For months and months we have been keeping the lid on an exciting piece of news, but now the hour is at hand. We have just been given leave to announce our involvement in an incredibly interesting project (or so we believe).
Our friend Joshua Wolf Shenk (above), non-fiction writer, essayist, and author of the award-winning Lincoln’s Melancholy, has lately turned his focus to examining creative pairs, asking specifically:
What makes creative relationships work? How do two people — who may be perfectly capable and talented on their own — explode into innovation, discovery, and brilliance when working together?
In attempting to answer these questions, Josh has been taking a close look at a wide range of creative pairs—from John Lennon and Paul McCartney to Conan O’Brien and his producer Jeff Ross to Watson and Crick to the Car Talk guys—while exploring various archetypes of creative collaboration. He has been focusing on well-known and unarguably accomplished or important pairs…with one notable exception.
In order to take a close look at collaboration in action, Josh has decided to put on his lab coat and use Robbi and me as guinea pigs in a quasi-scientific “study” of creative collaboration. Over the past six months or so, he has been subjecting us to a variety of tests and evaluations, from psychological surveys to a session with a psychotherapist to an on-site analysis of the barn by a feng shui master, all in attempting to get at the heart of what makes us tick and our collaboration work.
The first public presentation of Josh’s thinking on this front will be published on Slate next Tuesday (September 7), and additional articles will be published weekly thereafter. A series of pieces on Robbi and me will appear in the last week of September.
In the mean time, if this project interests you, please join the Creative Pairs Facebook group, which Josh hopes will be a clearinghouse for discussion about creative collaboration. Building on the writing and thinking he has been doing for the Slate series, Josh plans to write a book on this subject, and he is very interested in drawing on a wide community of ideas and perspectives as he continues his research.
Not convinced?
This is your opportunity to redeem social media by using it for communications of substance, depth, and potential for elevating human understanding!
This is your chance to rub elbows with an award-winning author!
This is your chance to find out once and for all what makes Robbi draw such unusual things! (That’s why I’m signing up, anyway).
We will have much more to say on this front in the days ahead, but we wanted to let you know about the project and encourage you to join Josh’s group. He is an incredibly thoughtful guy with a bunch of incredibly thoughtful friends, and we imagine the resulting discussion will be fascinating.
So be sure not to sign up if you’re not into that sort of thing.
Robbi and I are often left wondering what we are. In terms of genre definition, that is. In spite of popular misconception, we’re not making books for children (most of the time, at least) in spite of the fact that all of our books have pictures and words. We’re not exactly literature (which seldom contains pictures), in spite of hoping that our work is thought of as literary, and we’re not purely art (which seldom contains words), in spite of hoping that people will consider our work “artistic.” One thing we’re fairly sure of is that we’re not making comics, which according to celebrated comic arts theorist Scott McCloud, is defined as “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response in the viewer.” Or, perhaps by that definition, we are making comics.
Nevertheless, we woke this morning to find our work reviewed on ComixTalk, a website that “provides news and in-depth feature articles on comics in the digital age.”
The author of the post (a smart, perceptive guy with keen insights and fantastic taste) is quick to agree that none of our work “can be described unambiguously as comics.” But, I suppose, our relentless combination of pictures and words is enough to justify our inclusion in a forum where comics are discussed. We are honored to be included.
It’s an interesting read if you have the time and inclination. Robbi and I understand ourselves just a bit more than we did yesterday.
Last Friday, an interview with Robbi and me was posted on JawboneTV, a site devoted to “the good, the bad, and the bad-ass of story in the digital age.” We met the guy who runs the site at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival last spring, and he was interested enough in what we do to ask a few pointed questions, to which we responded. Our egos were temporarily enlarged upon discovering that not only was our interview featured as Jawbone’s lead story, but that the editor decided to publish the entire interview in spite of its inarguable longness.
We’re left feeling gratified and understood, but also with the nagging question of why, exactly, Jawbone took note of our work. We’d be happy with “good,” thrilled with “bad-ass,” but must also consider the possibility that we’ve been featured merely to round out the necessary quota of “bad.” May the mystery endure.
