The Archive of Free Thinking

think – act – grow

recent posts

  • How to pick the right medium

    “If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed.”

    Stanley Kubrick

    While Stanley Kubrick’s words could be an observation on the intrinsic flexibility of film (or a somewhat arrogant assessment of his own skill as a director), it is more fundamentally a comment on the flow of ideas across mediums. This edition explores this process of adaptation as ideas move from one medium to another, how a play can become a film and then a stage musical (as with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story). Many factors drive the adaptation of ideas into different mediums: a writer or director’s interest in a new interpretation, new technologies and materials, as well as commercial opportunities. This edition of the archive examines why some adaptations can be straightforward, while others are more difficult. It highlights that adaptation is often a source of inspiration in the emergence of new art forms and representations. It also explores how certain forms of representation become established across mediums. Over time, multiple acts of adaptation force both the artist and the viewer to reexamine the work and how it relates to the moment of its creation, reemphasising the importance of understanding the specific meaning of ideas and the qualities of mediums when moving an idea from medium to medium. 

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  • You should be listening to buildings

    “Interiors (of buildings) are like large instruments, collecting sound, amplifying it, transmitting it elsewhere.”

    Peter Zumthor

    Sound, like colour, offers architects a material with a wide spectrum of potential applications.  Sound in buildings can create atmosphere, rekindle memories and generate emotions. It can repurpose and refine private and public space, and it can be efficient, requiring minimal construction, environmental and economic costs. By looking at sound as a design tool, we can ‘amplify’ the emotional capacity of spaces, to profound effect.

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  • Don’t forget about textile art

    “The act of sewing is a process of emotional repair.”

    Louise Bourgeois

    Sewing, in all its forms: weaving, knitting, crochet and embroidery, has a unique quality and meaning derived from the range of materials used in the structured process of creation. The medium informs the works created, but so does the process of creation. This is particularly clear in textiles because the marks of labour are so physically apparent. These characteristics make ‘sewing’, and other (handmade) textile art forms especially valuable as mnemonic objects that carry ideas, identities, and histories.

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  • How to change minds

    “A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don’t have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.”

    Nelson Mandela

    The development and maintenance of societies depends on bringing together individuals with differing skills, values, and ideas to create environments where they can coexist and thrive. Central in this process is the ability to debate, to share thoughts, to challenge and to create agreement. This edition explores debate, both its ineffective and effective forms. In particular, the importance of ‘closeness’: direct contact, empathy and immersion, in creating constructive dialogues.

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  • Is greed good? Balancing rhetoric and informed debate

    I am not a destroyer of companies. I am a liberator of them! The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.”

    Gordon Gekko in ‘Wall Street’ (1987)

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  • “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the significant potential of community economics

    “People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well in my book, my father died a much richer man than you’ll ever be!”

    George Bailey

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  • A Question of Form: system alignment in problem-solving

    “The first requisite for a body of practical and progressing thought: recognition of the kind of problem at issue. Lacking this, it has found the shortest distance to a dead end.”

    Jane Jacobs

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  • Fireside chatting: fire, community and the human mind

    “The most enduring tool that fire ever made might just be the human mind.”

    Thomas Wynn

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  • Narratives of Disempowerment: when ‘good men’ do nothing

    “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.”

    John Stuart Mill

    Despite our imperative to deny the ‘triumph of evil’, all too often we allow ourselves to remain politically and socially inert; convincing ourselves that it is permissible – if not outright necessary – to avoid engaging with political activation. This issue of non-participation is too nebulous to address every facet at once, and so here we will consider the narratology of disempowerment, its role and function; what Mills calls the pacifying ‘delusion’. Narratology is the study of narratives. It considers the structure and patterns in stories and, more broadly, ‘how humans use stories as sense-making instruments’. We shall first look at the reasons people may ‘take no part, and form no opinion’, recognising the purpose and importance of these narrative ‘delusions’, before analysing their origins and consequences. In doing so we can begin to see why it is so important to believe in our own political capacity, as well as the very serious ‘harm’ that can come when we defect on our responsibility to ‘take part’.

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  • Intellectual effort and the search for a better life.

    “Because more complex and intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and richer life.” 

    Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

    This quotation from Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. can be interpreted in multiple ways. Some may look at this from a functional viewpoint, arguing that ‘intense intellectual efforts’ lead to better decision making, or at least to better understanding, resulting in a measurable increase in personal happiness. However, the ‘fuller and richer life’ he describes could instead be the intrinsic joy of understanding and participating in the flow of ideas. As Aquinas said, ‘it is clear that people who give themselves to the contemplation of truth are the happiest a person in this life can be, happiness consists primarily in intellectual contemplation’. By exploring Wendell’s statement we can start to unpick what he means and discover how we can apply this to our own personal betterment. 

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