Above
I have been dreaming of mountains.
I have also been playing with digital textures and layering, while dreaming of mountains.
Below
I was feeling extraordinarily BLAH about all the BLAH BLAH BLAH.
I took some photos of old typeface Dry transfers or rub-ons and played with some digital overlay. Lost track of how many I made. BLAH
Created by me on the iPad using Procreate.
Really no theme other than nostalgia, odd personas and Halloween excitement. Created on the iPad using Procreate.
Over the weekend I revisited Why Man Creates, a 1968 animated short documentary, written by Saul Bass and Mayo Simon. The 29 min short, was surprisingly commissioned by Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Company, who requested a film about ideas and the importance of imagination within the company. What they received was a wonderfully creative film about creativity itself.
Wow, stumbled upon this short from 2019 a few weeks back, wish I found it earlier. Written and directed by Morgan Jon Fox- its simply- 9 min of love and hope. Starring Tasha Smith, Charles Malik Whitfield, London Curtis & Owen D. Stone.
Empathy is the ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand or relate as best as you can to how that person feels in the situation. Another response to hearing another person’s problem is to express sympathy. Sympathy is the ability to express ‘culturally acceptable’ condolences to anothers problem, a lot of the time this includes pointing out a "silver lining" in the situation.
Empathy is harder to accomplish for many reasons because our brains are wired to run from pain—including emotional pain—whether it is ours or someone else's. We not only have to actively listen to another person’s problem without judgement but then be honest with ourselves and the the other person about our feelings as a listener. That connection builds bridges that enforce trust and understanding that are healthy and positive for both people. At a later time it may be appropriate to look for meeting needs and building a solution.
Brown points out in this video that empathy rarely starts with the words, "At least..." and that oftentimes, the best response is, "I don't know what to say, but I am really glad you told me." When we feel heard, cared about, and understood, we also feel loved, accepted, and as if we belong. This is the art of meeting basic needs.
In I Thought it Was Just Me (But It Isn't) (2008), Brown references nursing scholar Theresa Wiseman's four attributes of empathy:
To be able to see the world as others see it—This requires putting your own "stuff" aside to see the situation through the eyes of someone else.
To be nonjudgmental—Judgement of another person's situation discounts the experience and is an attempt to protect ourselves from the pain of the situation.
To understand another person’s feelings—We have to be in touch with our own feelings in order to understand someone else's.
To communicate your understanding of that person’s feelings—Rather than saying, "At least you..." or "It could be worse..." it is, "Tell me more about it.”
Brown explains that empathy is a skill that strengthens with practice and encourages people to both give and receive it often. By receiving empathy, not only do we understand how good it feels to be heard and accepted, we also come to better understand the strength and courage it takes to be vulnerable and share that need for empathy in the first place. It is also the starting point of the the problem solving journey, to make something better there needs to be connection to fully understand the root problem.
“Empathy is walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes. Sympathy is being sorry their feet hurt. ”
Empathy Quotient (EQ) questionnaire is designed to measure empathy in adults. The test was developed by Simon Baron-Cohen at ARC (the Autism Research Centre) at the University of Cambridge.
What happens inside when someone looks at you? How long till you look away? Is it frightening, fabulous, or both? When you look into another’s eyes, do you notice yourself judging them or simply being with them?
Eye contact makes us more socially aware and empathetic. It also allows us to make sense of our relationships and social orientation. When we look in another’s eyes, over time we experience an echo in our own body of what the other is needing. This process is automatic, beneath awareness, and is considered an important component of empathy.
According to the communications-analytics company Quantified Impressions , adults make eye contact between 30% and 60% of the time in an average conversation. However, they follow up with saying people should be making eye contact 60% to 70% of the time to create a sense of emotional connection, according to its analysis of 3,000 people speaking to individuals and groups.
I often heard clients complain that their partner did not make enough eye contact, leaving them feeling lonely and disconnected. We all long to be understood, appreciated, and valued. So then, what is the impact on empathy when we decrease our amount of eye contact? There is research showing empathy has plummeted among college students. In another study, cyber bullying decreased when the subjects could see the eyes of the person they might bully on the screen.
Eye contact stimulates our moral brain, which in turn promotes pro-social behavior. Empathy, like other emotions, is highly attuned to visual imagery – the more vivid the imagery, the more likely one is to be empathetic. This translates directly to pro-social behavior: noticable, easy to imagine, and similar victims lead to a greater empathetic response and more altruistic behavior. Meaning, immediate victims with visible needs induce greater empathic responses. (Schelling, 1968; Small & Lowenstein, 2003).
