First Thought, Best Thought!

Hi folks,

Just a couple of short things…

I made — “vibe-coded” — a spontaneous creativity App, and just added it to my website. Basically, I skimmed practices from 20th Century artistic movements such as Fluxus, Oulippo, The Surrealists, and so on, to put together this application, which is totally free to use. Below is a description… you can try it here:

First Thought Best Thought

If you do try it, please let me know in the comments how it was for you. I can still improve and modify it in all kinds of ways, perhaps even build a little social network around it. I’m particularly interested in the “multi-player” options… please give them a whirl next time you meet up with friends.

Also, I took my essay on the eclipse and turned it into an instant Youtube video essay, which you can watch here:

Beat poet Allen Ginsberg liked to say “first thought, best thought”. The Beat approach to creativity encouraged spontaneity and immediacy. The Surrealists created many different techniques and games to free up the unconscious mind, such as the infamous “Exquisite Corpse.” Writers from the Oulipo movement in France saw art as a form of play, creating rules for their works — such as author Georges Perec, who wrote an entire novel without the letter “e.”

Our first flash of uncensored insight is often more powerful than what comes through long reflection.

‘First Thought, Best Thought’ assimilates games and practices from these movements as well as others taken from Yoko Ono, Augusto Boal, and Fluxus. You can practice them alone or explore the multiplayer options with friends, or even strangers.

We give you a prompt picked at random and start a timer. The backspace key is disabled to encourage unmediated expression. What you end up with is not a finished piece. It is raw material — the thing you thought, before you even knew you were thinking it.

You can save the result to your personal archive or delete immediately. Hope you enjoy! Please add best results to the comments.