A presentation for Visual Thinking Class, Spring 2014.

1. Flow states + the
general theory of creativity
Concept: Shades of Gray, Tone-Value Scales
People: Charles & Ray Eames, Max Ernst
Places: The Guggenheim Museums

2. Charles & Ray Eames

3. Inventors of Multimedia
✤
CHARLES + RAY
✤
Innovative / Interactive museum design.
✤
Experimental use of film to convey information.
✤
Modernist Architecture
✤
Pioneers of mid-century furniture design and manufacturing.

4. Eames exhibition

5. Innovative
filmmakers

6. products that
serve the world

7. Masters of mid-century furniture
design and manufacturing

8. Architects the first building they designed was a
HIT!

9. Being good at
this...
Could help you
create
this...

10. Zaha Hadid - overcoming obstacles
✤
Born in Iraq.
✤
First woman to win the
Pritzker Prize.
✤
Architecture is still ‘a man’s
world.’
✤
Style is radical and futuristic.

12. Peggy - the poor Guggenheim

13. Peggy’s house + museum Venice, Italy
✤
“A painting a day” -began to collect in
Paris, just as the Nazi’s were about to
invade.
✤
Friend & patron of Ernst, Picasso,
Brancusi, Pollock, Miro, Magritte,
Kandinsky, Calder, etc., etc.
✤
Bought an unfinished Venetian palace
in 1949.
✤
The last Venetian to have a private
gondola, gondolier.

14. Solomon Guggenheim NYC
1959
FLW

15. Other Guggenheims...
Berlin (closed 2012)
Las Vegas (closed 2008)
Not completed: Salzburg, Tokyo,
Rio de Janeiro, Guadalajara,
Taiwan, Helsinki, Lithuania.
✤
Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain
- Frank Gehry
✤
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
(starts in 2017)

16. Flow States - Mihaly C.
✤
A euphoric sense that we are ‘in
the groove.’
✤
We’ve all experienced ‘flow
states.’
✤
Expressing ourselves and
coming up with solutions to
problems happens effortlessly.
flowing water is a
perfect metaphor
for the creative
state of mind

17. When did you last experience ‘flow?’
✤
What area of life was your flow centered on?
✤
Relationships, business, learning, spiritual, adventure,
helping others, artistic expression, or ______.

19. “A joyful life is an individual
creation that cannot be
copied from a recipe.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

20. “Most enjoyable activities are not
natural; they demand an effort that
initially one is reluctant to make. But
once the interaction starts to provide
feedback to the person's skills, it usually
begins to be intrinsically rewarding.”

21. INTRINSIC VS EXTRINSIC
Motivated employees play a crucial role in
creating a company’s sustainable competitive
advantage. Successful ‘Management by
Motivation’ shows that in a knowledge-based
society, this goal cannot be achieved by extrinsic
motivation alone. Pay for performance often even
hurts because it crowds out intrinsic motivation.
To succeed, companies have to find ways of
fostering and sustaining intrinsic motivation.

22. What things are you intrinsically motivated to do?
Now
what
?

23. Allowing for a little uncertainty, focusing on
what you dream of doing, before committing
to action, can lead to greater success and
satisfaction in the long run.

24. “To overcome the anxieties and
depressions of contemporary life,
individuals must become independent of
the social environment to the degree that
they no longer respond exclusively in terms
of its rewards and punishments. To achieve
such autonomy, a person has to learn to
provide rewards to herself. She has to
develop the ability to find enjoyment and
purpose regardless of external
circumstances.”

25. Draw a tone-value scale
✤
Graphite
✤
Ten even steps.
✤
No smudging.

26. Frottage Value-scale
✤
Tear one inch strips from
rubbings that are NOT part of
your series.
✤
Arrange from light to dark.
✤
Paste together.