Technology, Artists, Money

This excerpt is from my regular column, Culture & Kibbitz on March 23, 2016 at The Clyde Fitch Report. You can read the entire post, which more fully discusses long-term planning's importance, here.

The Crossroads of Technology and Arts

I was in Providence recently to attend the first annual Conference for Research on Choreographic Interfaces (CRCI), where I was lucky to meet with young artists who were discussing their practice and relevant issues in the most optimistic and excited tones. This fascinating meeting explored the intersection between technology and choreography — loosely defined in this case as anything involving gesture in the service of artistic communication.

The main takeaway from the conference is that technology continues to advance and insinuate itself pervasively into our daily lives, including in artistic practice. Thinking back on my interactions at the conference, I had the sense that these young practitioners view the world differently in at least three ways from those of my generation, born in the mid-20th century, and it is interesting to consider whether, with such a small sampling, there is anything representative to be learned about general trends from this group.

One shift that is noted and discussed at length elsewhere is that ours is a “gig” economy, in which mobility and transience will be hallmarks of one’s career. What was striking, however, is how comfortable the participants in the conference seemed to be with this shift. In my encounters with young technologists, both at the conference and elsewhere, I find people working simultaneously in multiple areas, seemingly transitioning back and forth fluidly and seamlessly, piecing together a living. The ease with which they shift extends beyond how they support themselves financially; it seems they have found ways to feed multiple parts of themselves and their needs, almost as if they have adopted multitasking as a basis for the structure of their lives.

Along with the fluidity of building a career in this way, or perhaps related to it, this group does not carry the negative assumptions about money and its connection to artistic practice that often pervades the traditional nonprofit world. These young artists feel strongly about their work and the “purity” of it, but have no antipathy to the involvement of money in their practice. Perhaps these artists are engaging in a sector that, like film or architecture, is really an industrial manufacturing process — one untroubled by reliance on capital and marketplace; they accept such forces at work, and in their work, very naturally.

Finally, for some in this group, research seemed to be the sine qua non — the very essence of what they were doing — rather than a vehicle to explore areas of interest. Their own curiosity was the “audience” for the work, not the outside viewer. In this sense, the work of these practitioners was akin to high-level mathematics or academic research, where posing and answering questions is the totality of the experience.
Looking ahead to next year’s conference, I know the organizers are already considering focusing more on the aesthetic and perhaps even the intellectual property issues raised in this year’s conference. It should be as rewarding and stimulating as this year’s conference and I intend to be there.

Read the entire fully developed post in Culture & Kibbitz at The Clyde Fitch Report here.

Chaos

"The 21st century is a really terrible time to be a control freak, . . . In the 21st century, the level of control is going to be decreased, . . ." Jared Cohen and Alec Ross in the New York Times Magazine, July 18, 2010.

I've been thinking a lot about chaos lately. Thinking about the increased level of chaos we all live with. We have seen the disintegration of nation states and the rise of failed states around the world. At the same time, the proliferation of non-governmental actors, capable of sowing tremendous destruction and disruption, has raised questions about the long-term viability of the sovereign state model that has been the norm since Bismark. Most interesting, however, is the level of "comfort" young people seem to have with this situation that sets many of us on edge.

Growing up today, one is constantly engaging in multiple discussions, through different technology, with many people. "Multi-tasking" is accepted as the norm and more time is spent interacting than contemplating. The end-result is a flat experience, devoid of the richness and depth that comes with allowing time to affect our thoughts and experience.

Creativity can be seen as the synthesis of data in a unique and inventive way. Sometimes, the creativity yields a result that resonates broadly, imbuing it with increased societal value. Sometimes the creativity yields a result that is banal and uninteresting - in which case we would hesitate to call it creativity. In either case, though, time and contemplation play a critical part.

The implication of total involvement in the immediate here-and-now is that we no longer are able to engage in the non-linear contemplation of data that happens as our mind works over time. In the end, it is our loss as we no longer will synthesize our experiences to create a unique response, diminishing the richness of our artistic and cultural life.

What is most curious for our future is how the work of young artists, engaging constantly in flat, broad, immediate interactions will differ from the work of other generations, steeped in long contemplative exploration of themes and experiences.

