A space to discover what the Source Arts have to offer and teach. As a Source Artist I will post and explore the conceptual and development process of the Cultural Fusion art series and the socially purposeful art movement. My primary interest is in advancing art based research to illuminate new opportunities and valuable insights.
An experimental documentary of a personal and creative journey
Recent research supports the rationale that art that pushes the boundaries of what is known and ushers in new mental models may be just the thing to help teach the masses to apply new mental models.
In the new book I am co-authoring with Ron "The Inner World of Innovation" I explore how new mental models emerge and take shape. In that process I am also producing the body of work and collaborations that have ushered in the realization of Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy.
Why now? Because it is necessary for us to develop new ways of approaching learning, economics and growth. I believe it was Einstein who said (and I will paraphrase) we can't use the same thinking we used to create a problem to fix them...and art is more important that knowledge because art embraces the world.
New research suggest that exposure to bizarre, surreal storylines such as Kafka's "The Country Doctor" can improve learning. Apparently, when your brain is presented with total absurdity or nonsense, it will work extra hard to find structure elsewhere.
And when you're ready to get started with your Innovation Initiative contact me at WebAntiphon.com
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After a few requests and a bit of encouragement I am sharing what started out as storyboards for a presentation to get sponsorship for an event marketing solution project.
I hope it encourages people to think and question some assumptions about branding, attention, social capital in sustainable profitability and of course - the role of Art Based research and the benefits to the private sector, organizations, and communities.
Please feel free to contact me with questions or feedback.
Watch Attention-Art-Social Capital and Your Brand in Travel & Culture | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
This is Part 1 of a presentation I was encouraged to develop and share. It has evolved from storyboard slides I was working on for a project. With a slight bit of tweaking it works as slideshare presentation - I may convert these to eliminate the need to advance each slide but in the mean time...I hope it encourages people to think and question some assumptions about branding, attention, social capital and of course - the role of Art Based research.
Over the weekend I watched "Rocky Balboa" again because my husband had not yet seen it. It was my recollection of two scenes, that made look forward to seeing it again. Like many of the books I read - after I see a movie I often forget much of it. However, this speech from the movie sticks with me - especially on those days or at those moments when I get discouraged.
While I feel ego has been put to rest in my quest - I also feel we are the vessels of the dreams that seek expression through us. That is what my journey as an artist has been about - and although it would be easier to just paint or do something that was easier for most people to comprehend, I realize that is the challenge of doing something new.
"When you have a dream - you have to protect it. People can't do something themselves they want to tell you, you can't do it." (from the movie Pursuit of Happiness)
Yes, I have had those moments where I wondered why I didn't have an easier dream, something easier - simpler.... like "normal people". For whatever reason(s) that is not what calls me - that is not who I am. I suspect like many of you, I seek to live a life that is authentic and true to who I know myself to be....and sometimes that isn't as easy as we would hope. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." Chinese Proverb
No one else can walk your journey for you - even if others are with you, your experience feels like a solitary one. Because there will come a time, maybe more than once, that you will have to reach inside yourself and find out what you and your dream are really made of.
So what keeps you going? What helps give one the persistence and tenacity to keep moving forward? That is also part of who we are.
I share this clip because when you feel you have hit the wall....that life has knocked you to your knees and you are doubting that you can get back up and keep going. Please remember that it is in you to do it.
My observation since posting this is that often in marketing or public relations what is done/intended and what is said do not match. And consumer will accept the lie. This is another contrast with customer.
In Business there are companies that serve both, so it is not a matter of right or wrong but rather I feel it informs these ideas about value distinction in:
1. Branding- building a community brand where the community defines the brand
2. Messaging campaigns
3. Valuation metrics (must know what to look for in order to know what to measure)
4. Market positioning based on where value is delivered
I feel these may form converging points to transition between the old which is crumbling and the new which is emerging. This seems to be the points that are addressed in Cultural Fusion.
Had been mulling over some ideas about qualitative evaluations of Attention since I posted a few of the slides from the storyboard I had done with ppt to share with a few people for feedback.
Current dialogues about Attention are mostly superficial - referring to metrics like page views or duration on a page to evaluate qualitative attention. This is connected to other metrics called demographics which reduce people to labels and dollars.
Without questioning these underlying assumptions one is not seeing the whole picture. It like talking about an orange and only referring to the peel. If you don't get beneath that you miss some of the best parts of the fruit.
I was reading the updates to Ron's site having followed an awesome chat with Merik of Morphle earlier today about "Cultural Fusion Happenings". I found this passage and I realized this was a Source:Convergence helping to see a bit more of the answers to questions that led Ron & me to cofound Cultural Fusion.
Let me show you what clicked - as much to share with you who care to pay attention to access it, as to make note of it for myself as something I want to include because it was one of those Ah-Ha moments.
Create Attention What is the origin of attention? How to wake up attention? By using your imagination - Harry Palmer I really look forward to this vacation! By using your fantasy, you create energy. It looks like you touch an inner well, the source of energy. Creativity, in this context, is the gap between thinking (neo-cortex) and feeling (belly brain).
SoulFood is the method or model for this process. And this is key to understanding how to "work" with Attention to address challenges holistically
Soul Food emerges from oral traditions as a soulful tradition not be confused with an intellectual tradition. Rather than rely on known knowledge (intellectual tradition) it relies on the bridge between the intellect and creative intuition (soulful tradition) as am approach to developing new solutions for increasingly complex situations.
Furthermore it provides illumination about how to do this with integrity (purity of ingredients), value for the individual, and appreciation for context.
Starting with the insights from Source:Acceptance
Through this approach one finds balance and peace...here in the context of mixing ingredients, recipes, etc it is akin to "cooked just the way you like with the ingredients available to you".
