When I was in Cambridge reading mathematics, I went to Amsterdam for the International Mathematics Congress. There I saw M.C. Escher's fascinating work. That inspired me to try my hand at drawing such impossibilities.
Interpretation
Roger Penrose reflects on how M.C. Escher's artwork inspired him to explore creativity through drawing.
In this quote, Roger Penrose shares a personal experience where attending an international congress exposed him to M.C. Escher's artistic creations, which are known for their paradoxical and impossible structures. This encounter sparked Penrose's interest in the realm of art and mathematics, demonstrating how inspiration can lead to attempts at creativity and innovation in one's own work.
In practice
In a speech about innovation, one could quote Penrose to emphasize the importance of seeking inspiration from different fields.
Some people take the view that the universe is simply there, and it runs along - it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe.
Consciousness ... is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known.
Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor’s New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.
I believe there is something going on in a conscious being, which includes many animals, as well as ourselves, that is not a computational activity. And to be conscious at all is not a quality that a computer as such will ever possess - no matter how complicated, no matter how well it plays chess or any of these things.
Some people take the view that we happen by accident. I think that there is something much deeper, of which we have very little inkling at the moment.
The image of Stephen Hawking - who has died aged 76 - in his motorised wheelchair, with head contorted slightly to one side and hands crossed over to work the controls, caught the public imagination as a true symbol of the triumph of mind over matter.
I discover poetry when I was in elementary school and I was so fascinated by it. Because I realised if you get the right amount of syllables and the right amount of words, in the right rhyme scheme and you put it all together. You make words just bounce of a page.
A musician is a professional, whether he or she is successful or not. The profession itself must be regarded as a stable job.
Art -- the fresh feeling, new harmony, the transforming magic which by means of myth brings back the scattered distracted soul from its modern chaos -- art, not politics, is the remedy.
A blind man can make art if what is in his mind can be passed to another mind in some tangible form.
Kid ... Comics will break your heart.
Good actors I've worked with all started out making faces in a mirror, and you keep making faces all your life.
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