“In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains
On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,
In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,
The good deeds a man has done before defend him.”
-> J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting out of the Bhagavad-Gita in American Prometheus (his biography), p. 305

“Man is a creature whose substance is faith. What his faith is, he is.”
-> J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting out of the Bhagavad-Gita in American Prometheus (his biography), p. 290

“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.”
-> Stephen McCranie

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.”
Thomas Huxley

“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
-> George Orwell

“‘Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.’ He makes fear serve him. I would have let fear lead me around by the long way. Courage and reason are with him. What good seeking the safe course, on a journey such as this? There are senseless courses, which I shall not take; but there is no safe one.”
-> LeGuin, Ursula K. ~ The Left Hand of Darkness, p. 338
-> Use your fear! Don’t let it use you. Accept it, learn from it, then deal with it.

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

• Cited by a character in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951) as a statement of Wilhelm Stekel, this has often been attributed to Salinger, and may actually be a paraphrase by him of a statement of the German writer Otto Ludwig (1813-1865) which Stekel himself quotes in his writings:
  “Das Höchste, wozu er sich erheben konnte, war, für etwas rühmlich zu sterben; jetzt erhebt er sich zu dem Größern, für etwas ruhmlos zu leben.”
  “The highest he could raise himself to was to die gloriously for something; now he rises to something greater: to live humbly for something.”
• Gedanken Otto Ludwigs : Aus seinem Nachlaß ausgewählt und herausgegeben von Cordelia Ludwig (1903) p. 10; this is quoted by Stekel in “Die Ausgänge der psychoanalytischen Kuren” in Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse : Medizinische Monatsschrift für Seelenkunde (1913), p. 188, and in Das liebe Ich : Grundriss einer neuen Diätetik der Seele (1913), page 38.

“Paradoxically, it is easier to construct a coherent story when you know little, when there are fewer pieces to fit into the puzzle. Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance.”
Kahnemann, D (2011) ~ Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 201

“What this means is that, rather disappointingly, life’s journey on Earth is already three-quarters done. This fact was only recently appreciated. You might want to sit with it for a moment.” Hanlon, M ~ Save the Universe” (08.06.2015)

“The best possible version of this to see is right off the 2K files, and the only place you can do that is at laboratories like Lowry Digital. But the minute they go onto film, they lose something. The second time our print was screened, I saw two new pieces of dirt on it. I started laughing. Here we go, I’ll never look back again.” Bruce Posner about digital vs print.

NY Times ~ Film – Avant-Garde, 1920 Vintage, Is Back in Focus (24.11.2008)

“Some things we forget. But many things we remember on the mental screen, which is the biggest screen of all.” David Lynch

NY Times ~ Questions for David Lynch – The Visionary (24.11.2008)

“Maybe cinema is dead, but it’s a wonderful afterlife.” A. O. Scott

NY Times ~ The Way We Live Now – The Screening of America (24.11.2008)

“If you have an industry that puts a smile on people’s face, that’s Nollywood.” Toyin Alousa

“You can be in a Lagos traffic jam and you can buy a movie or some bananas or some water. […] This really proves that storytelling, it’s a commodity, it’s a staple. There is no life without stories.” Franco Sacchi

TED ~ Franco Sacchi – Welcome to Nollywood

“Whaddya mean they won’t wear glasses? They’ll wear toilet seats around their necks if you give them what they want to see!” Bill Thomas about 3D films, 08.06.1953.

“There appears to be more general appreciation that technical innovations alone are not the only answer to winning larger audiences. Once again the rallying cry around Hollywood is, ‘the play’s the thing.'” New York Times, 18.10.1953.

NY Times ~ Word for Word | Screen Grab – How 3-D Lost Its Wow (24.11.2008)

“In the YouTube age it might seem strange to say so, but not everything belongs on screen.”

Guardian ~ The view – Leave the unfilmable unfilmed (25.11.2008)

“Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” Sam Goldwyn

Guardian ~ Certificate – Thoughtful (25.11.2008)

“They applied studio economics to the independent market and the economics were not the same.” Jonathan Sehring

Most independent pictures can’t attract a big enough audience to support their cost.

Bloomberg ~ Independent Filmmakers Hock Houses (25.11.2008)

“You can use the Internet to launch a film like you use a movie theater.” Thomas Lesinski about replacing the cinema as the locomotive which pulls all the rest.

