Creativity

charleswood · July 5, 2014

Julie "... and creating a beginning (what Clive mentioned earlier, a new or changed question); an opening, a passage, a fissure, the interstices, window, door; ... whatever stimulation or or provocation or kick in the ass that shifts you off balance, into some place or condition that you haven't been able to get to before. In this case you can never point to anything and say triumphantly or happily, 'there it is!' because what you've been given is access. Serious voodoo. Or not. It's up to you."

What comes to me in reply is that we can tell a child they are special. What we can't tell them is why. That it is so they must discover for themselves.

charleswood · July 5, 2014

I found this on a friend's Facebook, without attribution, I didn't write it:

Creative Process

1. This is awesome.

2. This is tricky.

3. This is crap.

4. I am crap.

5. This might be OK.

6. This is awesome.

charleswood · July 5, 2014

Clive - "The simplest way of talking about your gastronomic invention is that you would be deluded if you thought you had been creative - and you probably know that too, but the idea that we can reduce "creativity" down to "in the mind of the creator" is, as we all really know, just a little inadequate."

I think you meant to write something like: ...but the idea that we can believe a maker's claim to originality isn't adequate? If so, nothing I wrote meant to suggest we much care about a maker's claim to originality. The maker may be right, they may be wrong, the only thing that matters is that their offering is meaningful and new in deciding if 'creative' occurred where creative's definition includes the words meaningful and new. It isn't for the maker to proclaim creation, as indeed we all know and of which fact we scarcely need to be reminded. I learned that well from my snack treat making experience, and we all had something happen to us like that, you can assume it is common knowledge as do I. My point was that in focusing only on that restrictive definition of creative, we miss that a creative process, more loosely defined, could have occurred in a re-invention. In other words, that maker may indeed know the full measure of the sting of number 4 in the process and not really appreciate your constant harping on it or grading system. In summary, on the face of it, your words quoted above, suggest that rooting creativity in the human mind is inadequate, which I'm sure you recognize upon a re-read and further reflection that isn't a supportable assertion.

clive_murray_white · July 5, 2014

Now I think we're really getting somewhere,

If we look at Charles' peanut butter snack, with a fresh eye, next to his phases of Creative Process list, I think things start to fall rather more elegantly into place.

Creative Process

1. This is awesome = a natural excitement when we think we've created something, many people are just satisfied to leave at that and claim creativity but run the chance that, a) they may be deluded, b) their invention is not quite as good as it could be and c) thousands of other people may have done it before or simultaneously.

2. This is tricky = is an acknowledgement that the peanut butter and cracker idea has some merit but requires some right side brain work.

3. This is crap = left side brain, well known for spoiling the fun of the right side, starts the process of undermining confidence - well advanced by, 4. I am crap.

5. This might be OK.= this is the most important stage where creativity is likely to occur because the word "might" implies inventing ways to get the most out of the idea. You start out by questioning whether you've chosen the right/best/most suitable brand of peanut butter to have with your cracker, you do the same with the crackers, maybe you accidentally pick up a knife that was used for chopping chilies and garlic and use that to spread peanut butter on cracker, and on it goes like a chain reaction, certain paths of action appeal to your taste and you are getting some idea of a genuine invention. You proceed along that path and create what is now a finely tuned product.

6. This is awesome.= an often short lived euphoria, because you start to realise that your first answer wasn't quite as good as it could be or is deficient in someway - so the process starts all over but this time you're more ready for it............and I suspect this time you are nearer to creating a snack that really hasn't been made before and tastes delicious.

clive_murray_white · July 5, 2014

sorry Charles I was writing my last post so I missed your last one.

charleswood · July 5, 2014

I don't know if with the elephant they go through 4. I hope not.

clive_murray_white · July 6, 2014

I'd be very surprised if the elephant got past 1.

charleswood · July 6, 2014

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised though. Consider my earlier comment "Interesting that the latin root of create is to make, produce, and is related to the latin word for to grow."

So if we think of making, creating, producing as all related to growing, as in growing a business? Then creating becomes less restrictively defined and hierarchical, broadened by becoming less distinguishable from the organic process called life itself.

clive_murray_white · July 6, 2014

You do have to see the funny side of it Charles, I can imagine someone going to the last few pages of this discussion and stumbling on all the stuff about peanut butter, crackers and elephants - and thinking that maybe they should send in the guys in white coats, but in effect what happened was exactly as Julie described it a few pages ago...when talking primarily about risk.

....an opening, a passage, a fissure, the interstices, window, door; ... whatever stimulation or or provocation or kick in the ass that shifts you off balance, into some place or condition that you haven't been able to get to before. In this case you can never point to anything and say triumphantly or happily, 'there it is!' because what you've been given is access. Serious voodoo. Or not. It's up to you.

I think the funniest thing about trying to arrive some at consensus is that we have to use language to do it and as we all probably know that is fraught with all sorts of dangers - one person's risk could be another's growth. I think the OP's question was firmly related to creativity in photography but I think the Peanut Butter and Saltine Theory probably works for that too.

ramon_thompson1 · July 10, 2014

Yes creativity is something that might be out of the ordinary. I think this has a lot to do with how successfully a photographer captures the essence of the picture.

clive_murray_white · July 10, 2014

Would you like to clarify some things a little Ramon, are you suggesting that only "good" photographs can be creative, or contain creativity?

