Thursday, November 06, 2014
Where'd you get that great idea? Team seeks the source of creativity: Near or far?
phys.org: It's commonly believed that creativity is a process that involves connecting ideas and building on the past to create something new. But is it better to "think outside the box," using unrelated concepts to get the creative juices flowing, or to build on something more closely related to the problem one is trying to solve?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
This might be a really bad response to this article, but I get my creative ideas from other theatrical or film productions. I am always being inspired by other people's work. This goes back two sayings that teachers have said. The first is Anne said, "there are no original ideas." The second, is Peter told us during orientation, "go see as many things as you can." These two statements couldn't be truer, and I think make the best artists. That is the source of my creativity.
I think that this is really cool to look at as an actor, because a lot of the time we play with 'crazy' motivations or tactics in order to get out of our heads. But, sometimes the best idea is simply the one that is closest to how your character would actually react. Cameron Knight talks about rooting your situation in '1 truth.' So drawing inspiration from closely related topics is really helpful.
This is somewhat surprising indeed, and I would really love to know what the researchers think the reason for this is. I suppose this study was about collecting data, and that they might follow up with a different study examining why we create more viable solutions by expanding the box rather than thinking outside of it.
I think that this might not be known, but a lot of people might intuitively work like this regardless. For example, designers begin their work by researching the time and place of the play, the possible aesthetic of the playwright, the purpose and ideas that motivate the text. They come with creative designs by delving into the work and exploring as many of its aspects as possible, as opposed to imagining random environments or costumes until they think that one of them might work with the world of the play. This seems to be the most successful way to create a strong, grounded design. It’s of course important to still get exposed to many different places, people and things, but clearly good ideas stem from the problem’s parameters, not from random unrelated occurrences or observations.
I think it's interesting to think that about the "creative phase" and how we technically do have that. Literally we actually do here at CMU, if anyone looks at the production calendar they clearly see what the design phase is and how it integrates into the larger footprint of a project. There is a clear indication of when creation is happening versus when production is happening. But at the same time we know that the creativity is constant and ever flowing and it never actually stops. Especially when we start experiencing problems and have to solve them. We have practical solutions sure, but they are all rooted in creative reasoning, or artistic purpose in a way. How something can be fixed and still looks pretty.
I really enjoy hearing about this. Meeting should always be collaborative. I don't think people realize that successful ideas come from these kind of meeting. They go through many steps with lots of people to come up with just one idea. That's why I love CMU. Here, even on the first day, the school stressed about how the focus on creative collaborative phases. And our first project was with a teammate. I know that in the future there will be more to come and THATS so exciting. Hearing the tactics from this inspiring article gets me pumped for the future. I always hear my mother express how she loves her meetings at Disney. She mostly leads them and she says the more collaborative the better the result.
Post a Comment