April 13, 2011

Positive Sign #9 & 10

by Christine Wong Yap

Positive Signs is a weekly series of interpretive diagrams, quotes, and speculations on creativity, optimism* and the lives of artists, published every Wednesday through June.

Christine Wong Yap, Positive Sign #9 (Creative Tasks and Distraction), 2011, glitter and neon pen with iridescent foil print on gridded vellum, 8.5 x 11 in / 21.5 x 28 cm. vertical axis: ambitiousness of task. horizontal axis: time and effort. flow pierces distractions as task becomes more ambitious and time and effort increase, though distractions interfere flow at highest levels. The less well-defined the problem, the more ambitious it is. The more ambitious the task, the longer it takes to lose oneself in it, and the easier it is to get distracted. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi.

Christine Wong Yap, Positive Sign #9 (Creative Tasks and Distraction), 2011, glitter and neon pen with iridescent foil print on gridded vellum, 8.5 x 11 in / 21.5 x 28 cm.

Christine Wong Yap, Positive Sign #10 (Ambitiousness and Praxis), 2011, glitter and neon pen on gridded vellum, 8.5 x 11 in / 21.5 x 28 cm. vertical axis: ambitiousness of task. two columns. first column: practice; from mindless production or mixing and matching form and content to problem-solving and insightful elaboration, to generating worthwhile ideas, to developing advanced, ambitious projects. column 2: theory; from rejecting discourse, or letting your art speak for itself, to reading theory, to understanding theory, to participating in discourse, to synthesizing discourse. both theory and practice converge to praxis. It is easy when you have an idea to work on. The hard part is finding your problem. Freeman Dyson, quoted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Christine Wong Yap, Positive Sign #10 (Ambitiousness and Praxis), 2011, glitter and neon pen on gridded vellum, 8.5 x 11 in / 21.5 x 28 cm.

*Notwithstanding brief forays into the nature of space, stuff, experience, and cognition.

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Next Wednesday: Positive Signs #11, 12 & 13 on optimists and pessimists.
See all Positive Signs to date.

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