Hollywood Is Worried as DVD Sales Slow (21.02.2009)

Ideas are “hard to identify but important to understand.”

Hartley, John (2003): A Short History of Cultural Studies, p13. See post on his book for full quote.

“There’s no question that the successful media companies in the future are going to be the ones that are, if you like, platform agnostic and will just try and deliver content appropriately across different platforms depending who they’re trying to reach.”

Frank Boyd in Encore ~ Breaking Old Habits

“Change only comes when the pain of the present outweighs the fear of the future.”

Probably not from him, but I have it from Ted Hope: Truly Free Film ~ The New Model For Indie Film: The Ongoing Conversation (10.08.2009)

“Copyright is the wrong way round.” Brian Fitzgerald at CCI symposium 02.07.2009.

“Our job is to communicate the spiritual content of life as it is presented in the music. Nothing belongs to us; all you can do is pass it along.” Joyce Hatto in Dutton, D ~ The Art Instinct (2009)

“Human nature is permanent, […] but human culture is created.” Dutton, D ~ The Art Instinct (2009), p204

“Our ability to adapt to new kinds of music or art has no limit whatsoever.” Dutton, D ~ The Art Instinct (2009), p205

An actress who tries to arouse a kind of emotional reaction in an audience, exercises craft. If she explores a character, she creates art. (soap and film?) Dutton, D ~ The Art Instinct (2009), p228

“The work of art is another human mind incarnate, not in flesh and blood but in sounds, words, or colors.” Dutton, D ~ The Art Instinct (2009), p235

“If you are an artist, the most enduring way to achieve a lasting artistic success is to create works of artistic pleasure that are saturated with emotion, specifically expressing distinct emotions that are perceived as yours.” Dutton, D ~ The Art Instinct (2009), p235

“Piracy is here to stay, I am disturbed to be part of an industry that is so backwards that it does not understand the inevitability of infinitely replicable, ubiquitous content. We need to fundamentally innovate our business models in order to move forward, not punish people who are ENJOYING [sic] the content we produce.”

Screen Daily ~ ScreenDaily survey reveals uncertainty over tackling piracy (10.08.2009)

“In order to cope with change you need to know where and when – the window of opportunity.” Prof Stuart B Hill at STEP 2008

“If you can’t describe a movie in one sentence, you don’t have a movie.” Steven Spielberg quoted by Jonathan Chissick at Media Economics Weekend, AFTRS CSB Melbourne (May 2008)

“The killer app for television is watching TV!” Vincent Dureau quoted in Vinson, J ~ 3D TV is not a set top box running a 3D graphics UI (25.09.2009)

5 defenses of art

1. aesthetic alibi (although some forms of expression, such as hate speech and blaspehmy, can be legislated and cicumscribed, these restrictions do not apply to art)

2. art speech (artistic expression is on par with political and commercial speech, and thus, for example, government funding must be allocated to all kinds of artists or else the state is not living up to constitutional requirements)

3. estrangement defense (art teaches its audience something about themselves, the world, or art itself. Shocking the viewer is necessary to shatter illusions, to astonish, to disturb, to seduce, or to shake things up)

4. formalist defense (it is the job of art to explore form and the spectator should learn to keep his cool distance and contemplate. The subject is not relevant, only the presentation)

5. canonical defense (it looks for continuity in the canon of art. It finds similar works that are respected, points to them, and shows that, logically, if the new work is dismissed, there goes the canon as well)

A. Julius (2003) Transgressions: The offences in art in Stenros, J et al ~ The Ethics of Pervasive Gaming; p210

“It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. But just as one might not receive permission, forgiveness is not automatic either.” Stenros, J et al ~ The Ethics of Pervasive Gaming, p211

“(Willing) suspension of disbelief” Coleridge, S ~ Biographia Literaria (1817)

He meant poetry, but today it is used more in the sense of: the audience tacitly agrees to provisionally suspend their judgment in exchange for the promise of entertainment.

A creative breakthrough is “like a crystal precipitated from a supersaturated solution – but like that, you need the creative medium and all other conditions to be in place before the thing will form and grow.” John Hartley in comments to Jason Potts’ article on the creative instability hypothesis.

“Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” O’Reilly, T ~ Piracy is Progressive Taxation (04.12.2009)

“While the traditional record label model isn’t exactly going through a golden age in the west, it never even had a golden age in the Middle Kingdom.” The Register ~ Music in China (04.12.2009)

“God what suffering ‘writing’ means!” Schumpeter in McCraw, T ~ Prophet of Innovation, p345.

