Brain-picking CurrentTV’s Max Lugavere & Jason Silva

The art of wow, transcendent interconnectedness, and why science is a creative lubricant.

Last week, we reported from TED, where the world’s intelligencia gathered once again to dispense cerebral stimulation and creative urgency. But the best part about this magical gathering is always the incredible wealth of human interestingness in attendance. Among these exceptional minds were Max Lugavere and Jason Silva, founding hosts of CurrentTV, the Emmy-award-winning network launched by Al Gore in 2005. At the intersection of film, philosophy and smartertainment, Max and Jason’s flagship show, Max & Jason: Still Up, curates a late-night hour of short-form documentaries from around the world.

Besides their pivotal role at Current, the duo have also hosted Pangea Day and appeared in GAP’s 2008 ICONS campaign. Oh, and they’re great fun — tremendously intelligent, but with just the right amount of healthy goof to prevent them from taking themselves too seriously.

We caught up with Max and Jason over delicious Thai food to chat about curation, scientific progress and the cross-pollination of disciplines — passion points we seem to share. Here’s a peek inside their fascinating brains.

Tell us a bit about your background and your brand of creative curiosity.

Jason: I have always had a relentless curiosity and passion for big ideas.

In fact, I am so enthralled by moments of insight that I have felt compelled to film such moments as a way to immortalize them. Big ideas wash over me, they inspire me… but they are fleeting… and so filming them or writing about them, or even socially broadcasting them on Facebook, is way of imprinting permanence on these ideas themselves and also how they made me feel.

Max: I have an informal background in computer science, graphic design, filmmaking, and music.

I’m naturally extremely creatively curious and my methods for expression have transitioned in the past couple of years from the digital — I taught myself to program in 3 languages, and have always loved doing web-based design — to the analog: filmmaking, songwriting, etc.

I’m obsessed with the euphoric rush that comes with the creation of something entirely new.

I also love the challenge of figuring out how to make abstract ideas become reality that other people can relate to or feel — whether the idea is a performance or a design or a piece of code. It has been my lifeblood.

How will science better humanity in the age of the social web? How will social science and science-science intersect more meaningfully?

Max: Science will more effectively enhance humanity because information will be free and ubiquitous, and the truths of our own existence will no longer be esoteric abstractions but instead packaged in cool ways with interfaces and context that make sense.

The future of science will basically be a lovechild of great design and fascinating information.

Jason: Science and technology are really the only things that have helped humans overcome problems, obstacles and limitations. Science extends our understanding and our reach.

Science and technology interconnect us, allow us to comprehend each other better and enrich our experience by virtue of knowing how things are tied together. On occasion, science can lack a good narrative — this is where we need to tell better stories. Art-direction, aesthetics, design and framing — all key things to make science and technology meaningful and visceral.

Today, we are all plugged in to an all-encompassing techno-sphere. One billion minds interconnected, surely setting up the conditions for the emergence of a super-organism. It certainly makes me excited to connect with so many minds, time and space no longer limitations. The result is transcendence — something greater than the sum of its parts.

User-generated content can be of questionable quality – how do curators work as quality-control to deliver something truly compelling?

Max: Curators are essential because our world is becoming increasingly more digitized and information is everywhere. Content is being consumed faster and with greater voracity than ever before. However, not all of this information is deserving of our valuable attention spans and it’s up to us to share what is worth taking note of — be it a noble cause, a perspective, a gorgeous song, a beautiful film, the latest research, etc. Since everyone basically becomes a curator, or has the power to curate because of the way social networks are designed, it’s up to the individual to decide how best to use that platform — or whether to use it at all.

Jason: The job of the curator is to act as a barometer of wow.

Good curators have an innate “aha” ability to be easily moved, enthralled and inspired by content that is magnificently curious. They have their eyes unusually peeled and the best of them never fail to find spine-tingling content. Curation of wow is key to having meaningful experiences when consuming information.

Where do you see the cross-pollination of ideas and disciplines going in the next decade?

Jason: More interconnection… more curation, more framing….

Each of us has the responsibility to act as a lens and lend focus to the content and the ideas that will enrich the world and elicit our sense of wonder.

I think technology will continue to extend our capabilities exponentially and our right-brain fantasies will be easily manifest in the digital realm — so much so, that I predict a blurring between the digital and the real. I see augmented reality contextualizing and interfacing our experiences with content and knowledge in a way that the only constant will be a mental state of extreme lucidity. We will learn so much and it will be so meaningful and magical. I am so excited!

Max: I think science, design, and wellness will be the most stand-out themes of the next couple of years. I also think that we have yet to figure out proper monetization models for our content creators themselves.

