Taraksa

27 Februari silam, saya kembali lagi ke Teater Tertutup Dago Tea House untuk kembali menonton teater; atau kalau menurut MC kemarin, mengembalikan Dago Tea House ke tujuan utamanya – menyajikan teater.

Taraksa!

Taraksa adalah teater kelima yang dibawa oleh Teater Epik, sebuah wadah untuk penggiat seni teater yang terdiri dari mahasiswa dan siswa sekolah yang ada di Bandung (ITB, UNPAR, ITENAS, UNISBA, UNPAD, UPI, IT Telkom, SMAN 1, SMAN 15, SMAN 19). Pertemuan saya dengan Epik pertama kali adalah melalui Majalah Epik dan Teater Epik Vol. 1 yang kala itu ditampilkan pada Auditorium SBM ITB. Kalau tidak salah pada tahun pertama kuliah, antara 2010/2011. Saya pribadi senang dengan majalah Epik.

Epik diprakarsai oleh senior-senior saya di SBM yang menurut saya, berani “nyeleneh”. Salah satunya adalah Sutansyah Marahakim, yang menjadi sutradara pada pementasan Taraksa ini. Awalnya, saya membaca cerita Taraksa dari blog Sutan. Makanya, perjalanan saya naik taksi dari Pasteur (baru sampai dari Jakarta) pukul 18.55 (padahal show jam 19.00 dan katanya akan ditutup 5 menit setelahnya) cukup deg-degan. Takutnya malah ditutup dan tidak bisa nonton.

Sampai Dago Tea House, ramai! Penuh!

Sekelebat lihat, isinya adalah anak-anak remaja, walau ada beberapa keluarga dan dosen saya. Setelah dicermati lagi, ternyata ada orang-orang dengan face painting dan kostum ala Indian. Awalnya saya pikir mereka semacam “pager ayu pager bagus”. Tapi ternyata mereka lebih dari itu! Ada seseorang yang menurut saya seperti burung dengan gerakan-gerakan aneh dan berjalan menggunakan tangan dan kaki. Ada yang menjadi seperti nenek-nenek gila dan berjalan mendekati orang-orang. Bahkan ada anak kecil yang dikejar-kejarnya! Yang lucu adalah tiba-tiba ia mendatangi saya dan meminta (tetap dengan perannya, tentu) untuk memasangkan penitinya yang copot. Haha.

Menariknya lagi, berbeda dengan pementasan-pementasan sebelumnya, ada merchandise booth. Dan merchandise yang dijual disini bukan pin atau kaos berlogo Taraksa atau sejenisnya, melainkan kalung-kalung etnik, gelas, tas, boneka, bahkan ada lukisan. Sayangnya, saya tidak sempat melihat karena booth penuh sesak. Ada juga beberapa booth makanan dan barang-barang IBE.

Pertunjukan dimulai sekitar jam 19.30. Yang saya rasakan ketika itu adalah rasa penasaran akan properti scene 1. Pada pertunjukan sebelumnya, Mendiang Republik, properti dan visualisasi scene 1-nya juara. Pada awal pertunjukan, MC menyebutkan bahwa pertunjukan kali ini bukan hanya akan menonjolkan visual namun juga integrasi antara auditori, visualisasi, dan cerita yang ada di situs Majalah Epik.

Awal pertunjukan dibuka dengan theme song yang dimainkan oleh tim musik.

Creative Something….not

This week, my creative brain is met by yet another website. I was expecting something new from the previous websites – well after all, they are meant to be creative, don’t they?

First website was a site with creative products – mostly packaging and ad, second was 2012 trend predictions, and third was – my favorite! – a wonderful website called Eclectic Curiosity filled with texts, images, curations, videos, and presented in a very nice way with alliteration here and there. This third website, Creative Something, is yet another website to stimulate and enhance creativity.

Creative Something Homepage

At a first glance, I was quite disappointed. The interface is not visually appealing and the colors used are also well, quite boring. I tried not to judge a site by its homepage and keep reading a few articles. My rule of good narrative is that I keep reading them after fifth paragraph. I didn’t. The narrative was not presented in such a way that I want to keep reading or get my curious senses tingling.