“The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.” Schumpeter in McCraw, T ~ Prophet of Innovation, p456.

“pessimistic visions about almost anything usually strike the public as more erudite than optimistic ones.” Schumpeter in McCraw, T ~ Prophet of Innovation, p457.

since the birth of cinema we moderns maneuver at the unclear frontier between human and machine. Cubitt, S ~ The Cinema Effect, p83.

“Narrative depends on symmetry-breaking: ultimately, there is narrative because the universe is expanding.” Cubitt, S ~ The Cinema Effect, p183.

“repetition is primordial, and things or events repeat themselves as ever-renewed copies of an original that does not exist” In the end there are but a few original stories. Cubitt, S ~ The Cinema Effect, p184.

“Everyone has access to a video so there is no excuse for not making a film right now.” Luhrman, B ~ What now?, p16.

“The hearts and minds of the new generation are set against copyright. The copyright industries are losing the war.” Court, D ~ Copyright gets it, p80.

All successful people are “standing on ground that is crumbling beneath their feet.” Schumpeter in McCraw, T ~ Prophet of Innovation, p496.

Let us “look forward … with an eye to the past, and our feet firmly in the present.” Lotman, Y ~ Culture & Explosion Translators Preface.

“free-riding, taking benefits without paying the full cost, persists as the fundamental problem of social life.” Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p63.

“Life is what matters, and the only immortality worth wanting is in the memory of the living.” And if we are intelligent and think long-term we stand “our best chance for a long mortal life and a lasting memory in the minds of others.” Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p285f.

“If we wish to assess religion’s social benefits, its truth matters less than its power to motivate. So long as they are widely believed, false ideas can powerfully spur social cooperation: that the gods can watch every human move, that sooner or later they will punish infringements, that ritual can signal our respect for them and the precepts they safeguard.” Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p310.

“Individuality is no late Western invention but a biological and psychological fact.” Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p349.

“Even genius does not know quite where it is going until it arrives there, usually after a long cycle of generate-test-regenerate. But it gradually builds on its partial discoveries to arrive at substantial and often lasting solutions to problems it could not formulate before reaching them. It becomes an efficient system for generating significant novelty.” Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p357.

“all art serves creativity.” Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p376.

“Attention and meaning remain distinct from and irreducible to each other, but they feed off and into each other.” If storytellers want to be successful, they have to gain and keep attention and deliver meaning. Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p379.

“Storytelling appeals to our social intelligence.” Stories HAVE to be about inter-personal relations to be interesting to us. Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p382.

“Like design, purpose emerges rather than precedes.” I can only purposefully move my arm, because evolution has already been working on the human arm for a very long time. Today, I have the purpose to move my arm and I do. But I can only do it, because I physically and mentally can (thanks to evolution). Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p403.

“Norms help unambitious filmmakers attain competence, but they challenge gifted ones to excel. By understanding these norms we can better appreciate skill, daring, and emotional power on those rare occasions when we meet them.” Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p407.

“Only when science began to offer alternative naturalistic explanations of the world did religion and art start to split right apart.” Boyd, B ~ On the Origins of Stories, p414.

“Six year olds are not stupid. I don’t feel like I’m smarter than I was at six–I just have a lot more context now.” Laia in The Beast (13.05.2010).

“It is at a moment of crisis, conflict, and controversy that communities are forced to articulate the principles that guide them.” Jenkins, H ~ Convergence Culture, p26.

“A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.” William Stafford, from WRITING THE AUSTRALIAN CRAWL, February 1982; in Brookes, K ~ Metalinear Cinematic Narrative, p 95.

What makes a story different from other narratives? That it has a point. There is a reason for introducing it, for bringing it up. If it means something to our situation and to the way we talk to one another, then we are doing storytelling.

Montfort, Nick: www.vimeo.com

“The plot of the film is the sequence in which we encounter specific bits of information, while the story of the film is our mental construct which rearranges that information into a coherent sequence.”

Jenkins, Henry: www.henryjenkins.org

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” Bertrand Russell(?)

Some people see things others cannot, and they are right, and we call them creative geniuses. Some people see things others cannot, and they are wrong, and we call them mentally ill. And some people, like John Nash, are both.
Andreasen, Nancy: Secrets of the Creative Brain