Creative Think Blog

The trail takes a creative turn today stopping by Roger van Oech writing on his blog at Creative Think.

Roger writes:

Heraclitus felt that consulting our own knowledge and intuition is a wonderful way to gain insight. Unfortunately, some of us never learned this lesson. Much of our educational system is an elaborate game of "guess what the teacher is thinking," and we come to believe that the best ideas are in someone else's head rather than our own. Heraclitus reminds us that there are good ideas within ourselves if we are willing to dig deeply enough.

Read the full posting on Heraclitus.

Roger writes:

One of my favorites is "Speed-Reducing Art" by John Glassie (subscription required). It's about using tromp l'oeil art to reduce traffic speeds at busy intersections. (Tromp l'oeil is the art of visual deception; check out my earlier posts on tromp l'oeil art "Fooling the Eye" and "More Eye-Foolery.")

According to Glassie,

"Public art projects are usually intended to beautify. But artwork commissioned this summer by the city of Cambridge, Mass., has a more utilitarian goal: reducing traffic speeds at a busy intersection."

A particularly busy intersection is at Walden Street and Vassal Lane; 6,000 cars pass through it every day. One Cambridge citizen, Susanne Rasmussen, had been aware that neighborhood street murals in Portland, Oregon had the unintended consequence of slowing traffic down. A light bulb went off in Susanne's head, "Why not experiment with deliberately putting murals on the street to slow the traffic."

Read the full posting on speed reducing art.

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