It makes me feel like my code is more beautiful, somehow.

Maybe it’s because whenever I watch a brilliant hacker give a technical talk, they put their screens up on the projector and live-code with super-large type.

Perhaps it reduces the amount of stuff that fits on my screen to a more elegant “that which matters.” Too much text via smaller font makes it difficult to focus.

It’s a cognitive hack for creativity.

Monoco 18pt – Vibrant Ink color scheme for Textmate

The concept, called SmartLab, looks to be a fun way to reapply and improve on some work I have done previously in interface design, multitouch tables, and creative workflow research.

The project will involve prototyping a physical workbench (with integrated projection, multitouch screen, and image capture facilities), writing some system software, and developing a user interaction that will stretch my imagination in strange and useful ways.

Tomorrow I’ll be working with them at Dev House Boston (a self-imposed cram session of people completing interesting things over the course of a few hours) to design and possibly prototype some of the user interaction for this device.

I have an interest in people’s workspaces. I have reams of notes and photographs documenting how people set up their studios, kitchens, or even just their computer desktop. I adore artist studio tours because you can often get a sense of flow from the best producers just by their arrangement of tools or choice of decor. I believe that prolifically creative people set up their environments so that there are few barriers to successful accomplishment.   

The idea of introducing technology into an environment in an unobtrusive way to facilitate creation strikes me as a big problem worthy of exploration.

For example, one of the more interesting ideas that surfaced today was the idea of an “improved lab notebook.” Researchers must take copious notes about their experiments as they are learning and trying new ideas and techniques. These logs serve as both evidence of work progress and as fodder for the papers that are the mark of accomplishment for scientists.

While there are many attempts to digitize or automate these notes, it seems that most researchers revert to paper and pencil as their note-taking default; Mac relayed a story of a researcher printing out results and literally cutting and pasting the spreadsheet into a paper notebook.

Lifecasting as Means for Project Documentation

There are live video streams of offices and studios and workshops out there that I find fascinating. Sometimes I’ll just turn them on one of my monitors and just have them running in the background. Since I work alone from my home office, this sometimes makes me feel connected to other humans also pursuing some results.

A little while ago, I registered a ustream.tv account for an idea called “Tinkercam.”

lifecasting as means for project documentation.

There is a known psychological effect that when you are observed in a work setting (i.e. you think somebody is watching you), you will work more effectively and are more likely to stay on task. The surprising thing is that this will even work if you place a photograph of eyeballs somewhere in your peripheral vision.

I set up my tinkercam in hopes that it may be a way to mindhack my way into increased focus. On my test run, I just found that I was spending all my time fiddling with the webcam and that only one person was watching (who thought I was a tech support person and started asking questions about setting up their ustream account). Granted, I could have gone onto twitter and announced the “launch” of tinkercam, but I felt that it’s not at a launch stage yet. (The cam is live sometimes, nonetheless.)

I then started brainstorming on what else a tinkercam would be and how it needs to change to be useful or even fun.

First, because it’s video, it needs to point at interesting things. A guy, banging on his keyboard all day is actually not interesting. More interesting would be a stream of my computer screen overlaid on top of my face so you could see what I was working on, what I was paying attention to, and how my workflow progresses.

If I was working on my robotics projects (like the robot puppet), then I could get away with just pointing my camera at my soldering iron and that would be more visually interesting by the nature of the work.

Second, it needs to be unobtrusive. I shouldn’t have to think about turning it on or switching between camera views. Something like motion detection or application awareness could act as a virtual “director” for the tinkercam.

The more exciting potential is that by recording the stream or taking critical snapshots, you can document the progress of a project automatically for sharing. Documentation and process sharing has become increasingly important for creative producers in the hacker/DIY community. (see instructables.com) Software artists pay attention to the blogs of other software artists as they write about their projects.

We also discussed the value of “replaying.” Mac often captures a desktop stream as he is iterating over design (ex. photoshop). This way, he can replay his tinkering and watch the creative evolution of an idea. Often he will discover decision points where alternate choices might be useful in different contexts.

The Creative Framework and the Digital Notebook

I’ve also been working on a digital sketchbook and ideaflow tool which allows me to rapidly iterate through ideas and follow threads. I am able to fork off ideas and replay/retrace iterations to discover their lineage.

This, in essence, is my lab notebook. It’s custom software that in itself is a creative work, but it allows me to open lots of streams of thought and follow them as I see fit (or as the software urges me to go).

I’ve written about my theory of creative infrastructure before, but to reiterate:

The creative process has steps:

1. Live and Observe
2. Wonder and Research
3. Tinker and Experiment
4. Build and Bookend
5. Repeat

You complete this cycle forever and at every stage, you have opportunities to share your output copiously so that you can create better work.

I think working with Jason and Mac on the SmartLab table and lab notebook will inform my continuous tinkering with the creativity framework. I think there are tools that may emerge that will become useful cognitive aids for knowledge workers.

I took for granted that Austin was a relatively smaller town and that I could go to just about any tech-related meetup and find at least one person that I knew.

So the question, “what do you do?” has had me stumped for a while now. When most people ask that, they really want to know “how much money do you make” or “can you even relate to my self-important world?”