Here's a proposition - can failed or bad pictures be creative? - I actually think they can because all the photographer then has to do is add perfection to their creativity to make a high quality picture. To me quality and creativity are a bit different.

Norma Desmond · July 10, 2014

Yes, bad pictures can be creative. I agree that quality and creativity are different.

Perfection is an ideal that can't, IMO, be reached. So no photographer can add that to the mix.

I think of quality as a relative value judgment, not an absolute. Quality was supposedly lacking in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which led to its poor original reception. It took years for "quality" to set in. What magic happened in those years? It was not anything about the music itself. It was about the perception of the music. Good art often sets new standards and trends in taste so a contemporaneous judgment of quality can be tricky and often misleading, though it still is what it is. The audience booed Stravinsky because that's how they genuinely reacted. We're no more right about it today. We just have a different perspective and attunement.

I thought the movie, The Black Swan, was extremely creative and extremely bad. I thought the same thing about Baz Luhrmann's recent film of The Great Gatsby. When I first saw some of La Chapelle's photos, I thought they were awful but recognized the creativity in them. I appreciate them a lot more now. Still not sure whether I like them.

clive_murray_white · July 10, 2014

.....maybe a slip for me to even use the word perfection - better to say something like "work" or "get right" but lurking in my mind is a more generous use of "perfection".

There are so many concepts loosely related to creativity and as we see here "quality " may be one of them.............one of the most contentious of all especially when linked to like.

i.e. the commonly expression, "I like it therefore it is good (or has quality)" my view is that there many people who wouldn't know quality even if they tripped over it.

Norma Desmond · July 10, 2014

Would you consider "skill" instead of "work"? I like the idea of skill because it's related to craft and I think craft together with creativity can get us somewhere. One can work and work and work and not necessarily come up with something of quality. Things of quality generally show skill.

In any case, I do think art lies in some combination of creativity and craft.

clive_murray_white · July 10, 2014

Hi Fred - you've got my poor old brain working too hard for this time in the morning approx 6:00am here!

I've grown so used to using the word "work" in relation to every conceivable art, concept/idea, craft, architecture, design, photography, drawing etc that I must do it on auto. It's been the base word for my very long teaching career in art schools.

I'll do my best to describe how we use it, in a nutshell, on this thread we have been attempting to come up with an idea that satisfactorily describes "creativity" and I'd say some of the ideas put forward "work" others "don't work" and many show some promise of "working" if we tune them up a bit with some extra work. So its one of those very funny words that can be an action and an end result.

My car will "work" if I work on it some more - the same can be said for a photograph or more specifically a concept that is going to be realised photographically.So for me, the possibly inadequate word, work embraces skill and doesn't have as many problems as it or craft for that matter.

Norma Desmond · July 10, 2014

Got it. Thanks for the explanation. I like "work" in the sense of the photograph "works" or doesn't "work." Important consideration. I think working, in this sense, suggests some kind of internal coherence, which I think is important.

But . . . regarding creativity, I think a creative person has to be willing to come up with a lot of things that don't work. And those things may still be creative. I also think a lot of very creative things, like the movies I mentioned above, are creative but don't work. I think "working" may apply more to quality and success but is probably not a necessary condition of creativity.

Norma Desmond · July 10, 2014

A couple of little quotes might shed some light in a direction.

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." —Albert Einstein

"Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties." —Erich Fromm

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Einstein's quote suggests a kind of spontaneity that's involved, a kind of rift somewhere along the road from what came prior, though I think that's different from originality which I think creativity does not have to have.

Fromm's quote suggests the aspect of letting go, which I think is important. And uncertainty surely seems to play a part.

Something creative will often have some sort of foundation or basis, but it is not dependent on it and is not inextricably tied to it. Creativity may actually provide new foundations or bases.

.

clive_murray_white · July 10, 2014

I think we're definitely on the same page, Re: your Einstein and Fromm quotes.

I think Einstein would have been better to say "one of the secrets" or "my secret" because undoubtedly there are many techniques that can aid creativity and can even be be taught.

A quick way to replicate what I think Einstein is saying is a variation of an old and often amusing game - Think of the first word that comes into your heard, say it, I respond by saying the first thing that comes into my head, next person does the same - I'm sure we've all done it and been surprised at where it all ends up.

The variation is to respond by saying the second word that comes into your mind instead of the first, which means, in a way, that we travel further from the source word far more quickly - or the source becomes more rapidly hidden - just a simple example first word: black, I then think, white, but then have to think of another word after white, I say "stripe"

The very interesting thing about the Fromm letting go quote is that it is another way of saying that creativity often involves "risk", a (dangerous) leap into our own unknowns - a subject that Julie brought up some time back but some people objected to - a few pages on and it is perfectly understandable now!!

