Summer 2012
It’s been an exciting last weeks at Ideami!
The Summer started with a presentation i gave at Stanford University in June. I gave a talk called: The Symbiosis between Art & Technology, from fact to fiction and all the way back. It was a recap of some of my works where i have mixed and blended art and technology; How sometimes Technology enables me to create new types of artistic works which in turn suggest new technological developments. The fascinating Art-Technology feedback loop! Watch a few moments of the talk in here: From fact to fiction and all the way back
During the summer i worked very closely with Imagine Creativity Center, a fantastic company directed by Xavier Verdaguer and Rosa Monge. To their imagine dreamers i gave my Springkite Workshop, an intensive ideation and creativity workshop that combines multiple creative languages in one single event. Read more about it here: Springkite Ideation Workshop
After Springkite we worked together on the production of two new short documentary films, Hacking Alcatraz and Lost in the Sand which you can watch these days through the links available on the motion area of the website. Hacking Alcatraz is a metaphor about positive energy and thinking as triggers of positive change even in the darkest of scenarios, represented in the film by the infamous Alcatraz Prison. In the film a group of entrepreneurs, the Imagine Dreamers, attempt to hack a cell, the courtyard and a tower of Alcatraz with Yellow Balloons, symbolizing the complicated challenge we all have to go through when we try to reset negativity to a better state.
The second film, Lost in the Sand, continues my tradition of creating giant portraits on the sand of beaches around the world. In this case, i teamed up with the Imagine Dreamers and Imagine Creativity Center to tackle a challenge in which i gave the dreamers the task to complete a giant Leonardo Da Vinci portrait drawing in a short span of time, having to face the coming tides of the ocean and very vague instructions. The instructions were vague on purpose in order to push them to explore their team work dynamics. The experience was full of surprises and the best way to experience it is watching the film!
At the end of July i had the honor to be invited by Xavier and Rosa to present the final Imagine Event in San Francisco. For the event i created an story-performance that you can watch here: Dream, a Story Performance by Ideami. It was a really great experience and as always working with Imagine Creativity Center is always a Joy!
Another great development in the last weeks was completing – Winds of Change – the documentary about Entrepreneurship. In this documentary i had the fortune to work with great personalities of the entrepreneurial world such as Jeff Hoffman, a really great speaker and the cofounder of priceline.com; Daniel Kottke, fantastic inventor and thinker, roommate and friend of Steve Jobs, and one of the first Apple employees; Rebeca Hwang, the CEO of YouNoodle and Henrik Scheel, CEO of Startup Experience, both doing such an awesome job with the new generations of entrepreneurs around the world; Also in connection with the investment and venture capital arena, I had the fortune to have Tod Francis and David R.Barnes, another two great speakers whose views and perspectives are very valuable; On top of that Evan Reas, Cofounder and CEO of Circle, one of the hottest startups in silicon valley participated as well, bringing really great insights into the film;
All of them provide a perfect complement around the main character of the film, Nacho Ayanz. This film would never be what it is without Nacho. The day Rebeca invited me to go to Stanford University to meet the young entrepreneurs arriving from different countries for their eBootCamp Event, i knew i had an urgent mission if this was all to work well later on. The mission was to find an interesting character to base the film on. It had to be somebody intelligent, with a good startup idea, and at the same time that person had to be outgoing, expressive, transparent with his/her emotions. If on top of that he/she was also funny, that would be the icing on the cake!
Well, in the moment i met Nacho i knew i had it! Nacho has it all. He is the CEO of a great startup which is trying to do something really important for the environment and many communities; producing low power eolic energy generators to bring energy to isolated locations and people by using the power of the wind. At the same time he is very outgoing, very enthusiastic in a very genuine way. He doesn’t try to fake his emotions, his emotions stream out from him and this so very important to engage audiences in a powerful, direct and truthful way. On top of that Nacho is fun. He has that spontaneity that can bring the unexpected at any time in original and entertaining ways.
It’s been a few days since we released the film and I’m happy to report that so many entrepreneurs from around the world have already written to say that the film inspires them, that they find it very easy to identify with the character of Nacho, that they can find themselves reflected on his frustrations, challenges, doubts, excitement and enthusiasm, that the film is giving them an extra push as well as providing them with a lot of useful information, practical data that can help them today and in the future. And that was the mission of this film, to provide practical info about many aspects and sides of entrepreneurship; To put on the table as well some of its darker and harder sides and at the same time to inspire people with the unique and daring creative energy of entrepreneurs as well as the possibilities and opportunities that entrepreneurship opens to us all.
