cusp of knowing and not knowing. On the cerebral map, not knowing is located somewhere at the edge of the world.”
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November 9, 2018

msb ~073 Picture this

Picture this

Picture Icelandic elements: a photograph by Gareth Goldthorpe — Iceland elements

As recent passages here — TERRA and The Library of Ice — hint, my reading’s had an Arctic preoccupation recently. I’ve never been north of 60^o, so my polar regions are imaginary zones. Although reading is intensely visual, photographs still jolt my every-day, word-fed way of ‘seeing’ the distant world. I’ve dabbled in photography, but my brother does the real thing, and I’m envious of his skills and travels. I’d forgotten his recent Iceland trip, my anticipation of his new images and, checking his website, there they were: freshly discovered places that others’ words had been walking me toward. Continue reading “msb ~073 Picture this”

October 25, 2018

msb ~062 Connecting with change

Connecting with change

I’ve mentioned the book Anticipatory history and how I keep returning to it. The term also describes a loose collection of approaches that extend beyond the book’s collection of texts, each a means to open up conversations about change in places we feel deep attachment to, now facing uncertain futures.

To help us bring in new perspectives when we try to make sense of change, ‘anticipatory history’ approaches might include:

Looking imaginatively at past changes and at the contingencies which underlined (and could have undermined) the events and actions that shaped what it is now. Examples are reverse chronologies, timelines, oral histories and artistic representations.
Taking a fresh look at the language we use to talk about the natural and cultural processes at play. The book itself provides one way into this, as a form of glossary arising from a dialogue between specialisms.
Imagining and naming unfamiliar or new ways of living with change that might be adopted in this place.

Continue reading “msb ~062 Connecting with change”