The Beauty in Nature: Andy Goldsworthy’s Creative Muse

  

Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist known for his brilliant intersection of nature and art. He only uses materials he finds outside to create his works and leaves them there to degrade naturally when he is finished, thus imbuing an element of time-sensitivity. Using leaves, branches, stones, and ice, Goldsworthy spends hours at a time meticulously arranging these items to create visual illusions that dazzle the viewer. This show of incredible patience is one of the reasons his art is so interesting to me— he organizes and floats leaf formations in small ponds, orders sticks to create portal-looking structures, and carves ice into tunnels; seemingly for no reason. Nature is inherently imperfect, but Goldsworthy is able to see the patters and perfection through the chaos.

Andy Goldsworthy’s art charms me in a unique way. As a fellow devout lover of nature, I appreciate tremendously his attention to earthly details, dedication to art that does no harm, and advocacy for environmentalism. The next time I find myself walking through a forest or by Lake Michigan, I’ll think about how Andy Goldsworthy sees beauty in ways no one else does.

In addition to an incredible sense for pattern creation, Andy Goldsworthy also possesses a masterful power over color. He creates almost unreal gradients that pull the viewers eyes towards the center, captivating them in his work. Since he photographs all of his own work, some have speculated that he uses photoshop to create such brilliant effects, but alas, it is all real and all very beautiful.

Having grown up in an agricultural family, Goldsworthy has always felt particularly close to nature, and creating his art with it is a way for him to connect on a deeper level with the Earth he loves so much. Additionally, he is an avid environmentalist and uses his works to bring focus off of the everyday drab of buildings and cities, and back onto nature, reminding us all of its natural beauty and the need to preserve our planet’s ecosystems.

I see a resemblance between Andy Goldsworthy and Frank Gehry in the sense that they are both creatives that work at a crossroads: Andy at the crossroad of environmentalism and art, and Frank at the crossroad of Architecture and art. They also both work in abstract mediums and find a bit of childhood reflection in their work—a life in nature, and a creative boy who made cities from wood blocks. Both Gehry and Goldsworthy but create an art for the adult world that invokes a sense of childlike wonder—buildings with curves and canopies that feel like a fun house to be in, and trees in the forest with leaves arranged to make it appear like it’s base is glowing in a video game.

From Page to Screen to Page Again: Hannah Azerang’s Reading Journey

“I do not know how to describe this story except a story about stories. It is a book about stories and how stories affect us and what they mean to us. And how they can shape people and years and dreams and nightmares. And that’s the only way I know how to tell you what this book is about. You just have to read it.”

This is an excerpt from Hannah Azerang’s review of her favorite book read in 2021, The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. It is a book review like this - simple, captivating, and full of heart - that inspires me to pick up a novel. (I promptly placed a digital hold at the Chicago Public Library for The Starless Sea after reading this review). A recurring theme in Azerang’s book review is this desire to maintain the mystery and whimsy of books by not giving too much away - instead, she focuses on her emotions towards the book and the themes that arose for her. This creative choice emphasizes her belief that there is only so much one can say to describe a work of art; at a certain point, words are not enough and one needs to experience them. 

Azerang’s review of The Starless Sea was posted on her YouTube channel, “A Clockwork Reader,” which has almost 400,000 followers. There are many book reviews on her channel, and other book-related content, making Azerang a part of the “BookTube” community of YouTube, a collective of individuals curating content surrounding books, reading, and recommendations. While Azerang has posted many different videos focused on books - from reading challenges to themed curated reading lists - Azerang’s content extends far beyond book synopsis. Through her digital presence online, Azerang has been open about her life experiences through updates and videos, particularly her journey with mental health over the years. This includes a 2020 video called “what to do when you don’t want to do anything,” which documents her journey throughout a day where she tries self-care routines and finds what works for her, with the hope of helping others who might be having similar experiences. 