We’ve just been notified that a recent video interview we did for the Chestertown Spy is up for public consumption. We happen to think it turned out great. You totally can’t tell from the video that it was filmed the day before I left for Alaska, when I was in a frenzy of getting things done and the bags under my eyes weighed two tons. Thank god for the hours they spent on my hair and make-up. Matthew, of course, looks just scraggly enough to be thought of as a legitimate writer, while not being in a brawl (Hemingway) or drinking himself under the table (everyone else). Even Kato makes a cameo (though he really suffered from those ten pounds that the camera adds). So, all things considered, we give it an A+. They also chose not to include the many, many, many stupid things we said.
Without further ado, have a look:
Many props to editor Dave Wheelan for getting us to say the few things we said that weren’t stupid, and to Kurt Kolaja for putting it all together so deftly.
Also, have a look at the Spy and see what’s up in Chestertown (occurrences as well as disturbances, though I prefer to heavily browse the latter) – and (the best!) check out the Osprey Cam. They do it right here in C-town.
There is a nice little piece about Idiots’Books today on Reading Local: Baltimore, a blog devoted to “exploring and discussing Baltimore’s creative, funky literary scene with book and bookstore reviews, event listings, and a personal take on book-related goings-on.”
The post presents a quick overview of the Idiots’Books story, some quotes by yours truly, and a smattering of links to various corners of the Idiots’Books universe. Those who know us well might find it unenlightening, but if you find yourselves still struggling to plumb the full depths of our many mysteries, perhaps the post will put forth some new insight.
I mentioned last week that Idiots’Books has been profiled in the current issue of Baltimore Magazine. The article is now available to read online. You can find it by clicking here.
I have just returned from dropping Robbi, Alden, and Kato at the airport in Washington. The barn is deathly silent, save for the quiet whir of the AC. I might hear Iggy’s tail against the floorboards if she had one. It had already been removed by the time we adopted her. I am left with the question of how to spend the next month of my life as a seclusive bachelor. The empty hours represent so much potential.
For now, I’ll start by letting you know that our family is the focus of a very nice article in Baltimore Magazine, the “cameo” feature on pages 88-89 of the July issue (look for the prominent photo of a Maryland blue crab doused in Old Bay on the cover).
It’s a nice piece, written by a very nice person named Jane Marian, who spent a few hours a few months back talking with us in the barn. She sheds some light on how we found our way to the barn, why (and how) we do what we do, and what we think we’re trying to accomplish (I’m glad that Jane has a theory, since we’re constantly asking that question of ourselves).
For those of you who live in Baltimore and chance to stumble on a copy, it’s a nice read, in my completely unbiased opinion.
It will be available for online reading in a few weeks, and I’ll post a link when the time comes.
For now, I’m off to finish up a bit of pending work work before beginning my two-week writing sabbatical. I’ll post a message of jubilation when it officially begins. I’m counting the hours with anticipation.
For months now, you have been hearing us yammer on about the Makers Tile Game, a series of illustrations commissioned as a companion to the online release of Cory Doctorow’s novel Makers. The 81 illustrations are interchangeable tiles that can be put together into one big puzzle or recombined in seemingly endless ways.
Last week we sent the Tiles out to the subscribership as Volume 26 in the Idiots’Books series. Yesterday, the Makers Tile Game hit the big time, landing on popular media and technology blog BoingBoing to great fanfare and praise from Cory Doctorow himself (he called us “insanely creative,” and we blushed appropriately).
Not only was yesterday the single greatest day in the history of Idiots’Books e-commerce (we got orders from 24 states and seven countries), but in just one day, more than 4,100 people around the world have watched the Makers Tile Game promotional video that Robbi made. Here it is. Watch and dare not to tremble.
Those of you who are freshly inspired to own the Makers Tile Game for yourselves may do so by clicking here. At only $12, the Tile Game is a pretty cheap date, especially considering that it offers more permutations than there are atoms in the universe (as determined by the fine mathematical minds at Williams College).
In our last subscriber mailing, we announced a contest. We will award a fabulous prize to the person who sends us a photo of the most innovative or wonderful use of Makers Tiles. The current frontrunner is this submission by the great Steve Haske.
I’d really like it if someone else could do better. Subscribers, show us how you are putting your Makers Tiles to use for the world. Surely someone out there has invented something fabulous, made some mindbending art, or leveled a wobbly table.
