Flow states + the

general theory of creativity

Concept: Shades of Gray, Tone-Value ScalesPeople: Charles & Ray Eames, Max ErnstPlaces: The Guggenheim Museums

Charles & Ray Eames

Inventors of Multimedia

✤ CHARLES + RAY

✤ Innovative / Interactive museum design.

✤ Experimental use of film to convey information.

✤ Modernist Architecture

✤ Pioneers of mid-century furniture design and manufacturing.

Eames exhibition

Innovative filmmakers

products that serve the world

Masters of mid-century furniture design and manufacturing

Architects the first building they designed was a HIT!

Being good at this...

Could help you

create this...

Zaha Hadid - overcoming obstacles

✤ Born in Iraq.

✤ First woman to win the Pritzker Prize.

✤ Architecture is still ‘a man’s world.’

✤ Style is radical and futuristic.

Peggy - the poor Guggenheim

Peggy’s house + museum Venice, Italy

✤ “A painting a day” -began to collect in Paris, just as the Nazi’s were about to invade.

✤ Friend & patron of Ernst, Picasso, Brancusi, Pollock, Miro, Magritte, Kandinsky, Calder, etc., etc.

✤ Bought an unfinished Venetian palace in 1949.

✤ The last Venetian to have a private gondola, gondolier.

Solomon Guggenheim NYC

FLW1959

Other Guggenheims...

✤ Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain - Frank Gehry

✤ Guggenheim Abu Dhabi (starts in 2017)

Berlin (closed 2012)

Las Vegas (closed 2008)

Not completed: Salzburg, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, Guadalajara, Taiwan, Helsinki, Lithuania.

Flow States - Mihaly C.

✤ A euphoric sense that we are ‘in the groove.’

✤ We’ve all experienced ‘flow states.’

✤ Expressing ourselves and coming up with solutions to problems happens effortlessly.

flowing water is a perfect metaphor for the creative state of mind

When did you last experience ‘flow?’

✤ What area of life was your flow centered on?

✤ Relationships, business, learning, spiritual, adventure, helping others, artistic expression, or ______.

“A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.”

― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

“Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.”

Motivated employees play a crucial role in creating a company’s sustainable competitive advantage. Successful ‘Management by Motivation’ shows that in a knowledge-based society, this goal cannot be achieved by extrinsic motivation alone. Pay for performance often even hurts because it crowds out intrinsic motivation. To succeed, companies have to find ways of fostering and sustaining intrinsic motivation.

INTRINSIC VS EXTRINSIC

What things are you intrinsically motivated to do?

Now what

?

Allowing for a little uncertainty, focusing onwhat you dream of doing, before committing

to action, can lead to greater success and satisfaction in the long run.

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.”

Draw a tone-value scale

✤ Graphite

✤ Ten even steps.

✤ No smudging.

Frottage Value-scale

✤ Tear one inch strips from rubbings that are NOT part of your series.

✤ Arrange from light to dark.

✤ Paste together.