Scientists and Artists

Yesterday, I attended the kick-off meeting of a new partnership between SUNY, the SUNY Research Foundation, and the New York Academy of Sciences. This partnership, an outgrowth of the SUNY strategic plan and New York State strategic plans for SUNY to be a prime motivator of economic development in the state, was established to support the implementation team on which I serve. Our mandate is to develop an entrepreneurial culture throughout the state and in SUNY.

The meeting, held at the Academy offices overlooking the Ground Zero site, was all day and was attended by some thirty SUNY, Research Foundation, and Academy colleagues. Each of the SUNY representatives was asked to make a brief presentation on their campus' research, funding, technology transfer, etc. Needless to say, we don't compete in this arena, so my presentation took a different point of view.

Here are my comments with the five slides I was able to present.

Comments at the Kick-Off meeting of the
SUNY-New York Academy of Sciences Partnership
February 24, 2011

Well, I certainly feel like the “odd man out” in this group. Despite overseeing an arts training program, where we are creating entrepreneurs every day, I will not be able to present the same kind of quantitative information about technology transfer, incubators, and private-public partnerships as the rest of you. So I ask that you indulge me for a few minutes so that I can present a different perspective on the topics we have been discussing: entrepreneurship and economic development. I am very grateful to the Academy and the Research Foundation for giving me this opportunity to address you.

While it is a common perception that the arts don’t drive economic development, all the data show that the arts are instrumental in certain kinds of development. Over the past 50-75 years, we have seen, time and time again, that urban planners have turned to the arts as instigators of urban redevelopment. In addition to serving as engines of urban development, the public spends between $150-160 billion annually on the arts and there are some 2.2 million artists in the United States workforce.

But it is difficult to quantify the direct effect of the arts in terms of prospective economic development. While artists embody the characteristics we are looking for - risk-taking, innovative thinking, resilience, and a necessary tolerance for failure – the effect of producing art or of artistic communities is only indirectly measureable and almost only in retrospect after a great investment of time and effort. In a world in which precious resources must be allocated and in which we are less and less competitive, we are all striving to identify the most efficacious use of our resources to produce maximal results. As we have fallen behind other cultures and societies, we have focused on our competitive shortcomings in science, mathematics, and related subjects, choosing in many cases to elevate these areas over the arts, whose benefits are harder to quantify.

So how exactly can the arts participate in our goal of reenergizing our economy and in economic development?

Last August, I was graciously asked to address our faculty on the topic of creativity. One of the critical points I addressed was the existence of creativity in all spheres, not just artistic ones. Today, I would like to further develop that thought and look at artistic endeavor as an indicator of successful scientific creativity and innovation.

As a starting point, I would posit that the traditional distinction between the arts and sciences is, in some ways, a false one since artists and scientists engage in like explorations. I would go farther and argue that the essence of scientific advancement is driven by the very same impulses that drive artistic activity – understanding the world, taking risks in this exploration, pursuing this exploration until a satisfactory conclusion is reached, and a persistent attempt to conform the exterior world of experience to the inner world of the mind. While their means of expression may be different, both scientists and artists seek to respond to experience and increase our understanding of the wonder of nature and life.

Part of my argument last August was that creativity, the ability to imagine or invent something new, is not limited to any single discipline. In fact, the “symptoms” attendant to creativity - an openness to newness or change, a flexibility of thought and outlook, a natural curiosity, and, at least in certain areas, an ability to synthesize data in ways that may be at odds with common or accepted ways, can easily describe the successful scientist. It will not be a surprise to any of you that the successful scientist, like the successful artist, necessarily has a tenacity and corresponding tolerance for failure. Innovation, creating something new from the old, requires many of these same traits as well.

