Painting the Music Recap

We were treated to a magnificent and innovative performance from Jeremy Sutton. He showed his unique style and process he engages in order to produce his original paintings.

 

When Jeremy Sutton asked us to make sure there was a bit of space up at the front for him to dance during his presentation, I wondered what we were in for. It turns out we were in for a powerful look at the intersection of art, technology, music, and improv, with a bit of swing dance thrown in for good measure.

Jeremy Sutton is a physicist turned artist who uses a combination of digital tools and traditional painting techniques to create his artwork. We’ve all experienced the magic of listening to someone create music. Or watching someone perform dance. It’s much more rare that we get to see art in the creation stage. Jeremy took it one step further, and did his best to draw us into the creative process, from the beginning stages of percolating ideas, to the loose throwing of paint onto a digital blank canvas, to the final steps of reigning in the wild brushstrokes to make something that really captures the subject.

In this case, the subject of the painting was SVII’s director, Howard Lieberman. Howard was also an active participant in the creative process, offering improvised piano music that helped influence the rhythm of the brushstrokes.  Piano pairs very well with art.

At our August event, our topic was improv. We talked a lot about how improv relates to business. It opens up our thinking and lets us accept what is, rather than what we’d like things to look like according to our careful plans. Jeremy’s presentation touched on many of the same things. He mentioned that he never uses the “undo” button, although you’d think that would be one of the blessings of being a digital painter. He doesn’t use undo, because he sees every brushstroke as a gift, as a step towards something bigger. Mistakes are worked into the creative process, not “undone”.

As innovators, this mentality should feel familiar. People who keep trying to undo errors to manage their creative process won’t allow themselves the freedom required to make breakthroughs. It’s beyond a simple willingness to fail. It’s a knowledge that what we’re trying to reach is about ten steps past failure, and that failure was necessary and helpful part of the process.

If you’re interested in seeing more of Jeremy’s work, check out his websites: http://www.jeremysutton.com/ and http://www.paintboxj.com/. You can also stop by his studio this weekend (Oct 8-10) for his Fall Open Studios event. Or check out his live performance as Vincent Van Gogh at the de Young on October 15th or October 22nd.

September Newsletter

A Recap of our September events.

September Event Recap

The Impact of Ubiquitous Bandwidth and Connectivity:
A Multi-Perspective Panel Discussion

Ubiquitous bandwidth may not sound like a controversial topic, but our panelists (Alexander J. Field, Pete DeLisi, Ray Abrishami, and Ann-Louise Kardas) did a great job stirring up our minds to think about the true impact of a constantly connected society. So many aspects of connectedness offer us a double-edged sword. Is it a sad sign of our hyper-conected world that a dad is tapping away on his iPhone during his son’s birthday party? Or are we looking at a positive sign that this dad can now be connected to both the party and the office, where he might have been totally absent before?

Our panel offered insights on the constantly connected brain. They challenged the idea that online social connectedness necessarily has a positive impact on loneliness and isolation. The group also pondered whether increased capability equals increased productivity. The lively dialougue brought out the truth that people have very different ideas on how this increased bandwidth should be “spent” and about whether we are currently putting it to good use.

The conversation that happened at this event gave us a preview into some of the issues that will shape the ubiquitous bandwidth debate in the months and years ahead.

October 6th Society Event

Improvisation & Innovation:
A Powerful Duet in Art, Science & Business with Jeremy Sutton

Artist, author, educator and digital painting pioneer Jeremy Sutton demonstrates through spontaneous, improvised live art-in-action how he harnesses the creative power of improvisation to generate innovation on his digital canvas. During this exciting presentation you will see Jeremy, using state of-the-art digital paint technology, create a live digital portrait of musician, technologist and entrepreneur Howard Lieberman as Howard plays improvised music. Throughout the process Jeremy will share his decision-making strategies and provide insights into how the same principles can be applied in other arts, in science and in business.

Jeremy Sutton—world-renowned artist, author, educator, digital painting pioneer and Corel Painter Master—has drawn and painted for over forty years, and worked with digital painting media for the last eighteen. Please visit www.JeremySutton.com to see more of his artwork and www.PaintboxJ.com for his online training materials.

November 3rd Society Event

Technology Serving Humanity:
Exploring the Impact of Accessible Technology with Jim Fruchterman

Jim Fruchterman believes deeply in the power of technology to transform the world. “We fail to give technologists a model between making scads of money on an idea, or doing charity,” says Jim, “and I think that technology can do so much for the people who can least afford it, as long as the cost is accessible.”

At our November event, we will develop a better understanding of that missing model–the balance between generating profits, and breaking down barriers to technology for the people who could have the greatest benefit.

A bit about Jim Fruchterman:

A technology entrepreneur, Jim Fruchterman is a former rocket scientist who has founded two of the foremost optical character recognition companies and developed successful social enterprises. Jim co-founded Calera Recognition Systems in 1982. Calera developed character recognition that allowed computers to read virtually all printed text.

In 1989, Jim founded Arkenstone, a nonprofit social enterprise, to produce reading machines for the disabled community based on the Calera technology. Following the sale of the Arkenstone product line in 2000, Jim used all the resulting capital to fund Benetech, with an explicit goal of using the power of technology to serve humanity. Jim believes that technology is the ultimate leveler.

December 1st Society Event

NASA’s New Frontiers: A conversation with Bruce Pittman

At our December event, Bruce Pittman of NASA will lead us in an interactive discussion focused on the exciting, innovative, and cutting-edge happenings at NASA. More details to come!