As a typographic critic, I was also disappointed at the choice of fonts. It was a usual wordpress-ish font. I demand something different if you put up some “creative” label in your blog. (Talking about demanding girl…)

The background image! As you scroll down, the chalkboard-ish header disappears, leaving you with a boring gray. It was not so good for the eyes, remembering that you are mixing it with a dash of white.

I also find the site navigation not quite user-friendly. I clicked the Random tab (and stumbled upon the same presentation of narrative) once. I want to get back to the homepage, and I couldn’t find my way back. I don’t know whether it is my limited ambition to find positivity in this site or they truly didn’t make a home button, but I was, again, disappointed.

If I have to give advice on how this site could be bettered, I truly think it lies on the visual appeal in the narratives presentation. I stumbled upon the “Four ways to encourage a creative workplace” article, I read it, and it’s actually helpful! But for an article like that, don’t people demand pictures? Or perhaps a friendlier, more colloquial way of preaching the people?

Eclectic Curiosity

Creative Generalist | Eclectic Curiosity

Don’t you love its tagline?!

My first reaction upon opening this website is oh dear Lord I fell in love with the tagline and the fontface. The other 1 minute I spent on admiring the wordings they used in the website. Wander & Wonder. Mix & Match. Synthesize & Summarize. Link & Leap. Experience & Empathize. I fell in love.

For a girl who has a tendency to overuse the figure of speech alliteration and repetition, I fell in love. For a girl who often abuse thesaurus to look for hipstery synonym, eclectic curiosity just clicks. For a girl who claims herself as a curious person, eclectic curiosity is just perfect.

I personally love the site. Not only it has brilliant ideas and examples of creative products, it is not boring. Several “creative/inspiring sites” usually only put a plethora of images with a paragraph explaining the product and comment button and like button. Creative Generalist is a curator. Curating creative ideas, idea for creativity, pleasing people with, well, eclectic curiosity.

It has bookshelf page, showing recommended books. It has curation page, with links to other interesting pages (whom I already know some of). It has the miscellany page, with mixture of bizarre and fun video, interesting pictures, creative products, slides of interestingness, etc etc. It has vacation page, with links to external conferences or events that can increase ideavity/creativity.

It is complete.

Ideation, unlike creativity, is not a specialized activity. Ideativity and creativity are not the same thing. Ideas require a divergent, generalist approach (“a wide net”) while creative endeavours require the opposite: a convergent, specialist approach (“a deep drill”).

2012 Predictions: really?

The new year is always exciting with designers and experts busy projecting the trends and the in-styles of the year. I stumbled upon this 2012 projections and trends and I cannot wait to prove (or bust) these experts’ opinions.

Proved!

1. Gesture-recognition technology
   Hello, Kinect! Hello, movement-triggered shutter digicam! Gesture-recognition technology makes Apple’s Siri seems outdated. Ilya Bukshteyn proved right with the ever-expanding gesture-recognition application in today’s gadgets. Eat that, Siri. Kidding.
2. Cloud-based documents and information resources
   You are not yet today’s efficient professional if you haven’t employed technology such as Google Drive, Cloud Computing, Dropbox, etc. Sharing and saving made easy through this innovation.
3. Proximity-based social networks
   This century can be written in history as the gleaming era for stalker. With social networks popped out here and there (some even have the tagline “Chat with strangers!” – creepy, much?), maybe the definition of strangers has changed since it is so much easier to talk, meet, and even marry a stranger.
4. Social media for hiring
   Upon reading the line, most people would think of LinkedIn, the professional social network where people can put their resume to be directly reviewed by headhunters or employers. But, it is not only through LinkedIn are employers hiring for employees. Facebook might be filled with narcissistic photos and daily updates, but sometimes people might find job vacancies and now-hiring status updates to be shared by friends. Twitter, the 140-characters status updates, has also been employed to hire employees. An example to this is @IDStudentJob where the account shares vacancies. A friend of mine did a job interview through social media. Crazy!
5. Chinese companies become a force in global markets
   China has been the talk of the 20th Century, said to be the new superpower. I’ve read this on headlines countless of times, and it steals the spotlight so many times for a reason. From 2002 to 2011, China’s outward direct investment flow expanded by 27.6 times; in the first seven months of this year alone, the volume of outward direct investment reached $42.2 billion.