In the WebAntiphon:Clear_CRM_Strategy scheme of things this approach acknowledges the value of each person served and consulted by helping you find the recipe for the SoulFood:Meal or SoulFood:Dish that best suits your needs and taste:
After noticing Ron's Twitter update I followed the link and these questions caught my Attention:
how do we keep balance between income and spending of attention? you PAY attention. - what is the full width of an economic transaction? besides money there is also the currency of attention involved. what does the equation look like? VALUE equals a percentage (x) of money PLUS a percentage (100 - x) of attention? - what happens with attention when we scale the economic transaction to infinitely small?
What I would add to what Ron has said is that it is a matter of quality. For example, the spice Saffron. At $72.95 an ounce (28.35 grams), you are paying $2.57 per gram (24 servings) or 10 cents per serving it is an expensive spice that requires a good deal of attention. See: http://saffron.com/cons_guide.html Because of its value both culinary and monetary it attracts it invites you to pay attention and it is used sparingly in most recipes.
So as Ron points out with his equation (100-x) of attention...what I see is that although the quantity of attention may be small or reductionist - it is the quality of the Attention that makes all the difference. It doesn't take much saffron to add infuse its essence into a dish and the experience of in the context of a recipe vs a an actual dish or meal are not the same.
My understanding is that this means we must develop an understanding of really that integrates what we know. If we know objects are not solid but made up of lots of tiny particles, for example, at what point does this understanding get integrated into our general understanding and way of operating? When do we develop social systems that catch up with our science?
Context for understanding the value of SoulFood
* Historically, much of fundamental physics has been concerned with discovering the fundamental particles of nature and the equations which describe their motions and interactions. It now appears that a different programme may be equally important: to discover the ways that nature allows, and prevents, information to be expressed and manipulated, rather than particles to move. For example, the best way to state exactly what can and cannot travel faster than light is to identify information as the speed-limited entity. In quantum mechanics, it is highly significant that the state vector must not contain, whether explicitly or implicitly, more information than can meaningfully be associated with a given system. Among other things this produces the wavefunction symmetry requirements which lead to Bose Einstein and Fermi Dirac statistics, the periodic structure of atoms, and so on.
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The understanding of our operating and management systems must evolve within the larger context of what we know about quarks and leptons.
There are six different types of quarks, known as flavors: up (symbol: u), down (d), charm (c), strange (s), top (t) and bottom (b).
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There are six flavours of leptons, forming three generations.
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Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy is about creating more than what is created and SoulFood is the framework for this paradigm.
Since the rate at which challenges when resisted, will present themselves and so any solution that can not see the big picture.....
If I am one of the drops of water at the crest of a wave - How to warn or help the people beneath?
A connection must be made between the drop of water, which is connected by context of the tidal wave/ocean to all the other drops of water, and the people on land in the path of the impending wave.
That is the potential of Cultural Fusion that is great than the sum of its parts (the artwork projects) but also imbues it with significant added value distinguishing it from previous work in the tradition of installation art.
So now I am considering that I will share the whitepaper with a few people and this blog helps with the conclusion I wanted to revise. Excellent!
With the dismantling of community mental health system and the erosion of personal support networks new alternatives must be devised. Currently I am working cf House of Cards series with that forming a recurring imagery/concept to be confronted. In contrast to the typical approach of assuming only bureaucratic systems can explore and solve these challenges, Cultural Fusion is interested in addressing them in the context of self organization, freedom, personalization, social media/technology, ecology, economics and social evolution via art based research.
The results are multilateral solutions, an art series, that combine visual art (performance, media/software, recycled materials, installations, sculpture, paintings) as well as music and audio. That while operating as art, and community intervention – are also operating as business solutions that promote innovation in economic development.
This is an excerpt explaining our collaborative Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy series as a demonstration of the SoulFood model I have been developing as a Source Artist.
While it advances the idea of “Self Referencing Creativity” it has been inspired by key scholarship in the areas of community mental health. As art imbued with this layered integration it seeks to pioneer new approaches to project/product development and management that promote a culture of peace. While at the business or economic level this is best understood from the perspective meaningful marketing, CRM Strategy and Global Social Responsibility; at the personal - community level it is chiefly as an expressive therapy approach to community intervention/prevention strategy.
This work is distinguished by its policy of Radical Inclusion - integrating mental health, arts and culture, history, economic development, and personal development that goes to the roots of several issues including: domestic violence, poverty, crime, depression, a host of “at risk behaviors”, etc. Rather than seeking to exclude needs, each person is allowed the time to identify and distinguish real needs from perceived ones. Resources and “intangible assets” are valued above lacks or deficits.
One of the primary benefits of this approach is its attention to integrity – starting with the integrity and transparency of the SoulFood:Ingredients included in any given project recipe. Here in this paper attention is on the community mental health model and theories that were the basis of the early inquiry into this work.
In beginning to approach community economic renewal my instinct was to go to the weakest links first – homeless, those needing mental health services, neglected seniors, those living in economic poverty, and the disenfranchised (included the previously incarcerated). The point of Radical Inclusion is that the needs of all sides seeking inclusive expression need to be brought to the table and integrated into the Recipe.
Client engagement is critical, and this is the basis of using interactive high art concepts with multiple components that also operate on the level of a project-based expressive therapy approach as opposed to traditional cognitive therapy to deliver community mental health intervention/prevention programs.
Primary experience, which exists apart from language, is described by language (a representation, or secondary experience). Language is that secondary experience created by verbalizing primary experiences. Verbal psychotherapy, then, is a procedure for the verbal processing of verbal descriptions of events. According to discourse theory, language constructs its own reality rather than corresponding to it.