Extending beyond digital content creation and video production, recently, Azerang embarked on a new creative pursuit, in publishing her book A Clockwork Reader Reading Journal, which was released in December of 2021. The process of creating this journal has been documented throughout Azerang’s YouTube Page, where viewers can watch her creative process, from brainstorming ideas to implementing artistic components, through videos like “i created a reading journal for you.” This book, which contains spreads of notebook pages handwritten by Azerang herself, provides an opportunity for readers to reflect on their own reading journey. People around the world can purchase this journal and chronicle their own experiences in the journal - finding the books that they love, reflecting on the characters that resonated with them, and looking towards their future of reading. Even though the pages and spreads are designed by Azerang, there are no strict rules in the journal - instead opportunities for growth and adding one’s own designs and thoughts to a journal that while centered around the reading experience, can also extend beyond. Each individual is creating their own creative work through the reading journal - making it a collaborative, collective process. In this way, the product that is created - the reading journal - is distinctly linked and formed through the author and journalist. 

While there are many inspiring aspects of Azerang’s creativity - from her artistry and graphic design to video production and editing - to me, I find her reviews to be the most striking creative work. In her reflections, she tries to put words into the emotions that a work of art evokes, and often cannot find the perfect words, honestly admitting that. Her reviews assert that sometimes, “you just have to read it” to discover your own feelings towards a book, which she hopes readers everywhere will do through her reading journal. 

Sources:

https://www.instagram.com/clockwork_reads/?hl=en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7-oVOXXYtg&ab_channel=AClockworkReader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVRLU5M43pg&t=1099s&ab_channel=AClockworkReader

 

Misha Mansoor: "Djentmaster"

Have you ever experienced a piece of media that you didn’t know you needed until you had it? That is how I felt when I first consumed the song “Marigold” by the progressive metal band Periphery. Also often considered to be in the genre of “djent”, there is primarily one person who can be thanked for the rise in popularity of this heavier metal subgenre: Misha Mansoor.

As a self-proclaimed nerd, Mansoor lived out his most formative years in the late 90s and early 2000s, where he spent a lot of his free time on blogs and forums having to do with the Swedish metal band Meshuggah. There, he would post clips of songs he wrote on his guitar and jokingly caption them with things like “new djent-y clip”. From there the term rose to prominence 

Perhaps this deserves a bit of context. Prior to the mid-2000s, djent was not a recognized genre. The name came to be when fans of Meshuggah, talking about the band’s signature low-pitched, palm-muted guitar tone, often assigned the onomatopoeia “dj” or “djent” (Try it out for yourself; it’s surprisingly addictive). The t was more of a soft t, similar to how some people say “mountain” or “Aunt May”, but it still conveyed the sound well.

People online started acknowledging Mansoor’s ability to write music and riffs, and from there the term “djent” started to become less of a joke and more of an official term describing that certain style of guitar chugs. But because of the community’s mostly online presence, creators and fans of djent were mostly teenagers and 20-somethings who were creating snippets and songs in their homes. For this reason, the sound of the music was not palatable to many listening ears, even among other metal communities.

Misha Mansoor formed Periphery in 2005 with a revolving lineup of members. With their rise to international prominence and the rise of general production quality. people started to appreciate it more and the genre generally became more appreciated and…djentrified.

But as is the case with any great revolution, there will always be nay-sayers. Periphery, as well as other emergent djent bands, had no shortage of critics. Progressive metal as a genre already stretched the boundaries of what could be done. TOOL created vivid atmospheres with synthesizers, Dream Theater would make an 18-minute song with a seemingly random ragtime piano solo in the middle. Now Periphery was taking the concept and translating it to 8- or 9-string guitars with powerful riffs in time signatures that would make jazz musicians blush. Misha Mansoor thought of his band as a progressive metal band, but some critics pushed them solidly into the emerging “djent” genre, as some thought it to be too different to be considered the same thing. This polarizing conceptual shift only brought the band more attention and recognition though, and they took that publicity and ran with it. Mansoor has stated that he is thankful for the “djent revolution”, even though he attributes the word to Meshuggah. Personally I think he's just being humble.

Misha Mansoor has also said that Periphery’s approach to writing music is pretty collaborative. When presenting ideas to each other, Mansoor has stated that “we don’t identify problems, we only identify solutions”. This makes sense, as it’s never fun to present something that you worked hard on and are proud of, only to be told that they don’t like it. Since they have a total of 3 guitarists, they can bounce ideas off of each other and get each other’s opinions on how to make them better.