Recently, I have been reading the works of Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, who have been looking into the relationship between artistic activity and successful scientists. What they have found is that there is a “very significant relationship between success as a scientist and evidence of adult arts and crafts avocations.”¹ They surmise that successful scientists who are also practicing artists have a wider range of physical and intellectual skills than the average person or scientist. Their data show that a Nobel laureate in science is 29 times more likely to create in the arts than a member of the public.²

In my talk last year, I commented that creativity often involves the synthesis of complex and sometimes apparently unrelated data into a coherent whole. The Root-Bernsteins similarly state: “Creative scientists [have the ability] to explore a wide range of apparently unrelated activities and to connect the knowledge and skills gained thereby into integrated networks that can be brought effectively to bear in raising and solving important scientific problems.”³

Over time, many well-known men of wisdom have been scientists and artists. Leonardo DaVinci, Albert Einstein, Samuel Morse, Max Planck, and Alexander Graham Bell come to mind. Many of these and others have commented on the unity that their artistic and scientific endeavor created and how it was essential to their success. Laureate Santiago Ramon y Cajal [Ka-Chal] commented that “[a scientist] would possess something of this happy combination of attributes: an artistic temperament which impels him to search for, and have the admiration of, the number, beauty, and harmony of things.”⁴ Max Planck, echoing Ramon y Cajal and others said that “[t]he pioneer scientist must have . . . [an] artistically creative imagination.”⁵ As noted above and in the attendant list, I think it is fair to say that many of our great scientists were polymaths and omnivores who exceled in multiple fields to the benefit of us all.

But how, getting back to where we began, does this relate to economic development?

We live in a world that craves innovation and creativity. Not only are we all curators of our own experience, but we need new ways of building our businesses in order to compete. In a recent blog post, Root-Bernstein quoted a number of big business leaders who acknowledged the inter-relationship between creativity and innovation. These leaders, from companies such as Boeing, United Technologies, Lilly, and Bayer, go further, articulating their understanding of the necessity of the arts to creating an environment and set of skills to maximize creativity and innovation.⁶

Looking ahead and planning how to ensure New York State is competitive, there is a critical place for the arts. As data and experience show, those who integrate the arts into their training and experience are more likely to be more creative and, therefore, able to make a more impactful contribution to business and society. Let’s not forget this as we allocate our diminishing resources and strive to build an entrepreneurial culture and spur economic development.

Thank you.

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¹ Root-Bernstein, Robert, et al. “Arts Foster Scientific Success: Avocations of Nobel, National Academy, Royal Society, and Sigma XI Members.” Journal of Psychology of Science and Technology, Volume 1, Number 2 (2008): 53.
² Ibid. 55.
³ Ibid. 56-57.
⁴ Ibid. 57.
⁵ Ibid. 58.
⁶ Root-Bernstein, Robert and Michelle. "A Missing Piece in the Economic Stimulus: Hobbling Arts Hobbles Innovation." Imagine That! Annals of Ordinary and Extraordinary Genius. Psychology Today, 11 Feb 2009. Web. 20 Feb 2011.

Creativity

Last week, I was asked to deliver closing remarks at the Purchase College Faculty Retreat. The topic was fostering creativity on the college campus. Below are my comments.


******
Good afternoon. For those of you who don't know me yet, I am Ken Tabachnick, the new Dean of the School of the Arts. Thank you for offering me this opportunity to give you a few of my thoughts on this intriguing topic we have been discussing all day: creativity. I would also like to thank our Provost, Damian Fernandez, for putting together this program and for getting us all thinking about these issues that are critical to our success in serving our students and community.

This morning's program was planned to foster discussion on creating an environment that would encourage greater creativity in our classroom and studio learning. The materials distributed for today's program offer a simple definition of creativity: the ability to imagine or invent something new. The materials also acknowledge some of the  factors or “symptoms” attendant to creativity: an openness to newness or change; a flexibility of thought and outlook; a natural curiosity; and, at least in certain areas, an ability to synthesize data in ways that may be at odds with common or accepted ways. They also note that creativity is the result of a constant evaluation of the input involved, which requires continuous hard work.

George Balanchine, the most prolific dance creator of the twentieth century famously said: There are no new steps, only new combinations. Mr. B., as he was affectionately called, was born at the turn of the last century, and was trained in the Vaganova technique of classical ballet, which adopted a particular interpretation of the basic canon of ballet technique or steps. His training, like that of the ballet dancer of today, would have included endless repetition and correction in an attempt to ingrain the necessary steps, common to all ballet technique, into his body and psyche so that they were automatic and precise.

