Portrait of Lucien Hervé,
in his Paris Home, 2002.
visual curiosity is deep in my makeup. It is my first nature.
Let me quote Lucien Hervé on that:
’Oser Voir ce que l’on voit’.
Hervé, Le Corbusier’s life-long photographer and friend (born
Lazlò Elkàn, Budapest 1910) transmitted his great vision to me in
simple words and a great friendship – nearly in the form of a Haiku.
What is a 'Haiku'?
Haiku is a traditional Japanese poetry form composed of 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5
syllables respectively. Actually, in Japanese they're usually written in
one line, but still considered 3 separate units. Contemporary international
haiku usually relaxes the syllable-count restriction. In English haiku,
1-3 lines of 17 syllables or less is the norm (14 syllables is often
recommended).
Haiku are poems about nature and generally follow the
principles of minimalism and immediacy. Immediacy refers
to the sense of a scene being directly presented to your senses. A haiku
tries to capture a concrete image in place and time. A
season word is usually required in the traditional form
to place a poem in a specific season. A
cutting word is also common to direct the flow of the poem.
Back to the french.
‘Oser Voir ce que l’on voit’ translates as: ‘Dare to see what you see’.
This phrase reached right to the core in terming the emergence of social awareness in modern ‘photography’ - and
far beyond towards something timeless. To me, pure poetry and a renewed sense of purpose.
Later blogs will be devoted to Lucien’s life and work.
Another
source of energy (and hopefully some wisdom) to help structure my creativity has been the
simple concept of learning by doing. Nothing really new here. The
inspiration came up again when reading the acclaimed user interface author, Ben Schneiderman.
His recent book ‘Leanardo’s Laptop’ is particularily interesting in
showing his vision of ‘creative computing’ (the so-called New
Computing). Among other subjects, the idea of recreating education upon
the base of the typical user activities [Collect – Relate – Create –
Donate] caught my interest.
Scheiderman’s citations below, illustrate the universal, basic human learning process.
“Variations of active learning have existed for thousands of years, as indicated by the ancient chinese proverb:
I hear and I forget,
I see and I remember,
I do and I understand.”
Another beautiful citation from Sophocles:
“One must learn by doing the thing
For you think you know it
You have no certainty until you try.”
Ok. That was it.
Interpreting these words was a nice new puzzle to solve.
The following rhymes have offered me the ultimate interaction concept – at least one
that I can grasp and use to structure my blogs-to-come:
I hear and I forget,
I see and I remember,
I do and I understand
These led me to formulate the following:
1. A blog (weblog): Use this blog (http://visualcuriosity.blogs.com), to hear and forget!
2. A gallery (site): Go to: http://www.visualcuriosity.com, in order to see and remember! (the gallery site is under construction)
3. A Plog (project-log): Join: http://visualcuriosity.seework.com, in order to do and understand!