Misha Mansoor started a revolution in the metal community and created one of the most unique sounds in the modern music scene. Other bands like Animals As Leaders and Tesseract were quick to follow and leave their mark on the community as well, but none of it would be the same without Misha.

Videos/Sources:

Herman Li Interview with Misha Mansoor: What is DJENT?

Izotope: A Conversation with Misha Mansoor of Periphery

Dream and Road to Fame

“10 years of Mining and Crafting!”

 

 

Minecraft. At some point in your life, you’ve probably heard of the popular sandbox game that has enamored the world for over a decade. Whether you grew up playing the game, or heard of others playing it, its influence is far spread. If you’re unfamiliar with Minecraft, it is a blocky open-world game that provides endless degrees of possibilities, typically marketed towards children. While the base game has the end goal of defeating the colossal Ender Dragon, hundreds of thousands of mods, or unofficial additions made to the game typically created by fans.

There are some people who make money by playing this game. These people are known as content creators and they use either streaming sites or media creation sites, such as Twitch or Youtube. There are literally hundreds of millions of people who play Minecraft. Even with a huge player base, becoming famous for making videos or streaming Minecraft is no easy task. However, there are some names that have made it to the top that you may be familiar with. Back then, there was CaptainSparklez, The Syndicate Project and Yogscast. More recently, GeorgeNotFound, TommyInnit, and, the topic of today’s post, Dream.

“Nice to meet you!”

 

If you’re familiar with the content creators and streamers of Minecraft, then you know who Dream is. Dream has not disclosed any personal information aside from his first name, Clay. Dream is an extremely popular Minecraft Youtuber with almost 30 Million subscribers. He is well known for his Minecraft challenge videos, the server he hosts, and most of all, his manhunt videos. His manhunt videos are a special type of challenge. While trying to speedrun Minecraft, his friends try to thwart his progress and kill him. This makes for epic gameplay and peak suspension, as you will never know what happens next! There are videos of him with up to 5 hunters all trying to kill him as he races to beat the game. People are captivated by his skill and finesse. Each of his videos rack up tens of millions of views, generating a tremendous amount of ad revenue. Dream wasn’t always this popular in the Minecraft community. Like all great minds, he had to start somewhere.

The first of Dream’s achievements began with none other than Pewdiepie. Pewdiepie was uploading Minecraft content and people wanted to know the world seed to replicate the world. Deciphering the world seed is an extremely difficult task without much information. However, Dream, with a team of other people, were able to discover the seed with only a few sets of coordinates. This is akin to solving an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. He uploaded a video obtaining the world seed and this is where the traction began. In addition to speedrunning and being an extremely skilled player, he started to incorporate his own personality to his videos. People enjoy his content, his achievements, and his personality. Yet, this alone was not enough to catapult his fame to where he is today.

“4815162342 lines of code!”

The Youtube algorithm played a tremendous role in Dream’s rise to fame. The Youtube algorithm is how videos are recommended to your feed. Without manipulating the algorithm, Dream would never have gained almost 30 million subscribers in the span of two years. Dream read over 200 books worth of information and used it to his advantage. While content creation, personality, and video games are something you don’t associate with discrete mathematics and algorithms, Dream combined these two separate fields to create the product of his Youtube channel. This style of thinking is known as collecting. While Dream isn’t the first to crack the Youtube algorithm, the methods he used to abuse it are creative.

The Youtube algorithm picks up on keywords said throughout the video. These are evidenced by the automatic closed captioning on videos. In Dream’s videos, he makes sure to say out loud at the start the topic of the video, as well as trending words like “Minecraft” or “challenge.” This makes the algorithm flag the video as these tags, making his videos more likely to be found via searching or recommended directly to people who like similar videos. One example of divergent thinking is hiding some of these keywords in the source code of his video, even if the video had nothing to do with these keywords. For example, if the trending videos at the time were “thousand degree knife,” he would hide the keywords “thousand,” “degree,” and “knife,” in the video’s tags so that the algorithm is more likely to flag his videos as trending. Instead of more popular trends, He would incorporate more Minecraft trends at the time, such as “Minecraft but lava rises every second.”