Among those practitioners who use them for the purpose of representation, action methods generally are regarded as more vivid and memorable and having more impact than verbal methods. Action methods simultaneously engage cognition, affect, and behavior and better engage those clients who process information predominantly in visual and kinesthetic modes. When used as interventions, action methods provide novel ways of altering habitual patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
According to some psychological theories, formative experiences that occurred at a preverbal stage of development can be accessed only by nonverbal methods. Also, there is evidence that traumatic experiences are stored or encoded differently from non-traumatic ones, suggesting that experiential therapies may have the potential to shift traumatic experience in cases in which verbal ones cannot.
“The map is not the territory.” Action methods get clients to venture into the territory of experience, enriching those clients who have come to rely solely on the maps of verbalization. Experiencing these methods provides both a way of discovery in terms other than verbal ones and material that can be juxtaposed with verbally encoded representations. In sum, action methods put verbalizations to the test of experience.
Although psychotherapy will continue to be a verbally mediated process, the inclusion of action methods appears to promote significant clinical change in relatively short periods of time, making them particularly valuable in brief therapy and with populations not very responsive to talk-only therapy.
Why use an empowerment-based model? Empowerment may be defined as a process through which people become strong enough to participate within, share in the control of, and influence events and institutions affecting their lives; in part, empowerment implies that people gain particular skills, knowledge, and sufficient power to influence their lives and the lives of those they care about (Torre, 1985). The process of empowerment is ongoing and involves changes in three dimensions of one’s self: personal, interpersonal, and sociopolitical participation.
The personal (self-perception) dimension involves attitudes, values, and beliefs about self-awareness, self-acceptance, belief in self, self-esteem, and the feeling that one has rights. The interpersonal dimension involves acquisition of knowledge and skills, assertiveness, setting limits on giving, asking for help, problem solving, accessing resources, critical thinking to participate and work with others in networks and systems of mutual aid and education in order to enhance the world they live in. The political dimension involves participation by joining appropriate social organizations, giving back by helping others, making a contribution, voting, writing letters, teach others what is learned, and taking control in generalized areas of one’s life are specific skills that will be cultivated during participation in this fully implemented program.
The underlying assumption of empowerment practice is that clients are generally disempowered through membership in devalued and oppressed groups; that the system of governmental policies and services is a barrier to achieving desired goals; and that learned powerlessness is an attribute of many clients (Albert and Green, 2002). Therefore, practical empowerment attends to power issues and promotes the creation and discovery of personal and group empowerment among clients. Affirmational Psychology a later model I learned of that contributed to the work and let to a few major project collaborations.
It is my hope that in sharing this document that others who have similar interests....working in related areas will contact me. I have finally had a breakthrough in visually connecting this series as it evolves and organizing the huge amount of content I have already generated. In conclusion a few links to key pages in the Development Workspace: Cultural Fusion Futurist This is one of the primary projects - an installation called cf House of Cards Installation i Defining Installation for SoulFood context
The cf House of Cards has continued to evolve. I finally got the sketch of the installation modified and put online as a conceptual drawing. At first I was fussing over details before remembering the concept would be modified for the space it is install in.....as part of the virtual counterpart I am working on a digital piece - my reason for finally learning Flash.
Unfortunately, it is not going quite as I intended. The image above is the overlay layer, the original diagram is being modified to go underneath with the top layer parting, so to speak, to see the diagram text associated with the original cf House of Cards. One of the problems is the rippling water effect I was doing for half of the top layer seems to conflict with the script being used to provide the interactive component for the viewer. Since trying to fix it has finally given me a headache I have taken a break from it.
The on site installation requires a few things I still haven't completely ironed out so I am considering possible collaborations to help address that...namely the augmented reality, software art and 3D VR integration.
One of the things I am really excited about is that the piece integrates information that has value/merit in practical terms but it is transformed by its inclusion in the piece. I am hoping the discussions with potential tech partners will deliver the tools to make the information and content being included usable for the audience.
The installation needs a home so I have wondered about what the smallest size space could be....still not quite sure about that.
Since finishing the first play and starting the next couple - one of which could be Act 2 for the first one....I have been pondering positioning the piece when it is performed.
Since Proposition 8 took the scene I have thought about how my play goes beyond the standard excuse given for supporting a policy of discrimination. That excuse is usually religious in nature (See Proposition 8:The Musical)but what has gotten far less attention is what is really driving church fueled homophobia - I suggest it is rooted in denial, self hatred, and self rejection. I guess that would be a key theme in the play.
I was struck by reports about support for the ban which indicated that:
Proposition 8 draws its heaviest support in Republican strongholds such as the Central Valley and Inland Empire of Southern California, according to recent polls. Its biggest opposition is coming from Democratic bastions such as San Francisco and Los Angeles along the coast.
But two Democratic constituencies -- African-Americans and Latinos -- are leaning toward the ban. Among likely black voters, 58% supported Proposition 8 compared with 38% who opposed it in the most recent Survey USA poll. Among Latinos, 47% supported the proposition while 41% opposed it; white voters were nearly evenly split. The reason, "Yes" officials say, is that church attendance is strong in many minority communities. WSJ.com
In the Huffington Post I found a piece on Rev. Al Sharpton's response that resonated with my own views.
"There is something immoral and sick about using all of that power to not end brutality and poverty, but to break into people's bedrooms and claim that God sent you," Sharpton said bluntly. He made the remarks as the keynote speaker of the Human Rights Ecumenical Service
"It amazes me," he said, "when I looked at California and saw churches that had nothing to say about police brutality, nothing to say when a young black boy was shot while he was wearing police handcuffs, nothing to say when they overturned affirmative action, nothing to say when people were being [relegated] into poverty, yet they were organizing and mobilizing to stop consenting adults from choosing their life partners."
This has all inspired me to look at partnering the Human Rights Campaign or a similar organization to make the play part of an educational outreach that moves beyond PR.
If anyone reading this is interested please contact me to discuss further.
I don't understand people who complain of boredom. I can't recall the last time I was bored but I can tell you it was before I discovered I was an artist. That means prior to 1987 which was around the time I did my first painting "Portrait of a Soul".
