happy accident | The Direction of Intention

Embrace The Accident [on Two Artists Tuesday]

Posted on May 23, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative

I am a big believer in happy accidents. Kerri didn’t intend to take this photo. A vibrant shock of red thrust into a field of green. I’m tempted to slap a title on it and enter it into a contemporary photography exhibition.

I’ve read that serendipity, an “unplanned fortunate discovery,…is a common occurrence throughout the history of product invention and scientific discovery.” It’s also a common occurrence throughout the history of art. It’s also a common occurrence throughout the history of…history. We have experiences and then we make meaning of them. Not the other way around.

I suppose we pride ourselves on our capacity “to know” so we forget that all knowledge is the result of a stumble, a discovery found at the far end of curiosity, exploration or an outright mistake. The point of a hypothesis (to borrow a term from Quinn) is to cultivate serendipity. Try it and see what happens.

I’ve been following the conversation in the tech-o-sphere about the sudden blossom of the very lucrative job “phrase engineer.” Human beings attempting through trial and error to learn how best to converse with the technology we’ve created. AI. ChatGpt. The unspoken goals are (not surprisingly) efficient and effective communication. There are now several sites with useful phrases, conversational hints, Youtubes abound with guidance for best ways to ask better questions, quickly eliciting the best result: an answer. It’s glorious and reminds me of old 3rd grade language primers or my high school foreign language class – only more enthusiastic.

I am among the millions who hope beyond hope that someone-out-there bumbles into the secret of effective communication. Perhaps if we discover how to communicate with artificial intelligence there will be a profound blowback and we will, serendipitously, discover the secret of easy communication with each other. Generosity. Empathy. Kindness. How-you-say-what-you-say matters.

“AI, tell me what you see and I will listen with an open mind and heart.” I know, I know. More pie-in-the-sky. But as a dedicated believer in happy accidents, I’m given to think that anything is possible.

read Kerri’s blogpost about RED ON GREEN

like it. share it. buyusacoffee. tell us your thoughts. all are appreciated.

Filed under: Art, Creativity, Language, Perspective, Two Artists Tuesday | Tagged: AI, artistry, chatGPT, communication, curiosity, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, discovery, happy accident, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, knowledge, language, learning, meaning making, mistake, phrase engineer, serendipity, story, studio melange, the melange | 1 Comment »

Turn To See [on Merely A Thought Monday]

Posted on April 12, 2021 by davidrobinsoncreative

Joseph Campbell said, “None of us lives the life that he/she imagined.” We have an idea, perhaps a plan, a good map, and then, well, life happens. As anyone who’s ever done home repair knows, things rarely go according to the plan. A good life, a life well lived, allows for both the well-laid-plan and the home-repair-rule. Things happen. Plans change. Visions grow. Pipes burst. Pieces don’t fit. Good angels arrive.

Dreams are fluid things. Despite expectations, very few life paths are straight lines.

One of the tenets we taught in The Circle Project was to plan for surprise. Expect the unexpected. There is nothing worse than an inflexible plan. There’s nothing better than a happy accident that alters the course of an idea, the direction of a life.

That we have penicillin in our world is the result of a famous happy accident. Intention met mishap met serendipity. A surprise discovery in a Petri dish in 1928 took years, many more Petri dishes, publications and happy discovery by other scientists who held a similar intention, followed by additional happy accidents to at last become a useful antibiotic available to the public in 1942.

Though I rarely include it in my list of gratitude, I would not be alive today were it not for that accidental mold in the dish and the subsequent scientists who included in their plan time to read journals and follow up on the research they found there. I’ve never come across a life plan that included a bout with life-threatening infection but I’ve heard countless tales of relief when the antibiotic – no longer a surprise – arrived. Surprise meets plan. Plan meets surprise. They are dance partners, not adversaries.

A team can practice, practice, practice, but they cannot know or predict the outcome of the game. It must first be played. And, as any athlete will tell you, the game is only worth playing – or watching – because the outcome is unknown.

Plan for the unknown. Welcome the surprise.

The long view is what we desire before life is lived. Pick a point on the horizon and walk that way.

The long view is something we can only truly see after the fact, when we arrive at a point, and turn to see the surprising path we have traveled.

read Kerri’s blog post about THE LONG VIEW

Filed under: Emergence, Gratitude, Merely A Thought Monday, Perspective, Seeing | Tagged: david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, happy accident, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, life path, life plan, long view, map, penicillin, plan, serendipity, surprise, The Circle Project, unknown | Leave a comment »

Plan For Surprise [on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Posted on June 26, 2019 by davidrobinsoncreative

coffee cup dance copy

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft a-gley ~Robert Burns, To A Mouse

The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. It is something we keep in mind as we wade into the planning phase of our next project [well, learning first. Planning, second].

Actually, in truth, the best laid plans always go awry. Life, circumstance, is a constantly moving and changing force that generally alters all well-conceived plans. Whether we acknowledge it or not. We plan but [you might want to sit down for this next bit of revelation]: we do not control.

The plan, at best, is an abstraction that assumes a perfect circumstance and completely ignores relationship dynamics. People are fickle. Everyone has a plan and many of the plans do not line up with my plan! There is weather. There are partycrashers. Pick pockets. Tripping stones. The budget. The children get sick. The internet portals are tapped out. The bridge fails. There is a better idea.

If everything went according to plan there would be no happy accidents. No teachable moments. Most discoveries come precisely because the plan fails. It is a rule of change that if you know where you are going, you will recreate what you already have. The plan can only pretend to bring about change. Change comes when you veer off course. Change comes from time spent in the unknown lands. Oddly, so does learning.

The only plan that makes sense? Plan for surprise. You’ll never be disappointed or frustrated because everything will go according to the plan.

read Kerri’s blog post on THE PLAN

Filed under: Creativity, Flawed Wednesday, Surprises, Uncategorized | Tagged: abstraction, circumstance, control, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, happy accident, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, learning, plan, plans, relationship, studio melange, surprise, teachable moment, the plan | Leave a comment »

Count On You [on KS Friday]

Posted on August 10, 2018 by davidrobinsoncreative

count on you song box copy

Occasionally we’ve intentionally organized our weekly melange around a theme. Mostly, however, we choose the individual pieces according to a scientific method, a very precise criteria. It’s called ‘Oh, I like this one. Me, too.” And, sometimes our very precise criteria bumbles into a theme that we only notice when building the web page. That was the case this week. This is called the ‘happy accident’ method.

Our happy accident reads like a self-empowerment seminar: unleash the power of your crayon, living without fear, break away from the flock, pray in the field of opposites, and today’s KS selection: count on you. Kerri told me that this song was not her favorite and I reminded her that no artist likes all their work. She scowled at me and nodded her head at the same time.

It is especially difficult for an artist to reach back almost two decades and appreciate, let alone recognize, the work they did at another time, during another era of exploration. I famously look into my archives and grimace. A very few pieces stand out, the connection still strong, the exploration still alive and vital. The rest look foreign like someone else created them.

But this is what Kerri knows and always tells me when I am in full artistic grimace. The pieces serve as markers, important reminders of where you’ve been, reminders of how far you’ve traveled. And, as the artist, it is never my place to decide for others what is best and what is not. It’s the artist’s job to share. And so, in a grand moment of blow-back, I reminded Kerri of her own words when she grimaced at this song.

Blow back has blow back. No one ever accused me of being smart. It is not by intention that I now find myself sharing the crate with dogdog as I introduce to you this song of wise reminders. It’s a marker of Kerri’s past but her message is never dated.