GAH!

Attempting to define creativity is like trying to eloquently and concisely express a conflicting emotion. Frustrating, on the top of your tongue... fraught with the imprecision of language itself, and most of all, perhaps a little futile?

Language (of the artist, creator, designer, human...)

I've come to realise that trying to say what creativity 'is' might be quite a futile goal in itself. There are just so many different ways of understanding what it might be, and a whole list of frameworks from which it may be defined.

It is much like language in this regard - meanings shift and change. More than that, however, it is a concept which breaks out from the words which attempt to define it. Everyone has a sense of what creativity is, even if they cannot put it into precise words. It is evocative and emotional, in the same way that a particular word might have a sense of power behind it.

I know that mayn't make much sense. I might revisit this later and try and express this ill-defined thought a little better!

work!

When is a work finished? Can it ever be finished? (what is a work?)

Or is the initial inspiration for its creation simply exhausted?

Is the first design generated and made for a collection something of a template, from which
branching ideas are then expressed as the remainder of the collection?

(did that make sense?)

jtk;r tirius;i utr;elwkejt gfjgker

Sometimes I wonder if the creative process (particularly relating to the design process) is anything like one of the basic tenets of quantum theory: the idea that observation alters the outcome.

That is... well, I often feel as though there is a weight of expectation placed upon me as designer - that there are certain motions I am expected to go though (inspiration, generation of ideas, initial sketches, toiling and prototyping, resolved idea...) when developing something new.

Of course, these 'motions' are nothing but labels that have been identified and quantified from what is generally a very fluid, flexible process. Thankfully this has always been taught as such during my study at RMIT - though it was initially hard to break away from following these processes in a linear fashion as they were taught to me during high school.

Despite knowing all this stuff intellectually, it can be difficult to break away from the idea of what I 'should' be doing, or to stop thinking about what I am doing in terms of these processes. I know that if I were creating anything outside of a university environment that I would go through the same motions (pretty much), but perhaps with a little less self consciousness and (a lot) less angst.

The fact that I know my work and processes will be assessed leads me to approach my work differently, though I can't really tell you exactly how because I'm not to clear on that point myself. Am sure, however, that we all as students make the effort to make certain processes clearer, and pivotal decisions more obvious so that all our 'angsting' does not go unacknowledged.

So... to come back to my original point. The fact that work is being observed by assessors impacts the final outcome to some degree. I wonder if the same holds true for creativity itself. If all the processes comprising creative thought were recognised and labelled, would knowledge of them impact upon creative thinking? Would understanding these mechanisms in a more precise way make them more... well, mechanical?

ughhhhhh

All of this might just do my head in. Have just been reading about 'what is a "work"?', "work" being a term I have freely been using thought my research as to refer to something that has been made, as an expression of creative thought or processes.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple! After all, as this reading has pointed out to me, when does a 'work' become a 'work', and when is one ever completed? As I said in the title of this post: "ughhhhh".

Naturally, I don't have to talk about this in depth in my thesis, but I feel as though I should acknowledge it somehow. For now, I shall just add it to the ever increasing list of terms I need to define...

Creativity and Skill

Really interesting essay on the link between creativity and skill by Berys Gaut - essentially an argument that the two are intrinsically linked. Possibly I thinking it's so fascinating because I agree with this premise wholeheartedly.

After four years of undertaking a design degree, and spending a good deal of my life making things, I personally would deem my most creative works as those stemming from an understanding of the techniques I was using at the time, and perhaps outcomes utilising a technique in an unexpected way. This has evolved over time, however... when learning a technique, such as beading or embroidery, I wasn't doing anything but following a pattern or instructions from a book - I might have been creating something, but the act of simply producing something was not 'creative'.

The argument that "the core capacity involved in creativity is skill", writes Gaut, is a "long philosophical tradition, stretching from Plato to recent times." From Plato's Phaedrus:

'if any man come to the gates of poetry with out the madness of the Muses, persuaded that skill alone will make him a good poet, the shall he and his works of sanity with him be brought to nought by the poetry of madness, and behold, their place is nowhere to be found.'