I have always believed that only boring people get bored. There is so much to do and so little time that I just don't understand the tendency. If you are sitting doing nothing, then enjoy doing that. There is so much to be inspired by, so much to create that I don't know where there is a place for boredom. With the stuff in life that we "have to do" that the time to do what we want is precious beyond measure. Create more of that and enjoy it more.
The main reason I have several projects in the pipeline at any time is that I try to find a balance between projects that need to get done, and the ones I want to do. Also, if there is a delay with one it's not a problem because I have others to pay attention to until the first situation is sorted. Each at different phases rather than push through them, I move between them as I consider the next step. Because I do keep working on them they do come to completion and I get to check them off the list of works in progress.
At last after three years in the making I have finished writing my first play. I have shared it with a few friends for feedback and will continue to tighten up the dialog. And having completed it I feel that at some point I will write more of them.
I have the start of what will be Act Two of the first play or perhaps a related One Act play on its own. In fact, I have another manuscript from a short story developed for another project that I think would work well adapted into a stage play...there were several angles I was interested in exploring in that piece so this could be one path to do that.
One thing with the first play is that I wish I had found more humor in it so that is something I am looking for on the next read through. It was a piece conceived with malice and birthed through acceptance, rather than forgiveness. After all was said in done what was there to forgive really? Who was I to ask someone to apologize for being who they are or assume I need to forgive them for the same? It wasn't going to change anything and what transpired had provided the inspiration, as well as the initial anger that fueled my start writing the play.
I guess the time is drawing near when I need to be able to tell people what the play is about. Not as easy as it would seem since there is what the play is about (the action carried out by the characters) and what the play is REALLY about (what the characters do, why and what it represents). Those are the kind of details probably only of interest to me :-)
I hope to have this finished soon but in the meantime I will post parts of it to my blogs.
This document emerges from the realization that there is a recipe for capitalizing on the potential of a given situation. Much like cooking there are a lot of consistencies in the process, but what may seem like small differences are actually quite significant in the results produced.
While this is not to debate whether to continue investing in existing system, but to suggest that alternatives get attention. Consider that many of our old systems are based on the needs and thinking of the industrial age. Even in attempting to adapt to the information age, changes were largely superficial and do not reflect the depth of our current knowledge of information or organic systems.
Rather than a debate, this paper invites discussion on and consideration for how to develop structures that integrate more of what we have learned about freedom (creative expression), information and natural systems. This is a strong basis for developing strategies for working with rather than against the flow.
An analysis of seven tropical forests around the world has found that nature encourages species diversity by selecting for less common trees as the trees mature. The landmark study, which was conducted by 33 ecologists from 12 countries and published in the journal Science, conclusively demonstrates that diversity matters and has ecological importance
As an art based approach, the process for creating with attention towards multilateral potentiality that cultivates social capital requires a different world view. It is not based on either or, but and. Existing systems which are cracking at best and crumbling at worse, were not designed to enable inclusion. Inclusion supports diversity.
Another reason to support - explore - invest in Art based research is that Art Embraces Diversity and helps chart unknown terrain about 12:34pm from TweetDeck
To get better results we need to cultivate more original ideas using what is here identified as "self referencing creativity". Again, this is not an either or situation but in addition to what is coming from traditional institutions. Many ideas develop outside of them not by ignorance of the various programs and bureaucratic processes, but because they do not offer the context conducive to their maturation. The very environment they foster is counterproductive in this new paradigm.
It requires less energy to flow with the water moving down stream than to hold that water flow back. This energy expenditure is also expressed in resources required and the efficiency with which they can be applied to the challenge.
Decision makers would be well advised to keep this common sense example in mind when considering why broader and deeper perspectives are needed to make better decisions. For example the self organization phenomena represented by the growth in peer to peer networks gives new insight into the understanding of culture and collaboration. Within these networks there is a wealth of great ideas and the nation/community that benefits will be the one that makes it easiest to advance them. This new approach will actually reduce risk, and this counter intuitive idea needs to be explored because it could actually be the salvation for economic stabilization and renewal.
How can change come if everyone only keeps doing what has been done, with most attention going to how to manage - aka resist change?
Rupert Sheldrake with his work on Morphic Resonance has suggested that biological evolution is connected to habitual patterns of behavior.
In the hypothesis of formative causation, discussed in detail in my (Rupert Sheldrake's) books A NEW SCIENCE OF LIFE and THE PRESENCE OF THE PAST, I propose that memory is inherent in nature. Most of the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.
My interest in evolutionary habits arose when I was engaged in research in developmental biology, and was reinforced by reading Charles Darwin, for whom the habits of organisms were of central importance. As Francis Huxley has pointed out, Darwin’s most famous book could more appropriately have been entitled The Origin of Habits.
That seems to suggest that growth depends on radical departures from those conditioned patterns and management systems intended to maintain them. However movement in the "right" direction can not be assured, but likelihood might increase if action was taken towards healing-wholeness rather than based on merely defensive reaction. Could this be the key to understanding conscious evolution of humanity in the context of daily existence and its challenges?
Sharing rather than competition....collaboration based on understanding and value of contrast - this is the value of the cooking metaphor. The reason the Stone Soup story reverberates in my psyche like a mantra.
Pieces that seem unconnected, in reality converge and fuse to show new possibilities. This piece was inspired by Tom's post about intellectual property.
One of SICU's collaboration partners is File-Reg International Ltd. The company presents an online registration service to prove copyright worldwide with registration servers on different continents.
