Where does creativity hide?

Interesting video of Amy Tan talking about her own creative procees. It's certainly very entertaining! As she put it, her talk is about "Nothing out of something, and how we create."

Some of the points/questions she raises are:

• Are we innately equipped with something in our brains that cause this muse like effect? (Nature vs. nurture. An argument that never gets old, I suppose. Certainly, when it comes to creativity, this argument has not been settled. While some posit that creativity has much to do with how the brain functions (Einstein's brain was said to have a visible structural difference which assisted in the movement of thoughts/ideas from one hemisphere to the other), others (such as Edward de Bono) will insist that creative thinking can be taught to anyone. Though maybe there needs to be a distinction between creative thinking and creativity. Hmmm. Anyway, gone off on a bit of a tangent here.)
  

• Creativity might be a function of neurological quirk, or a byproduct mental illness.

• Creativity as a link to sense of identity.
  

• Skill is different to creativity. Tan mentions being good at drawing as a child, but drawings were copied from book. (I do believe that skill is vital to being creative, however. If you are a skilled patternmaker or machinist, you can take your knowledge and be more creative in its application - perhaps developing a new system for drafting, or a new way of finishing a hem. Personally, I believe that you have to know the rules before you can break or bend them. Having said all that, maybe a new way of patternmaking might be viewed as innovative, more than creative. Bugger, another tangent.)
  

• Reasons for creating: "looking for the about". What do you want to achieve by creating? If you try too hard, you will only discover the about, discuss the about and it will be boring. (I guess this is about openendedness and the offering opportunities for interpretation... that creating something of a journey.)
  

Also, the joy of related videos... Sir Ken Robinson: do schools kill creativity? and David Lynch - consciousness, creativity and the brain both look interesting. Will check them out later!

Reading: Poincaré's 'delicate sieve': on creativity and constraints in the arts (Paisley Livingston)

Fascinating article on the nature of inspiration, insight and how this ties in with creativity. A lot of it confirms what I have been thinking anyway, and wrote about in my post this morning. Although it focuses upon the processes of mathematician Henri Poincaré, rather than those of a fashion designer, there are many universal processes that apply to a variety of fields... many parallels that maybe drawn.

Without further ado, here be some very interesting points:

• "Poincaré famously reported that some of his best mathematical ideas simply popped into his head while he was on holiday and not consciously doing mathematics...

'...Disgusted by my lack of success, I went away to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought about entirely different things. One day, as I was walking along the edge of the cliff, the idea came to me, again with the same characteristics of brevity, suddenness, and immediate certainty...' "

• Article is not espousing the idea 'that genuine creativity is largely if not not entirely a matter of sudden, involuntary illumination or insight', but rather that 'creative achievements are often the product of different sorts of interacting psychological processes, including the stages of preparation, incubation, insight, and revision that have become commonplace in the literature on creativity.'

• conditions preceding flashes of insight should be that of a 'period of conscious work' in order to set in motion what Poincaré referred to as la machine inconsciente (the unconscious machine).

• 'inspiration must be accompanied by conscious effort: unless the researcher or artist makes a prior selection of the elements upon which the mind is to operate, the search will be too open ended and will most likely be fruitless as a result.' (This is exactly what I've been saying about how we operate as fashion designers - inspiration as constraint in order to narrow the field and generate a lexicon of design elements from which we can create a collection).

• Idleness might not actually be idleness - the times when an artist (or designer) sets aside their work in order to pursue other interests, when their minds are not consciously occupied with their work are still beneficial in finding solutions or insights. The 'unconscious machine' has been set in motion...

• "the key to innovation, be it conscious or unconscious, cannot simply be the application of 'a tremendous power of attention'... Having said this, however, the solution to how to be more creative is not to 'assume that the unconscious mental process' can identify new information or combinations. It seems that a mixture of hard work, research and then reflection is key. (This, I suppose, is something that we've always been told as students, but it is great to hear the why behind this!)

• "Invention consists precisely in not constructing useless combinations, but in constructing those that are useful, which are a tiny minority. To invent is to discern, to choose." (LOVE this - a beautiful way of expressing the process of refinement).

• All up, "... artistic creativity often arises from a multi-faceted process involving hard work, periods of idleness, unconscious cognitive activity, and episodes of inspiration, appreciation, and revision."
  

So... yeah... maybe this is the answer to the question I posited at the beginning of the semester, which was why do I get sudden thoughts/inspirations when I'm in the shower? It really does seem as though relaxing and doing something different helps sort out problems.

What I am left wondering though, is whether or not the knowledge that 'periods of idleness' can assist in maintaining the creative processes will help or hinder it. Perhaps it would come down to a matter of personality. Would telling yourself that you need to stop in order to interpret and process ideas stress you out? Or could you be comfortable in the knowledge that it will probably be beneficial?

I guess if you were concerned that you were wasting your time in 'relaxing' and not doing anything, then there probably would not be relaxing at all... and this would not be conducive to the desired 'breakthrough'. Perhaps the solution would be to do something like physical exercise, where there would be enough 'doing something different' (and in my case, pain because I am so unfit) to distract from the original task.

The only way to know would be to try these techniques out, and I imagine the results would vary greatly from person to person. If they were found to be useful, perhaps they could be scheduled in, or one could get into the routine of going for a run every time stress was taking its toll. Routine, after all, has been shown to be conducive to creativity.

Inspiration or Insight?

Is it a sudden flash of understanding that we are in fact experiencing, when we talk about getting a sudden flash of inspiration? I has this thought just before as I was making coffee – and quite appropriately it hit me quite suddenly, too.

I rather like the idea (whether this is completely wrong or not), that when we study something, or ponder upon a particular concept, that all the information and associated thoughts just… sit in our brains for a while, as it tries subconsciously to sort out.

Then... those sudden flashes are akin to someone jumping up and down with their hand in the air, going, ‘Me! Me! I know!’ Because we have in a way hit upon an answer, or a new way of looking at something – we have achieved clarity that feels absolutely inspiring.