Valentina Lisitsa: Revolutionary Pianist and Superhuman

More likely than not, anyone who has any sort of passion for music has his or her own favorite artists. As my taste in music, I would like to think, is not limited to a single genre, in the realm of classical music I do in fact have a favorite artist of today's world: Valentina Lisitsa. Born in Kiev, Ukraine, this Russian pianist used YouTube as a platform to offer her passion and talent to those who wanted to watch and listen. 

It should be recognized that she did dedicate her studies to music. Lisitsa was granted admission into the Lysenko Music School for Gifted Children and later studied under Ludmilla Tsvierko at the Kiev Conservatory. However, the classical music world is not one of major popularity in relation to the new, hip music trends. Finding success in the classical music business became more difficult with the industry transforming these artists into commodities of its market. The struggle for pianists to find work led Lisitsa to usually only perform as a substitute for others on their tours. 

She took initiative with her big creative move, and I would add, career launching step, that took place in a world where almost anything is possible: the Internet. 

"There was a transition of me as musician to me as entrepreneur, which they don’t teach you in music school.”

I sincerely love YouTube for its ability to, ever so simply, allow individuals to showcase their talent throughout the world. For that, I must acknowledge Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, the founders of YouTube.

This beautiful technological mechanism was granted another magical video. Lisitsa posted Rachmaninoff’s Etude Op. 39 No. 6, or “Little Red Riding Hood". The immaculate precision and thunderous sound of her key strokes made this video viral.

She exemplifies the components of intellectual skill as defined by Sternberg in his Investment Theory of Creativity. She recognized her skill, found means of promoting herself, and gained success through discovering the manner in which to convey her talent to others. 

Lupart and Sternberg address the importance of the atmosphere in which a creative person acts within. An ideal environment would be supportive and rewarding. Lisitsa found YouTube to provide her with such qualities, at least from the over 130,000 followers subscribed to her channel.  

 The Washington Post has acknowledged her dominance in the classical music world as she has more subscribers than renowned musicians like Yo-yo Ma. This is where I do believe the creative element comes in to play. Valentina Lisitsa has found a way to connect with the people of her times. For her, the mesmerizing music that her finger movements create is the reason people want to watch her videos.

“I think maybe people are very attached to the simple style,” she says. “I’m not dressing up for the videos. I’m not about fashion and don’t care about impressing people with elaborate productions.

I was lucky enough to personally witness the playfulness and discipline of her nature this past week at the Ordway Music Theater in Minnesota as she performed for fans as overtly fascinated with her artistry as I am. Evidently, her repertoire of pieces from Bach, Beethoven, and Liszt (to only name a few) proves the discipline and dedication she carries in order to accomplish such a feat.  Her playfulness comes out through her relationship with the audience. As any fortunate attendee of a piano performance can relate, there are times when one may not be sure when it is appropriate to clap. As Lisitsa had paused to retain her composure for the next  movement in a Beethoven Sonata, claps arose (despite the "inappropriate" timing). Rather than scrutinize the crowd for its actions, she continued playing and the during the next breaks in her pieces, the lovely comedian turned to the crowd with a playful expression to let us know whether or not to clap.

It is difficult to not validate the creative aspect of Valentina's personality and mind. She had to conquer the struggles that follow a multitude of aspiring professional pianists, the threat of evolving music trends in the business of such an industry, and find a way to cultivate her own image to the world of classical music. Thought she may not have provided for a paradigm shift in the classical music world, she has indeed made an impact in the way it affects its listeners.

Not only do I thank her for her contributions but also to the way her music sounds to my ears. Her piano playing has proved to me the possibility for an individual to transcend the world of worries and anxiety through the help of  music so eloquently performed as Valentina Lisitsa has and hopefully will continue to do so. 

Creatively and Compassionately Responding to the Needs of the Homeless

            

 

The Ignatian Spirituality Project originally began in 1998 by Fr. Bill Creed, S.J. as he sought a way to reach the homeless men and women with whom he was working in Chicago.  He began conversations of the ways to share the message and spirituality of St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit order and the personage behind Jesuit universities and Ignatian spirituality, to a larger population, namely the materially and economically disadvantaged in Chicago.   The Jesuits had not previously had a program that solely provided the Spiritual Exercises to men and women experiencing homelessness.  The Ignatian Spirituality Project has grown and developed since it’s inception in 1999, and through the great work of Father Bill and his staff of counselors, retreat leaders, and spiritual directors, the program has touched and changed many lives. 