As so often happened, Balanchine's words held much more meaning than their simplicity implied. There are no new steps acknowledges his training in the closed universe of ballet technique, while accepting that this body of information is still relevant for him and that he did not reject it. By focusing on new combinations, Mr. B. innately understood that his part in creating a revolution in the famously conservative world of classical ballet lay in the way he looked at, synthesized, and manipulated the data he had – the steps. His willingness to spend his life “playing” with the basic givens of the well-established technique, led to a revolutionary way of presenting and appreciating classical ballet, which continues to influence dance-makers to this day.

In retrospect, great creative insight always seems simple and clear. Ballet technique is designed to show the grace and beauty of the dancers by giving the appearance of defying gravity for as long as possible. Before Balanchine, dancers slowly raised their leg to its apogee, lengthening the time we see them “fighting” gravity in order for the limb to rise. Balanchine, looking at the laws of gravity in a different way, realized that the effect desired would be emphasized even more by reversing the dynamism of the movement, focusing the dancer's energy on quickly reaching the apogee and slowly lowering the limb. Simultaneously, he subtly, almost imperceptibly shifted the dancer's center of gravity off the vertical axis. The result was an exciting reinvention of the entire canon of ballet technique.

Similarly, he attacked the prevailing concept of dramatic development and created a body of work based on what some would call the “plotless ballet,” which was, as Richard Feynman might say, a “perfectly reasonable deviation.”* Responding to critics' complaints about Mr. B's abandonment of narrative storytelling in ballet, Balanchine responded something along of the lines of:  A beautiful woman enters an empty room. A handsome man follows close behind. Where is not the story in this?

Like so many others whose creativity has resulted in, what Thomas Kuhn would refer to as a paradigm shift, Balanchine's ability to so fundamentally alter the art of ballet stemmed from, and would not have been possible without, his deep immersion in the status quo of his time. It is axiomatic that creativity with far-reaching and resonant deep implications is the result of deep immersion like Balanchine's coupled with exposure to other diverse inputs that inform the immersive experience.

But, creativity is not restricted solely to the arts, nor is it solely relegated to formal training. It can be messy, disorderly, and even poorly articulated. In my experience as a designer, lawyer, arts manager, fundraiser, teacher, and father, I have seen creativity in every area, in every field. I am amazed at the richness of creativity I see in daily life in large and small ways.

One of the most vexing aspects of creativity is its inability to clearly align with morality and goodness. The historical record leads one to conclude that creativity is agnostic, taking no account of good or bad, or the creator's beliefs. In spite of this, we may be able to appreciate and revel in the results creativity brings, even if we don't revel in the creator him or herself. For this reason, it should be encouraged and fostered at every opportunity in every way.

Truly resonant creativity opens our eyes to a new way of seeing the world or doing something. We can see it in DJ Spooky's Rebirth of a Nation, Danger Mouse's Grey Album, Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point, and Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton's insights on Ptolemy's cosmology. Look at the contrasts in this list: an African-American artist remixes one of cinema's seminal, though racist, early works;  a young DJ from right here in White Plains creates a new work based on the Beatles' iconic White Album, created almost a decade before the DJ was born;  a Jesuit priest describes the inevitable end of time in contradiction to accepted religious orthodoxy;  and independent thinkers challenge the accepted state of the universe over centuries.

This college was born out of the belief that a true liberal arts background, integrating the arts with more intellectual study, is necessary to being a fully formed person, capable of fulfilling the highest potential. Rephrasing this, I would argue that a diverse, broad general set of knowledge is essential to the foundation of fostering creativity. We might disagree on the details of that set of knowledge, but I have no doubt that without such broad general knowledge, the fertile soil of creativity is lacking nutrients.

In addition, sufficient specialization and understanding of the existing state of belief about a particular topic is necessary before creation can occur in that area. Finally, an attitude of openness, whether conscious or not, is critical to the psychic freedom required to see the same set of details in a different way, which is creativity.

