• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Process
    • Competitive Namescape
      • Namescape: Search Engines
      • Blank Namescape Chart
    • Company Names
    • Product Names
    • Service Names
    • Brand Positioning
    • Name Development
      • Descriptive Names
      • Invented Names
      • Experiential Names
      • Evocative Names
    • Trademark Prescreening
    • Linguistic Connotation Screening
    • Name Evaluation
    • Naming Project Work Plans
  • Portfolio
    • Clients
  • Manifesto
  • Press
  • Blog
    • Archives
  • About
    • Our Team
    • Our Name
      • Finnegans Wake
    • References / Testimonials
  • Resources
  • Contact

Zinzin

Archives for January 2012

January 25, 2012 By Martin

John Baldessari sings Sol Le Witt, 1972

Here is the complete list if you care to sing along with John or perform your own version of “Sentences on Conceptual Art” by Sol Le Witt:

  1. Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
  2. Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
  3. Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
  4. Formal art is essentially rational.
  5. Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
  6. If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
  7. The artist’s will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
  8. When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
  9. The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
  10. Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
  11. Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
  12. For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
  13. A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind.
  14. The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
  15. Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
  16. If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
  17. All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
  18. One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
  19. The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
  20. Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
  21. Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
  22. The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
  23. The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
  24. Perception is subjective.
  25. The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
  26. An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
  27. The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
  28. Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist’s mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
  29. The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
  30. There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
  31. If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist’s concept involved the material.
  32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
  33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
  34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
  35. These sentences comment on art, but are not art.

First published in 0-9 ( New York ), 1969, and Art-Language ( England ), May 1969.

Filed Under: Art Tagged With: conceptual art, John Baldessari, Sol Le Witt, video

January 20, 2012 By Jay

Smile, you’re on Google’s camera

Google has its eyes on you. Notes Wikipedia: “Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world. It was launched on May 25, 2007, originally only in several cities in the United States, and has since gradually expanded to include more cities and rural areas worldwide.”

Google must employ an army of Street View photographers worldwide, and they drive seemingly everywhere on earth taking pictures of anything and everything that appears in front of their nine-lensed cameras. Artist Jon Rafman has posted a selection of amazing Google Street View photographs on his Tumblr site 9-eyes. The collage below is just a taste — visit Rafman’s site to see them in all their glory.

Street View collage

Filed Under: Art, Photography Tagged With: Google, Jon Rafman, street photography, Street View

January 17, 2012 By Jay

A blessing paper freed the flood

The great Irish author James Joyce died in 1941, and seventy years later, on January 1, 2012, his work has finally been set free from copyright restrictions, moving into the public domain. Notes the L.A. Times:

When the first day of 2012 dawned, the works of James Joyce moved into the public domain — for the most part. Joyce’s grandson Stephen, his only living relative, has long been thought to have been more of a hindrance than a help in terms of managing Joyce’s estate. Stephen charged high fees, refused scholars the right to quote from Joyce’s work and shut down the Irish government’s planned public readings of the  centenary of “Ulysses” when he threatened litigation.

Joyce’s work now belongs to the people.

A hoodenwinkle gave the signal and a blessing paper freed the flood.

Which is why this post has been interlaced with free quotes from Joyce’s last great work, Finnegans Wake. Because Joyce’s great works have been yearning to escape the clutches of his heir.

Ho hang! Hang ho! And the clash of our cries till we spring to be free.

And now, finally, they are free.

Hulp, hulp, huzzars! Raise ras tryracy! Freetime’s free! Up Lancesters! Anathem!

Time to celebrate.

And they all drank free. For one man in his armour was a fat match always for any girls under shurts.

The old laws are gone! Clap your hands, stomp your feet,

Fly your balloons, dannies and dennises! He’s doorknobs dead! And Annie Delap is free! Ones more.

There’s no going back now.

Its pith is full. The way is free. Their lot is cast. So, to john for a john, johnajeams, led it be!

It will be great to see Joyce’s work spread out into the world, get remixed and adapted, his words washing over the world.

That’s how our oxyggent has gotten ahold of half their world. Moving about in the free of the air and mixing with the ruck.

The world reJoyces, the heir can err no longer. Here comes Sunny Jim.

Been so free! Thank you, besters! Hattentats have mindered. Blaublaze devil bobs have gone from the mode and hairtrigger nicks are quite out of time now.

Even Kate Bush is now free to record her song, “Flower of the Mountain,” as originally intended.

Tiss! Two pretty mistletots ribboned to a tree, up rose liberator and, fancy, they were free!

Feels good, doesn’t it?

O what a loovely freespeech ’twas (tep) to gar howalively hintergrunting!

