Directed and produced by Regina Campbell-Orehoff. All rights reserved.
For full text, see The Golden Section of Creativity: Patterns of Professional Growth and the Language of Geometry
I am convinced that what we call the Golden Ratio is a concentrated force of beauty produced by human suffering. After attempting to write about it and capture it in film, the result is always the same: we can only see with the mind of the heart in its full capacity of emotion. Great thinkers communicated it through geometry and graphics but it can only be known by the soul(ψυχή).It is about people, individuals, eternal beauty. Golden Ages always arose out of War and Conflict; the Black Plague had a stake in the Italian Renaissance.
We are at War. Our enemies are not our enemies, our friends not our friends. A Golden Age is near...Do you see it?
Music credits: The Verve. Bitter Sweet Symphony
Fine Art credits: Costa Dvorezky
UNIVERSAL CALL
What inspires you? Who inspires you?
How do we measure creativity, luck, inspiration?
The Golden Section, that well established Golden Ratio of 1.618 symbolized by the Greek φ (Phi), named after Phidias (Φειδίας), the greatest sculptor of ancient Greece (Parthenon, Acropolis,Temple of Zeus), can be a useful tool for finding harmony and proportion, breaking from patterns, changing lanes—exploring the unknown. We know that numbers are not spirit or living things, but a way to convey meaning—place holders, conversion tools to measure and define what is undefinable, mysterious—what we call inspiration. Can we apply the Golden Ratio to Creativity? Could its source equally be found in between those irrational numbers somewhere between 0-1 or 1.618 and 1.618..9, those infinite numbers of expression?
In the Fine Arts of Architecture, Theatre, Dance, Painting Music, we came across this theory also known as the Golden Rectangle or Golden Mean the Fibonacci Sequence. We found the Golden Ratio pattern in nature, explored irrational numbers in architecture, graphics — when it comes to creativity it is less definable and worth discovering —try to recognize the Golden Ratio in the Great creators of our time. Were they aware of it technically, mathematically, intuitively? Is there a formula for creativity, luck, inspiration? How do we measure it? What is luck? An accumulation of both successes and failures that spiral out into a series of revelations?
My father was an accountant and a stockbroker (his Art was Digits & Dow’s) drilled me with numbers, keep track of the Nasdaq—I always left feeling it was a foreign language I would never learn. I remember writing 50 times on the chalk board: I will not be late for math class, until I understood that ”[The universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word.” (Galilei, Galileo)
Beauty has been the derivative of geometry, the built world, across cultures, architecture the beholder of the Golden Section, what Leonardo Da Vinci called Divine Proportion. Ancient Greeks and Egyptians into the Islamic Golden Age transposed these formulas through Euclid (إقليدس) known as the Key to Geometry among the Arabs—their Algebra from Indian numeric systems and back again with Leonardo Fibonacci through the Italian Renaissance has continued to spiral out in sequence through time.
Euclid defined the Golden Ratio in a single line of thinking: the line divided by 2 small parts in one rather than evenly divided or the Golden Mean. This tension, conflict gave Homer’s blindness, epic vision for the visceral details of the Trojan War and the human arc towards peace and that same conflict gave Beethoven God’s ear. Europe’s own inner conflict during the “dark ages” was to “reconcile reason with revelation, the secular knowledge with the religious”.
Our culture is shaped by what we value, a societal consent on what we will not destroy. The Islamic Golden Age, Byzantium and Western Christendom followed this instinct for cultural preservation during the Middle Ages and used that compass to disseminate universal knowledge a cross pollination between the East and West in the transmission of Greek thought proving the “Dark Ages“ not so dark after all, but candle-lit scriptoriums of knowledge that would illuminate the future Renaissance.
As Maimonides said :
”You should listen to the truth, whoever may have said it.”
Translations from Greek manuscripts to Syriac into Arabic then Hebrew to Latin on the language market—the Silk Road of cultural and academic syncretization preserved our understanding of beauty as if they were sacred texts and in many ways they were, as the world would see its Italian High Renaissance by the 16th century: “Without mathematics there is no art.” (Luca Pacioli 1447 –1517)
The coronation of Humanism through Artists and Architects, Catholic, Byzantine, Muslim, Zoroastrian Persians and Jewish scholars, Ancient Greek Philosophers, Mathematicians, humans, gods, mortals and immortals, a litany of Roman poets and historians (Cicero, Horace, Sallust, Virgil, Ovid, Tacitus, Julius Caesar, Petrarch and Danté) was a synthesis of Greek philosophy, the incarnation of geometry, fleshed out in the representation of universal truth.
There seem to be then two approaches to creativity: a technical mastery and an intuitive mastery, both have vision and converge at the same counterpoint or 1:1 ratio. “A whole universe of connections is in your mind – a universe within a universe – and one capable of reaching out to the other that gave rise to it. Billions of neurons touching billions of stars – surely spiritual”. Alejandro Mos Riera
It is liberating to be on a quest for the mystery between 0 and 1 or what lies between 1.618 and 1.619, reject the idea to stay in your lane— let’s all change lanes, find harmony and proportion, break from patterns, create new patterns, and explore the unknown—a new manifest destiny of ideas...
What inspire you? Who inspires you? How do we measure creativity, luck, inspiration?
Follow the Golden ratio
1.618033988749.........