Researchers at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine last year found that patients of doctors who made more eye contact presented with overall better health.
Eye contact is a really good surrogate for where attention is and the level of accord building in a relationship,” said Enid Montague, a professor of engineering and medicine at Northwestern, who used video recordings of 100 patient visits to a primary care clinic for her analysis. “We found eye contact leads to significantly better patient outcomes.
Konrath, Obrien, and Hsing’s research suggests that empathy is the key to maintaining and improving human society. This study suggests that with more Americans living alone than ever and the increased focus on the self, pushed by technology’s turn towards social media, isolation and increased self-focus have helped to diminish upcoming generations’ ability to empathize.
This is because social media puts pressure on the user to edit and correct their self-image to a state of perfection, disrupting the ability to form real, relationships. With impersonal communication like texts, posts and pictures, today’s youth have a limited capacity for real-time conversations, leading to diminished understanding of body language, facial expressions, and the overall read of others. Because they do not know how to form real relationships, their isolation increases. Social media then rewards the isolating behavior with “likes” and other forms of attention that act as a temporary, shallow balm to the user’s loneliness.
The problem with the inability to take others’ perspectives in when utilizing social media and technology is that it limits the scope of communication, or that your words can hurt, you can say something and not understand its impact.
Heirman and Walrave’s study on cyberbullying found that children and teenagers using social media like Facebook and Twitter not only felt that they had impunity because of anonymity, but also that they were unsure of the impact their words had. Subjects indicated that they thought their actions were only a joke, something funny to say or do, or else had simply not given thought to the impact it would have on the victim. Once again, the form of communication had cauterized away human reaction, so the aggressors could not put themselves in the victim’s place, and were uncertain of the impact of their words.
This “empathy deficit,” as President Obama has dubbed the current problem, is creating generations who cannot connect with and support each other. As Konrath points out:
Even though crime has decreased in the last decade over all, violence against the homeless have seen dramatic increases in the last ten years, hate crimes against Hispanics, immigrants, homosexuals, and transgender individuals have increased significantly. All of the victims of these crimes are the stigmatized, the marginalized, and defenseless groups.
Finally, we can and need to rethink social media itself. Microphones, cameras, and other human interface devices make it possible to connect on a more empathetic level from great distances. Incorporating those techniques into social media might, if Konrath, Heirman, and Cohen’s suspicions are correct, turn the tide on empathetically disconnected communication.
Schelling, Thomas C. (1968). The Life You Save May Be Your Own,’’ in S. Chase, ed., Problems in public expenditure analysis. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, pp. 127 –62.
Small, D. A., & Loewenstein, G. (2003). Helping a victim or helping the victim: Altruism and identifiability. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 26(1), 5‐16.
Amnesty International released a video in which they show strangers begin to understand common struggles with the help of eye contact. The refugee crisis is a worldwide issue that effects us all. People disagree about the right path forward for individuals that are often displaced by conflict or economic crisis. In these disagreements what is often missing from the conversation, is empathy.
When talking about the problem of refugees, we use dehumanised language, which reduces human tragedy to numbers and statistics. But this suffering concerns real people, who – just like us - have families, loved ones, friends; their own stories, dreams, goals... Only when you sit down opposite a specific person and look into their eyes, you no longer see an anonymous refugee, one of the migrants, and notice the human before you, just like yourself – loving, suffering, dreaming...
This video is an impactful look at what it means to share in our common humanity. The idea, put forth by psychologist Arthur Aron in his 1997 study, "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness," is that in as little as four minutes of eye contact with a stranger you can develop a bond.
This week I decided to focus my free time on reading. Takeaways: Tech and it’s distraction has increased an ADHD culture. For example, I often put my book down in the middle of a paragraph to avert my eyes to my blank phone screen. Learned Reflexive response🐒
I also found a holdover effect from an increase in reading more digitally. I had to slow my roll and kick start my attention span muscles. For example, I quickly make an assumption and move forward looking to validate. I needed to remind myself to relax and enjoy the journey to grasp the how and why behind the validation. It’s not about the destination but how you get there. And with that, I just put my current book down to post this, but am proud to say I have 3 books under my belt this week. Kudos me.
Janette Sadik-Khan & Seth Solomonow
During her time as New York City’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan oversaw the addition of 400 miles of new bike lanes, helped implement the nation’s largest bike-sharing system, converted 60 plazas into spaces where people could sit and relax, and repurposed 180 acres of asphalt for pedestrian and bike use. None of it was easy—she faced opposition, harsh criticism, and even legal backlash along the way. Written with her longtime colleague, Seth Solomonow—Sadik-Khan tells the story of how she made it happen, offering a roadmap for making cities and neighborhoods safer, more sustainable, and more connected. And she argues this can be done without spending huge sums of money. By emphasizing fast, easy-to-implement, “do-it-yourself” solutions, Sadik-Khan makes the case that being smart and creative—not having access to a hefty budget—is what matters most.