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From my reply to the above post at SICU Group in SICU ART:
I actually found the philosophy behind the company founder and the service to be inspiring. I have been using it for a few months now and have registered at least a dozen files and concepts so far. I found it easy to use with no learning curve. It started for me a line of inquiry of SoulFood:Ingredient(s) and recipes as intellectual property. I began working on this idea of recipes as the basis of algorithms to be registered and that is what this video is about...and represents documentation of the starting place of this line of inquiry. I would have used the company's logo but I don't have permission for anything like that - but I would love the chance to continue evolving this work in connection with a logo or marketing strategy for file-reg.com. We'll see what happens next because this is only a starting place....
I enjoy the lines of demarcation I find myself compelled to create and then curious about what happens if I selectively wipe them away....
I know I posted this painting previously but since it was inspired by the death of my own father- it is connected.
This morning was scrolling Twitter updates I had missed since my last log in and a post to an article about "Absentee Black Men Fathers in the U.S." grabbed my attention. Reading it I was reminded of something I had written awhile back.
I have been working on a multimedia performance piece to be a collaboration with poet Dawn Green, painter Irena Gapkovska and a dancer and musician still to be determined that is inspired by thoughts that is the stek-jes of this essay.
Once I finish my reply to the post that inspired THIS POST, I will link to it here.
The hyperlinking is quite funny to me as I had to make this post before I could link to it in my reply at Ecademy and I had to post this one before I could finish that post.
The Right to Choose to Think
Thoughts from a Pro-Choice Advocate
Sexuality is a fundamental part of being human and alive. It is powerful, even in its distortion it carves our lives in the same way that flowing water engraves the planet. As we struggle to harness hydropower for its best use, so it is with our sexuality (in the best cases). This is not a result of some philosophical hiatus; it is the effect of day-to-day choices. So is it really so arduous to accept that thinking humans should view their choices around sexuality in a larger context?
Take honor for instance. Honor and its sister Integrity are issues normally presented as side dishes on the buffet of religious dogma, untimely asides to the cornucopia associated with sexual bliss. I often wonder why this happens. Am I the only one who feels these issues are essential to an individual really being attractive enough to be considered sexy? To me, this means going beyond the (dehumanizing) objectification of persons towards (humanizing) evaluation, to place "sexiness" in a holistic framework. How can the presence or absence of the substances which make us really human be regarded as "irrelevant"?
In my own experience with human services, I have witnessed levels of denial that boggle the mind. For me, the cold water in the face has been to see actions, even among health educators specializing in STD/HIV prevention, that totally contradict the prevention-based behaviors they advocate publicly. If love is what you do not what you say, then I hold that the same applies to who you are?and who you will be. Who we are is the result of accumulated choices. The right to choose for women, however, is usually thought of in terms of termination of pregnancy. Yet, the power of freedom to choose can serve us as women, but only if we view it in extended terms. The right to choose needs to begin with a number of fundamental issues that we really think about. This should mean thinking in searching ways about partner selection and thinking about consequences, irrespective of the socially hyped up emphasis on sexuality as being only about "feeling", an emphasis that makes us ignore the effects of sexual stimulation and feeling with regard to, for example, integrity, procreation, or STD transmission.
The right to choose in the sexual arena begins with partner selection, and whether there will be one at all. The reality that between 34-46 million people are living with HIV/AIDS indicates the truth about people's choices, despite what many would claim about how they live and who they are. Globally there were between 4.2-5.8 million people newly infected in 2003, so there are definitely some people to whom what I am discussing here is very relevant.
Among my friends, one of the consistent patterns I have witnessed in their relationships is the total lack of thinking about partner selection, even when offspring was the result. It seems that time and again people settle for less and then wonder why they don't get more. The extreme consequences of disconnecting judgment from sexuality seem so obvious that I am amazed that the patriarchal myths still have so much influence. I blame this largely on the trend of making thinking "unsexy". Commercials, mainstream movies, television, music, and the deluge of input from the Internet are all mission-driven to titillate by employing the most superficial elucidation which, combined with the passive acceptance of the audience, almost invites the spoon feeding of skewed truths. It is an attempt to package sexuality in terms of everything that is superficial, involving only surface seeing, feeling, and experiences.
Ironically, many of the purveyors of pleasure and everything that's supposed to be hedonistic and liberating end up echoing the usual divisions between the "serious" and the non-serious, between thinking and feeling, between thought and pleasure. One of the most obvious manifestations of this has been the elevation of celebrities to demi-gods. Would everyone cease knowing how to dress themselves, without celebrity wardrobes to mimic? Would we stop knowing what it means to have fun, to find and achieve sexual pleasure, without advertising? Would we have no idea of how to relate to each other, or how to choose not to relate, if that is where our sense and instincts lead us? I for one, think we'd all manage just fine. Think how many emotional calamities (romantic and otherwise) could be avoided if issues that are so often defined as "non-sexual" (integrity, honor, political judgment) were a part of the sexual evaluation criteria.
It may seem like an unfashionable thing to talk about, but I will continue to point to this truth?Thinking is sexy. Which makes issues like honor, integrity, and politics sexy, too. All those repressive ideas that pigeonhole human experiences into what is fun and what is staid are actually the heart of the idea that thinking is "unsexy". Waking up to that may make us realize just how much the dominant myths about "pure feeling and pleasure" are based on patriarchal ideas that are far from fashionable.
Originally published in Quiet Mountain Essays; vo.I, no. IX
Just prior to the New Year Ron Wopereis asked me if I could fall in love with 2009;Dawn and Desmond Green invited me to celebrate my experience of life as an amazing creation-life as art. Delighting in the exploration of essential components of conceptual process art related ideas.
If you followed this link because you wanted what you consider "straight forward marketing advice" or resources skip down to the end of this post. 35-50% of sale proceeds go to charitable causes In addition to the early adapters, I have been working with Ron Modro to partner with transitional homeless programs in the States.