We want there to always be incentives in the marketplace for artists to create. However, there’s never been a time like today for sharing and getting your work out there.

I’m pretty psyched for the future.

Find Max and Jason online, catch their show weeknights at 12/11c, and follow them on Twitter for more curatorial, cross-disciplinary, cerebrally indulgent goodness.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Uncovered Gem: Steve Jobs on Paul Rand

A brave assault on the paradox of choice, or why the best option is the only option.

This week’s uncovered gem is a 1993 interview of Steve Jobs, talking about what it was like to work with iconic designer Paul Rand, the mastermind behind the logo of Jobs’ second company, NeXT. And, like any genius, he seems to have equal parts brilliance and bravado, talent and tenacity.

I asked him if he would come up with a few options. And he said, ‘No, I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution — if you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve your problem for you the best way I know how, and you use it or not, that’s up to you — you’re the client — but you pay me.’

He’s a very deep, thoughtful person who’s tried to express in every part of his life what his principles are. And you don’t meet so many people like that today.

A wonderful companion read — a 1990 interview with Rand on what he calls “the play instinct”, echoed and evolved in a couple of our favorite TED talks, Tim Brown’s and Paula Scher’s.

Donating = Loving

Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.

♥ $7 / month♥ $3 / month♥ $10 / month♥ $25 / month

You can also become a one-time patron with a single donation in any amount:

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.

Interview with Illustrator Christina Tsevis

What Coldplay, Oscar Wilde and Plato have in common and why the commodification of art may be a good thing.

Today, we’re picking the brains of Athens-based visual artist Christina Tsevis, a.k.a. crosti, whose illustartion is among the most whimsical we’ve seen in years, and whose scope of inspiration ranges from German literature to Greek philosophy to The Beatles, embodying the very cross-pollination of ideas and disciplines that we so try to foster here at Brain Pickings.

Hey Christina, good to have you. Tell us a bit about your background and your brand of creative curiosity.

Thanks so much for having me.

I’m a 26-year-old illustrator/visual designer from Athens, Greece, working as a freelancer.

I guess you could say I was the type of kid who sketched on everything. I was lucky because my brother, who had a big influence on me, left Greece to study graphic design in Italy when I was only 8 years old, and I inherited design for life. I never really had to wonder what I was going to do with my life — I always knew it would be something in arts.

What inspires me? People I love. Music. Books. Movies. Daisies. Bugs. The 60’s. Traveling. Memories. Dreams. My family. My dogs. Everything! Anything could trigger my interest and imagination.

oh, take me back to the start

Coldplay - The Scientist

My favorite artists range from William Kentridge to Radiohead, from Woody Allen to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.

Your illustrations embody a curious duality of vibrancy and melancholy, innocence and burden. What inspires this interplay?

Life! It’s never black or white, is it? It has its ups and downs and it’s that perfect balance we look for, to be complete. Our dreams are our guidelines in life, but then again we must always be in touch with reality.

There’s no way to prevent bad things from happening to you, no way not to get your heart broken. There is a way to make sure it’s worth it though. It’s so much better to live life to the fullest, than to be cautious all the time.

To rephrase Oscar Wilde, “you might fall down in the gutter, but when you rise, you’ll be floating among the stars.”

We’re particularly taken with your series based on Kafka’s 1915 novella, “The Metamorphosis.” It’s a story that dabbles in the darkness of death, but is really about fantasy and light and the whimsy of life – a relationship that seems to define much of your work as well. Tell us about the inspiration for the series and what you hoped to capture in the illustrations.

This series was made in 2006 as part of my thesis.

To me, Kafka is a genius. His work can always be elucidated on several different levels and its philosophy can apply to many aspects of life.

pages 03-04

His writing reminds me of Plato’s — the moment you think you completely understand, you realize you have much more to explore.

Everyone who has heard of The Metamorphosis knows that it describes a man (Gregor Samsa) who woke up to find he was transformed into a bug-but I quickly gave up the idea of trying to depict that.

pages 13-14

Having read the book in its written language — German — I began to concern myself with how much of the book is lost in translation.

In reality, Kafka uses a more vague word to describe what the main character was turned into and I hated the idea of contributing to that “misunderstanding” by drawing weird bugs.

pages 19-20

So I decided to try to portray this metamorphosis in a semi-scenographic way, defining the character through his absence and setting forth the distortion of Gregor’s personal space — his room, which was as much a shelter as it ended up to be a prison.

Most of your characters are kids, your color choices are bold and vibrant, and your graphic style has a certain lightness reminiscent of children’s books. Why this fascination with childhood?

I guess it’s because I haven’t come to terms with the fact that I’m a grown-up (ha-ha!)