James Joyce grave sculpture

[For reference, here are the “page.line” numbers for each of the passages from Finnegans Wake quoted above: A hoodenwinkle, 78.23; Ho hang!, 627.32; Hulp, hulp, huzzars, 348.28; And they all, 23.8; Fly your balloons, FW 378.2; Its pith is full, 399.33; That’s how, 281.25; Been so free!, 540.28;  Tiss!, 588.36; O what, 273.19.]

See also: James Joyce Reading Finnegans Wake.

Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: copyright, Finnegans Wake, James Joyce, Kate Bush

January 16, 2012 By Jay

Escape the groupthink brainstorm and go deep

In a  piece in yesterday’s New York Times, The Rise of the New Groupthink, Susan Cain makes a strong argument against the rising tide of groupthink in our culture. This kind of “collaborative creativity” can readily be seen in the proliferation of group assignments in school, companies with open plan offices with no personal space, and, in the naming business, naming committees with too many members trying to collaboratively create a new brand name.

The problem is, for any kind of creative endeavor, groupthink doesn’t work.

Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.

One explanation for these findings is that introverts are comfortable working alone — and solitude is a catalyst to innovation. As the influential psychologist Hans Eysenck observed, introversion fosters creativity by “concentrating the mind on the tasks in hand, and preventing the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.”

In other words, the social aspects of work might be beneficial and necessary to an individual’s overall health, but they are not conducive to creative work and the development of new ideas. And “creative work” is something that should be required of everyone in an organization, not just so-called “creatives.” Here is Apple co-founder and famous introvert Steve Wozniak describing engineers:

“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

The key for any company or organization is to find the right balance, to recognize that people need uninterrupted “alone time” to do their best work, thought they and others in the organization can benefit from the collective energy of occasional group interaction. Interaction and exchange of ideas, not continuous collaboration, because,

…it’s one thing to associate with a group in which each member works autonomously on his piece of the puzzle; it’s another to be corralled into endless meetings or conference calls conducted in offices that afford no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers. Studies show that open-plan offices make workers hostile, insecure and distracted. They’re also more likely to suffer from high blood pressure, stress, the flu and exhaustion. And people whose work is interrupted make 50 percent more mistakes and take twice as long to finish it.

Privacy also makes us productive, notes Cain. She references a study of 600 computer programmers at 92 companies called the Coding War Games that showed quantitatively that “what distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay, it was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed.” And creative solitude helps learning too, because an individual can work more on the things that challenge them, which is not an option in a group learning situation.

The flip side of deep, focused, solitary work is the corporate brainstorming session. We’ve seen this time and again in the naming industry, where brainstorming sessions are usually conducted by companies in-house, or by their advertising agency. The company or agency will ask a group of its “creatives” to work late one night, fueled by pizza, beer and Red Bull, and work together to brainstorm a new name. As you may have guessed, such a process rarely if ever generates the strongest, most powerful names.

Conversely, brainstorming sessions are one of the worst possible ways to stimulate creativity….decades of research show that individuals almost always perform better than groups in both quality and quantity, and group performance gets worse as group size increases. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” wrote the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”

The reasons brainstorming fails are instructive for other forms of group work, too. People in groups tend to sit back and let others do the work; they instinctively mimic others’ opinions and lose sight of their own; and, often succumb to peer pressure. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that when we take a stance different from the group’s, we activate the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the fear of rejection. Professor Berns calls this “the pain of independence.”

Simon Sinek has also weighed-in on why the best ideas don’t happen though groupthink, pointing out that brainstorming sessions only activate the conscious mind, not the subconscious mind. He notes that your rational brain can only access about two feet of information around you, while your unconscious brain can access the equivalent of eleven acres of information around you. This treasure trove of unconscious information is where gut decisions and epiphanies come from, and they just can’t come out in the collective groupthink environment of a brainstorming session.

The only way to make brainstorming  productive is to have individuals work alone on the problem at hand before and after the group work, and use the brainstorming session for communication, interaction and amplification of the individual ideas, rather than a mechanism for creating those ideas. There simply is no substitute for the deep thought of individual alone time away from all distractions.

One exception to the general shortcomings of groupthink is electronic collaboration at a distance, or so-called “crowdsourcing,” where individuals working “alone together” have the potential to tap into the best of both worlds. In the rosiest of such scenarios, individuals still have plenty of solitary creative time, which is then combined with focused bursts of remote group collaboration free from the negative dynamics that come with in-person group interaction. Cain notes that, “most humans have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy,” and finding the right balance is crucial for success:

To harness the energy that fuels both these drives, we need to move beyond the New Groupthink and embrace a more nuanced approach to creativity and learning. Our offices should encourage casual, cafe-style interactions, but allow people to disappear into personalized, private spaces when they want to be alone. Our schools should teach children to work with others, but also to work on their own for sustained periods of time. And we must recognize that introverts like Steve Wozniak need extra quiet and privacy to do their best work.