            The Ignatian Spirituality Project operates under a five-fold approach.  The first and foremost mission of ISP is to provide retreats, spiritual direction, days of reflection to homeless men and women seeking recovery.  These retreats are meant to serve as pathways to recovery for homeless men and women, and recovery means anything from becoming drug-free to finding support and community in their struggle and oftentimes isolation.  The second goal of this “recovery” is to give the retreatants a sense of purpose and meaning as they begin to piece their lives back together.  The Spiritual Exercises are meant for the retreatant to grow in a better understanding of their authentic selves, their relationship with others, and the unique and beautiful love that God has for them.  By recognizing these things about themselves, the retreatants on ISP retreats grow in a new and better understanding of their value as human beings and people loved by God.

            The majority of this five-fold approach (I’m condensing two, three, and four here) consists of properly and effectively structuring these retreats.  The retreats are comprised of men and women currently experiencing homelessness, the team leaders, staff of ISP and often Jesuit Volunteers, and former retreatants who offer witness on retreat.  These retreats are meant to strengthen the bonds between individuals experiencing homelessness as well as to connect them to formerly homeless individuals.   The volunteers in every city are often spiritual directors, have training in Ignatian Spirituality and the Spiritual Exercises, and serve as leaders on the weekend and day retreats.  The “witness” of former retreatants gives a perspective on and a testimony to the power of ISP and the power of the Exercises. 

            Another key aspect of this five-fold approach is the continued expansion of the ISP to cities and communities across the United States. The breadth of ISP has grown from a small organization in Chicago to currently reaching twelve major cities.  The retreat program has spread, as more and more individuals have heard of the deep and meaningful retreat experiences.  The ISP collaborates with communities and other agencies like Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, in their efforts to end homelessness.  These agencies offer ISP great support, as they refer homeless individuals who they work with to the retreats. 

            The greatest part of the ISP is the testimonials of formerly homeless retreat alums.  The stories of success and rehabilitation, as a results of their Ignatian retreats, are heartening and inspiring.  ISP’s belief is that these retreats have a real potential in ending homelessness for their retreatants.   After retreats, individuals often commit to “getting clean” from drug and alcohol abuse and often get jobs, housing, and a better quality of life.  A testimony by Wayne Richard, who is now the senior community organizer at Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, speaks to the truly transformative nature ISP.  Wayne was a homeless man living on the streets of Chicago after abusing drugs and alcohol.  To quote ISP, "he was lost, high, homeless, and desperate."  Then one day he was sitting under a traffic bridge and he found God.  He began to visit a transitional center and was beginning recovery and rehabilitation.  During his time transitioning, he attended an ISP retreat.  He is quoted as saying, "During the retreat I began to examine the continuous presence of God in my life."  Since his first ISP experience in 1999, he has helped lead over 60 retreats for ISP Chicago.  He says he sees "God move men on the retreats to faith and hope."  Wayne is only one of the countless people who had transformative experiences on an ISP retreat.

    Fr. Bill Creed, he had previous experience with these two levels of expertise (working with the homeless and Ignatian Spirituality), utilized his innovation and creativity and a sense of humble compassion to begin the Ignatian Spirituality Project. There is something interesting in looking at creativity from the standpoint of recognizing and responding to a need in a new and interesting way. Never before had someone thought that offering retreats could be a way to end homelessness. This way of thinking, this process of taking ideas and areas of expertise and combining them, is very creative.  And when discussing the realms of domain and field, it is again interesting to look at where Fr. Bill is coming from and where he lies in his ability to enact a paradigm shift of sorts. Being a member of the Jesuits, he was exposed to mentors with strong passions for spirituality and justice work and living in Chicago and working with the materially and economically disadvantaged gave him greater insight into the needs of a specific population and he creatively was able to respond to that need. So, how can loving compassion and Ignatian Spirituality get people off the streets? The creative energy and person within Fr. Bill has been working though that question for close to two decades now. And the work he's done with ISP is pretty amazing. 