Actors in order of appearance in process:
1.The Universe
2. Film Leader
3. 80’s phone
4. Buster Keaton at the helm in Navigator (1924). Directed by Buster Keaton.
5. Harold Loyd famous clock scene in "Safety Last", 1923 American Silent film Fred C. Newmeyer,Sam Taylor
6. Golden Rectangle
7. Vitruvious Man, Leonardo Da Vinci 1490. Body proportions based on Roman Architect Vitruvious.
8. Fibonacci Sequence Spiral
9. Shell illustrated by Rafael Araujo
10. Greek Phi
11. Marble staircase, German Renaissance “Wendelstein" Schloss Hartenfels Castle,Torgau/Saxony,Germany.
12. Caryatids of the Maidens on the Erechtheion, Acropolis. Sculptor: Phidias.
13. Gods and Goddesses on Mount Olympus, Birth of Athena East Pediment, sculptor: Phidias.
14. East frieze detail, Parthenon pediment, depicting Poseidon, Apollo and Artemis. Sculptor: Phidias. Athens, Greece.
15. Ashmolean Cast Collection Parthenon frieze, Parthenon frieze horsemen. Phidias.
17. Parthenon facade, Golden Rectangle.
18. Iraqi Architect Zaha Hadid:The Heydar Aliyev Center. Baku, Azerbaijan.
19. Zaha Hadid: Heydar Aliyev Center. Baku, Azerbaijan.
20. Zaha Hadid: Beijing Daxing International Airport, China.
21. Section, Corinthian column.
22. Vignola architectural plan.
23. Corinthian Capital. The Corinthian maiden fell ill and spilled her fruit basket. The basquet turned upside down and acanthus leaves grew over it creating the Corinthian Capital conceived by Vitruvious’ sketch.
24. Euclid demonstrating a construction to student. Raphael’s School of Athens fresco. 1509-1511.
25. Zoe Caldwell, late actress, performance
26. Zoe Caldwell, late actress, performance of Cleopatra , Stratford Festival, Ontario, Canada. 1967
27. Mozart curls
28. Miles Davis trumpet curls
29. Fyodor Dostoevsky
30. M.C Escher drawings hands lithograph, printed 1948.
31. J.S Bach Cantata, doodle sheet music
32. J.S Bach Prelude in E Flat Major BWV 998 sheet music
33. Mozart hand-written score from Mozart’s Verzeichnuss aller meiner Werke.
34. Nautilus (sailor) shell #1
35. Nautilus (sailor) shell #2
36. Nautilus (sailor) shell #3
37.Lillian Diana Gish,The First Lady of American Cinema.(1893-1993) in Orphans of the Storm. Silent film pioneer.
38. Salvador Dalí
39. John Lennon #9. (October 9,1940-December 8, 1980).
40. Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel.1911-1972
41. Glass sky scrapers, London Leadenhall building, the “Cheesegrater”.
42. Ionic fluted column and section blue print.
43. Close up photograph William H. Gray III 30th Street Station, Philadelphia. Fluted column.
44. Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Milan Italy.
45. Ballerina
46. Ballet couple
47. Crepe dancers
48. Dancer Koresh Studio: Bicking Photography Studio
49. Mikhail Baryshnikov
50. Musical Group, 1520s. Callisto Piazza (Calisto de la Piaza da Lodi), Italian (active Lodi and Brescia), c. 1500 1561/62. Oil on panel, 35 5/8 x 35 3/4 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection, 1917.
51. A group of Renaissance musicians in The Concert (1623) by Gerard van Honthorst.
52. Ballerina duet
53. Nautilus shell
54. Fibonacci sequence Lobelia deckenii, giant lobelia. East Africa
55. Saint Peter at the Gates, Rome, Italy.
56. Giaconda, Mona Lisa. Leonardo Da Vinci. 1503-1506
57. La Scapigliata. Leonardo Da Vinci.1506-1508
58. “Lady Day” Billie Holiday. Downbeat Club, New York City, February 1947.
59. Beethoven
60. Maria Callas, bel-canto Opera singer 1923-1977.Greek Amer
61. Beethoven hands
62. Albert Einstein eyes. 1879-1955.
63. Beatles John and Paul, March 18, 1965 - Marietta Hotel, Obertauern, Austria. Henry Grossman's photo.
64. Master of delta blues. Robert Johnson. 1911-1938.
65. Chuck Berry,Father of Rock ‘n Roll. 1926-2017
66. Marie Curie. Physicist. First woman Nobel Prize winner. Radioactivity research/radium. University of Paris. 1867-1934
67. Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor, electric power. 1847-1931.
68. Nikola Tesla. American Inventor. Electric power. 1856-1943
69. Galilei, Galileo.1564-1642. Astronomer, Physicist, Engineer. “Father of Modern Science”.
70. Julian Abele, American architect, trained under L’ ecole des Beaux Arts, collaborations with Trumbauer, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Designed Duke University Chapel, Buchanan Duke‘s residence, Duke University Campus, Newport mansions.
71. Jesse Norman, American Opera singer. 1945-2019.
72. Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff. Russian composer, 1873-1943.
73. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. Russian poet, playwright, novelist.1799-1837. Father of modern Russian language.
Novels, fairytales: Eugene Onegin, The Golden Cockerel, Captain’s Daughter, Ruslan and Lyudmila.
74. Oumou Sangaré “The Songbird of Wassoulou".Bamako, Mali.1968. UNESCO International Music Prize
75. Srinivasa Ramanujan FRS,1887-1920 India‘s greatest Mathematician. Number theory, continued fractions, zeta function and other divergent series.
76. Jimi Hendrix.
77.
CODA