Companies should take heed of these findings and incorporate them into how they structure their workflow and work environments. In our own naming work we have always worked this way, as individuals pursuing ideas on our own, punctuated by regular, brief and focused sessions for discussion, argument, and collaboration, both internally and with our clients; then back to our private spaces for more deep thought.

If your company is staffed only with extroverts, it’s time to hire some introverts, pronto, and give them the space they need to go deep. The extroverts will benefit too.

Filed Under: Ideas Tagged With: brainstorming, creativity, Simon Sinek, Susan Cain

January 13, 2012 By Martin

FridaySongs 15 music playlist

Townes Van Zandt album cover

I’m a satisfied fool to want you, Layla Brown. Here is today’s FridaySongs YouTube music playlist, FridaySongs 15:

  • Flume – Bon Iver
  • re: Stacks – Bon Iver
  • Dark Was the Night – Ry Cooder
  • Make Me a Pallet on the Floor – Mississippi John Hurt
  • I’m Satisfied – Mississippi John Hurt
  • Poor Boy – John Fahey
  • Layla – John Fahey
  • Sad Sad Song – M. Ward
  • Blue Bayou – Norah Jones & Matt Ward
  • Dark Was The Night – Playing For Change
  • Gimme Shelter – Playing For Change
  • Redemption Song – Playing For Change
  • Three Little Birds – Playing For Change
  • Goye Kur – Ali Farka Touré & Ry Cooder
  • Debe – Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté
  • One Love – Playing For Change
  • The Long Road – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Eddie Vedder
  • Without You – Eddie Vedder
  • Magdalene Laundries – Joni Mitchell
  • She Moved Through The Fair – Sinéad O’Connor
  • Wonderful – My Morning Jacket
  • Golden – My Morning Jacket
  • Irish Melody – Daniel Lanois
  • Down To The River – Ray LaMontagne
  • Here Comes The Sun – – Nina Simone
  • I’m a Fool to Want You – Chet Baker
  • I’m a Fool to Want You -Billie Holiday
  • Summertime – Norah Jones
  • Summertime – Miles Davis
  • You Don’t Know Me – Norah Jones
  • Dead Flowers – Townes Van Zandt
  • Tom Thumb’s Blues – Townes Van Zandt
  • Come And Go Blues – Gregg Allman
  • Hollis Brown – Bob Dylan
  • Seven Curses – Bob Dylan
  • Come Talk To Me – Bon Iver
  • Work Song – Charles Mingus
  • Haitian Fight Song – Charles Mingus
  • Split Sides – Radiohead & Sigur Rós

Do you have any music or video recommendations for us at Zinzin? If so, please let us know.

Filed Under: Music Tagged With: FridaySongs

January 12, 2012 By Jay

Solutions are not the solution

From the Naming & Branding Manifesto, number 25: When creating a brand name or any collateral messaging, avoid vacant, overused words like “solutions.” A quick web search will confirm that you can find a solution for nearly every problem, except perhaps for the problem of having too many “solutions.”

Filed Under: Branding, Zinzin Tagged With: overused

Primary Sidebar

Categories

  • Advertising
  • Art
  • Branding
  • Design
  • Film
  • History
  • Ideas
  • Language
  • Literature
  • Music
  • Naming
  • Narrative
  • Nomenclature
  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • Quotes
  • Science
  • Zinzin

Recent Posts

  • New IFG grapes launched — named by Zinzin
  • Naming Advice For New Businesses
  • Words have no size: the corny magic of Ed Ruscha
  • Industry Jargon: Elephant Walk
  • Playing For Change: Ripple around the world

Recent Comments

  • Lance Foster on Who was St. George William Joseph Stock?
  • Bob on How HAL from “2001: A Space Odyssey” got his name…and no, it’s not IBM minus one
  • Rudy on Cristo Redentor by Donald Byrd, 1963
  • Ivan Allen on Zen in action: no tree, no mirror, no dust
  • Aaron J Ziegler on Nicknames and slang of the San Francisco Giants

Footer

Contact

415-857-5775

contact@zinzin.com

Zinzin
1025 Carleton Street
Suite #9
Berkeley, CA 94710

Navigation

  • Home
  • Process
  • Portfolio
  • Manifesto
  • Press
  • Blog
  • About
  • Resources
  • Contact

Connect

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS (blog)

We are Zinzin

Zinzin is a naming and branding agency that creates powerful product and company names to propel and differentiate brands beyond their competition. We want to set your brand free.

Copyright © 2021 Zinzin Group Inc · Log in