Strands of Genius: Mysterious Ways, Philosophy is Creativity, Art is a Mirror
Guest curated by Rafa Jiménez
Each year we aim to highlight 50 creative thinkers that have inspired us by giving them the opportunity to guest curate this newsletter, Strands of Genius. This edition is guest curated by Rafa Jiménez, Founder, Seenapse; and Partner at Good Rebels México.
:: A BIT MORE ABOUT GUEST CURATOR, RAFA JIMENEZ ::
LOCATION: Mexico City
PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT: Founder, Seenapse; and Partner at Good Rebels México
Hi! I'm Rafa, and I'm delighted to be guest-curating today's Strands. I met Faris like I suspect many of you did, through Twitter. I noticed that among the many interesting things he wrote about and shared, one topic was very dear to my heart (because I had been reading and noodling about it for years — more on that later) which is the combinatory nature of creativity. I DMd him and we hit it off pretty quickly, and since then I've had the chance to meet him and Rosie several times in that quasi-mythical plane called real life!
Editor’s Note (Faris): I did indeed meet Rafa on Twitter, which is indeed how I meet most people. Rafa is awesome, one of the original digital agency people in Mexico, launched Yahoo! in that market, and has been constantly innovating at the edge of our industry for longer than most of us have been in it. He’s become a dear friend - I’ve been to his house! - because thanks to him we’ve been invited to various gigs in CDMX, now one of our favorite cities - and we always have a great time. He’s a deep thinking deep cut otaku, GO playing, anime head and sings a mean karaoke. He’s currently a partner at a groovy indie agency and the founder of Seenapse, which I encourage you to check out. See more on that below - I also mention it in this recent article.
Also, we are in Mexico City right now and will be meeting up with soon - so see you soon, hermano!
:: THE LINKS ::
MYSTERIOUS WAYS
In this recent interview with David Silver, the lead scientist of the famous AlphaGo project at Google's DeepMind, he talks about games and their role in creativity and, of course, of AI's creative capabilities. He recalls how back in 2016, during the second game of the much-publicized match against one of the best Go players, Lee Sedol, AlphaGo came up with a move that all the game pros and commentators hailed as brilliant —divine, even— and as a demonstration of its creativity (in the link, BTW, the excellent AlphaGo documentary is embedded, and is worth watching even if you're not into Go or AI).
To Silver, it's evident that the old belief that creativity is what sets us apart from machines isn't true anymore. And I have no qualms about that. What's annoying about these creative machines is that they're not great teachers, because they can't explain why they did what they did, what's on their _minds_. And so for example, in Go, when pro players review games in which AlphaGo plays itself, or its more advanced successor, AlphaZero (which became much stronger without studying human matches), there's a point in which they just give up trying to understand the moves.
There are some interesting initiatives to make AIs able to explain themselves, but for now, it's as if gods have given us scriptures that we can't make sense of… and interestingly, that sends us back to square one in regards to our understanding of exactly how creativity happens. (The Bulletin)
PHILOSOPHY IS CREATIVITY
I've been attracted to the ideas of Deleuze & Guattari for quite a while, although I find their texts incomprehensible most of the time, to be honest. I've been trying to read “A Thousand Plateaus” for about five years, and it's a fixture at my night table, but it really is dense in more ways than one. Still, their rhizome concept animates much of Seenapse's organizing principle, and I find D&G's way of working eminently creative. For example, when describing their process, Deleuze said that if one said that the Earth's center was made of raspberry jam, the other's job was to find a way to make that idea work. Isn't that a great way to approach creative work in teams?
Anyways, the other day I was listening to Stephen West's podcast “Philosophize This!”, and in the episode I wanted to share with you he explains D&G's view of philosophy. They basically introduced a radical new idea: Philosophy is not about “discovering”, but about “creating”. They say that given that we cannot really know the truth, all of the different ontologies that philosophers (mostly in the Western tradition) have proposed are simply conceptual frameworks, thinking tools that make more or less sense depending on who you are and what's your historical context; and that the job of philosophy is to come up with concepts. Philosophy, along with science and art, is our way to confront chaos, and they all require creativity in order to progress in said confrontation. (YouTube)
ART IS A MIRROR
The anime “Attack on Titan” is coming to an end, and I've been on the edge of my seat trying, unsuccessfully, to guess what's going to happen next. If you haven't watched it (or read the manga), I envy you — I'd love to be able to watch it again for the first time. Hajime Isayama, its author, has revealed himself as a great artist and a master storyteller.
One of the interesting things about “Attack on Titan” is that it doesn't incur in facile good-evil dichotomies, and all characters have some virtues and serious flaws. So it was surprising to me when a friend mentioned that some people in the far right were really excited with the storyline (and there was even a Republican congressman that tweeted an edited sequence in which he portrayed himself as a titan-slayer, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a titan). I thought that there was nothing in the narrative they could sympathize with, but incredibly enough, there is, and they do, as this text in TNR explains.
As Oscar Wilde said, it is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. (The New Republic)
Looking for more from Rafa Jiménez? Those enrolled in The School of Stolen Genius will receive a deep dive from him in their inbox shortly! You can access all our expert interviews for SOSG here.
:: AND NOW… SOME FAST FAVORITES ::
:: Game :: Go, of course! (Not that I'm any good at it)
:: City :: It's a tie between Mexico City and Tokyo.
:: Book :: Of recent times, Ishiguro's The Buried Giant.
:: Podcast :: Metamuse, covering thinking tools, creativity, and product design.
:: Album :: Talk Talk's Spirit of Eden, or David Sylvian's Manafon.
:: SEENAPSE ::
The new version of Seenapse is coming, combining human lateral thinking with AI's speed and scale. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to start experimenting with it now in its beta version!
That's it for me! Happy to connect with you for an online game of Go, discuss augmented creativity, and of course showing you what Seenapse can do for you. You can find me on Twitter (@rafajim) or write me an email (rafa@seenapse.it).
Rafa Jiménez
rafa@seenapse.it
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