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Not Seeing Giraffes
Jessica Hunter, PhD
Director of Creativity & Innovation
While working in Uganda in 2015, members of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute encountered a Nubian giraffe that measured just nine feet, four inches tall. (For context, the average height of a fully grown giraffe is 14 – 18 feet.) Although initially identified as a juvenile, closer observation revealed that the giraffe was an adult. Three years later, scientists discovered an Angolan giraffe who topped out at eight feet, six inches. Scientists attribute these giraffes’ shorter stature to skeletal dysplasia, a genetic condition that affects bone growth. As skeletal dysplasia is extremely rare in wild animals, it was never considered as an explanation for the animals’ shorter stature.
Why did researchers assume that the smaller giraffes were juveniles? It turns out that the world offers us far more sensory data than we can use, so our brain and body must continually evaluate incoming information based on prior experiences. Recognizing objects involves making split-second comparisons between a new stimulus and our similar previous experiences to determine its identity and relative importance: Is it familiar or unfamiliar, threatening or beneficial, worth further investigation, or readily dismissed? These determinations influence how we form perceptions of the things we encounter and how those perceptions become available to our consciousness.
Our brain becomes remarkably adept at finding matches between existing knowledge and new information as we age, making us increasingly efficient decision-makers. At the same time, our ability to make sense of our environments based on prior knowledge means that we stop examining something new once we have enough information to identify it. In this way, our brain’s efficiency works against us by leading us to make false attributions or causing us to ignore things that do not correspond to anything we’ve previously experienced—a phenomenon called inattentional blindness.
If the breadth and depth of our perceptions determine our possibilities for thoughts and actions, it follows that broader perceptual explorations can result in richer creative responses to our environments. So, given the power of our expectations to shape our perceptions, how might we push our abilities to see, think, and feel beyond our habitual limits so we may allow more possibility into our lives? In other words, how do we learn to see the smaller giraffes for who they truly are?
Becoming aware of the limitations of our perceptions can prompt us to intentionally re-examine what we think we understand. C&I offers a variety of exercises and workshops that ask participants to re-examine their visual world to uncover overlooked possibilities for creative engagement with their environments. For more information, contact Jessica Hunter: jhunter@coloradocollege.edu
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An Interview with Shodekeh Talifero, C&I’s Innovator in Residence
Auna McConnaughey, ’26
It was 2006, playing music at Towson University when Shodekeh Talifero’s world changed through the exploration of his voice. When asked to provide atmospheric sounds, not just beatboxing, for a dance project, Talifero began creating the sounds of ocean waves, and something clicked. Using his voice, he began emulating sounds from the surrounding environment. It was a step beyond beatboxing and the beginning of something completely different. It wasn’t until 2018 that he understood “breath art” to encompass what he could do with his voice. Talifero refers to beatboxing as the father and dance as the mother of his breath art. His work is to balance the tension between the two through his voice.
Talifero is an Innovator in Residence with Creativity and Innovation. So far in his residency, he has performed with the globally renowned Tuvan throat-singing ensemble Alash and provided live breath art to a screening of the documentary King Coal. He is collaborating with faculty and students in the dance production Raise/Raze, and will be featured at the Aerials Open Jam in the Ritt Kellogg Climbing Gym this weekend. Projects with the Chaplain’s Office and Shove Chapel are planned for Block 7. Noting the impossibility of divorcing spirituality and philosophy from his breath, Talifero is drawn to projects that align with his intentions to use breath as a healing medium.
I attended the live performance where Talifero performed his breath art alongside the film’s screening. There are no words to describe the experience of existing within those walls. While the film’s cinematography was breathtaking, Talifero’s breath art was captivating. Closing my eyes, I was taken from the ocean to the sky and to worlds I hadn’t realized existed before. My body was close to all the sounds I was hearing. My heart beat next to the rhythm of his voice. I was ignited; there was no halting the inspiration I felt within my chest. I couldn’t wait to have a conversation with him the following week.
It’s not often you meet someone like Shodekeh. I felt lucky to spend an hour conversing and learning about his projects and creative process. When asked what he wants to do moving forward, he plans to continue focusing on his breath art. Utilizing breath art as his creative medium, boundaries are pushed, which strengthens his passion for the art and continuously challenges himself. After speaking with Shodekeh, it is impossible not to feel invigorated, inspired, and eager to engage with your personal creativity.
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Alash, in Concert with Shodekeh Talifero
Cecilia Timberg, ’24
At the Alash and Shodekeh Talifero concert, shared humanity took center stage. Breath, which we all have, was the instrument. Themes of history, landscape and ancestry, art, and joy permeated the banter between songs despite language barriers.
Shodekeh Talifero, one of CC’s Creativity & Innovation Innovators in Residence, began the concert by asking the audience to close their eyes and breathe together. He reminded the auditorium what we all have in common–our breath. Then, Alash’s band manager, Sean Quirk, joined him on stage.
