Recognizability of Individual Creative Style Within and Across Domains: Preliminary Studies

It is hypothesized that creativity arises from the self-mending capacity of an internal model of the world, or worldview. The uniquely honed worldview of a creative individual results in a distinctive style that is recognizable within and across domains. It is further hypothesized that creativity is domaingeneral in the sense that there exist multiple avenues by which the distinctiveness of one’s worldview can be expressed. These hypotheses were tested using art students and creative writing students. Art students guessed significantly above chance both which painting was done by which of five famous artists, and which artwork was done by which of their peers. Similarly, creative writing students guessed significantly above chance both which passage was written by which of five famous writers, and which passage was written by which of their peers. These findings support the hypothesis that creative style is recognizable. Moreover, creative writing students guessed significantly above chance which of their peers produced particular works of art, supporting the hypothesis that creative style is recognizable not just within but across domains

Commentary: Both/And: A Response to De(fence)/Defense

In this paper we introduce non-dualism and begin by answering the questions posed by the editors of this journal. We address the theme of de(fence) and propose a paradigmatic shift. For many years, art teachers have advocated tirelessly in defense of the field, fighting for funding and legitimacy in an educational landscape that prioritizes other subjects. While the reaction to fight is appropriate, art reveals another way. It aids us in our task of living in the liminal, and it gives us the chance to suspend our judgments and forego meaning in favor of experience. Art can help us transition from the dual mind to a non-dualistic awareness. When we experience art as it is, we stop seeing differences and start to see connections

New Deal Art: California

Traditionally, the years of the New Deal projects have been treated as a part of the Depression experience with an emphasis on their economic and social dimensions. Until recently, sporadic interest in the art of the period has usually focused on individual artists, not general movements in the art of the time. This has been particularly true in the western states. The purpose of the New Deal Art: California exhibition was to create an overview of the New Deal art projects by bringing together examples of art from the federal art programs in California. New Deal Art: California came about as the result of a chance remark made, by Dr. Francis V. O\u27Connor, Art Historical Consultant, on his first trip to the de Saisset Art Gallery and Museum in 1971. The original exploratory research he did revealed a wealth of information about California\u27s contribution to the Works Progress Administration\u27s Federal Art Project and the Treasury Programs. Dr. O\u27Connor\u27s initial work helped provide the foundation for two years of subsequent research into the historical and aesthetic climate that gave birth to New ,Deal Art in California. The results of our explorations, in both quantity and quality of resources, has far exceeded our original expectations.https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/faculty_books/1367/thumbnail.jp

Wandering intellect, intuition and chance in architecture

Improvisation is the art of fabrication with what is at hand. It fosters spontaneous decisions, but it is not random. It becomes a spiritual wandering of intuitive, intellectual, and chance components. Improvisation happens in the process of making art and architecture, and is experienced by wandering through the process using rational, intuitive, and chance components. This phenomenon is expressed in architecture, Abstract Expressionism, and jazz improvisation. These art forms are a synthesis of intellect, intuition, and chance based on culture, environment and memory, which reconstruct our place in the world. Heidegger and Piaget provide the philosophical foundation for this argument. Architecture engages these issues and is a vivid reflection and expression of our environment. The art forms of jazz improvisation and abstract expressionism also exhibit aspects of wandering and gathering. Classical and Avant-Garde literary sources will be used in support of wandering through the intellect by intuition and chance. Through wandering, such as Odysseus in Homer's epic, one's place in in the world is found

A Hierarchical Bayesian Model of Pitch Framing

Since the advent of high-resolution pitch tracking data (PITCHf/x), many in the sabermetrics community have attempted to quantify a Major League Baseball catcher's ability to "frame" a pitch (i.e. increase the chance that a pitch is called as a strike). Especially in the last three years, there has been an explosion of interest in the "art of pitch framing" in the popular press as well as signs that teams are considering framing when making roster decisions. We introduce a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate each umpire's probability of calling a strike, adjusting for pitch participants, pitch location, and contextual information like the count. Using our model, we can estimate each catcher's effect on an umpire's chance of calling a strike.We are then able to translate these estimated effects into average runs saved across a season. We also introduce a new metric, analogous to Jensen, Shirley, and Wyner's Spatially Aggregate Fielding Evaluation metric, which provides a more honest assessment of the impact of framing

Aleatoricism and the Anthropocene: Narrowing the divide between humanity and nature through chance-based art research

An important aspect of art is that it functions as a dialogical platform for the cultivation of ecological thought. In this thesis, I explore ways in which discourses on the Anthropocene can emerge through art that involves chance-based collaborations between humans and plants. As a case study, I examine selected works from American avant-garde composer John Cage, who used chance operations to construct musical compositions. Through his use of non-traditional plant-based instruments and the I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination text, Cage turned his attention to the inseparability of humanity and nature. I explore parallels between Cage’s approach and bio-sonification, a process of turning the biological rhythms of living entities into sound, which I use as a generative device to create aleatoric virtual piano compositions from plants’ electrical signals. Chance-based mechanisms in art production and approaches to environmental philosophy form the theoretical foundation for the arguments presented. This practice-based work explores the multitextured ecologies that human and non-human lifeforms are enmeshed within. It suggests that by challenging anthropocentric assumptions, ecologically engaged sound composition has the potential to generate discourses on the Anthropocene. Art about the Anthropocene can liberate us from a dichotomy of nature and culture, which facilitates the desecration of the natural world through unsustainable environmental practices that threaten the viability of life on Earth. Keywords bio-sonification, MIDI, indeterminism, chance-based art, ecological thought, practice-based, aleatoric music, generative art, John Cage, Anthropocen

Wurdi Youang: an Australian Aboriginal stone arrangement with possible solar indications

Wurdi Youang is an egg-shaped Aboriginal stone arrangement in Victoria, Australia. Here we present a new survey of the site, and show that its major axis is aligned within a few degrees of east-west. We confirm a previous hypothesis that it contains alignments to the position on the horizon of the setting sun at the equinox and the solstices, and show that two independent sets of indicators are aligned in these directions. We show that these alignments are unlikely to have arisen by chance, and instead the builders of this stone arrangement appear to have deliberately aligned the site on astronomically significant positions.Comment: Accepted by Rock Art Researc

The reversibility of art, Lucretius, gravity and Semâ Bekirovic's How to stop falling

This paper reflects on art works recently displayed in an exhibition in the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, Ireland, in 2011. In particular it focuses on Semâ Bekirovic's video art work How to Stop Falling, in order to expand upon a theory of art s reversibility. The paper uses the work of the Roman philosopher Lucretius, along with Jacques Derrida s deconstructive encounter with Lucretius in his essay Mes chances/My chances, to meditate on art s resistance to the entropic logic of the natural world. The paper also employs Lucretius alongside modern scientific understandings of the cosmos to reflect on Bekirovic's and others engagement with the very idea or in fact ideas of gravity. As part of this meditation on reversibility, the paper foregrounds issues concerning the relationship between nature, art and the idea of chance. Lucretius's atomistic philosophy, with its concept of the clinamen, emphasises chance in ways which Derrida has shown are particularly congruent with deconstruction, and with these contexts in mind this paper attempts to explore ways in which art seeks to frame the essential aleatory nature of realit

Creativity as a Lifeline: connection through witnessing

The weekly Accountability Art Project was the product of a chance meeting at an art exhibit to honor Doris Arrington, the founder of the art therapy department at Notre Dame de Namur University. The conversation revealed a common theme that each of us were noticing – a lack of personal art making. The project began as accountability art: a pledge, between three art therapists, to complete one piece of art per week