So I've convinced a photographer friend of mine to join me in this month long challenge to kickstart both of us back into regular creativity. Having just finished renovating the house. Emptying the house. And having a complete 'change in lifestyle recently' aka aquiring a gentleman friend, the regular painting has fallen onto the backburner. This challenge is needed! Nothing like an incentive, a goal, to get going again.

I was supposed to be travelling now. Camping my way up through the desert of western NSW before heading into Byron Bay and surrounds. Maybe permanently. But those plans have changed and for the moment I'm still in the Central Highlands of Victoria. In winter. And I hate the cold. At least I'm getting a compensation holiday to Adelaide next week, with a swing through the Flinders Rangers (very excited, never been), Broken Hill (Pro Hart anyone?) and the top corner of Victoria including Mildura and Swan Hill. All good, and in a sweet and fabulous way, the holiday still fits in with the photo challenge. I should digress about now and explain the challenge. It sounds really cool to me and I'm quite excited. From the site (methinks they explain it quite well enough already) :

"SoFoBoMo is short for Solo Photo Book Month - a group event where a bunch of photographers all make solo photo books start to finish, in 31 days, at more or less the same time. It's modeled loosely on NaNoWriMo, where participating writers all write novels in a month, and NaSoAlMo, where musicians write and record solo albums in a month....

....For SoFoBoMo, the goal is to make the photos, write any needed text, layout the book, and produce a PDF image of the book, all in 31 days. Rather than confining it to a single calendar month, we use a 'fuzzy month', where you can pick any contiguous 31 day period inside a two month window - this makes it a bit more flexible and encourages broader participation."


I know, I know, I'm not 'a photographer'. But I am 'a creative'. So I say this fits. Plus, as I said, it will kickstart regular creativity AND it can be done while travelling. Much easier than oil painting while travelling. MUCH easier. In fact, I designed my theme so it could be done on the road....

Found Creatures.
Not just straight photography for me, no. Each image will be a unique creation in itself. The theme is animals of the imagination, and each animal will be created in 2D from scraps of nature (bark, leaves, rocks etc) for as long as it takes to record them, and then the site will be returned to it's former state.

And I'll be shooting it all with my iPhone (plus CameraBag).

I'm looking into geotagging the images and I might take shots of the locations (hmm, Pano, yum yum) and include these in the uploads as well. I'll see how well this all fits as I go along. So now I hope you can see how a drive to Adelaide, the Flinders Rangers, Broken Hill and Mildura will fit. Loads of different landscapes equals loads of variation in the flora and geology equals loads of materials to play with!

Hooray.

This is where my Found Creatures SoFoBoMo '09 book will live:
http://www.sofobomo.org/2009/books/wherefishsing/

Here on this blog is where the images will be uploaded as they are taken, before being compiled into the final book. Enjoy!

Might, radiance, prosperity, victory, wealth, plenty, augustness, readiness, creative action, intelligence, adornment, stability, obedience and taste. These are 14 qualities identified as the primary effects and signs of creative force from Ancient Egypt, taken from Joseph Campbell's Oriental Mythology. These refer to qualities the original world creating force was believed to have. These were qualities the revered god/s had. Qualities to aspire to.

I thought I'd contrast these with the qualities I see that Western mainstream society values highly in a person now. Here goes, in a roughly equivalent order. Power, youth, f-ability, competitiveness, monetary wealth, accumulation of possessions, extroversion, social intelligence, easy categorization and a finetuned fashion sense. Putting it like that makes it look as though there has only been a slight shift.

And just for fun, I thought I'd throw in the beliefs, values and characteristics of this new millennium's creative people (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Creative). This new group of people value achievement, independence, non-conformity, internal locus of control, ambiguity, risk-taking and opportunity. Nothing about power, possessions or looks. Quite a change huh?

Here's a bit more on values:
Authenticity - actions must be consistent with words and beliefs
Engaged action and whole process learning; seeing the world as interwoven and connected
Idealism and activism
Globalism and ecology
The importance of women

And defining characteristics:
* love of nature and deep caring about its destruction
* strong awareness of the planet-wide issues (i.e. global warming, poverty, overpopulation, etc.) and a desire to see more action on them
* willingness to pay higher taxes or spend more money for goods if that money went to improving the environment
* heavy emphasis on the importance of developing and maintaining relationships
* heavy emphasis on the importance of helping others and developing their unique gifts
* volunteer with one or more good causes
* intense interest in spiritual and psychological development
* see spirituality as an importance aspect of life but worry about religious fundamentalism
* desire more equity for women in business, life and politics
* concern for the violence and abuse against women and children
* want politics and government to spend more money on education, community programs and the support of a more ecologically sustainable future
* are unhappy with the left and right in politics
* optimism towards the future
* want to be involved in creating a new and better way of life
* are concerned with big business and the means they use to generate profits, including destroying the environment and exploiting poorer countries
* unlikely to overspend or be in heavy debt
* dislike modern cultures emphasis on making it and success, on consuming and making money
* like people, places and things that are different or exotic


And just for fun, a quiz!!

http://quizfarm.com/quizzes/new/eddxii/what-is-your-world-view/


You Scored as Cultural Creative

Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.