Jokes aside, I envy children and their emotional immediacy. The tiniest of things can provoke a massive explosion of sensitivity that we learn to give up very early on in life.

That is such a shame and I often find myself wishing I could experience happiness and sadness to that extend. Other than that, some creators might at first seem to be addressing children, but in reality their target audience is a lot wider than that.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is one of those examples, or even Hans Christian Andersen’s books. Sometimes it seems this is the easiest gateway to pass on some thoughts and ideas that are easily mistaken as naive or childish. This is another reason why my work seems to be about children.

The red-haired girl character in your more recent work has her eyes closed in almost all of the illustrations. Is there a symbolism behind this?

That’s Chloe. She made her first “appearance” in June 2009.

This entire series of illustrations isn’t commissioned and was created out of my need to express things that I couldn’t or didn’t want to put in words.

John Lennon wrote, “Living is easy with eyes closed” for Strawberry Fields Forever and I guess that’s a big part of why Chloe always has her eyes closed — she doesn’t want to face reality and prefers to live in her own dream world where things are still the way she remembers them to be.

Waiting for Spring to Arrive

In some of my work we see this “dream-world” of hers depicted all around her; but sometimes, as much as she wishes it all away, she can’t escape reality.

mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix

I have had people ask me if Chloe is ever going to open her eyes and I really have no idea what to tell them. They’re going to have to ask her themselves!

Digital platforms are making it increasingly easy for artists to get their work out there. And we’re beginning to see massive amounts of talent, often from “amateurs.” But this golden age for creativity is also making art a bit of a commodity, making it harder to craft a distinct, memorable creative voice as an artist. How do you feel about the future of art in this era of creative commodification?

I think only good things can come out of this. Art should be a commodity! Wouldn’t it be great if we lived in an even more artistic world, full of new talents?

reach out...i wonder where you are now

Personally, I find education extremely important in any field. However, even though imagination and feeling can be generated when studying, they can in no way be taught. And this is why, in my opinion, some amateurs can aim towards what some professionals can’t.

I’ve always felt the only thing that can make your work stand out is how successful you are in the art of communicating your feelings through what you do. Regardless if it’s illustration, theatre or music, people will only relate to what you do if you’re honest, consistent and responsible.

Are there any exceptions? Of course. But I don’t believe they stand a chance in time.

Explore more of Christina’s work and find yourself swept up in a wonderful world of whimsy and visual philosophy.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.

Crowdsourcing 2010: Behind the3six5 Project

An experiment in the collaborative authorship of history and our collective reality.

Today, we’re picking the brains behind the3six5 — a new blog-project that invites a different, often famous, person to write an entry for each of the 365 days in 2010, essentially crowdsourcing a snapshot of the year. So far, the project has enlisted a varied spectrum of personalities — from writers to comedians to TED speakers to, well, us. (Mark your calendars — we’re going on February 9.)

We sit down with co-conspirators Len Kendall and Daniel Honigman for a chat about the inspiration behind the3six5, its challenges and its ultimate goals.

Hey guys, good to have you. Tell us a bit about yourselves, your background and your brand of curiosity.

Len: I’m a Chicago native, a first generation member of my family, and a digital marketing guy. My brand of curiosity stems from my desire to always be learning and discovered. I’m a self proclaimed “Expert at Nothing” which is a personal reminder to never consider myself a master of any discipline.

My career is a direct result of my interest in bridging creativity and business. I’ve spent time at 2 Chicago ad agencies focusing on digital media and currently am helping lead the charge of “Digital PR” at Golin Harris Chicago where I work with over a dozen major brands.

Daniel: I’m a news guy. I fell in love with journalism when I was an undergrad in college, and I moved to Chicago to study it. I started my career as a reporter, and then sort of fell into the digital/social media world when I started to cover it.

I then landed a gig at the Chicago Tribune as its first social media “person,” where I created and ran its Colonel Tribune persona, after which I then moved up to lead social media strategy for all Tribune newspapers and television sites. I started at Weber Shandwick in June 2009, where I work with brands to interact with consumers and best tell their stories digitally.

Whether I’m working with brands, or consulting with news organization or local businesses, my passion is working with others to help them tell their stories. I enjoy pushing the envelope, and I enjoy helping others think outside of the box.

How and when did the idea for the3six5 first come up?

Len: Daniel and I are very entrepreneurial in nature and many of our discussions over cigars will revolve around potential projects we can team up on. This particular idea came up over the course of a few months and we decided to act on this one as it merged our interests of journalism, marketing, and technology (also not to mention a low cost of entry).

Daniel: We were talking one day about doing a similar storystreaming project for the city of Chicago, actually. We would gather folks from all sorts of life in town: athletes, politicians, artists and some regular, hardworking folks from the city and invite them to tell their stories.