This film is just a first phase towards future entrepreneurship related films. We had this idea of making a feature film that reflected on the motivations and triggers behind entrepreneurship and this short 20 minute documentary film is a first step in that direction. We will be working in the future on more entrepreneurship related films that will continue exploring this fascinating topic: The emotions, motivations, triggers and deep multifaceted sides of entrepreneurship. For me as a filmmaker and entrepreneur this is a very important topic, a personal passion.
you can watch the film in here:
Winds of Change – Entrepreneurship Documentary
Another exciting development these days is having completed the new ideami.com website!
Every few years i renew my website, but i can say that this is probably the first time i feel i have been able to create an ideami.com website that balances simplicity with the objective of showcasing a lot of my work in an efficient way. That has always been the challenge for me. As I’m active in many areas, showing all of my works in so many fields and at the same time having a simple website was always a challenge. This year i really made a big effort to think in advance very very carefully what would be the best way to accomplish that goal, and listening to the first feedbacks after launch it seems it’s looking good! Of course i will never be fully satisfied with any version of the website but i feel this one is the closest to what i had always envisioned.
It is very visual, very easy to navigate, it is efficient and easy to maintain.
One of the decisions i took with this website was to stop making the typical fine art galleries with thumbnails and the like and just create static pages for each of my fine art series. And I’m really happy with this decision. It allows you to understand and grasp an entire series at a glance without having to open and close thumbs all the time. It speeds up the process and we all know how important speed and efficiency are today!
You can visit the main areas of the new website on these links
Home Page: http://www.ideami.com/
Motion, Filmmaking & Video: https://ideami.com/motion
Fine Art: https://ideami.com/art
Training Services: https://ideami.com/training
Technology & Ventures: https://ideami.com/tech
Other Miscellaneous areas: https://ideami.com/misc
News & Blog: https://ideami.com/news
Main Services: https://ideami.com/services
The website also contains some of the oldest works i created which were not present in previous websites and also an opportunity to explore more fun and casual parts of what i do. Some examples are the ideami music collection, composed and performed by Ideami, Food Art consisting of bread masks created by the artist, the old ideami drawings comissioned many years ago before ideami started working in photography, and one of the ideami published books, in this case an illustrated tale for children.
I have also added to the website some Fine Art Photo Series that weren’t before showcased at Ideami, such as:
The Path Series (Spain): The Path Series (This is one of the first Photo Series i ever created)
The SkinLand Series (Spain): The SkinLand Series (This belongs as well to my early period of work)
The Life Series (Spain): The Life Series (Likewise this one, part of the early stages of my work)
The Escape Series (San Francisco): The Escape Series (Produced in San Francisco)
the Ice Series (New Zealand): The Ice Series (This is an unfinished series started before an accident happened at Franz Joseph Glazier)
During September i started collaborating with a radio program on KLIV 1590 Silicon Valley’s only all-news radio station, an affiliate of NBC Radio, at a program called Upstaged featuring Reid Martin Basso (Reid is awesome and a lot of fun to listen to!) and Ruthie Pangilinan, dedicated to the world of Arts, Theater and Culture in the Bay Area, i have a little part called – The Creative Minute! where i explain creativity exercises, review creative events, talk about some of my latest creative works and projects, talk about springkite, and similar stuff; its UPSTAGED! On 1590am KLIV Tuesday and Thursdays at 8pm for the latest in San Jose and beyond Bay Area arts and culture, online at http://socialstreamingplayer.crystalmedianetworks.com/radio/kliv
And more info here: http://www.broadwaysanjose.com/upstaged.html
These days, after completing the ideami.com and the 3 films, I’m back with the entrepreneur & engineer hat on. I’m working on one of my startups preparing a really great update, can’t wait to tell you about it!
I’m also working with a group of friends on another potential new startup, eager to see how that develops.
At the same time i continue to explore possibilities to bring my services to Asia and continue working on new tools to allow people to create and refine ideas in new ways.
To conclude the summer this is a new video i produced about the FleetWeek event in San Francisco, using the event to reflect about the nature of planes which sometimes are symbols of peace and innovation and other times are symbols of war. This is a video for a world where planes may be always dancers in the sky, symbols of peace, bringing joy and color to people around the world, instead of fear and war.
October is going to be intense, I’m trying to complete a very important startup update before its end, let’s see how it goes!
Stay well, and thank you for reading
For collaboration proposals and the like you can email me at ideami@ideami.com