Cultural Creative

94%

Materialist

88%

Existentialist

75%

Postmodernist

75%

Idealist

69%

Modernist

56%

Fundamentalist

19%

Romanticist

13%

So today's topic is "receptivity". And I, in my short and to the point way, would like to ask, 'how receptive are you to the possibilities all around?' Magic happens, if you'll let it. It's all in the way you DECIDE to view the world.

Another explanation I found while wandering the blogosphere is excerpted below. It's very wordy, but I think, well worthwhile. Read the full piece here if you feel inclined.

"There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet
an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says,
"Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a
bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes,
"What the hell is water?"
...
A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain
of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of
the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of:
everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that
I am the absolute centre of the universe, the realest, most vivid and
important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of
natural, basic self-centredness, because it's so socially repulsive,
but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our
default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it:
there is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute
centre of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of
you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your
monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be
communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent,
real - you get the idea.
...
But then you remember there's no food at home - you haven't had time to
shop this week, because of your challenging job - and so now, after
work, you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's
the end of the workday, and the traffic's very bad, so getting to the
store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there
the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day
when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery
shopping, and the store's hideously, fluorescently lit, and infused
with soul-killing Muzak or corporate pop, and it's pretty much the last
place you want to be, but you can't just get in and quickly out: you
have to wander all over the huge, overlit store's crowded aisles to
find the stuff you want, and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart
through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course
there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and
the kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and
try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually,
finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out
there aren't enough checkout lanes open even though it's the
end-of-the-day rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is
stupid and infuriating, but you can't take your fury out on the frantic
lady working the register.
...
The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where
the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded
aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't
make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention
to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to
food-shop, because my natural default setting is the certainty that
situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and
my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for
all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all
these people in my way?
...
If I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do - except that
thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to
be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default setting.
...
But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you
can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up
lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line - maybe
she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights
holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe
this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept who
just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape
problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course,
none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible - it just depends
on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you
know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want
to operate on your default setting - then you, like me, will not
consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if
you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will
know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience
a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only
meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars -
compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that
mystical stuff's necessarily true: the only thing that's capital-T True
is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to
consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.
...
And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default
settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite
nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and
the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces
in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal
freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms,
alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to
recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the
kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the
great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really
important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and
discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people
and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy
ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is
unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant
gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.
...
It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and
essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep
reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water.""


And at last, the vid!

Brute strength. Quiet strength. The strength of steel. Flexible sapling strength...
I chose an imperfect variety:






The final image:

There are a number of points I find really interesting about the number of images for simplicity that I could generate and that exist already in the wider world. For me personally, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that I would generate so many ideas around this concept, after all, it's something I've been aiming at and getting closer to for quite a while. For the wider world, I find it revealing that it has such a large place in our visual vocabulary. With so many symbols for simplicity, it means that it is important to many people. What a wonderful thing.

And now on to the vid that explains all the rambling ideas that led to my version of a symbol for simplicity. And there were so many I had to take notes! So many that I could do an entire painting series on simplicity. Now there's an idea to file away.




And the final image. A bit Japanese, and a lot Australian:

My first thoughts around stability led straight to stone. Specifically, ancient carved stone such as the statues on Easter Island.















But stone is not permanent. It's not fully stable.













In fact, when you really think about it, there is nothing that is permanently stable. So one of these seemed quite apt:














So that's the brief summary. And the movie that goes into a bit more depth:




And the end result:

Well today has been hell, so if(!) I look a bit worn out, it's because the computer issues are landing like dominoes. First the virus, then the back up disk dies. Virus writers should be lined up and shot. And for the record, Microsoft - you suck. Maxtor - you suck too. But I am CONFIDENT I will get all these issues resolved. However, it is likely to mess with my posting schedule. I'll do my best.

Here are some examples of the sort of cocky, bravado, puffed up ego foolhardiness I was trying to avoid depicting. Interesting that these were the top results in Google pictures for confidence. None of these are what I would call real confidence. What does that say about our society? Not much good I fear.

And the explanation behind it:

Here's the pic:





And the inspiration behind it (posted late because Microsoft sucks big time... that'll do or I will rant for the next 14 hours).