We figured that it could be quite difficult to find 365 in Chicago, and we wanted to try to incorporate a more global perspective for the3six5 project, so we opened it up.

We know from psychology that two people may undergo the exact same experience yet walk away with drastically different interpretations of and sentiments about it. Curating the lineup of contributors will thus be critical to the project’s final product. So, in a way, you’re outsourcing the content but shaping the course of it yourselves — how do you feel about that?

Len: Regardless of a person’s digital or offline footprint, we ultimately have no idea what kind of content is going to be produced over the 365 days of 2010.

No one can predict what will be taking place in the world that day and no one can predict what factors will be affecting the lives of our 365 authors in the future. All we can try to do is find people who we believe are creative, quality writers, and have a unique life experience to date.

Daniel: I feel great about that. With any big crowdsourced project (e.g. Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton’s Age of Conversation projects) there must be a theme. There must be guidance. We want to give our contributors an idea of what they could and should be writing, as far as format, types of content, etc., but we want to give as much flexibility as possible as to the actual content itself. Think of the3six5 is a collaborative diary for the year 2010.

We’re big believers in eclecticism and the cross-pollination of ideas. Are you making an effort to ensure a diverse lineup from a wide spectrum of disciplines, or are you focusing more on social media personalities? What’s your selection process for the authors?

Len: The easiest route here would obviously be to leverage our social media channels to find authors, but Daniel and I knew that the variety of perspectives would suffer. We’re using social media as a starting point for exploration and discovery.

Through both of our usage of Twitter we’ve been able to bridge relationships with people offline and in industries that are polar opposite from our own.

Sure, some of our authors may have a social media presence, but we’re looking for people who are well-versed across different types of subject matter. Having variety is critical to this project, otherwise it will just sound like a diary written by one person which is the exact opposite of what we’re trying to achieve.

Daniel: Successful social media efforts happen both online and offline, therefore, we didn’t want to limit this project to people we know online. We hope this project brings people together. We hope this project introduces folks to others they never would have met otherwise. That’s what will make the3six5 so much fun.

“Lifestreaming” has evolved from musings on one’s immediate cirumstances in personal blogs to broader reflections on the chancing social, technological and cultural landscape – just look at some of the big-name blogs, from TechCruch to BoingBoing. How do you see the idea of content curation fitting in with lifestreaming?

Daniel: For A Day in the Sun, the Austin American-Statesman’s crowdsourced news project, editors and reporters received content from Austinites first, and then posted it to the web. For an open brandstream — aggregated or published — it’s easy to flood the stream with all sorts of content the brand may not want.

Therefore, for brands and news organizations to take advantage of lifestreaming platforms, the actual content, if crowdsourced, has to be verified and of an agreed upon standard.

This is not to say content in an individual’s lifestream isn’t curated. By reading an article and posting a link or other content, users are curating their own content in real time, whether they know it or not.

The purpose of a lifestream is to publish one’s digital activities for others’ benefit. Not everything you’ll read or do can — or should — be shared for others. Therefore, not ALL content should go in a lifestream.

My take is that for crowdsourced lifestream projects to be successful, editors must establish clear guidelines.

A key criticism of the web is the dilution of authorship — it’s often hard and sometimes even impossible to track down the true origin and author of a piece of information online. Would you say the preservation of authorship is important in writing our own history as a society and civilization?

Len: I have mixed emotions on this topic. On one hand, if we don’t preserve authorship, then there will be less motivation for people to create content.

Let’s be honest, we’re a proud species and if we’re not getting credit for something we created, we aren’t going to want to continue. That being said, from the audience’s perspective, there isn’t much concern about who or where content comes from, we just want it to be of substance.

With the3six5 we’re going to do our best to make it very clear of who the author is each day. By showing readers a different author each day, we’re reminding them that the story is coming from a different perspective. Unlike reading a book, here the audience needs to reset its expectations each day in regards to style and personality.

Daniel: People steal credit for other people’s work — and have done so — for thousands of years. As we move forward, and with more information readily available, it’s going to be incumbent upon us to cite our original source material, as this will only lend more credence to our own original thoughts, when we do have them.

Well, thanks for letting us pick your brains. Any last thoughts left unpicked?

Len: Thank you for taking the time to share our project. I’d like to take this opportunity to point your readers to our listing on Kickstarter. Although the3six5 does not require any money to work, our ultimate plan is to publish 2010 as a hard copy book and as such, we would love to have assistance with the potential publishing process. Donations will go towards buying a future book, and also an additional copy for an author of the3six5.

Details are available here.

Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s what to expect. Like? Sign up.