If, in your travels around the Internet, you haven't yet come across the spellbinding video of the little girl giant puppet, be sure to check it out now. Read about this and three more creative tidbits:
1. The little girl giant puppet video showcases an unusual aspect of creativity. I found a nice sharp copy at Electric Pig (under the Photography button). A variety of creativity sites and blogs have linked to it, such as Richard Wiseman's Blog where he refers to the 'giant puppet" rule of creativity. What I got out of the video was to think about how making something ordinary into something huge (and of excellent quality) can have amazingly creative results. It's a great example of creative teamwork too. (The photo is by Matthew Andrews and Sophie Laslett, courtesy of Arts Council London)
2. "Taking the Mystery Out of Writing Mysteries" is an article by author/psychologist Dennis Palumbo. Sample: "We want order restored. But not just social order; the best mysteries, whether on Without A Trace or in Murder On the Orient Express, are also about the exploration and resolution of psychological tension."
3. Here's a video lecture, both stimulating and insightful, by designer Tim Brown about the many connections between creative thinking and play, with audience participation invited (that's you).
4. Jon Stewart talks in an interview about "audience" (and how one gets over caring about it) in his early stand-up days:
There was a club right down the street called the Comedy Cellar. And there was a guy there named Bill Grundfest. He did the best thing for me ever, which was: "I'll tell you what I'll do; I'm not gonna pay you, but I'm gonna let you go on every night as the last guy." And so I went on for two years at the Comedy Cellar at 2:30 or 3 a.m. as the last guy. It was me and the waitstaff and a table of drunken Dutch sailors. And in that place, I learned how to be myself. It was the thing that made me want to be good. You begin to develop an internal barometer that doesn't include the audience. And that was a really big thing to learn: not to fall in love with the audience.
