Maurice Bennett - supposedly New Zealand's most renowned artist, The Toastman - makes portraits from toast. The portraits require many thousands of slices of bread, toasted to different tones to create skin highlights and shadow. They measure many metres in height and width, and are displayed as billboards or in public spaces, best viewed from a distance. Portraits are of such folks as Elvis, Dame Edna and Mona Lisa, and there are also other artistic and sculpural creations made out of the breakfast staple.
Not sure if Fox has any business testing intelligence, but this is kind of fun.
"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience." -- George Bernard Shaw
"The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap." -- Albert Einstein
[FYI, my posts may bit a bit more sporadic than usual over the next couple of weeks. Holidays, you know. ... Season's greetings everyone!]
Andrew Zolli presents an excellent post over at Z+Blog about the intricate inter-relationship maps (or "conspiracy art") of the late Mark Lombardi. The Brooklyn-based Lombardi is the subject of a retrospective called Global Networks at The Drawing Center in SoHo.
The diagrams (Lombardi called them "Narrative Structures") are beautiful - and reveal the web of influence that ties together Popes and Presidents, terrorists and technocrats, and the remarkable 'natural life' of grand conspiracies. Simultaneously compelling and disturbing, the diagrams reaffirm the true social power of maps in particular, and information architecture in general.
She has a fascinating bio and and an impressive portfolio - the photography of Heidi Hollinger:
Heidi Hollinger is widely credited with having revolutionized political photography in Russia. During her 10-year residence in its great capital city in the 90’s, her “non-iconic� portraits of leading politicians created new ways of revealing the psychology driving personalities. In the process of helping make a photographic revolution she also made herself a Russian celebrity. Her professional exploits and even her personal life are followed by the national media, making her, in the words of the Canadian Ambassador to the Russian Federation Rodney Irwin, “the best-known Canadian in Russia.�
Leaders as Generalists
We need generalist leaders. This is especially true in the context of company management.
Leaders are, ideally, generalists that can understand and handle many different parts of a company. Innovation is dependent on an organization’s ability to regularly access and sift through large volumes of available information, determine which is most important and pertinent and then to apply it to unique situations in new ways. This role – essentially one of direction and delegation – is the province of leaders.
The irony of this of course is that companies naturally specialize and the people working at modern day companies are trained to be specialists, managers. This is where one can really see Lawrence Peter’s Peter Principle in full swing. The great, highly talented specialists get promoted and eventually become mediocre company leaders unable to competently comprehend other essential parts of the organization – including other personality types and working conditions – and the environment in which it operates. People who have been socialized into mechanistic, bureaucratic [specialized] systems are less likely to be comfortable in organic ones. They are used to being told what to do and when to do it and having boundaries marked, expectations set and little change in tasks. Generalist activities like combining numerous sources of knowledge to find (and recognize) general thought are not natural for managers whose expertise is narrowly defined. It is a difficult adjustment for some and a company-stagnating impossibility for others. And those capable of recognizing what it is that they do best will admit as much.
Some of the best managers make the lousiest leaders, and vice versa.
Even in fairly progressive environments where generalists are at the helm, leaders fail to recognize their success too brings with it a potentially harmful characteristic – experience. Over one’s career one gradually moves from the naiveté end of the continuum (where one thinks he/she knows everything), past an optimal balance point and into the experience end (where one thinks he/she knows everything). Both naiveté and experience are valuable in business but too much of either can be harmful. For the seasoned executive, overconfidence in proven techniques fosters a mindset averse to new ideas. “If managers 'believe' their world views are facts rather than sets of assumptions,” says Peter Senge, “they will not be open to challenging these world views. If they lack skills in inquiring into theirs and others’ ways of thinking, they will be limited in experimenting collaboratively with new ways of thinking.”
The point is, generalists are needed to identify specialists and to direct their activities in such a way that benefits the whole project. They are needed as seers of the big picture. This does not mean that generalists are more important or that specialists are unable to self-organize but rather these two groups of workers need each other in order to achieve the best results. It is a team game. To use a sports analogy, the players need the coach as much as the coach needs the players (and they both need the scouts that initially introduce them to each other).
Thinking is a momentary dismissal of irrelevancies. -- R. Buckminster Fuller
...and leadership is a consistent dismissal of irrelevancies (after great care is taken to understand the relevancies). -- Frank Patrick
Nicely put.
The New York Times Magazine has just published its annual Year in Ideas. They're interesting notions with names ranging from The Jules Verne Project to Quiet Parties to Injectible Beauty.
(via IdeaFlow)
IdeaCity announces the impressive first half of presenters for their fifth annual idealist conference.
In its brief history ideaCity has become a celebrated venue where interesting people say important things about the world. The next 'meeting of minds' (to be held 16, 17, 18 June 2004 in Toronto), will once again bring together some of the most fascinating and influential personalities of our time for three days of thought-provoking ideas, memorable performances, stimulating conversations and dazzling social evenings.