I’ve been doing web and software development of some sort or another for the past decade with an occasional foray into non-profit organizational work and things like dorkbot and robotic puppets. There are also many things I aspire to and am working towards. I looked at web stuff as bread and butter.

I no longer introduce myself as a web developer or Rails guy. Ballast. All of my current gigs involve art or robots or innovative software. It’s a good place. When I consciously made the decision not to pursue web stuff as a source of income the universe rewarded me by presenting just enough non-web opportunity to keep my income pipeline fuller than it’s ever been while keeping the stress level way down.

I’m happier when I’m doing work that’s more creatively fulfilling.

I’m also realizing that if I keep all of my creative work closed up in a box out of fear or relentless tinkering, then it’s as good as “never done.” Nothing is more unflattering than trying to convince someone of the value of a perpetual “closed beta.”

As a side effect, I find that the people I’m wanting to meet deal in the currency of provable accomplishments and not vaporware ideas. Nobody cares about the network of people I know (since nowadays, it’s super easy to reach anybody via social media tools). Spinning multiple plates badly is not attractive. They aren’t even interested in what I can do.

The only thing that matters is, “What have you done lately that’s remarkable?”

Cal Newport defines Grand Projects as

any project that when explained to someone for the first time is likely to elicit a response of “wow!’”

There is a huge difference in multitasking because you are disorganized and consciously multitasking so that you accomplish interesting grand projects.

Interesting people are often involved in multiple grand projects, but they really only can get one completed at a time.

So the better question is “What project are you working on right now that fires you up the most?”

I’d like to live a life of prolific creativity. I’d like to introduce myself with infectious enthusiasm over some project I can literally put into somebody’s hands.

I’m working on a meta-grand project, then. I’m fired up about figuring out what creativity framework I need so that I and lots of other people can have a relentlessly creative output of accomplishment.

I won’t spend all of my time ruminating over the creative process rather than actually creating things. That’d just be procrastination. I am spending quality time doing research and building infrastructure that facilitates creative output. These ideas are to be field tested by me and eventually others.

I’ll probably blog about that research on occasion, but only when I have something provable to say or an artifact to share.

Most of the time, now, I want to talk about the projects that result from my creativity experiments.

I may, at some point in my life, call myself a technology artist or creativity expert. For now, I’m a guy making things.

This post is a response to the Holidailies writing prompt “Introduce Yourself.”

So, I’ve often pointed to Mark’s stretch daily as a source of inspiration — he documents one creative act per day. The last few months have been spotty, but in general he’s amassed a nice portfolio of work simply by doing one small thing every day that stretches his creative mind.

Ira Glass talks about the importance of just making large volumes of creative work. And pretty much EVERY missive on creativity insists that you have to just fail often and fail quickly to get to the good stuff. (see War of Art and Twyla Tharp’s Creative Habit).

Ergo, “to make creative stuff, you just have to make creative stuff.”

SxSW (despite all its problems this year), never fails to inspire me in some way. A lot of it is simply, “Oh my, these people are not doing anything interesting and yet they are seeing successes” followed by the dreaded “Oh no, I’M doing even less interesting things.”

The truth is, I’m not devoid of fascinating projects. I talk to people about dorkbot or other things I care about and I get reactions like, “Your face lights up when you talk about that!” What’s clicking now are the many events and evangelical promotion of geeks and other cool things I’ve done and have in the works.

My anxiety right now is that I don’t actually want to just be a vehicle for other peoples’ interesting work, but I also want to be a source of interesting work. Being the huxster and promotions guy is a powerful and fun rush, but really, doing those things AND having established credibility as a maker of interesting work is a one-two punch, I hope. Somewhere I can envision myself having a wonderfully fulfilling life.

I’ve done little projects in my garage, but an in act of hypocritical omission, I’ve not been very good at showing these things to the world (fear of failure, fear of critique, etc.)

I’ve pontificated on the creative process (i.e. living leads to observations leads to wondering leads to tinkering leads to building).

But it’s all just been a whole lot of talk.

Because I do have a bit of a need for structure, however artificial, I need to create for myself a framework — a set of rules around work — that I can choose to abide by.

So here it is:

1. For the next 365 days, once a day, I will complete a creative act that requires less than one day of effort to bring through the creative process.
2. For the next 52 weeks, I will complete a creative act per week that requires a weeks’ worth of effort.
3. For the next 12 months, I will complete a creative act that requires a months’ worth of effort.
4. This entire experiment will last one year and will represent a year’s worth of creative effort.
5. Everything I do, I will share online and/or offline.
6. This is not just computers, robot-building, or programming — it can and should cover lots of different creative media.
7. creativity is not just about art. creative experiments can happen in business, volunteering, etc.
8. The rules are to be followed in spirit with good faith effort.

Why do this? Why set myself up for failure?

Because right now I have no idea how I can do this, but I know with certainty that it’s something I want to do.

The intent is to provide an interactive experience for the show-goers bringing laptops — the back-channel as performance art.

I set them up with PHPFreeChat on a mac mini with a local wireless network. I have no idea what the play is about, but it promises to be weird and fun.

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