Julie H · July 11, 2014

Re Clive's word game: you're never going to get to the "before" or 'behind" of the first word (Einstein need not have worried); from the buzzing richness of the full surround of consciousness, that word cuts out one arbitrary peg; it affects the fluid dynamics but it is in barely representative of any of the fullness that is there.

Creativity is embryonic (if at all); 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, ... How does your 1, 2, 3, linear cutting out of words map onto that? The question that is being formed at 64 is not that of 2 or 4 or 8. Can you ride the rocket? Can you be "in" the state of the infinitely morphing flavor of that which started at 2? Or does it change from creation to explosion; which is creativity that consumes and destroys itself, where the question throws the questioner and disappears back into the distance (or is it too-nearness?) that is (almost always) out of reach of even intuition?

Norma Desmond · July 11, 2014

Well, my sense of it is that creativity is not as much of an explosion as all that, especially from behind. Depends on my perspective. From in front, it may look solely embryonic. But I wonder if creativity doesn't sometimes get overly mythologized. Looking back at art history from where we sit, and I think a bit of linear cutting maps quite well. There does seem to be a fairly "logical"* progression from school to school, from artistic invention to artistic invention, even if that logic is by no means simple or certain. And there are all kinds of strands, that are more like tentacles reaching out to each other than they are like explosions of the completely new or embryonic.

*I tend to revert to the word "logic" here, but I would understand a bad reaction to that word when talking about creativity. Regardless, there seems to be some kind of building progression and an important quality of responsiveness even to creativity.

Consider Expressionism. Was it an explosion or did it, in fact, start at 2? What role did Nietzsche have in it, Dostoevsky? How influential were the Fauves? How much is it a reaction to Impressionism, and a fairly natural one at that.

I actually view creativity in both explosive and more linear and progressive terms. No doubt, as I said, there is a "rift" character to much creativity. But I also think the creativity in art has a history of being much like a dialogue throughout the ages. It's not just the assertion of individual radical voices arising out of the void. There's a sense to creativity, IMO, that requires being so in tune and in touch with what's come before, and so responsive to it, that one almost can't help but take the next step. I think there's an aspect of creativity that is as much pushed as it is doing the pushing. That's the "letting go" part. It's OK to be open enough to also let history carry one forward a bit, even while making it.

charleswood · July 11, 2014

If the word creativity's definition requires making something new, then exploring creativity to an extent becomes an attempt to explore and explain change. Expressionism offered a new interpretation of an apple and Impressionism offered a new interpretation of apples in its day. Why the change when there was no change in the apple itself?; and change didn't happen in a vacuum because interpretations were communicated, much what I take Fred to say when speaking to dialog and history where we can find some of the reasons for progress. What's at stake, and how much are we invested, how much do we personally need something new: it's tricky, this is crap, I'm crap. Oh wait. This may be OK. Who knows where this came from? Sometimes it is the difference between life and death, we are that invested even if we got there from mere boredom or ambition.

clive_murray_white · July 11, 2014

In defense of the little word game, it's sole intention was to see where you could get to from a single source - I'm sure we can devise a process that could find ways of getting to "before" or "behind" a first word.

Over the years I've made "artworks" that illustrate aspects of creativity, in teaching terms they would be called "teaching aids" , these fall outside what I think of as my "real" work.

Here is one that goes to the core of what I think we are talking about, It is "logical", it makes sense and worst of all it includes a component that we haven't talked about much, but have alluded to, the questions that many people think should never be asked and the answers that change the questions (possibly for all time)- a very important component of creativity, by my way of thinking.

charleswood · July 11, 2014

Clive - "Think of the first word that comes into your heard, say it, I respond by saying the first thing that comes into my head, next person does the same - I'm sure we've all done it and been surprised at where it all ends up."

The definition of creativity I cited is making meaningful new things. The word game may unintentionally produce something new, but not something meaningful, being a game and not a modeling of an intentional process that can produce meaningful new things frequently enough to matter.

clive_murray_white · July 11, 2014

The definition of creativity I cited is making meaningful new things. The word game may unintentionally produce something new, but not something meaningful, being a game and not a modeling of a process that can produce meaningful new things frequently enough to matter. Charles - I think you've just described one of the many possible outcomes of the game/activity that is a very close relation to "brain storming" - a process credited with often producing many new, meaningful and useful creative results. It is also interesting that you have introduced 2 additional value judgments, the idea that a game may be less useful than a modelling process - which I don't agree with, and the notion of frequency of useful outcome - I'm not sure that this is actually so, at best we could can only say we just don't know. My personal feeling is that structuring a question in the form of a game can be one of the most useful aids to creativity - I think the important thing here is that in playing and games people often leave their preconceptions and prejudiced beliefs behind and are therefore more likely to think and act freely with the result that creativity frequently occurs.

charleswood · July 11, 2014

Clive - You described a word game that didn't have an intent other than to play it. I said that sort of game wasn't analogous to creative process, lacking the purpose of making something new and meaningful. Brainstorming has intention, isn't an activity that is closely related to the word game you first mentioned.

Yes I think games take the pressure off though.

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