I am eager to get up and work with the images once again. The core to the four day process is to use the same set of images but come up with a different arrangement for the collage and a different story.

Before starting I reflect for a few minutes on my core question “what is the future I want to create for myself for this new venture and product?”

Sitting at my desk, I lay out the eight images on my deskpad. I look for the image centerpiece that I’ll arrange things around today. I decide I want the many hands, many suns in the center.

The story I tell today is:

“At the center is the luminosity of many hands and many bodies working on the platform vision of the future. The challenge is to embody the beauty and dynamism of nature (nautilus shell) without it becoming fossilized.  Across the top, the challenge is to be able to grow with the power of augmented nature (man and nature cultivating fruit) with the designed earthen ware of the potter and the pot.  I want to create a system that is at once natural and a product of nature.  Both a vessel (the pot, the wine glasses) and the biodynamic product of nature’s fruit. Across the middle we have the inspiration that feeds me and the team that is grounded in the needs of the product’s users. While the path is winding it has some milestones and celebratory arches that signify significant progress which leads to celebration (top right). The pot of gold on the lower right fuels the rainbow that brings beauty out of the interaction and intersection of light and rain. Natural. Biodynamic. Grounded. Shaped.

“I am reminded of the story from The Grail:  A Year Ambling and Shambling through an Oregon Vineyard in pursuit of the best pinot noir wine in the Whole Wide World by Brian Doyle.

“Grapevines are amazing life forms when you think about it, they plunge their fingers a hundred feet down into the rocky soil, they can live for hundreds of years, they fend off all sorts of insect attacks, and they have been working with human beings for so long, thousands and thousands of years, that you wonder sometimes who cultivates who, you know what I mean?  Are people manipulating and taking advantage of grape vines, or are grape vines deftly using human beings to take over the world?“

“If we build this tool right, we won’t know who tended who – the product development team or the content users and connection discoverers.

“Having another great day.”

I hit the “Send” button and off the electronic missive goes to that muse Christine. Back comes:

“Christine as computer again

“Interesting, yesterday you put all the paintings on the left and photographs on the right. Today all the paintings are across the middle horizontally and the photos above and below. Any significance to that?

“I also notice that only one of the nautilus shells is showing, just like yesterday.

“What might happen to the story if you tried really hard to assemble the images in a different pattern? Just for one day to see what emerged.”

We chat back and forth:

SKIP: Thank you Christine, oh wondrous computer (said in my best HAL 9000 voice). They were in a different pattern.  So clearly you mean something different by a different pattern.  Are you suggesting one of those patterns I can’t do – like a spiral? Also, now that I have worked with these images for a second day, I am feeling like there is something missing.  So can I dip back into the well of images or should I play out the string of four straight days.  I am inclined to do the latter.

CHRISTINE: Different – not required, just suggestion, for example:

CHRISTINE: You can do spirals, they will just look/feel strange to you. Sometimes that can be useful. Yes, try to stick with the program (you can add images later)

SKIP: But this is just so wrong.  😉