For those of you who are already enjoying your Makers Tiles, please send Robbi’s video around to others you think might be interested. We aim to start a Makers revolution (especially since the Cross-Eyed Zebra t-shirt revolution seems to be falling squarely on its face).
We recently sent in an application to be included in the newly established Baltimore Slideluck Potshow. It seemed like a pretty neat event – slideshows by various creatives rotating while everyone enjoys a potluck dinner. Apparently this has been done in other cities, but this was Baltimore’s debut.
Our first submission was literally just a slideshow. We thought that if we were accepted, we would be able to narrate in person. It turns out that that is not the way it works. Slideshows were to be accompanied by music or some sort of soundtrack. Since we were planning on reading one of our books, we couldn’t just send a clip of some music and say “press stop when the slides are done”. So this, of course, led to a series of all-nighters where I tried to remember how to use iMovie (btw, has anyone on the planet figured out what they did to iMovie HD to turn it into the completely worthless “upgrade” iMovie ’08? Other than take out all of the useful things that it does and make it totally inscrutable? Sheesh, I say. SHEESH!). Someday, I will have an intern do this.
Once I figured out iMovie, it seemed the slideshow ought to have a little more pizazz, a little something about us for the uninitiated. So we recorded a little intro, I drew some pictures, and the ordeal went on for several more sleepless nights.
In the end, though, we have a nice slideshow. Too bad we didn’t get selected for the event. But that’s okay. Now I know where the “import” button is in iMovie, and we have a little promotional piece to share with, well, whoever wants to have a look.
BTW – I hate the sound of my voice. But because I like you guys and trust you won’t write a bunch of comments like, “Robbi, you sound like you have peas in your nose,” and “Robbi, did you just have oral surgery?” and “Robbi, those braces you wore for all those years didn’t fix a thing,” I am posting it anyway.
If you have ever thought to yourself that it might be fun to throw Robbi and me into a laboratory and poke and prod us with various sensors and probes, here is your golden opportunity. We have been identified by a nice fellow writing a piece on creative collaboration for a well-known online magazine as subjects for his wonderings. The name of the well-known online magazine and the nice fellow/author of the piece will be left unnamed for the time being.
The plan, as this fellow sees it, is to subject us to a number of evaluations that run the gamut from downright scientific to downright whimsical, all in an effort to get at the question of what makes a creative pair tick. What is it that happens when two minds come together and try to create? Perhaps you know the answer already. The nice fellow writing the article does not. And so he aims to thoroughly investigate us.
Robbi and I have already undergone a number of evaluations, including some psychological surveys, a visit to the barn by a Feng Shui master, and an examination of our written correspondence by a psychologist. We are in the process of creating drawings of our ideal work space, creating a dictionary of our private language (I hadn’t even realized that we had a private language), and are anticipating a trip to an actual laboratory, in which we will be hooked up with sensors and electrodes, which will evaluate our unconscious biorhythmic utterances. I kid you not. The very depth of our beings is being summarily plumbed. And yet the nice fellow will not be content until he has examined our collaboration in each and every manner imaginable.
Here is where you come in. We have been asked (by the nice fellow, writing on behalf of the unnamed, yet well-known online magazine) to turn to you, faithful readers, for ideas for yet more ways in which our collaboration might be measured, analyzed, tested, or scrutinized.
So put on your lab coats and take out your test tubes. Dig deep and see what you can come up with. No idea will be unconsidered. Consider the floor open. We can’t wait to hear your ideas.
And neither can the nice fellow.
Please note: As an added incentive, we will be sending the illustration at the top of this post as a prize to whichever of you is determined to have supplied the best idea (according to the nice man who is writing the article for the not-yet-named but terribly impressive online magazine).
Story Builder
Play with our recombinable, death-defying, story-making watchamajig!
2010 Small Press Expo - One of the top alternative press events on the east coast, with over 450 exhibitors. Come see! On 09/11/2010, which is in 2 days and 06:31 hours.
AWP 2011 - The Association of Writers & Writing Programs is holding its conference in DC this year. We'll be there too. On 02/02/2011, which is in 146 days and 06:31 hours.