Takeaway: The Importance of having data and statistics to back campaigns & the importance of involving the community in these projects, e.g. in deciding where to place pocket parks, where to draw bicycle lanes.
The importance of planners /designers paying attention to desire lines, “naturally occurring travel patterns that reflect where people naturally want to travel or maneuver. Desire lines are the natural, spontaneous was that people use public space, website, or even often contradicting the way the space was designed.”
Designing for Social Change, is a compact, hands-on guide for graphic designers who want to use their problem-solving skills to help others. Author Andrew Shea presents ten proven strategies for working effectively with community organizations. These strategies can frame the design challenge and create a checklist to keep a project on track. Twenty case studies illustrate how design professionals and students approach unique challenges when working on a social agenda.
Takeaway: Using case studies, it dissects social change projects to then analyze their lessons and create the strategies to start your own successful social design project. Engagement strategies, are broken down to provide a path to funding social design (pro bono work/grants).
David Fougner I am attempting to knit a hammock so....The Manly Art of Knitting was originally published in 1972. This guide to knitting, provides step-by-step instructions, helpful illustrations and fun photographs. Chapters include basics, pattern stitches (garter, stockinette, purl, rib, moss, rise, and basket weave), projects, and problems.
Takeaway: I need big knitting needles.
Longtime activist Cleve Jones has dedicated his life to working with members of the LGBTQ community. He tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that growing up he felt like the only gay person in the world, and felt so isolated as a teenager that he often considered suicide. Then he read about the gay liberation movement in Life magazine and his outlook changed.
"This magazine, in a matter of minutes, revealed to me that there were other people like me," Jones says. "There were a lot of us. We were organizing... There was a community, and there were places we could live safely. And one of those places was called San Francisco."
Jones moved to San Francisco when he was in his early 20s. He marched alongside Milk for gay rights, and when Milk was assassinated in 1978, Jones decided to dedicate his life to the cause. "Meeting Harvey, seeing his death, it fixed my course," he says.
After the AIDS epidemic hit San Francisco, Jones co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and started the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Jones describes his life and his involvement in the gay rights movement in his new memoir, When We Rise. He says it's a story of hardship, but also one of triumph. "I have these memories of great struggle and great pain and great loss, but I also in my lifetime have seen extraordinary progress and amazing change."
Music and memory have a tremendously strong link. Hearing an old song can take you back decades in the blink of an eye. One of my earliest memories is listening to my mothers 8-track cassette of Dolly Partons 1977 Album, Here you come Again. I still have vivid memories of this time in my life due to the recall of memories associated with the music surrounding me.
Me Rocking out to Dolly
Fast forward to when I found myself working with folks who had tramatic brain Injuries (TBI) or organic memory issues, like Dementia or Alzheimers. I found this work to be both challenging and rewarding. I enjoyed sitting back and watching clients and their relationship with music. I witnessed some dramatic personality changes after residents started listening to music either individually or as a group. Once, a man who hadn't uttered a sound to his wife for years suddenly "woke up" when Dusty springfield came on the radio. I was in mid sentence speaking to his wife when he began signing along, while we both watched stunned. His wife reached out and took his hand and it seemed for the first time in a long while, there was a moment of clarity and they fully connected. Dementia patients are still in there, and I always felt my challenge was to find the right trigger back to clarity, even if momentarily.
This leads me to Alive Inside. A documentary that follows social worker Dan Cohen, founder of the nonprofit organization Music & Memory, as he fights against a broken healthcare system to demonstrate music's ability to combat memory loss and restore a deep sense of self to those suffering from it. Music & Memory has taken the idea of music’s connection with our lives and brought it to a new level. Building on the theory that music triggers memories, founder Dan Cohen established a program to get iPods donated to nursing homes to provide music-related therapy to patients suffering from Alzheimer’s or other illnesses that cause dementia.
From the Music & Memory site:
Even for persons with severe dementia, music can tap deep emotional recall. For individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s, memory for things—names, places, facts—is compromised, but memories from our teenage years can be well-preserved.
Favorite music or songs associated with important personal events can trigger memory of lyrics and the experience connected to the music. Beloved music often calms chaotic brain activity and enables the listener to focus on the present moment and regain a connection to others.
Persons with dementia, Parkinson’s and other diseases that damage brain chemistry also reconnect to the world and gain improved quality of life from listening to personal music favorites.
