Aesthetic Intelligence

Anesthetic

Back from a 2 days Lego Serious Play workshop in Lugano, CH.

There are tools that need to be used, otherwise they become useless. As useless appliances, they are abandoned and confined in some remote corner. Eventually we forget them. Aesthetic Intelligence is one of these tools. If we neglect our Aesthetic Intelligence toolkit, it slowly becomes pointless and we become ready for anesthesia.

Lego Serious Play is a great way to awake our aesthetic instinct, to remove the toolkit from the backyard and to renew our building skills.

The beginnings of Aesthetic Intelligence

The When? has now a new answer: much earlier than expected, as Science magazine highlights today. But the interesting question is still open – and it is still the most interesting one: Why? Why Homo Sapiens (or maybe his competitor, Neanderthal) started to produce images? Around 48.000 years ago we started to develop our Aesthetic Intelligence and to use our representation skills to become what we are. Money is just one of the most recent and most trivial outcome of these representation performances – Homo Pictor is much older than Homo Oeconomicus, we shouldn’t forget it when we talk about financial crisis.

Thresholds

The perception of boundaries is an interesting Aesthetic issue. Without boundaries identities wouldn’t exist, neither would exist expressions like “our company”, “our market share”, “our products”. Scientific management is based on boundaries and insists on the value of corporate divisions. But if we forget that all boundaries are artificial, we are in trouble. Boundaries are effective tools to face reality and to reduce its complexity, but boundaries are not reality, wich is always much more complex than any artificial distinctions. Today’s economy is forcing us to experience the arbitrariness of our usual boundaries: we’re all moving a step ahead toward the ambiguous territory of thresholds, where making business will be much more interesting.

Here is the link to Fastcompany’s feature on “collaboration over boundaries”.

One man caravan

What was the world in 1932? Bike were the same and so were human beings. What was different? Aesthetic Intelligence skills. As Ted Simon (arguably the best motorcycle travel expert in the world) pointed out, this is “the best motorcycle travel book ever written”. The reason belongs to the ability to perceive shown by the author. A lesson to learn.

Oh Susannah

A vision of contemporary Aesthetic Intelligence, Neil Young + Shepard Fairey, the listening and the watching.

Day Seven

1257 km. From Folkestone to Milan, from 7:50 am to 11:35 pm. From A to B the way it should be. Eggs and bacon, quiche Lorraine, Toblerone and espresso, four countries in a riding menu. The stress test is over, the Stelvio is perfect, I’m back home. Live to read, read to live.

Day Six

Stonehenge welcomes tourists. It couldn’t be different and none should be disappointed. Heritages must be protected otherwise it would be impossible to preserve them. And Stonehenge is very well protected.

Protection is strongly linked with exploitation, as the ancient brothels’ stories teach us. Our culture is a great exploiter of cultural heritages.

No wander the main achievement of the visit is an almost perfect Anaestehtic Experience with interesting mathematical implications: how to be bounced back by 5000 years in 5 seconds after 5 hours of pouring rain:

Day Five

I know it is only a park, an usual British park, normal and even trivial. But it is my park. I’ve been playing on this grass hundreds of times, for 7 consecutive years, every summer. And I’ve been watching cricket matches, without understanding a single cricket rule. I’ve been spending my time in this park and I’ve been growing up with these perceptions, these clouds, this flat space. Today I came back here alone 20 years after my latest solo visit. And nothing has changed, I still can hear the sound of the grass and taste of the sudden color changes in the sky.

Here I became aware of the relevance of emptiness and waiting but the way I live currently is right the opposite of emptiness and waiting. It has been very important to come back here and to be pushed back to this flow of perceptions. This reminds me how weak our intelligences would be without the Aesthetic one.

Tomorrow I’ll be back on the road, after this 3 days stop in my past which is suddenly my present again. And during my riding, while leaving Mrs Linda and Mr. John unequaled hospitality, it will be very easy to follow my leather jacket advise:

Day Four

Expectations can be dangerous. The narrow space that hosts The School of Life in London is very generous with Alain de Botton’s books but curiously stingy with ancient Greek philosophy – we should not feed expectations when it comes to shops. However, is well-known that when reality doesn’t matches expectations we get ready for compensations. Therefore, as soon as London’s philosophy showed all his thinness, London’s bikerness immediately compensates.

The fish ‘n chips served at Ace Café is not the main reason to stop here, but all the rest is the way you expect it, even on a bored and calm post public holiday wednesday afternoon. The absence of my 750 S from this picture is something difficult to stand.

There is a strong catchword in this ’60s checkered black and white aesthetic. Even if we all know it is unauthentic, we believe in it. It probably belongs once again to the compensation process: if I can’t be a maudit hero on a ratbike for the rest of my life, I can wear his colors at least on a cloudy and lazy wednesday afternoon.

Talking about remarkable shops in London, we have to mention that Lewis Leathers and Aviakit are strong brand for leather jackets fans (and they have been for more than 100 years). Fortunately I’m a Vanson addicted, otherwise I would have spent some money on these classical jackets, gloves, shirts, boots (specially the boots are worthwhile).

Day Three

Here I am, I’m at home. Now I can stop, I can rest. The very first time I’ve been in this garden I was 11. The very first English phrase I remember I’ve learned is “semi-detached house”. It was an unforgettable word for my newborn dictionary. I’m back to my British roots, semi-detached from my current existence, and everything is the same, exactly as I’ve left it, even if everything is changed.