I hesitate to generalize about all artists and all...

“I hesitate to generalize about all artists and all technologists. Which marks me right there, as an engineer by training. Trained to obsess about edge cases and tiny details — missing the forest for the trees makes no sense, the forest is just many individuals trees, repeated, at scale.

Which strikes to the heart of one of the key differences I’ve experienced watching and collaborating with artists.

As an engineer my creative act begins by removing ambiguity. What’s the simplest possible thing we can do? What’s the core of the idea? What’s the minimal viable product? When you say pigs should fly, is that sustained flight? Self powered? Do you mean flapping or simply moving through the air? Does flight imply control? Or would a porcine trebuchet get us to a version 1 beta? Maybe we could do some testing by putting a pig on top of a tall tower?

Artists I’ve worked with often take the opposite approach. How can we remove all the walls around this idea? How do we make the possibility space of this idea infinite? Flying pigs are really just an example of the impulse towards freedom that we’re trying to address, let’s not get too caught up on the pigs, or the flight.

Additionally as a technologist I’m often driven by an inner fantasy life of utility (and utopia) with a secret hope of broad impact. Artists seem compelled by the innate desire to express the inexpressible, and a secret hope of widely inspiring. Basely, the difference between being right and being true.”

Kellan Elliot-McCrea answering the question: Do Artists and Technologists Create Things the Same Way?

I love this answer. via christmasgorilla

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And then there are those of us whose brains work one way or the other given the task. This is why I never get anything done.

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Source christmasgorilla