I could and will go on about Cultural Fusion as an art based solution to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The purpose of this blog is group content and ideas for pieces I am working on... I plan to use the process to discuss this as an art based solution and touch on some socially significant ideas for further inquiry...pointing to the economic connections. The financial costs of ignoring these social issues is difficult to measure because numbers don't give complete stories. Likewise an emphasis on what has not worked and expecting better results has its own outcome. I invite those that are interested to join us in exploring/developing this one as part of advancing your work.
What kind of year do you want to create?
Increasing the peace, means increasing experiences of abundance.
It begins with each of us as individuals committing to peace within to address the systemic issues that can not be resolved through government legislation or corporate policy alone. Nor is assisted by devotion to woundology
Instead of playing out the victim in distress, how about we become our own heroines and heroes in our story?
If you were your own hero what would you deliver to yourself this year?
My dream for 2009 is to accept a fellowship to develop a plan to spend the next three to five years focusing on research in art based solutions - specifically there application to regional economic development and technology innovation.
That is what I love to pay attention to. All the work I am doing now advances that work but a fellowship would shift the energy in a direction that supports the artistic inquiry.
Installation #1 - inspired by the idea of a source download
Many people study NLP to develop the skills to see the signs anticipating response, but i found much of that could also be experienced through paying attention to attention. One of the great things about the internet is that it is much more conducive to finding people with whom you want to share attention.
This points to a new set of skills required for the new context presented by cyberspace where social networking is expected to grow.
According to the report by Jupiter Research, the total number of people online will climb to 1.8 billion by 2012, encompassing roughly 25 percent of the planet...Overall, the number of users online is predicted to grow by 44 percent in the time period between 2007 and 2012.
This means increase in number of people creating cyberspace, so clearly we need to explore this process from different perspectives. Certainly our historical perspectives are proving inadequate, so the pay off beyond the creative experience is off the charts in terms of satisfaction or rewards.
What needs are being feed in this new environment? One - it provides the space we need to express and find inspiration. While also creating a place to document the discovery of attention based perspectives. The result is that we have a context that supports developing social capital driven authenticity, collaborative ways of thinking and approaching situations.
In this context you succeed by paying attention to your own attention. Learning to distinguish quality attention is vital to understanding the right investment of intangible and physical resources. One result is that we create our own worlds.
What defines a planet, universe, or town in cyberspace?
Blogs then become a place where people interested in your ideas can learn more about them. I see that as a key part of understanding your SoulFood:Ingredient. note to self: use this for space as metaphor for process story
As we move towards open systems one has the choice of resisting by creating laws to criminalize the unwanted behavior to protect closed systems OR developing new systems to address current and emerging challenges capitalizing on open systems.
An open system is a state of a system, in which a system continuously interacts with its environment. Open systems are those that maintain their state and exhibit the characteristics of openness previously mentioned.
Open systems contrast with closed systems. Systems are rarely ever either open or closed but open to some and closed to other influences. [1].
Developing systems to support open systems as expressed through Radical Inclusion and social capital can quite logically be used to create new economic opportunities/activities based on wholly different frameworks.
i find it easier to conceptualize this as art because the pieces that are related, their relationships are clearest to me from that perspective. Then it takes on the ease of mixing scraps metal with fabric made from recycled plastics, clay, paint, a flower from the garden with five leaves from the ground and polymer gel medium
Rather than assume who the right people are, I shall endeavor to find out.
I know many of you reading this will not care less about my artistic inclinations and introspective musings on my art - whether installation, digital works, play, painting, or mixed media experimentation. But I would guess those people would not have read this far.
And if you are reading this because you stumbled upon it looking for marketing resources or edutainment that is not too complicated. Perhaps one of these resources will assist those of you who are new to doing business online and are looking for internet marketing information of the more mainstream variety - see Do you suck at marketing? Free Internet Marketing DVD Website Marketing Strategy
When I first entered the world of knowledge products/services, and internet marketing software I was part of the beta testing for some of Russell Brunson's products which I went on to promote for the social sector looking at how to use the web to generate larger income streams than they were getting from donations and traditional fundraisers.
In studying the needs to develop the support systems and trainings to meet the needs people bring, I realize this information has a great deal of value for people new to this online world or struggling to make sense of it. For example, there are lots of people who don't know what there passion is but they want to start an online business.
People in many sectors are going to have to re-invent themselves and develop new business models to thrive. Combining techniques and resources is a good start. If you are looking at strategies for monetizing your web properties you may find value in these resources.
Look at how you can find new opportunities to meet your needs in ways that also support the best in others.
Perhaps turn your knowledge base and passion into a product or service or find new markets for existing ones. Cultivate a mindset of abundance by paying attention to the value of what you have and how it can be leveraged or harnessed.
In addressing some of the more persistent and costly (financially and socially) challenges I find it is worth looking at how existing resources - professional and personal development - can be made available to those who can most benefit from them. That is a core part of inspiration to commit to Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy to create art with purpose.
Bernard Lietaer talks about the relationship between the money system and sustainability
While there are those within institutions that see the problem, I find there are far less who understand the fundamental issues that are being ignored that will have a dramatic impact on the outcomes expected from current investments of majority of attention and resources.
In Cultural Fusion I find an opportunity to explore a radically different conceptual basis for open system organizations or frameworks. Art based solutions allow a depth and breadth of perspective that does not seem possible (or natural)within knowledge silos or through the lens of judgment.
After I get this sorted out I will move most of it to the comfusion an new Oci Novosti websites.
Instead of telling someone else what they should not do, what would happen if I paid attention to what I was doing? Then it is more natural to be inspired - paying attention without negative emotional charge. And that's an important part of flexibility of perspective.
Had a chance to work on revisions to my play, tentatively called "In Your Own Backyard". One of the big issues now resolved was framing a tawdry drama inspired by my early observations and frustrations developing multifaceted programs to address homelessness/poverty/domestic violence/HIV/AID prevention and interventions within a specific community.