Ongoing research and evaluation of Music & Memory’s work in care organizations shows consistent results:
Participants are happier and more social.
Relationships among staff, participants and family deepen.
Everyone benefits from a calmer, more supportive social environment.
Staff regain valuable time previously lost to behavior management issues.
There is growing evidence that a personalized music program gives professionals one more tool in their effort to reduce reliance on anti-psychotic medications.
A data-driven review by Northwestern University researchers published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience pulls together research from the scientific literature linking musical training to learning that spills over to skills including language, speech, memory, attention and even vocal emotion. The science covered comes from labs all over the world, from scientists of varying scientific philosophies, using a wide range of research methods.
The explosion of research in recent years focusing on the effects of music training on the nervous system, including the studies in the review, have strong implications for education, said Nina Kraus, lead author of the Nature perspective, the Hugh Knowles Professor of Communication Sciences and Neurobiology and director of Northwestern’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory.
Scientists use the term neuroplasticity to describe the brain’s ability to adapt and change as a result of training and experience over the course of a person’s life. The studies covered in the Northwestern review offer a model of neuroplasticity, Kraus said. The research strongly suggests that the neural connections made during musical training also prime the brain for other aspects of human communication.
An active engagement with musical sounds not only enhances neuroplasticity, she said, but also enables the nervous system to provide the stable scaffolding of meaningful patterns so important to learning.
“The brain is unable to process all of the available sensory information from second to second, and thus must selectively enhance what is relevant,” Kraus said. Playing an instrument primes the brain to choose what is relevant in a complex process that may involve reading or remembering a score, timing issues and coordination with other musicians.
“A musician’s brain selectively enhances information-bearing elements in sound,” Kraus said. “In a beautiful interrelationship between sensory and cognitive processes, the nervous system makes associations between complex sounds and what they mean.” The efficient sound-to-meaning connections are important not only for music but for other aspects of communication, she said.
The Nature article reviews literature showing, for example, that musicians are more successful than non-musicians in learning to incorporate sound patterns for a new language into words. Children who are musically trained show stronger neural activation to pitch changes in speech and have a better vocabulary and reading ability than children who did not receive music training.
Also musicians trained to hear sounds embedded in a network of melodies and harmonies are primed to understand speech in a noisy background. They exhibit both enhanced cognitive and sensory abilities that give them a distinct advantage for processing speech in challenging listening environments compared with non-musicians. Children with learning disorders are particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of background noise, according to the article.
“Music training seems to strengthen the same neural processes that often are deficient in individuals with developmental dyslexia or who have difficulty hearing speech in noise.”
Currently what is known about the benefits of music training on sensory processing beyond that involved in musical performance is largely derived from studying those who are fortunate enough to afford such training, Kraus said. The research review, the Northwestern researchers conclude, argues for serious investing of resources in music training in schools accompanied with rigorous examinations of the effects of such instruction on listening, learning, memory, attention and literacy skills.
The Music and the Brain program was developed as a "real world" application of the research linking cognitive ability and music instruction, particularly in young children. In addition to developing a solid curriculum and teaching materials, Music and the Brain set up research to study the effects of the program on students' aptitude in multiple subject areas including reading, spelling, calculation, aquiring English as a second language, and attention.
"Music and the Brain" is an educational program created by Lisha Lercari, an educator on a mission to promote the creative benefits of teaching music to young children. Michelle Miller reports.
Music and the Brain (MATB) is a project of the 42nd St. Development Corp. designed to teach public school students to read and play music through classroom keyboard instruction. Since 1997, more than 275 schools and 400,000 students have benefitted from Music and the Brain training, curriculum and keyboards.
Inspired by neurological research linking music and cognitive development, MATB is the experience of what studies are telling us; When children receive sequential music instruction, it can impact their proficiency in language, reading, math and cognition.
The MATB program is granted to qualifying public schools and includes invaluable teacher training, piano books, keyboards, recordings and rhythm cards for successful classroom piano study. The comprehensive curriculum was designed for all levels, particularly K-5th grade. With participating schools throughout N.Y.C., New Orleans, Ferguson (MO) and beyond, more than 45,000 students receive Music and the Brain lessons each year.
A community-based approach to the development of intergenerational housing cooperatives could teach new lessons on how different age groups can benefit from living together. Examples of intergenerational housing cooperatives where elderly people live together with young adults in order to help each other have existed in most European countries for some years now.
Tiffany Tieu, 26, and Laura Berick, 80, formed an unlikely friendship while living at Judson Manor, a retirement community. Judson Manor houses a select group of music students for no charge in exchange for performing recitals and concerts for the older residents. At Judson Manor, age is just a number.