“Finally complete!”

At the time of this blog post, Dream is currently at 28.5 Million subscribers on Youtube. He will continue growing as a testament to his skill as both a player and as a content creator. There’s much more behind the scenes to content creation than you’d think. Some people’s successes were lucky and blessed by Youtube’s algorithm. Dream was cunning, deciphering it and creatively using it to his advantage.

“Look mum, I’m in a splash!”

The title of these sections were references to Splashes, randomized yellow text whenever you start up Minecraft. Thanks for reading!

Artistic Process and Innovation in Bisa Butler’s Portraits

Bisa Butler is an American artist who uses quilting and textile arts to create detailed portraits of historical figures, her family members, and others. Her work explores themes of migration and family within the Black American experience, and her choice to quilt is informed in part by its history as a marginalized craft with history in the Black community. 

Last spring, I visited Butler’s first solo exhibition at the Art Institute and was struck by her work in a way I hadn’t been in a long time. In studying the process and personal characteristics common in creative people this semester, I’ve been able to identify some of the specific ways her work stands out in her field and why it was so compelling. By developing an expertise in painting, collecting elements of its style, and applying them to quilting, Butler established a new kind of portraiture which uniquely captures human figures and scenes in textile form. Her innovative process has created a paradigm shift in her field by bringing the form of quilting into the sphere of fine art. 

Her expertise and education as an artist heavily inform the way she engages with her craft, in particular because she has collected specific techniques from other art forms and applied them to quilting to transform the effect a textile piece can have. Butler is trained in painting, which she studied extensively as an undergraduate at Harvard and uses painting techniques in her fabric art. For example, she uses shading to give more depth to her portraits by applying several different shades of fabric together the way you would apply strokes on a canvas while adding white or black, saying, “I’m doing the same thing, but I’m doing it with fabric” (Q&A with Bisa Butler). You can see how she uses this painting technique to create dimension in the subject’s face in a part of her 2019 quilt Dear Mama. 

In another borrowed technique that hasn’t traditionally been used in quilting, Butler layers pieces upon pieces of fabric to create more complex images. “The pieces are not put together like a jigsaw puzzle,” she explains, adding, “it’s layer upon layer, like a topographical map” (Q&A with Bisa Butler). This layering is typical of collage, including textile collage, but Butler specifically wants to create quilts, so she stitches them together with thread. She values quilting as her art form because she wants to take part in the long Black American tradition of quilting which began with enslaved Black women who combined fabric scraps to create a distinct new craft (Logan). 

More than simply participating in this tradition, however, Butler has added to and transformed it into a means of portraiture to depict the Black experience through her groundbreaking style. According to craft scholar Glenn Adamson, “Butler is elevating the status of her subjects by making portraits, and also elevating quilting– which is an African American craft tradition– by adding portraiture to it” (Logan). The artist herself frequently cites her primary goal as telling untold stories through her work, and I certainly left her exhibit feeling that I’d encountered people and experiences– as well as a unique style– I never would have otherwise. 

To see some of her work, check out https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9324/bisa-butler-portraits.

Vlogbrothers Hank and John Green: A Creative Team

 Hank and John Green are people who I’ve known about longer than I’ve known who they were, and far before I would realize the scope of their impact and contributions to the world.

Everyone in my cohort probably knows of Crash Course, also known as the day your teacher didn’t feel like making an actual lesson plan and instead put on a very entertaining animated video that covered topics from world history, psychology, etc. Ultimately these videos were not to replace the learning of content in-depth but provided a great aid in understanding broad and complicated histories and concepts.  It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic I dove down the rabbit hole that is vlogbrothers YouTube channel and the other amazing creations of Hank and John Green.

John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, started a project called Brotherhood 2.0 with his younger brother Hank on YouTube in 2007. They were some of the first content creators on the platform as we have come to know it today. On YouTube, they helped build the Nerdfightaria community, which enabled Hank and John to branch off into new projects and endeavors.