You might want to check out: http://www.ignatianspiritualityproject.org/ and http://www.jesuitpartners.org/site/News2?id=7141 

A Brand New Way to Experience Music

Recently at SXSW (South by Southwest, a set of a number of interactive festivals in Austin, TX each year), I heard about Neil Young introducing this new music player, called Pono. Yes, this is the same Neil Young that has been making music since the late 1960's, and he's now trying to bring back the experience of music from the past. In today's day and age, most people are listening to music that is MP3 format, whether through online mediums, playing through their iTunes, or on some handheld device, such as an iPod. Neil Young uses the example of "underwater listening" to try to show the differences across formatting for music. This MP3 format is at the bottom of this metaphorical water, blurred by the murky waters and the fish swimming about. The MP3 music is compressed, which allows for easier sharing and movement of files, but it loses a lot of the highs and lows of the music itself. As we move up from these depths, you reach CDs and eventually you scale up to 192K which is finally above water, where you experience this new relief and and "feel good" listening to the music, as he states. The issue is that things like your iPod or through your internet you can't necessarily listen to this higher level format. That's where the Pono idea comes into the picture.

The Pono player

The idea behind the Pono player is, "a new system that was not a format, had no rules, respected the art, respected what the artist was trying to do and did everything that it could to give you what the artist gave." This player could handle any format of the music, whether it was MP3, 192K, or anywhere in between. There are plenty of barriers, with the player being relatively late to the game as far as music players go, and with streaming as popular as it is today. However, unlike many of the current players, which can play up to about the CD level, the Pono player can play without the digital feedback and filter that some formats include. The idea is that the player can play music just as the artist records it, rather than having to compress the audio file in order to play it.

Neil Young at SXSW speaking about Pono (courtesy of Bob Boilen/NPR)

With his history as a singer/songwriter, it is not a big surprise that Neil Young would look to try to create some way for people to experience the music the way he and other artists have intended. While the issue may not have been one to solve some major problem that faced the industry, after all there are plenty of music players out there, a mix of his past experience led to such an idea. In trying to bridge the gap between what the artist creates and what we as the audience hear, he is trying to look at the whole idea in a new light. He as an individual in the domain of the music industry saw the shift from vinyl to CDs to MP3s, and the decrease in the quality of the music along the way. This music player is a way to try to bring back the true experience of music between artist and the listener, especially in a digital age where most people choose to listen to their music through their iPods or streaming online. While the music player has received rave reviews from the artists themselves, it will remain to be seen if it makes any impact on the music player industry or in the way people look to actually experience their music.

For more information:
The NPR stories where I found out about this can be found here or here.
The website and more information about Pono can be found here.

Whoop Dee Doodle Do

            First it was an idea, then it was a company, and then it was a verb. With over one billion searches a day from 181 countries in 146 different languages, Google has effectively taken over the Internet. Despite incredible efficiency as a search engine as well as a business plan revolutionized for

the twenty-first century, Google offers one unique feature for its users: an effervescent logo that provides historical information about a certain day in a graphically creative and visually pleasing way.

            These artistic logos are called Doodles, and there is a group of thirteen artists and engineers, called the Google Doodle team, that is in charge of choosing the special occasio

ns and creating custom logos.

            Created by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the first Doodle appeared in 1998, which was also the year the company was born. The first one incorporated the logo of an alternative music festival called Burning Man into the Google logo. Brin and Page went to this festival every year, and the Burning Man logo was used to tell users that they were away from the office. The change was so well received that the pair used it again when they were out of the office for Thanksgiving.

            In 1998, Google’s logo change flew in the face of every theory about good business, because the cardinal rule of commercial success is to keep your image consistent. Others in the business world must have laughed at this small Internet company with its foolish founders. However, Brin and Page were some of the first to represent what makes twenty-first century business different from twentieth-century business.

In an interview with TIME magazine, Webmaster Manager Denis Hwang said that Brin and Page didn’t care what the experts said about the changing logo, “Larry and Sergey said, 'Why not? We should have fun with this.' They did it in spite of some resistance within the company."