Busted!

1. Navigate the Web using voice command
   Voice command is cool – I have to admit it. When I got my new gadget who has advanced voice command, I spent 30 minutes to try it out. But in my own opinion, it is not so much a trend in 2012. Voice command is perhaps in R&D phase, but the projection has several holes. It stated that in 2012 Apple will release a voice-commanded television – didn’t happen. Although voice command is now popular in smartphones and other gadgets, it hasn’t been able to replace the conventional way to navigate the web.

To sum up, I personally think that the projections are mostly true, since I can only find one Busted (well, although it is in certain way true) projection.

Don’t you love busting projections?

Limiting Creativity

A screenshot of Tinsiders

When I first opened this blog, all I could think of was: “Oh, it’s just the usual, hipstery, creative pictures you often find in Tumblr.” I was already skeptical and thought to myself that most probably, I’ve seen 75% of the pictures posted here in Tumblr.

Turns out I was wrong.

It is true that I’ve seen countless creative packaging and product designs in various sources, namely Tumblr, 9gag, library books, and concept magazines. And, as usual, I am always amazed by these creative stuffs. But as you browse through a horde of images, you get overwhelmed by creativity until you feel you’ve had enough and stop browsing because either 1) you feel bad for not being creative 2) you feel so creative that you have this urge to stop browsing and start doing something, um, well, creative 3) you do not want to make your creative brain limited by seeing these products too much they become a benchmark – I often find the most creative things while not having a specific reference and just scribble something out of thin air.

Thus, when I open this blog, I don’t feel excited at first. The content must be revolving around something geeky and tech-savvy with modern, silvery touch here and there.

But then when I scan quickly through the square flipcharts, I realize, you can’t limit creativity.

It is true that I prefer not too get overwhelmed by creative packaging so that I will not have my brain limited, but I’ve been too arrogant. I forget the fact that there are thousands of people, designers out there, that in their own way invent creative products – and the products are always expanding. Seeing tinsiders, I realized that my perceived “creative benchmark” has expired and constantly expands into something bigger. Once in a while, browsing through new images would excite you and freshen up our dull brain.

Here are the products in Tinsiders I find amusing (and new to me):

Smile!

Smile Alarm Clock

I am the kind of person whose day is heavily affected by my morning mood – and this clock might just be the answer for my off-days.

The product might be still in its R&D phase, but I love the idea! An alarm clock that can only be turned off by smiling is amusing! This clock would force the user to smile each morning, and psychologically, it’s good for our selves.

Using the not-so-new face recognition, I guess this clock brings a new addition to the rapidly expanding technology of facial recognition usage.

 

 

 

Always First?

Always First?

Oh, how I love satirical ad.

The logistics world is full of pleasing Ad (referring to UPS’s catchy tune). This FedEx ad by two Miami Ad School students is an addition to Cahya’s-list-of-brilliant-satirical-ad. Speeding down the road with this ad would create a perception that FedEx is always first off other logistics, namely DHL  (it is not printed clearly yet anyone can easily guess what the yellow half of the bus represents).

Yum!

Colgate Ad

Who does not love a good ice cream?

While kids are happily eating ice cream, parents might worry about the kid’s dental health. Colgate makes a brilliant connection between the two rivals by advertising in the ice cream. So kids who dear their ice cream so, after finishing the good chocolate icing and vanilla ice cream realizes the need to brush their teeth – with Colgate! And not only in ice cream, the picture collages in the lower left side shows that it also places ad in lollipops.

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All in all I might stubbornly say that these pictures aren’t new, but I definitely agree that these pictures are indeed creative and exciting!