August Newsletter

August Event Recap

August 4th’s Society Event cracked open our shells and set us to work applying improv skills to the world of innovation. Chris Miller, Ann Swanberg, and Jim Herriot led the group through improv exercises that demonstrated what it feels like to listen well, bring out the best in other people, and be open to crazy thoughts.

While improv may conjure up thoughts of “funny” or “silly”, Chris and his team brought the skills of improv down to the truly practical level. Improv skills were applied to questions like: How do you foster a meeting enviroment that doesn’t crush creativity? How do you get people to really connect and respond to each other in positive ways? How do you get people to open your emails?

True innovators will often hear the word “no.” Improv at its most basic level helps people stay connected to “yes.” If you missed the August event, you can find out more about Chris Miller and the LifePlays team atwww.LifePlays.com.

September 1st Society Event

Impact of Ubiquitous Bandwidth and Connectivity
A Multi-Perspective Panel Discussion

“Billions of connected individuals can now actively participate in innovation, wealth creation, and social development in ways we once only dreamed of. And, when these masses of people collaborate, they can advance the arts, culture, science, education, government and the economy in surprising but ultimately profitable ways.”
– Dan Tapscott

A few of our distinguished panelists:

Alexander J. Field

Professor Field is the Michel and Mary Orradre Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University and Executive Director of the Economic History Association.

His research focuses on two main areas. The first is U.S. macroeconomic history with a focus on technology and productivity. His book, A Great Leap Forward: 1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth, will be published by Yale University Press this fall. The second, aimed at better integrating the human sciences, is reflected in his 2001 book Altruistically Inclined? The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, and the Origins of Reciprocity, which won the 2003 Alpha Sigma Nu National Book Award in the Social Sciences. Professor Field has published more than 50 scholarly articles.

Brinda Dalal

Brinda Dalal is an anthropologist who worked with PARC, Xerox and many of Xerox’s clients. She co-founded PARC’s clean technology initiative in 2003.She got her PhD from University of Cambridge in social anthropology. She founded Dhoopa Ventures and is driven by two questions: How do we systematically understand change as it occurs in human society? How might we build innovations that radically shape the future?

Ray Abrishami

Ray Abrishami is the Co-Founder and Principal of InLinx Communication. He is the founding member of the WiMAX Forum which promotes the standards based broadband access technology. Earlier, he was the Senior Director of Engineering at Fujitsu and he brings the perspective from Technology and Enterprise to the discussion.

Some discussion points:

* What interesting problems, ideas and solutions have emerged from the promise of unlimited bandwidth and such connectivity?

* In the midst of Foursquare and Groupon, what does it mean to be always online? ‘Real-time’ may be nice for search engines, but what about personal lives? For example, how do we address the Location paradox: On one hand, it does not matter where you are, as long as you are connected. On the other hand, it is more critical than ever for targeting information, announcements, marketing and even public service.

* In the Yottabyte era, companies (like Google, Amazon, Facebook) collect huge amounts of data. Data can be a double-edged sword: it can provide enormous benefits to consumers in terms of intelligence, experience, and engagement and can also prove to be problematic when privacy and data breaches happen.

* How are businesses dealing with this? What new business models are emerging? Today 2% of enterprise is on cloud, 16% virtualized. By 2015, 20% will be on cloud, 45% virtualized.

* Who owns the bandwidth and the connectivity? How do we provide equitable distribution and access in a responsible manner? What are the ethical, legal and moral issues that arise?

October 6th Society Event

Improvisation & Innovation:
A Powerful Duet in Art, Science & Business with Jeremy Sutton

Artist, author, educator and digital painting pioneer Jeremy Sutton demonstrates through spontaneous, improvised live art-in-action how he harnesses the creative power of improvisation to generate innovation on his digital canvas. During this exciting presentation you will see Jeremy, using state of-the-art digital paint technology, create a live digital portrait of musician, technologist and entrepreneur Howard Lieberman as Howard plays improvised music. Throughout the process Jeremy will share his decision-making strategies and provide insights into how the same principles can be applied in other arts, in science and in business.

Jeremy Sutton—world-renowned artist, author, educator, digital painting pioneer and Corel Painter Master—has drawn and painted for over forty years, and worked with digital painting media for the last eighteen. Please visit www.JeremySutton.com to see more of his artwork and www.PaintboxJ.com for his online training materials.

Improvising Inventors

An integral part of innovation is failure, you need to be open to failure in order to part take in innovation. But what happens when you fail. Instead of starting over and trying again, you can improvise. In this event we explored how inventors can take advantage of an unsuccessful situation simply by improvising.

 

March 3rd’s First Wednesday event will revolve around an open panel discussion with local inventors that focuses on the relationship between improvisation and invention. Often, successful activities do not turn out as anticipated; adapting and improvising are core competencies for innovators.

This SVII program will bring together several inventors for a discussion concerning the types of improvisation they have utilized to become successful.

The following inventors will be participating in March:

Ed Austin – Flings
SVII member Ed Austin developed the pop-up recycling and trash containers known as Flings. An inventive way to make recycling easier, Flings are now available at Safeways across the country. More information can be found online at http://www.flingsbins.com/

Joy Mountford – QuickTime
During her time at Apple Computer, Joy Mountford managed the Human Interface Group; the group that developed QuickTime, AppleSearch, and Macintosh Finder, among other software programs. She was also the founder of Apple’s International Interface Design Project. An interview with Joy can be found at http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews/JoyMountford

Todd Basche – Wordlock
CEO of Wordlock, Inc., Todd Basche invented the Wordlock padlock because he could never remember number combinations. Prior to developing Wordlock, Todd was VP of Software Applications at Apple, responsible for creating iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD. More information about Wordlock can be found at http://www.wordlock.com/