Tori Haring-Smith, the president of Washington & Jefferson College and a noted speaker on creativity, suggests that we should consider training students first to be specialists and then generalists, which is the exact opposite of the traditional training students receive. The truth is, however, that for resonant creativity to flourish, both are needed. A creative person must have exposure to a broad and diverse portfolio of thought and theories. As importantly, a deep immersion in the then existing state of a subject with all of its attendant history is essential to the break that is embodied in the creation. Additionally, one must be able to analogize or apply other models of thought in a nonlinear way to what appears to be an inapplicable situation to foster the truly resonant creativity we all crave.

It seems to me that Purchase College, mixing specialized conservatory with extensive liberal arts education, has been and continues to be the embodiment of the broader ecology of creativity.

Looking ahead, one of our greatest challenges is determining how to counter what I refer to as “the flat thinking” engendered by surfing and immediately (supposedly) “assimilating” information, which has been made possible by the internet and living in the digital world. I believe that for creativity to resonate and have an impact, it must be the result of “deep thinking,” rooted in contemplation, whether conscious or not, over time until the creative insight appears. For us then, the goal should be encouraging our students and ourselves to continually examine our subjects bringing broad and diverse possibilities to bear. Not all of our efforts will succeed, but the other thing that every creative person understands, even if that understanding is innate and not overt, is that creativity includes failure, often repeated and over long-periods of time. Once gripped by the creative impulse, a creator has no choice but to pursue his or her creative urge, sometimes despite overwhelming barriers or high costs. Despite the hard work and challenges involved, creative people do not give up; they keep thinking, exploring, and experimenting.

In 2004, the magazine Fast Company published a story about research done at the Entrepreneurial Management Unit of the Harvard Business School.  The  study, looked at creativity in seven commercial ventures and tried to understand the “experiences and thought processes that lead to creative breakthroughs.” The characteristics the study identified give us an outline for our efforts. Here is what they found:

1. There is no such thing as a creative type. Almost all research shows that “anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work.” In addition to the various characteristics I and others have discussed, the study highlights intrinsic (not external) motivation as critical to creativity.

2. Money is not a creative motivator. As noted above, intrinsic, not extrinsic motivation is critical. Bonus and pay-for-performance plans tend to make people risk-averse, which does not foster creativity.

3. Time pressure does not fuel creativity. Time pressure prevents people from engaging with an issue in the way that results in creativity. Focus is critical, and distractions prevent the deep engagement required for the creative impulse to arise.

4. Creativity is “positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with fear, anger, and anxiety.    AND

5. Collaboration is more effective at fostering creativity than competition. The most creative teams are those that have the confidence to share and debate ideas.

In closing, I would like to describe an experience that a wonderful conductor/educator named Benjamin Zander describes in his book: The Art of Possibility,**  which he wrote with his wife Roz, a psychologist. In struggling with how to address the closed minds of his students when he was attempting to foster their creativity, he realized that the students were concerned and being held back by their anticipation of not receiving the grade they wanted. To release them, he told the entire class that they would be getting an 'A' at the end of the year. The only requirement was that each student had to write a letter describing, at the end of the class, what he or she had accomplished in order to receive the A. As he describes it, “this A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.”

While I do not recommend this as a proper pedagogical methodology, I think you can see how such a strategy creatively addresses some of the blocks to creativity that the Harvard study and many of us in the field have noted. Developing such strategies for ourselves and our students is imperative if we are to successfully engender creativity here on campus.

Thank you.

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* From a letter by Richard Feynman to Mrs. Whitehouse of the California State Curriculum Commission, dated April 13, 1966, in regard to a 5th grade textbook by Scott Foresman:

“In 5th grade, chemistry and sound is [sic] good an clear, but material on weather and electricity are [sic] not very good. In particular, in both these parts (weather and electricity) the teacher's manual doesn't realize the possibilities of correct answers different from the expected ones and the teacher instruction is not enough to enable her to deal with perfectly reasonable deviations from the beaten track.”

 Michelle Feynman, ed. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track (Basic Books, New York, 2005), 214.

** Benajmin and Rosamund Stone Zander. The Art of Possibility (Penguin Books, New York, 2002), 25-32.