What makes ideaCity different from other conferences?
--The conference is not themed or oriented around any one topic, issue or business.
--There are no keynote, breakout, panel or parallel sessions. Everyone is in on the common narrative.
--Scripted speeches read from podiums are verboten.
--There are no Q&A's in the moment. Rather, we elevate schmooze to the level of art during extra long breaks between sessions; and at our legendary parties, which flow freely with outstanding food, drink and connections.
--Speakers and audience alike have described ideaCity as a transformative experience.
In an age that seems to swing wildly between wide-eyed optimism and dire pessimism, perhaps our greatest challenge is to sustain a capacity for idealism. ideaCity is one small effort to establish a forum for the high ground of ideas and idealism.
Hubble sure knows how to impress. Nice slideshow here.
(via iloveeverything)
Pulled straight from Reveries this example of Whirlpool's approach to new markets is a fine model of observational insight and intelligent innovation:
Whirlpool, in America and Europe, is known for high style and prices to match. But when it markets its washing machines in Brazil, India and China, Whirlpool is winning women's hearts with inexpensive appliances that look great too, as reported by Miriam Jordan and Jonathan Karp in The Wall Street Journal. Given that most low-income women in developing countries break their backs wringing out "their shirt and sheets by hand," one would think Whirlpool might simply have served up a stripped-down version of an existing model. But, no: "We had to innovate for the masses," says Marcelo Rodrigues, "Whirlpool's top machine engineer in Latin America."
And innovate they did. First, Whirlpool created "a single-drive system by which clothes are washed and spun without switching gears." That leaves the clothes a bit damper than with a traditional multi-drive, shifting system, but it was "good enough for the target consumers." Based on focus groups, Whirlpool also determined that machines could have a smaller capacity -- because lower income Brazilians do laundry more frequently." That saved some money, too, but Whirlpool didn't stop there. Because "Brazilian housewives like to wash floors underneath furniture and appliances," the machine, called Ideale, was designed "to stand high on four legs." And because they "said they want to see the machine operate ... Whirlpool made a transparent, acrylic lid," that also happens to be cheaper than glass.
Good enough? Not yet. Whirlpool's research also revealed that aesthetics were important because washers are considered status symbols. In China, the looks factor is multiplied because "many families keep appliances in the living room." There's no place else to put them. In Brazil, Whirlpool jazzed up the control panel with bright yellow buttons and blue lettering. They also carefully selected appliance colors based on by-country preferences . Wash cycles were named on a by-country basis, too (in India, the delicate cycle is called the "sari" cycle, for example). What does one of these machines cost? Just $150 to $200 (about half the average cost in the U.S.). So happy are low-income Brazilians to have these machines that some are said to "treat the washer like a member of the family, referring to her as 'my little princess' and my 'little girl,'" for instance. And maybe most important of all, Whirlpool's "people's washers" are expected to make their way to Europe and America. "It's the second wave of globalization," says Nelson Possamai of Whirlpool in Brazil.
Young kids demonstrate a fascinating creativity and honesty in their hand-drawn crayon pictures. The world is presented simply, colourfully and crudely. The same could be said for Jeff Mash's vicious and humourous reviews of these kid's drawings.
Trends tracking is itself in an upward trend. Hunting for the Next Cool in Advertising.
Q. Could you describe some of the major reasons marketers need to have trend watchers?
Mr. Welch: You want to build empathy between your brand and the people you're selling to. If you don't try to tap into how they spend their time, who they are, it's just another brand. If you don't understand the changes they undergo, you can't communicate effectively with them. And it's not necessarily right for every brand, every product, every category. It has to have resonance with the brand and the brand values.
Ms. Lazarus: You're looking for leading-edge trends that will eventually filter into the mainstream in one to two years' time, changing patterns in leisure behavior, holiday destinations, music choices, as well as fashion trends.
Mr. Welch: It's important to look at the periphery, because that's where trends start.
Ultimately, says Kathy, 21st century kids won't need to memorize "all this junk" anyway, because with search engines put "a lot of facts" at their fingertips. More important -- and the key to success -- is "to know how to take all those facts and combine things in new and interesting ways to create solutions. The kids who can," says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, "are going to be the bosses of the future. The people who know only facts are the worker bees."
This great generalist-endorsing quote is about a book by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff titled Einstein Never Used Flash Cards. The book looks at the deficiencies most modern - and especially high-tech or high-memorization - toys have as learning tools for children. They encourage parents and educators to step away from the cult of achievement and toward a more nurturing home life full of imaginative play and love of learning.
(via Reveries)
In a valiant effort against jargon, cliches, legalese and gobbledygook the Plain English Campaign has just announced this year's "Foot in Mouth" award for the most baffling statement by a public figure and "Golden Bull" award for most incomprehensible packaging label. Examples in overdesimplification.