Tag: Creativity

Book Review by Amy Ione: The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World

Reviewed by Amy Ione, January 2018

Although creating a mess is not qualitatively the same as creating an original mathematical equation, what the word ‘creating’ denotes in each case is nonetheless clear. I cannot answer why we easily comprehend the meaning in both instances, but I do know that creativity’s amorphous and multidimensional reality is tantalizing even if our use of the word spans a spectrum of activities. In terms of discovery and human psychology, a good touchstone is a graphic that the creativity researcher Robert Sternberg put together titled “Cognitive Characteristic of Creative Persons” [1]. In it he summarizes the views of 16 authors who contributed to an anthology he edited on this subject in 1988. One striking feature of the chart is that each author stressed multiple traits and yet no single trait was postulated by every one of the renowned contributors. Among them were Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Howard Gardner, Howard Gruber, and Dean Simonton. Equally striking 30 years later is that the distribution of the 20 relevant characteristics they identified seems dated now. Nine of the experts, the second highest number for any trait, argued for specialization (or creativity in a particular domain) in 1988. Given the emphasis on transdisciplinary work in the 21st century, I would guess that this factor would not rank as high today. By contrast, the top characteristic, stressed by 11 of the 16 authors, seems to still hold. This is the use of existing knowledge as a basis for new ideas. Even so, at under 70% it was nonetheless not universally chosen.
Continue reading “Book Review by Amy Ione: The Runaway Species: How Human Creativity Remakes the World”

Amy Ione Review of ChildArt Magazine: Arts and Mind – The Brain Science of Human Experience

Review of ChildArt Magazine: Arts and Mind – The Brain Science of Human Experience, Guest Editor, Susan Magsamen; Editor, Ashfaq Ishaq.

Posted at Leonardo Reviews

I sat down to read this ChildArt issue about art and the brain a few days after I learned of Marian Diamond’s (1926-2017) death [1]. Perhaps best known for her studies of Einstein’s brain, which noted that he had more support cells in the brain than average, she was also a distinguished educator and a pioneer in brain plasticity research. The two products of her legacy that influenced me directly came to mind as I absorbed the essays. First, I recalled how Diamond’s skill as an educator came through in an interactive videotaped lesson on the brain she did during her tenure as Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science (recorded in 1990). While explaining the brain’s functions and dissecting an actual brain she also sensitively responded to questions posed by a group of two elementary school students and two graduate students. The composite demonstrated how a talented instructor is able to stimulate learning [2]. In addition, and similarly, when I was a docent at the Hall, one of the most popular installations was an interactive installation about the brain, designed by Diamond, that engaged visitors of all ages and backgrounds.

ChildArt’s “Your Brain on Art” likewise captures the importance of engagement in education and human development, introducing projects that highlight children in schools as well as cross-cultural and community outreach. Divided into three sections, the issue also reminds us that children learn and experience life in more than one way. Continue reading “Amy Ione Review of ChildArt Magazine: Arts and Mind – The Brain Science of Human Experience”

Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited (Reviewed by Amy Ione)

Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited
Editors: Catelijne Coopmans, Janet Vertesi, Michael Lynch, and Steve Woolgar
Reviewed by Amy Ione

Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited offers an explicit sequel to the discussion featured in the 1990 book Representation in Scientific Practice [1]. I use the word sequel because this more recent volume is not an update so much as an effort to show that the questions surrounding representation inhabit a quite different theoretical and conceptual landscape 25 years later.

The 1990 book grew out of a workshop on “Visualization and Cognition” held in Paris in 1983 [2]. Although a compilation of already published articles, the book is now remembered as a contribution that helped to coalesce the late 20th century discourse on scientific visualization among historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science on visualization and representation. In some ways it was also representative of how Kuhnian paradigms had changed thinking. Thomas Kuhn introduced paradigmatic thinking in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [3]. His thesis about distinctive ways of thinking in historical eras, in turn, laid the foundation for a focus on scientific context and a more nuanced approach to ideas and practices. With the first Representations volume it was clear that the discussion had shifted accordingly and included enhanced sensitivity to how humanists and social scientists perceived and modeled reality. Within this framework, epistemological thinking and practices were elevated.

The second volume demonstrates that this sea change brought about a focus on ethnographic studies within Science and Technology Studies (STS). The systematic study of scientists working and the environments in which they practice is so predominant in the articles of the second volume that an unacknowledged subtheme of the book is the degree to which practices within environments are now representative of what Kuhn might call a “normal” approach in historical, humanistic, and sociological investigation. Indeed, as author after author explained the design of his or her ethnographic study it is hard to miss how standardized the approach is. No doubt this is why some of the authors ask if the time is ripe for a shift from an epistemological to an ontological treatment of the representations concept.

Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited itself is comprised of 14 lengthy papers primarily by younger scholars and seven brief, reflective pieces by established academics.

Continue reading “Representation in Scientific Practice Revisited (Reviewed by Amy Ione)”

Amy Ione interview on Yale University Radio

The interview with Amy Ione, Director of the Diatrope Institute, is now included in the Interviews from Yale University Radio (WYBCX) index of The Art World Demystified, Hosted by Brainard Carey. It is available at http://museumofnonvisibleart.com/interviews/amy-ione/. This collection is an oral history of the Lives of the Most Excellent Artists, Curators, Architects, Critics and more, like Vasari’s book updated.

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures by Eric R. Kandel (Reviewed by Amy Ione)

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures
by Eric R. Kandel
Columbia University Press, NY, NY, 2016
240 pp. Trade: $29.95, ISBN-10: 0231179626;ISBN-13: 978-0231179621
Download PDF

Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures by Eric Kandel, like his study The Age of Insight [1], builds on earlier efforts to couple science and art, particularly those of Alois Riegl (1858-1905), Ernst Kris (1900-1957), and Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001). These three men, he tells us, endeavored to establish art history as a scientific discipline by grounding it in psychological principles. Riegl emphasized the “beholder’s involvement, stating that art includes the perceptual and emotional involvement of the viewer. Kris studied ambiguity in visual perception, concluding that every powerful image is inherently ambiguous because it arises from experiences and conflicts in the artist’s life. Gombrich extended Kris’ ideas to include the inverse optics problem: how our brain takes the incomplete information about the outside world that it receives from our eyes and makes it complete. This is a problem that arises because the brain reconstructs the images we see. It should be noted that Gombrich’s positioning in his well known Art and Illusion [2] is, like Kandel’s, more concerned with beholders than artists or the community.

Continue reading “Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures by Eric R. Kandel (Reviewed by Amy Ione)”