Intellect and Creativity

At The University of North Carolina School of the Arts, creativity is key. Without a sense of creativity, it would be more than just difficult to get through this school, and in addition to that, it's probably not the place for you. From the school of Drama, to Dance, to Design and Production, every field at this school practically requires creativity. For acting one needs to be able to preform improvisation and think outside the box. For dance, one can only take what the teacher is saying to a certain extent, but if there isn't a sense of their own flow and style, then what makes it special. Then you have Design and Production, and that is something where you really have to think outside the box, from designing a costume for a show about cannibalism, to lighting a stage with just the right moodiness for the scene of a death. Creativity is KEY at this school.

In addition to that, intellect is very important here as well. An artist has to be able to discuss their design decision and why they chose to convey it that way, and use intellect to support their creativity. That's why these two mix so well together. For example, in Color and Design, the teacher will tell us to be creative with a project and really think like an artist. But she always stresses not to just do things mindlessly and call it art, you have to put intellectual thought into your design decisions. Then when you go to present it, she will challenge you and ask why you picked that certain color, or twisted the wire in that type of curve. They both must coexist to really create great papers, art, dance pieces, blog entrees, and everything else in between at UNCSA.

"Engage in creative work intelligently, and engage in intellectual work creatively" -Bob King. This quote was pulled from Media Studios: A Field Guide. It really describes and summarizes this school, and mixing these two properties together. It shows it's not enough to just create art without intellectual though, and it's not enough to write a paper without using creativity to make it unique, your own and most importantly, engaging.

Writing creativity, and with your own style is very important, especially at School of the Arts. Academics at any other school they would want a student to write very linearly, and pointA, pointB, etcetera... at this school one can write how they want to and more free and CREATIVELY. But, it should not just random and artistically written without INTELLECTUAL thought behind it. This is a quote from Meeting Macomber, REMIXING intellect and creativity, wrote by Bob King; "I'm also talking with you creatively now, making connections between disparate points, not between sequential points... In some places it is more like connecting pointA to pointQ rather than connecting pointA to pointB, and that's okay." This relates to the previous statement I made about things not having to be completely linear thoughts, in fact, it’s best not to in many cases. These two things mix beautifully together and both help add interest to one another.

Wikileaks Understanding

The movie Tron and Wikileaks most obvious is they are both all about technology, access to files, and computer systems. In the beginning of the movie, the boss cut off any level 6 access to the files because he is afraid they are after the same information he wants. With Wikileaks, Julian did something similar it that he was trying to hack all of the government information, and was successful. Both the movie and the site have to do with hacking, but honestly, thats the only main parallel i see between the two.
My understanding of the Wikileaks phenomenon has grow vastly since i began my research. i have not only learned more about the Wikileaks itself, but also about the creator. the man is very ingenious to be able to hack into such a top secret and hard to access file of information. One thing that really grabs my interest and made me think was that if these lies had not been kept digitally, and had been kept how they would have been 30 years ago, on paper, in a filing cabinet locked up from anyone with an alarm system so great that no one could access them, none of this would have ever happened. But now that everything has gone digital, hackers (such as Julian) are able to work the system and find the files. This also shows us what Wikileaks tells us about digital media.
Yet another thing that really fascinated me was the way that Julian decided to dual out the information. instead of selling it at a very high price to companies or even back to the rightful hands, he just gave the insane amount to large newspaper companies and such and essentially said, "Heres the information, do what you think is right with it." He then also of coarse put it up on the internet for others else to access as well.
I feel like this information is a good, democratic way of letting everyone have the information and do what they think is best to do with it. It is better that just letting the government decide solely on their own and get to make all of those decisions. On the other hand though, this can be a bad thing if it gets into the wrong hands like russia or north korea, or even china. This is a very uncomfortable situation for the government to deal with and i don't necessarily think they know just how to deal with it for the time being.

Gathering

When i am gathering information for school assignments, the first thing i do is go to google and type in the topic i am researching. Then the next step i take is i look at a few of the different links that came up and use what those are roughly about to help me narrow my search. then i attempt again with a few words added to help keep my results more related to my topic. I repeat this cycle until i find the links and information i am looking for. One major thing i am goo about avoiding is connecter words like with, and, the, and it. These words are useless for google serches, because they are in EVERYTHING.
I know this is not the best strategy and could defiantly be improved. The sites helped get an idea of ways to work on that. The main thing these sites helped with was to search the actual concept of your topic. So instead of doing what i did in the past, i should also try searching what the topic is actually about, rather than just the exact word i was given. Lastly I learned about  whole new thing that i didn't even know was out there, a custom search engine. It can help narrow down your search to certain websites and pages that you search within. This is something that could defiantly be helpful for me and I would like to try in the future.

Framing

Framing is the very first step in the challenge-cycle, it's thinking to your self and brainstorming. When you're framing, you are essentially processing the topic, and spiraling off of those ideas and conclusions. It to me seems like a way to get all of your ideas out there, and then in the later steps, weed out the ones that don't seem as neccacery, and get it down to only the best and most logical.
In my own personal life, i have reframed a lot of things and ideas. I have reframed big topics that effect my life a lot like where i wanted to go to school, what i wanted to do in life for a career, and even marriage and kids. I also reframe things from a day to day basis though, for example; eating the healthy option, or that delicious looking pizza, or working on my color and design, or catching up on reading for critical perspectives. In those day to day cases especially, i tend to reframe over and over again, changing my mind numerous times and re thinking my decision.
One specific example is where i wanted to go to school. I was set on Millikin for a while, but when i went to visit the school, i was very disappointed, so i reframed and went back to the drawing board. I came up with a few more options and applied to all four, and then realized that all of them didn't have a specific major in wig and makeup, it was just a general D+P program, so once again, i reframed. It can get frustrating, but it was worth it brainstorming to myself because on my third attempt at finding the perfect school, i visited here, and knew i could finally move on to the next step in the challenge-cycle.