At this point, changing the logo was not sophisticated or graphically advanced, but today, the Doodle team creates over 300 designs a year. They range from a Van Gough-style look with the letters of “Google” written into one of his famous painting to the word “Google” in Morse Code. Engineers and artists will sometimes work for months on a single design, yet it is only used for 24 hours. However, lead engineer Kris Hom still thinks it is a worthwhile endeavor, saying, 

“my job is to make everyone happy for 10 seconds, everyone on Earth.”

According to The Handbook of Creativity by Mary Ann Collins and Teresa M. Amabile, “there is considerable anecdotal and empirical evidence that creative production does require a high level of motivation.” In class, we talked about intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation. The Google Doodle team displays high levels of intrinsic motivation because they do not receive high external rewards for increased creativity. Later in the “Motivation” chapter of Handbook, Collins and Amabile say, “creativity is motivated by the enjoyment and satisfaction that a person derives from engaging in the creative activity.”

This view seems to be in line with the opinions of the Doodle team. In March of 2012, the Google company released a video of several interviews with Doodle team members. One member recounted the external struggles he faced in art school. He said that people told him art school was foolish and he wouldn’t be able to make a living doing art. However, he now works for one of the most influential companies in the world. During that early time, though, he needed to rely on intrinsic motivation to keep going. He was not being externally rewarded for his hard work and creativity, so the intrinsic rewards had increased importance.

In Howard Gardner’s Creating Minds, he describes a person’s creativity as a triangle of the individual themselves, the domain in which they work, and the field of others working in the same business.

The Google Doodlers themselves display visual-spatial intelligence as well as interpersonal intelligence in that they work as a team to create these images. Additionally, several members of the team are engineers, meaning that they possess logical-mathematical intelligence as well.

Doodle team members are generally young, most in their twenties. This is significant for the flow of creativity. Young, ambitious artists are eager to share their ideas as opposed to older workers who may have grown complacent. Like the TED talk we watched in class from the IDEO founder, these young workers still display childlike qualities such as divergent thinking and constant questioning that aid in creativity. In Creating Minds, Gardner also stresses the childlike nature of the creative geniuses he has studied.

In terms of the domain of website logos, the paradigm shifted when Brin and Page initially decided to change the logo. The Doodle team continued to move the paradigm of creative logos when they added animations and games, making the logos interactive. This past Valentine’s Day, the logo featured hearts that told real-life stories. Personally, I had never before seen anything like that in a website logo. Google is the first company to use a changing logo and is constantly pushing the envelope of that field.

Domain shifts are also described as “Big C” creativity, which is what Brin and Page’s changing logo is. However, the Doodle team is not changing the paradigm with their every-day designs. Instead, this creativity is what James Kaufman and Ronald Beghetto describe as “Pro-c,” or creativity more directly linked to careers in creative fields. Pro-c can lead to Big-C creativity (i.e. interactive logos) or stasis creativity (i.e. creating the same types of logos that are creative but not groundbreaking).

The final corner of the triangle is the online community that sees the logos. These people comprise the “field” that shapes the Doodle team’s creativity. One specific example of the field influencing the designers is the logo from April 25, 2003 that was celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the discovery of DNA. The DNA double-helix was incorrect, and almost immediately, emails from scientists all over the world flooded Google’s inboxes informing them of the mistake.

In the same TIME interview, Hwang stressed the huge amount of research behind every logo. One time, he took some artistic license on a portrayal of a Frank Lloyd Wright building, which alarmed architects around the world. “I felt so bad,” he said of the incident. “We don't want to mislead the public. Every time you do one of these, you learn something."

Renowned psychologist Robert Sternberg also stresses the environment’s affect on creativity, stating, “Creativity may be viewed as taking place in the interaction between a person an the person’s environment.” The Doodle team uses the world around them, both past and present, to make their creations. Most are celebrations of anniversaries, but others are reactions to current events. Around the

time of the Sochi Olympics, the logo displayed the rainbow colors of the LGBTQA movement in a stance against Russia’s anti-LGBTQA laws.

The Google Doodle team encompasses all three corners of Gardner’s triangle as well as Collins’ and Amabile’s motivation theory. Their creativity is seen be nearly everyone with an Internet connection, and their creations have touched the lives of many. So if you’re having a rough day or are in search of interesting information about this day in history, maybe just Google it.