The End of Fun and Merriment? (see photo below)

The article “Art and Creativity” (which we read for our assignment in DMA179) mentioned that the inventor Edison used to purposely wake himself up just so that he could write down things while he was still half asleep. He thereby “tapped the richness of theta [brain] states.”

I have unwittingly used that method myself, and recommend it to my fellow artists even though, as digital artists, we are now on the end of the 130 year “analog age” which Edison started when he invented the first analog signal in 1870 (see “stock ticker”).

Edison and his inventive spirit lives on: He was still alive when this 1930 flyer was written, advertising his “new” phonograph.. (I scanned directly from that actual flyer, which I happen to own.) The flyer boasts, " . . . so real and life-like are these tones that it is difficult to realize that you are not in a room with the artists themselves."

Just because the analog age is ending, this doesn’t mean the end of “fun and merriment;” --that is, if we keep “thinking theta.”

Edison, William Dickson, and Louis Le Prince were all involved in the first movies ever made. To see the first movie ever made in 1888 (by Le Prince) see:
http://www.nmpft.org.uk/insight/info/roundhay.mov

Each of the 17 frames of this 2 second breakthrough can be isolated by clicking on them individually. My thanks to wikipedia, and nmpft.org. According to wikipedia, this, the world's first movie, is now finally "in the public domain because its copyright has expired in the United States and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less." At last--a free movie!!!