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What is an infinite game?

And why should you, as a creative professional, care?

Let’s begin with “finite games,” because that is what our commercial culture is all about.

There are a few exalted winners and vast hordes of losers/strivers. Here are just a few obvious examples of our national finite games:

The Super Bowl, World Series, the NBA playoffs, flipping condos, stock speculation, consumer marketing, the Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, Obies, Golden Globes, Nobel Prizes, Indie 500 and Nascar, Pulitzer Prizes, Wimbledon, MacArthur Genius Grants, Sundance Indie Film Awards and Hollywood deals, Olympic gold medalists, Project Runway, American Idol, Congressional filabusters, offshore drilling, and strip development…

Conversely Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired Magazine and digital guru, defines Infinite Games this way:

“The game is to keep changing the nature of change. And that infinite game is my view of holiness. You play the game not to win, but to continue to play to make room for all expressions of truth, good, and the beautiful. You are opening up the world to possibility.”

This was slammed home to me just a few weeks ago. My longtime music guru, Dan Kleiman, unexpectedly died of a massive stroke from out of the blue. He was just 55. Dan seemed in good health and in reasonably good spirits when I saw him last October in Philly.

He composed, performed, and handled the post-production of twelve of my award-winning experimental videos over a period of a dozen years:

http://artnothate.com/friends/dan-kleiman.php
http://creativeledge.com/video/index.php

One of the things we talked about (perhaps the one thing that we always talked about) was the apparent unfairness and arbitrary harshness of life in the creative economy. As middle-aged working creative professionals, we were both experiencing the frustration of always being on the edge of big things. As the saying goes, always a bridesmaid and never a bride. With the collapse of both the stock and housing markets, we saw a lot of our savings and net worth evaporate and the prospect of easy money disappear.

Dan was vexed by the possibility of many more years of creative struggle and the uncertainty of any financial reward. I was less worried about things and more sanguine about the future (at least at that moment) and tried to cheer him up with my usual philosophizing. In my circle of friends and colleagues, I am often the resident skeptical optimist. I adopted this cast of mind when dealing both with a serious chronic illness for nearly twenty years and a life-threatening colon lesion. For the most part, my health situation was not talked about, but was always the 800-pound gorilla in the studio. Consequently, I am genuinely grateful for the good days when there is energy and creative flow.

Recently, Dan and his longtime creative partner and singer, Phyllis Chapell, finished a magnificent CD titled “Vision of the Dry Bones.” It combined their virtuosity with Jewish, Latin, and world culture into a delicious and fully realized whole.

http://artnothate.com/friends/phyllis-chapell.php

It had a genuine artistic integrity that can only be achieved by decades of practice, experimentation, and committed creative collaboration. Here is a link to some clips from the album:

http://artnothate.com/friends/projects/dry-bones.php

One of the things that I mentioned to Dan last fall was that the web might provide artists (particularly musicians and performers) a modicum of immortality. One might yet be discovered posthumously on the Internet and find an enthusiastic audience that could span generations.

This did not give my gifted friend much succor or solace. He was still playing the finite games of the mercurial creative marketplace at our last meeting, trying to figure out how to get fame, fortune, security, and unconditional love through one’s art.

Now he is part of eternity…as we all shall be…sooner or later.

But let me leave you with images from a favorite infinite game—Nantucket Sailboats!

It was one of the very first videos that Dan and I worked on together.

http://creativeledge.com/video/mainely-creative/nantucket-sailboats.php

Some Buddhist sages have equated anger with insanity. I agree with that sentiment in many aspects of life…but not all.

Anger can be an agent of positive creative change and an impetus to the creation of profoundly unsettling but life-affirming art forms.

As part of my forthcoming “Art Not Hate: Creative Responses to Conflict” exhibit at the Florida Holocaust Museum, opening in March, I worked with young people from Community Tampa Bay and various other organizations in the metro area. In the workshops, students came to understand the anger they experienced in various situations, and then used that anger as a creative energy.

Here is a short video that conveys the flavor of the workshops: http://artnothate.com/workshops/

I enjoyed working with the teenagers, but as a person on the brink of his 60th birthday, I have a compelling need to collaborate with both emerging and mature artists and performers. Together we can create art that might speak across generations.

I was especially interested in collaborating with Gen Y (under 30 adults) and fellow Boomers in projects that incorporate both traditional art forms and new electronic media.

As I see it, Tampa Bay’s future economic growth will be driven more by the silicon in computer chips than by our broad sandy beaches. Here is a link to a prescient column that I wrote for the Creative Tampa Bay Buzz a few years ago:

New Media vs. The Movies

The “Art Not Hate” project weaves together various strands of the creative economy ethos—the cultivation of diverse people and ideas, the humanization and monetization of digital technology, and the desire to foster genuine community (with all its conflicts, contradictions, and promises of creative human connectedness).