Alash is a trio known for Tuvan throat singing (xöömei), a vocal technique for singing multiple pitches simultaneously. Tuvan throat singing is practiced in the Republic of Tuva, Mongolia, and China. The very first throat singers sought to duplicate natural sounds. It was, and still is, a deeply spiritual practice. Alash seeks to blend this traditional music with modern sounds, Western instruments, and contemporary songforms. In this concert, they were in collaboration with Shodekeh Talifero.
Talifero is a beatboxer, vocal percussionist, and breath artist who explores the boundaries of voice both within and outside of the context of hip-hop. Talifero has beatboxed with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, at the Salzburg Global Seminar in Austria, and often serves as the musical accompanist for poets and rappers.
Before they began playing, Sean Quirk, highlighted that, to this day, the people of Tuva are fighting for the rights to their own land and to play their own music. Not unlike the Indigenous people in the United States today, he intentionally draws this comparison. Then, Alash took the stage.
By the first note, the audience was enchanted. Myself included. The instruments, the vocalizations, and the language were all foreign to me, and the musical talent was striking.
They played a partial set alone, with each song introducing a new rhythmic and melodic element to be impressed by. Singing two notes simultaneously is known to appear to some listeners as a supernatural phenomenon.
“At home, there are many mountains too; they are the same–also beautiful,” one of the band members commented between songs. Another connection. We both call the mountains home.
Halfway through the set, they invited Shodekeh to join them. Listening to two seemingly divergent musical forms in collaboration, I could not believe that they were isolated for so much of history. Their essential elements were so similar, both of them pushing the limits of breath.
My favorite part of the concert was watching the infectious smiles spread across the audience as we marveled at the human voice. Sounds we associated with trains and wind and choirs of hundreds of voices, emanating from just four.
The same audience that breathed in silent unison at the show’s start whooped and cheered together following the final song. A well-deserved standing ovation.
I left the concert eager to follow these artists’ innovations moving forward. Upon exiting the auditorium into the chilly night, I also heard a handful of people humming–desperately trying to split their voices into multiple pitches.
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Impressions of a C&I Student Facilitator
Chloe Jung, ‘27
When people hear “creativity,” many immediately think of physical artistic output, like painting, writing, or playing musical instruments. Consequently, some brush off the word, saying they “aren’t artistic or creative.” The Creativity & Innovation (C&I) office at Colorado College aims to move people past this restricting mindset and implore them to think of creativity as an instrumental tool in academics and life. One way they realize this mission is through a new program called the Student Facilitator Development Series (SFDS). SFDS paves a path for CC students to become facilitators of Creative Workshops to help educate their peers on the crucial role that creative thinking plays in their classes, work, and lives.
As a facilitator, I was recently trained to lead the workshop “Finding Inspiration through Unexpected Connections.” This 45-minute exercise involves observing a question or issue through a random image. At the end of the workshop, participants are asked to find advice or wisdom through examination of their images, a technique that emphasizes one of C&I’s key themes: Unexpected Connections. One participant stated it was “a great way to encourage open and creative thinking.” Observing students engage in creative thinking through this workshop made me realize how important it is to make this approach to creativity accessible. I felt elated that I could share my love for creativity with those who might not consider themselves creative.
In our workshops, facilitators utilize four other mindsets (besides Unexpected Connections): Openness, Tolerance of Ambiguity, Willingness to Risk Failure, and Possibility Thinking. A fellow facilitator, Camila Espinoza, stated that “these mindsets…are applicable…to creating communities, systems, programs, meaningful relationships, and more.” I completely agree. The C&I office at Colorado College exists to unlock each student’s creative potential by emphasizing creativity as a vital aspect of learning. Using this approach to creativity, I believe the community of Colorado College can be transformed into a more open, brave, and imaginative space.
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Check out the Colorado College Outdoor Journal
Cecilia Timberg, ’24
Location: Colorado Springs, CO (Apache, Arapaho, Comanche, Cheyenne, and Ute Indigenous Land)
What we do: The Colorado College Outdoor Journal is a student-led outdoor storytelling publication that emphasizes nontraditional storytelling mediums like art, photography, recipe writing, etc. With one print edition and a year-round online platform, our publication encourages people to share their experiences in the outdoors in whatever way feels most intuitive to them.
Why it works: We aim to be a radically more inclusive version of our predecessor, the CC Alpine Journal–a former climbing, alpine ascent-focused campus publication. CCOJ hopes to harness the energy of our historical climbing and mountaineering community into a more inclusive space. We are expanding the definition of outdoor storytelling to privilege art, stories, and photography, highlighting individual growth, environmental activism, and creativity over typically “impressive” outdoor feats.
Overturning the traditional outdoor culture of extraction and exclusion through storytelling is a challenge but also an honor that we, as a publication, take on. Isn’t that what the outdoors is anyway? Challenging our own limits, coming face-to-face with our flaws and discomfort. Why can’t we do the same with the outdoor industry as well?
Change, learn, grow. Listen. Tell stories. Listen again.
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