The play explores first the region as community. It is a hot spot for STDs including HIV/AIDS, political corruption, intangible deficits of all kinds and how they translate into a series of events that will redefine community and define a region for decades.
It was inspired by three southern communities ranking first, second and third in the nation for chlamydia and syphilis. After noticing discrepancies in the local numbers for the counties and CDC (center for disease control). Closer attention to what was driving these stats and how a drama
I learned what "community revitalization" really means. It is part of that Orwellian inspired industry of Spin Doctoring, which one refers to the people who manage dialgues. This seems intended to suggest a distance between the the carrying out of a misdeed and spinning of it.
Based on my observations I developed this idea to engage more people in the BIG ISSUES by breaking them down to a scale of impact that people can conceptualize. The time for this to happen is sooner rather than later.
In times of distress - domestic abuses increases. This has never been a good situation but in light of mandatory furloughs for state social intervention agencies and insufficient funding of community based programs - without attention could have increasingly tragic results.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008 :As families confront the impact of the current economic crisis, social service agencies across the US are seeing growing numbers of cases of domestic violence and child abuse. The correlation between financial stress and the growing incidence of such cases is shown in increased calls to hotlines, visits to emergency rooms and the utilization of social services and shelters.
My informal survey from contacts I have in grassroots advocacy report a similar story...shelters are seeing almost daily increases. Considering the numbers falling through the cracks before all this the prospects are troublesome of more being doomed to be cast in invisible shadows. Although no one will say the words, actions and priorities speak quite clearly about what (who) is valued and who is not. For example, what is the message when billions are committed to financial sector bail out due to circumstance they created, and cut backs for those that serve the people impacted? These messages are internalized and to play out to have political, social and economic impact on larger scales.
Looking at my own little sphere of "what can i do?" I am allowing expressions of solutions in the context of seeing what is being dealt with and transformed.
I could write more white papers, articles, research papers but fewer people would digest the information. Therefore the impact would be limited because it would perpetuate an underlying belief about value or rather values.
Tiger Woods A Game
Today Jeremy reminded me of what it takes for Tiger Woods to maintain his A Game. Listen to the show to see what he said about that.
Of course most of us know this intellectually - many of us want it for ourselves. But how many people think of this for people who are considered poor, who have survived being abused, or witnessing abuse overcoming serious odds to break cycles of violence?
It is no secret that these questions are connected to issues of incarceration because a significant number of people in prison could have been diverted with successful intervention providing them with personal development tools alongside opportunities to realize their potential professionally, and express themselves creatively.
I am writing my play as a series of connected stories because I want to explore the complexity of this tangled set of "facts" and observations for example - Consider that at least sometimes privatization of prisons has been used as a perverted kind of economic stimulus and redistricting tool. If we want to reduce crime - increase the peace - -then it is important that we begin to see where the underlying attributes are institutionalized?
Who is considering the long term impact of this kind of thinking? And regardless of what your ideas are about the situation, the reality is that are more people are released from prison we must find way to 1.minimize the damage to children left behind 2. successfully re-integrate them into society if we want to reduce crime and the costs of managing the crisis caused.
Now to be honest as I write this I know it is not an easy thing to learn forgiveness but having dealt with these issues personally I believe the rewards are worth the effort.
It is no small thing to have ones self survive and thrive despite such harsh conditions. When people have been encouraged by something i shared, i feel that i have been given a gift. To avert the worse case scenarios we have to set about the business of creating alternative structures and programs that can support regional collaborations. However, I believe that what a region is will come to be redefined with the evolution of cyberinfrastructure.
BUT what can we learn from people that make it? What is making it?
I am learning to be curious about what others believe before jumping to judgment. Does the need for resistance decrease and does less resistance translate into more efficiency over the longer term. By that i mean might it be worth looking at how personal intervention - focused on those that are already committed and motivated but just need access to resources pay off many times over.
What changes if we make that adjustment in our attitude?
Because much of what has been done will not work in this emerging context- it is important to identify what information to build upon- that which can shift much faster than our organizational dinosaurs, individuals creating the trends in P2P, open source, social enterprise development, employment & social media will command the expected attention.
It is not so much the I that has inspired me as much as the inspired i is observing, expressing and creating. I imagined that this is not apart from the flow that guides the phases of the moon or the path of the clouds.
I in i- had one of those amazing pieces floating into place epiphanies. When we sing/experience the song of our soul there is nothing like it. I used to think of it as My process, now i get it that it is the process.
"When our wounds lead to breakthroughs that connect to the sacred through inspiration - healing is possible & growth is the natural outcome." From: Breaking through woundedness to heal
Hind-sight is 20/20 and so there is nothing quite like the view of staring back for a clearer view.
How strange it might seem to pay attention this thing that can not be seen directly, only evidence of its existence witnessed and document it. Like other invisible forces (gravity) we learn through observation. It is a mistake to think this done only with the mind.
You don't know what you don't know until you know what it is you don't know.
[1/10/2009 11:25:21 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: ok read it [1/10/2009 11:25:35 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: when you are on the dark side of the moon [1/10/2009 11:25:49 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: how would you know which side is dark ? or ... what darkness is? [1/10/2009 11:26:04 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: i believe that life, as we know it, is this dark side [1/10/2009 11:26:10 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: ?
i pause to listen - there is a song that calls for me to find it to allow myself to hear, not just the melody - but the base line, the words - invisible layer of inspirations
together in the holon parts, the rhythms that depend on the pacing of the notes, - rests, pauses, shouts and whispers
sounds that like the wind travel in unseen streams but none of us doubts its flow.
you caught me! looking in your direction i was watching this flow and when it whirled in your direction i couldn't help but pay attention
As a collaborator there is Source:Converge on Attention and Source:Love infused into solution aka technology and cyberinfrastructure the language Merik uses (open source code as language) + community culture =
For reasons i could not explain my attention had been drawn to object oriented programming six or seven years ago. Even then i was trying to figure out how this would support the creation of this cyberinfrastructure of holistic technology.
