Noticings is a game of noticing the world around you.

A diagram called the connectome is seen as a potential holy grail for scientists looking to visualize the human mind.

A fascinating SEED magazine article from earlier this year explores how creativity works in the brain.

TED has posted a wonderful new video of a talk by designer Stefan Sagmeister. In the lecture, he talks about his traditional yearlong sabbatical which he takes every seven years.

Reddit (in association with TED) recently asked its community to come together and create questions to ask creativity and education expert Sir Ken Robinson. Questions were suggested, and the ten with the most votes by Reddit members were answered. The result is a fascinating exploration of creativity, school, learning and more.
Robinson begins:
The basis of my argument is: creativity isn’t a specific activity; it’s a quality of things we do. You can be creative in anything — in math, science, engineering, philosophy — as much as you can in music or in painting or in dance. And you can certainly be [...]

Some Monday morning inspiration, courtesy of this playful video for Japanese pop band Sour’s new song ‘Hibi no Neiro’ (Tone of Everyday). The collaborative effort involved fans from around the world and was shot entirely on webcam. This is a fantastic example of what can result from a bit of thoughtfully curated crowdsourcing.

[via Mike Arauz]

Robin Pecknold, of the band Fleet Foxes shares his views on the state of the music scene with the BBC. He believes that the rise of illegal downloading has been good for music, helping to inspire and inform creative new acts.
Pecknold explains:
“As much music as musicians can hear, that will only make music richer as an artform,”
“I think we’re seeing that now with tons of new bands that are amazing, and are doing way better music now than was being made pre-Napster.”
…I’ve downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records – why would I care if somebody downloads ours? That’s such a [...]

The Fader has created a great 3 part video slideshow of David Byrne’s New York office. Byrne narrates the videos, which show off all of his weird and wonderful possessions. A fascinating look inside a creative mind. See part one below.

[Fader via Utne Reader]

Scientific American has a fantastic interview with Daniel Tammet. He is an author and linguist, who’s also an autistic savant. He shares the amazing way his mind works, and gives advice on how to think better.
Tammet says:
I have always thought of abstract information—numbers, for example—in visual, dynamic form. Numbers assume complex, multidimensional shapes in my head that I manipulate to form the solution to sums or compare when determining whether they are prime or not. For languages, I do something similar in terms of thinking of words as belonging to clusters of meaning so that each piece of vocabulary makes [...]

When it comes to utilizing design or creative thinking to shape our society, few avenues are more direct or have more potential than reaching out and fostering a commitment to social responsibility within our schools and our children. An interesting newcomer to this form of education is Design Ignites Change, an initiative created by Worldstudio Projects and Adobe’s Youth Voices, which promotes and encourages high school students to use design thinking to solve real world problems. Fostered through a mentoring program which pairs creative professionals or university organizations with area high schools, the projects address a range of issues from [...]

¥ª₰ ¥∀₰ §฿₣∑₦₭$ or ‘Jah Jah Sphinx’ is a blog which groups bizarre and often incredible images in what appears to be a visual stream of consciousness.  Each post has a general theme, like Boyz III Myn or california dreaming, posting images loosely linked by similar textures, colours or subject matter. A perfect tool for creatives running dry on inspiration or for those with time to kill.  Jah Jah Sphinx has around twenty-four collaborators, many artists from Melbourne, Australia.
A word of warning, the posts occasionally contain explicit material which may be offensive to some.
¥ª₰ ¥∀₰ §฿₣∑₦₭$

A fantastic video here – Sir Ken Robinson talks about topics from his new book The Element. He explores education, creativity, human possibility and the magic point at which natural talent meets personal passion -  finding the thing that resonates with you that leads to personal success. Highly recommended, funny and insightful.

[via elearningpost]

According to the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), creative professions will soon outstrip the financial sector in the UK. The organization’s research indicates that by 2013, the creative industry, which includes film, music, fashion, TV and video games production, will employ 1.3 million people – or 100,000 more people than the financial industry – growing at an average of 4% annually, more than double that of the national economy.
[via Dexigner and Brand Republic]
[image via Vizrt]

Graphic designer and infamous graffiti writer Kunie Martins stars in an interview by Austin Peters which gives the viewer a fascinating look inside his head. More commonly known by his tag,  “Earsnot“, he shares his creative and lifestyle philosophy, and how and why he does the work that he does. It’s a truly fascinating look behind an unbridled creative force who is living his life on his own terms, consequences, rules and others, be dammed. Check out the video below.
earsnot
[via Freshness]

At the PSFK Conference Asia 2008, Rob Campbell (Sunshine/M&C Saatchi) explains why he believes the future of brands is about creating fate – not advertising.  Claiming that ad agencies don’t know the difference between an idea and an “ad” idea, Rob describes why true creativity is more cost effective than common philosophies of formal research & development, distribution and brain-washing media spend.
Rob explains why companies who are looking for the ’single insight’ are wasting their time and that companies who understand people and culture – not categories – and who have a way to transform it into something that is [...]