Ralph Ammer
Don't think big
An Article by Ralph AmmerOne of the biggest mistakes you can make in your creative project is to pick a topic which is too big. Big topics often lead to small results, small topics foster great results.
And here is why: Your project is limited by the time and energy you have.
These are the boundaries of your project. If you pick a huge topic then there is not much room for your creative efforts. On the other hand, if you pick a small topic you have time and energy to make a great creative contribution.
Is perfection boring?
An Article by Ralph AmmerWe love to see the process, not just the result. The imperfections in your work can be beautiful if they show your struggle for perfection, not a lack of care.
Now I get it
An Article by Ralph AmmerTo design a system means to orchestrate the interplay of its elements.
Such a system is considered “interactive” if it is open, which means that there are ways to engage with the processes that are happening inside of it. There is of course a range of interactivities which spans from very basic reactive behaviour to highly complex conversational interactions.
But what do you want to say?
An Article by Ralph AmmerPablo Picasso famously said:
“The world doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”
A sensible approach to something that can’t be explained is to express it.
Rather than giving you explanations or “saying something”, most artists are concerned with what I like to call “room for interpretation”. They create platforms that trigger thoughts, feelings, emotions, and ideas.
Instead of trying to explain the inexplicable artists express their view of it. They don’t want to tell you what to think, they invite you to respond.
A lightbulb is not an idea
An Article by Ralph AmmerWith conventional placeholders, such as words, we can describe patterns for a large number of situations. On the other hand it is easy to fool yourself (and others) with words, since you can avoid to be specific. Any business meeting can confirm this.
When you draw something you are forced to be specific — and honest.
Our illustration of an “idea” from above is unconventional in the sense that it conveys specific original thoughts of what an idea is. It adds value to the words.
And that is the catch: The drawing must be unconventional to support the conventional words. We have to make sure not to use “words in disguise”. Take a common illustration for “idea” for example, which haunts flip charts all over the world: the lightbulb.
The lightbulb image works on a purely symbolic level, it only replaces the word “idea”. This image of a household item contains no original thought about what an idea is. While symbols like these work well as international replacements for words or icons to indicate a light switch for instance, they convey no nutritional value as illustrations — they are empty.
Wittgenstein's Mistress
- I think very well of him indeed
- A perfect circle
- The Eiffel Tower
- Ceci n'est pas une pipe
- Erased de Kooning Drawing
I think very well of him indeed
When I was still doubtful as to his ability, I asked G.E. Moore for his opinion. Moore replied, ‘I think very well of him indeed.’ When I enquired the reason for his opinion, he said that it was because Wittgenstein was the only man who looked puzzled at his lectures. — Bertrand Russell
A perfect circle
Once, being asked to submit a sample of his work, what Giotto submitted was a circle.
Well, the point being that it was a perfect circle.
And that Giotto had painted it freehand.The Eiffel Tower
When the sun had gotten to the angle from which Phidias had taken his perspective, the Parthenon almost seemed to glow.
Actually, the best time to see that is generally also at four o’clock.
Doubtless the taverns from which one could see that did better business than the taverns from which one could not, in fact, even though they were all in the same street.
Unless of course the latter were patronized by people who had lived in Athens long enough to have gotten tired of seeing it.
Such things can happen. As in the case of Guy de Maupassant, who ate his lunch every day at the Eiffel Tower.
Well, the point being that this was the only place in Paris from which he did not have to look at it.Ceci n'est pas une pipe
There is nobody at the window in the painting of the house, by the way.
I have now concluded that what I believed to be a person is a shadow.
If it is not a shadow, it is perhaps a curtain.
As a matter of fact it could actually be nothing more than an attempt to imply depths, within the room.
Although in a manner of speaking all that is really in the window is burnt sienna pigment. And some yellow ochre.
In fact there is no window either, in that same manner of speaking, but only shape.
So that any few speculations I have made about the person at the window would therefore now appear to be rendered meaningless, obviously.
Unless of course I subsequently become convinced that there is somebody at the window all over again.
I have put that badly.Erased de Kooning Drawing
Once, Robert Rauschenberg erased most of a drawing by Willem de Kooning, and then named it Erased de Kooning Drawing.
I am in no way certain what this is connected to either, but I suspect it is connected to more than I once believed it to be connected to.
The cat
The cat I began to think about instead was the cat outside of the broken window in the room next to this one, at which the tape frequently scratches when there is a breeze.
Which is to say that I was not actually thinking about a cat either, there being no cat except insofar as the sound of the scratching reminds me of one.As there was, or is, no person at the window in the painting of this house.
It is still a house
Perhaps even the very house which I burned to the ground contained such examples, even though it would obviously not contain them any longer, no longer being a house.
Well, it is still a house.
Even if there is not remarkably much left of it, I am still prone to think of it as a house when I pass it in taking my walks.
There is the house I burned to the ground, I might think. Or, soon I will be coming to the house that I burned to the ground.The image of reality
Leonardo wrote in his notebooks backwards, from right to left, so that they had to be held up to a mirror to be read.
In a manner of speaking, the image of Leonardo’s notebooks would be more real than the notebooks themselves.Equidistance
Once, in the Rijksmuseum, I brought in new speakers for my phonograph. What the directions told me to do was make certain that the two speakers were equidistant from each other.
One certainly had to wonder what the person who wrote the instructions could have believed he meant by that.A strange calligraphy
Along the sand there will be frisky shadows, that will dance and fall away.
Or, if there is snow, the flames will write a strange calligraphy against the whiteness.Van Gogh
One of the things people generally admired about Van Gogh, even though they were not always aware of it, was the way he could make even a chair seem to have anxiety in it. Or a pair of boots.
The meaning of music
Once, somebody asked Robert Schumann to explain the meaning of a certain piece of music he had just played on the piano.
What Robert Schumann did was sit back down at the piano and play the piece of music again.
Good morning, Vincent
Perhaps I shall name the cat that scratches at my broken window Van Gogh.
Or Vincent.
One does not name a piece of tape, however.
There is the piece of tape, scratching at my window. There is Vincent, scratching at my window.Good morning, Vincent.
The illusion of anxiety
Or because of hormones.
And so which would not really have been anxiety at all, but only an illusion.
Even if one would certainly be hard put to explain the difference between an illusion of anxiety and anxiety itself.Somebody is living on this beach
Once, I had a dream of fame.
Generally, even then I was lonely.
To the castle, a sign must have said.
Somebody is living on this beach.