This short “Anatomy of Anger” video clip was written and performed by Aleshea Harris, accompanied on congas by Nery Arevalo, produced by Mark Maynor, and managed by Sarah Gerard.

The piece was inspired by a series of mixed media collages that are part of the “Art Not Hate” exhibit.

Please visit the exhibit website at www.artnothate.com and read the informative online press release.

The free public reception at the Florida Holocaust Museum is Sunday March 14th from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Piano jazz great Stan Hunter and classical piano virtuoso Judith Alstadter will be performing. RSVP required.

Email Amy Blake at floret55638@mypacks.net to be put on the guest list. Spaces are limited.

The “Art Not Hate” exhibit runs from March 6th to March 30th.

Dacher Keltner, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, says that contrary to long-standing assertions that humans are inherently self-serving, new evidence suggests that we’re actually wired to be compassionate. Studies conducted by a number of preeminent specialists and universities demonstrate measurable responses in the human anatomy including changes in brainwaves, oxytocin levels, and non-verbal communication, suggesting that, “Compassion is deeply rooted in human nature; it has a biological basis in the brain and body.” Certain parenting styles help the behavior along, particularly what the psychological community calls, “inductive parenting,” in which parents encourage children to consider the reasons why they have done harm and the kinds of effects their behavior has on others. “Parents can teach compassion by example,” Keltner says, explaining, “Human communities are only as healthy as our conceptions of human nature.”

World-acclaimed SIORA founders Phyllis Chapell and Dan Kleiman are all over the map with their international flavor and percussive instrumentation and Phyllis’ full-bodied vocals in eleven languages. Their latest release, "The Vision of the Dry Bones," a transnational representation of the Hebrew canon, departs from any classic interpretation into hip-shaking, body-swaying, soulful swings and jazz-centric beats. SIORA isn’t afraid to use a Samba style to spice up an Israeli ballad in MaNavu, or give a plaintive Yiddish song a heartbeat with rhythms from across the Jewish Diaspora in Papirossen. Inspired by a vision of the prophet Ezekiel of a vast expanse of dry bones gradually forming flesh and coming back to life, the message of "Dry Bones" seems to be that of tradition reinvented, breathing new and delicious breath, moving into the future with renewed vigor. Says Kleiman, “First the Jew in us asks why, then the jazz musician asks why not?”

Listen to Dry Bones here

Florida Holocaust Museum curator Erin Blankenship won 2009’s Florida Association of Museums (FAM) Innovator Award for her work curating the museum’s Courage and Compassion exhibit about the Bielski family, who saved over 1,200 Jews from certain execution during the Holocaust. The exhibit opened at the same time as the movie “Defiance”, telling the story of the Bielski brothers, premiered in theaters. Brendon Rennert, grandson of Tuvia Bielski, approached the museum about compiling the exhibit after hearing that the movie was in production.

The exhibition includes survivor testimonies, intricate models, and original artifacts, requiring extensive research by Blankenship to locate and build partnerships with family members, institutions, and survivors in order to acquire the right pieces. She even went as far as to coordinate an archeological dig of the Bielski family campsite in the Naliboki forest of Belarus.

“It is very rewarding being recognized by your peers,” Blankenship says, “so while it was a huge effort that really required a small team of people, I was very happy with the outcome and I feel very honored to have been given the opportunity to tell the story (on behalf of the FHM) of these extraordinary men and to have met the survivors and family.”

Read the press release about the award

Read Erin's bio

Rebecca Davis is the founder and Artistic Director of Philadephia’s non-profit Rebecca Davis Dance Company. In 2008, she traveled to Rwanda to teach dance to child survivors of the 1994 genocide that annihilated over 10% of the country’s population in less than three months. When she returned last year, she found that the project’s sponsoring group was closed, the safe house where the boys were living was gone, and many of the children she taught were once again living on the streets. Together with a volunteer friend, Rebecca vowed to raise the mere $2.50 per day that it takes to send at least one of her students to boarding school, asking, “Why can’t we, as an international community, prevent mass murder, or at least protect its survivors?”

Rebecca has choreographed and taught in Canada, Russia, Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and the United States. More than your average dance company, Rebecca founded her namesake four years ago with the mission of deepening the public’s knowledge of classic literature, significant historical events and social issues, and to provide a pre-professional dance-theater training program for young dancers. In the summer of 2009, Rebecca lived in Brcko, Bosnia-Herzegovina, developing a creative movement program for youth, which focused on the theme of reconciliation in a post-conflict country. The Rebecca Davis Dance Company is soon to offer a dance-exchange program with students from that country.

Read her story in Broad Street Review

Watch kids of the Unity Hip-Hop Group of Rwanda perform

Visit the Rebecca Davis Dance Company website

Read Rebecca's bio