The last page in Cornithaca County is a preface for a new chapter in the Idea Enhancement Project; and the reappearance of an old dilemma:
“There are none so deaf as those who will not hear.”
How do you gain belief for novel ideas in a comfort-zone world of encyclopedic compartments and the scientific ordering of minutiae?
In practical terms; find those who can think for themselves and decide for themselves.
The Project’s greatest need is to contact and collaborate; and receive the feedback needed to move forward as an accessible and practical means “for increasing innovative and creative thinking.”
For those who have not read it; I will reproduce that page as an introduction to the Project and its goals.
The Idea Enhancement Project
The Idea Enhancement Project is a unique undertaking that explores the use of art as a practical tool for increasing innovative and creative thinking. This project is visionary, but not theoretical: the results must be practical; because the process itself is unknowable to the conscious mind.
The unconscious mind is often portrayed as a wild beast; an uncontrollable and destructive atavism
Artists and creative people know that this is untrue, and many have personal and individual techniques for exploring this richest part of the human mind; allowing them to achieve what they could not with the conscious mind alone. The Idea Enhancement Project’s mission is to find ways that have the greatest chance of success; and are the most universally practical.
This process has too many “true” ways of looking at it to have an “explanation” that fits all viewpoints. And it is far too complex to be reduced to quantitative analysis. It cannot be “reverse engineered” because there are no measurable and discrete steps. One way I like to look at it is that art and ideas share the same level in your mind and can communicate and interact directly with each other.
One must leap into the unconscious and grab ahold of some connection to that area where ideas are born — but this is just what art does. With an increase in the frequency of connection; comes the ease of making that connection — until it happens “unconsciously.”
Problems can be left to “simmer” and various solutions will appear for inspection.
Visualizing the results of “quantitative” thinking as a nodule or accretion of pieces is a useful analogy because it describes a way in which the results of qualitative thinking is presented to the thinker. There is no conscious effort involved; but practical results can be achieved.
Like a daydream; it produces a world of its own, and its own feeling; a texture that the mind can sense.
It is practical, and it is useful: it generated much of the material in this book.
The results of this ongoing investigation are immediately available for “real world” use by everyone. All that is needed is a sustained contemplation of the images.
All artwork is original and free to download for any use at IdeaEnhancement.org