Skirkanich 2

Today marked the beginning of my internship in network visualization at UPenn. Our cohort of 6 artists and 6 high school students listened to lectures on creativity, networks and cognition. My favorite was Scott Barry Kauffman from the Positive Psychology center and the Imagination Institute 

He spoke quite a bit about the development of creativity and the personality characteristics associated with being a creative individual. He related much of what he explained to children and teachers, which made it all feel very relevant to me. It's ok to daydream. There's lots of kinds of intelligence and paths to becoming successful. The "foot in the door" is a good way to find your path towards your dream. And the noise or default mode of the brain is where imagination and creativity thrive.

Speaking of creativity...

Executive function in the brain may inhibit creative response. If we can turn off the quick parts of our brain that want to name things and filter out unnecessary information, then the slower daydreamy side can do its thing much more easily. Think of a everyday object. What is it's purpose? Boom!--your executive function just stormed in and got right to the point. A bat is for hitting a baseball, a chair is for sitting, a push pin is for holding papers to a board or wall. If that part of the brain can be reined in, the visualizing parts of the brain can play and make unexpected connections. A bat could become a railing on a staircase, a chair can become a bookshelf, and a pushpin could help you hold a miniature cob of corn to eat! I'm reminded of the artist Victor Nunes.

The toughest part of the day was comprehending our into to networks. It's really just a way of visualization information related to groups and their relationships. A group may be an individual, an idea, a organization, and they are represented as nodes. A relationship may be shared experiences, a social connection, a geographic relation,etc. and is represented as an edge or line connecting the nodes. Some nodes are more important than others in how they influence the dynamics of the system, and some system dynamics are better than others for transmitting information across the network. Proximity, bridging, popularity, and frequency all effect the influence of individual nodes. Ahhhhhhh my brain is about to explode thinking about all these things. I made the collage above to help me resolve the chaos of information...or maybe it just illustrates my chaos.
If you like visualizing information check out this website.