Hank and John are the founders of DFTBA and Complexly; they have projects such as Crash Course, the Awesome Socks Club, Dear Hank and John Podcast, and vlogbrothers YouTube Channel. Hank and John also created Vidcon and Podcon, in addition to both being authors of fantastic books. What amazes me about Hank and John the most isn’t just their ability to create new ideas, both weekly with podcasts and videos, and larger projects such as the Project for Awesome; it is their capacity for kindness in their pursuit of creativity and content. Hank and John give back to communities in need constantly. The Awesome Socks Club is just one example in that 100% of the profits from it go to charity.

Hank and John have made several videos about their creative processes and how they continue to produce such a volume of amazing ideas. In a video titled “A thought is not an idea,” Hank explains his process of divergent thinking, collecting, and ultimately convergent thinking that results in an idea. First, he has “a list of thoughts that aren’t really going anywhere”, and later on pooling them together to create an idea that combines elements of his thoughts such as a monthly sock subscription and funding independent artists, to then create a monthly sock subscription with unique designs done by independent artists. While this process has produced many amazing vlogbrothers projects, Hank mentions how this process is also riddled with failure. There is a website titled Days Since Hank Green Started Something New, in which there is a link to a spreadsheet of all of Hank’s Ideas (some of which are jokes), only some of which continue on the process of being made.

In the next part of the process, once the idea has been made, Hank and John discuss them to see what ideas are worth expending effort on. In a video aptly titled “How John and I Talk About Ideas”, Hank explains that the brothers spend a lot of time bouncing ideas off of each other, so much so that they have come up with a shorthand for idea categories.

Walkman: a technically difficult idea, in an area they don’t have enough expertise in, and will defiantly be done by someone else in time.

You can’t scale a Person: ideas that rely on one person too much, making it unsustainable

Newman’s Own: A good idea that becomes much better when you donate all the profit to charity.

Top Ten: an idea that would be successful but wouldn’t add value to the world.

Emperor of the World: ideas that would be great if everyone would just get out of my way.

 

This framework allows the brothers to collaborate together in an effective way about their ideas. In addition, they also have the Nerdfightaria community which both provide initiative for and support of these projects, which Hank also explained, produces domain constraint for the projects that are made, because the ideas have to align with the values of the community.

Every week John and Hank create videos on a random assortment of topics ranging from Gas Stovetops to news and international affairs to giraffe sex (no, this isn’t a joke). Their podcast is similarly somewhat creatively chaotic giving dubious advice to podcast listeners, which always somehow loops around to existential crises and death, because why not. Hank is also a Tik Tok sensation, with John currently emerging more on the platform, providing bite-sized entertainment. All of their projects, on a smaller and larger scale, add value to people’s days and the larger community. I hope you all go check some of it out, you won’t be disappointed.   

YouTube Videos Mentioned/Sources:

·        A thought is not an idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjCMnRt54Lw

 How John and I Talk about Ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMoHy0R9nGE

Claire Saffitz - A dessert person!

    Throughout my childhood, I was always really into baking. I had a passion for baking desserts and consuming content about baking whether it was on Food Network or in a magazine. Today as a 21 year old who actively has to cook for herself, I gained a love for popular youtuber baker, Claire Saffitz. 

    Originally gaining a following from the youtube channel, Bon Appetit, Saffitz became well known for the show Gourmet Bakes which showcased her ability to taste a candy or snack and reverse engineer it to create her own from scratch. This show required non-stop problem and innovative methods to expertly recreate these candies/snacks, which demonstrates her affinity for openness. Having since left from Bon Appetit due to the company's unfair treatment of BIPOC employees, Saffitz created her own youtube channel and has even gone on to write her very own cook book about her favorite desserts—Dessert Person.

    While brainstorming the book, Saffitz wanted to emulate the idea that everyone can be a baker despite the common belief that one is either a cook or a baker. She writes on her website that, "I wrote “Dessert Person”, my first cookbook, to celebrate and defend my love of desserts. The recipes represent my attempt to demonstrate just how versatile and flexible baking can be (which is why you’ll find an entire chapter on savory baking as well)." She believes that baking is a celebration and that anyone can bake—lessons that she hopes readers gain from reading her cook book.