And so there is this experience of coming full circle within a multi-dimensional reality one sees it is not flat. It is the never ending spiral. I continue to explore this ... It seems to me that these are what I am coming to see as "foundational" concepts - points of reference in terms of paths in the the process.
Pondering the journey to my interest in this piece, I looked back at this one "good bye metamorphosis" . I started it during the summer following the death of my father. It is a digital piece that I intend to explore as a deconstruction series.
The question - after taking it all in and knowing that collaboration was the way - I understood that any hope of peace meant a transformative commitment to living in peace- The question was: "what can i do?" That was the one that pointed my Attention in the direction of the door.
Imagine that your fingers have been slammed in the door. To stop the pain you decide to tie off the lower part of your arm at the elbow to interrupt/stop the flow of attention to the pain. Is that really the best response when you consider the consequences and risk exposures that flow from that choice?
Now what if you allow the attention to move in the direction of the traumatize area? Your Attention would first flow to an awareness of where your hand is now. Before you make a move to heal, you need to first get your hand out of the doorway.
Then you might realize your actual intention had been to open the door and walk through.
Instead of seeing this through the lens of the problem (symptoms) we see from a higher perspective of flow where events and ideas converge to create realities.
This piece was connected to, was the precursor of Home vs. Place of Origin - not in any official genealogy of the work but according to that trail of tears and giggles that lead us to our inspiration....our awareness...and if with the right Attention our expanded consciousness. Our ability to see the interconnectedness of our life experiences and choices is enhanced by our willingness to do so.
Cultural Fusion emerged from the energy of the question "what is peace?" back in 2006 when Ron and I decided to pay attention to this.
On a personal level in what is peace I was grieving the many losses that were commanding my attention at the time. Interestingly, several of the people I engaged in the first couple projects of this work also had someone they had lost that they felt moved to express a tribute to through some clarity in life direction.
For me, it was the death of my Grandma Lottie (paternal grandmother) that dominated my attention. Recovery from that loss led me to see that I had used my connection to her to connect to my father. For example, I would look at a photo and say I have my Grandma's eyebrows. Well, not until after my father's death did it occur to me when looking at his photo that I had his eyebrows. He had inherited her eyebrows and been the one to pass them on to me, but I refused to see it that way...until I did.
When we started Cultural Fusion it happened because Ron's work with Attention (See: Bilocality and the inner world of attention) helped me start a new phase in the quest to heal my relationship with places of origin. See Bert Hellinger's work here and Ron's Attention Diagram here. As fate would have it Ron and I found we shared an interest in this work and Ron is a trained/experienced representative.
[9:18:37 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: once you see in in the diagram, the whole thing is easy to understand [9:18:57 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: shortage of attention or love on one side, immediately affects the other side, [9:19:14 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: and while attention flows through generations, it affects the next diagram [9:19:30 AM] Ronald Wopereis says: ( = diagram of next generation in bloodline)
To me there is the game and then there is the essence of this paradigm that supports healing. Soul food is depository of Love that flows forward through time to reach across generations.
In what is peace? series part of what I am interested in is reconciling my own conflicts to find deeper levels of peace so that I may contribute that to the world in which I hope to be a part of creating a culture of global peace. In terms of place this started with my concern for Human Rights which is where I cut my teeth in social advocacy with Amnesty International and homeless shelters. In the peace series, I found it was my relationship with the south that called for attention. During a disturbing research trip I was inspired to start "Surviving the South" as part of that leg of the journey.
The most obvious conflict was connected to the concepts explored in Home vs Place of Origin. It is no secret that I am still searching for a place that FEELS like a place you love to love - one I am happy to love as my hometown...a town I can fall in love with. When I find it I will consider that my hometown.
I have been working on a play about this for two years. My relationships to place in many ways mirrored a playing out of women who don't see their pattern of selecting abusive partners. When they first leave there is this sense of living in freedom that has to be discovered before one can really get on with living - thriving instead of surviving.
There is a relationship to this connection to place, the absence of it, an abundance or deficit in social capital ---->in relation to place---> that has an economic impact because it has an economic expression in its component. This expression is more complex than our narrow consumer behavior driven economic analysis would allow one to see.
Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed. - Albert Einstein
In the past it has been easy enough not to pay attention to this less obvious side of economic systems. However as more people are interested in solutions rather than band-aids to what is unfolding, some will start to see the wisdom of kind of art as art based solution research <---> Cultural Fusion Art as Philosophy is an application of Attention:Bilocality knowledge base and SoulFood model. This morning I had my breakthrough!
Breakthrough: Chipping through a wall with no idea how thick it is. The breakthrough is the moment when you can see the light on the other side starting to peek through.
The play is about a woman who returns to live in the town where she was conceived and abused. While we learn about the community we also see how she has used her conscious choosing to transform wounds into triumph - and showing by contrast how genuine encounter with the sacred - transmutes the sinister and the tawdry.
I had been working on revisions to the opening for very close to a year and suddenly this morning I got it! I will share more about that later.
All of this is what I was/am expressing in this Home vs Place of Origin series...and the lesson that led to the video was that I am my own Home.
The breakthroughs today are connected to Cultural Fusion in a profound way. Having made this personal journey through the work where the personal, social and the political are intimately related....What has changed?
The concept for the Cultural Fusion "business website" has finally come together!
In the works associated with Cultural Fusion I have come to see how these sources of inspiration are connected to a wide range of issues and I am inspired that I have these characters and art works through which to express my insights and conclusions.
When our wounds lead to breakthroughs that connect to the sacred through inspiration - healing is possible and growth is the natural outcome.