Intergenerational housing aims at strengthening social cohesion and fighting isolation of elderly people and other vulnerable groups. In particular, an effective management of ageing-related risks through housing can have a positive impact on the cost of healthcare policies and the lifestyle of older people. Intergenerational solidarity should be based on the need to rebuild family-like links at the community level in order to fight isolation, loneliness and vulnerability, while respecting the private life of each individual.
All successful examples of community-based projects I found have external support from local authorities or other public organizations, showing the need for public involvement if this model is to be generalized and potentially used in different socio-economic contexts.
The number of Americans living in multigenerational households — defined, generally, as homes with more than one adult generation — rose to 56.8 million in 2012, or about 18.1 percent of the total population, from 46.6 million, or 15.5 percent of the population in 2007, according to the latest data from Pew Research. By comparison, an estimated 28 million, or 12 percent, lived in such households in 1980.
Eye contact helps humans to build trust and confidence with others, but does this relationship extend to the brands we know and love? To examine the influence of cereal box spokes-characters Cornell Food and Brand Lab Researchers Aner Tal and Brian Wansink, in collaboration with Aviva Musicus, asked two questions:
Do cereal characters make eye contact?
Does eye contact with cereal spokes-characters influence choice?
In this study, we first aimed to show that cereal spokes-characters make eye contact with consumers by measuring the angle of the cereal characters’ eye gaze. This helps to determine if incidental eye contact with children is possible as they walk by. Next, we examined whether or not eye contact influences one’s preference or choice in cereal.
The completed study consisted of 65 cereals in 10 different grocery stores, and found that trust for and connection to a brand are increased when eye contact is established. The researchers came to that conclusion after participants viewed two versions of a Trix cereal box, one in which eye contact was made and one in which it was not. They also found that when the Trix rabbit made eye contact, “brand trust” increased by 16% and “feeling of connection to the brand” rose 28%.
Disclaimer: I love cereal.
The Braille Bricks project, co-founded by the Dorina Nowill Foundation For The Blind, was created with the goal of helping blind children learn to read through play. Each block can be used like a toy by blind and sighted children alike, although for the benefit of the blind children, each block features one Braille letter.
As a child’s vision and motor skills develop, a typical baby begins to incorporate more and more strategies for exploring objects with the hands. Many of these strategies are learned through watching others, but also are developed naturally by just interacting with everything around them: reaching and grasping, banging and batting, putting together and taking apart.
The active use of touch to “seek out and acquire information” has been called “haptic touch.” The “haptic system” has been defined as a distinctive perceptual system, oriented towards discriminating and recognizing objects by handling them as opposed to looking at them. (McLinden & McCall, 2002)
McLinden and McCall also include the following list to show the type of sensory information that can be found by various exploratory procedures we typically use on objects.
Exploratory Procedure (EP)
Lateral motion EP (Rubbing finger across surface of object)-Learn Texture
Pressure EP (squeezing, poking object)-Learn hardness
Static Contact EP (Fingers resting on object surface).-Learn Temperature
Enclosure EP (holding/grasping object)-Learn Shape/Size/Volume
Unsupported holding EP (holding object in hand)-Learn Weights
Contour following EP (tracing along contours of object)-Learn Global shape/outline
When we think about children with blindness and deaf blindness, we can begin to see how important it is to develop haptic ability. Hand use and cognition are tied together. The more capable any child is in their exploration of objects with their hands, the better they are able to formulate concepts that are critical to learning
Developing the sense of touch and good hand use skills are important goals for any child who is blind. The tactile sense often is needed to confirm what the child is seeing or hearing. We must think about the child’s experience of the world and find ways to enhance the use of the child’s tactile sense in all the activities we do.
So far, the São Paulo based organisation has only manufactured enough bricks for 300 students, but through the Creative Commons, they hope more will be made.
The Creative Commons “Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International” license is the second-coolest part of this project. This license makes the design FREE to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format), or adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, even commercial, as long as you distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
More info: braillebricks.com.br
McLinden, M. and McCall, S. (2002). Learning Through Touch: Supporting children with visual impairment and additional difficulties. London: David Fulton Publishers, Ltd. The Chiswick Centre, 414 Chiswick High Road, London W4 5TF. www.fultonpublishers.co.uk.
Stilwel, J.M. and Cermak, S.A. (1995). On the Way to Literacy: early experiences for visually impaired children. Louisville, KY: American Printing for the Blind.
Rochat, P. (1989). “Object manipulation and exploration in 2- to 5-month-old infants”, Developmental Psychology 25, 871-4.