...Or if you prefer, works that are deemed creative by their very nature (such as poetry) are not able to be generated using a formulaic approach and have any value as a highly creative work. There was (is?) a belief that creativity is something requiring a spark of inspiration, perhaps a touch of madness. But is this perhaps the distinction between skill and genius, 'genius' somehow encompassing the ability to generate something original, inspiring, and able to stand the test of time.

I've yet to re-read the essay, so there's a lot of thinking, understanding and interpreting to still do. But the concept and opening quote really grabbed me, and I think a study of the interplay between creativity and skill is extremely relevant to looking at creativity in fashion design. It is an industry which relies heavily on skills, such as pattern drafting, draping, sewing, etc... At one extreme, there is no creative thought associated with the skill of being able to copy a design and produce a pattern from it. But at the other end of this spectrum, a deep understanding of a skill (eg. embroidery) might allow it to be utilised creatively, in a way that has not been done before.

More on this later (much more, probably)...

Benefits to understanding creativity?

"Some people appear to be offended by questions about how creativity works, believing that it is not possible for us to understand this... Creativity does not work by magic or by divine inspiration. We cannot explain it in terms of intuition. It is true, to be sure, that creativity involves intuition, but to say that does not tell is much, since the word 'intuition' is just a placeholder for some unknown psychological process, invisible even to creative persons. If we want to understand how creativity is possible... we cannot rely on appeals to intuition... In other words, we have to understand how intuition works."

From 'Creativity: How Does It Work?' (Margaret Boden)

I like the idea that we cannot perhaps truly understand creativity as a phenomenon, short of perhaps completely understanding what consciousness is (and that's a whole other conundrum!). We can, however, study the processes of creativity; perhaps separate the generation of a work or idea into stages. Even if it is only these 'stages' that are distilled, this information can still be used by an individual to better understand their own creative process, with the possible outcome being more productive generation of ideas (critical to the fashion industry, which typically thrives on fast turn overs).

Okay...

... honing in on the field of fashion design is probably the way to go - the more specific, the better. That's not to say that there is no merit in looking at approaches to being creative that are not fashion related, but being too broad will probably do my head in.

Common to just about every definition of creativity is that the work produced is valuable, that an idea has been generated that no-one else has ever had before.

As Margaret Boden writes in Creativity: How does it work?:

"What different people regard as interesting varies, so new ideas can be valuable in many different ways. Encyclopedia writers, gallery curators, chemists, sculptors, property developers, entrepreneurs, and advertising executives focus on different sorts of creative idea, different sorts of value."

Essentially, depending on which field a work is being evaluated for creative merit, different aspects will be seen as having value. If I'm to focus on the fashion industry specifically, I need to evaluate what is of value in terms of creativity within this field as a means of contextualising my findings. My predominant interest, however, is in identifying methods by which a fashion designer may be able to generate ideas with greater ease - to take apart the creative process so that it might be better understood.

So....

Am still trying to decide if I will refer all my findings re: creativity back to the area of fashion design. Does it need to be contextualised that way? Or should I just use a variety of examples from different design (or 'creative' fields)?

Obviously I need to have a specific focus, and part of me wants to write about creativity in fashion design simply because there is hardly anything written about it at all. Of any study focusing on creativity, fashion design and the processes employed are never mentioned as a way of illustrating the different approaches to being creative.

However, I don't know if trying to limit everything to fashion will make my research... well, limited.

I guess I'll just have to see what I come across; see what develops. One solution might be to take my findings about approaches to creativity to fashion designers/design students relate to them...

width, depth...

Something that is deemed creative is often given this label because it draws upon inspiration and references from seemingly unrelated areas. So am I narrowing my research too much by restricting it to fashion design (or design)? The creative techniques a writer may use, for example, might prompt the creative processes for a fashion designer...

I'm glad I picked this topic for my thesis...

...because it is just so interesting! Am actually a little excited at the moment, so let me back track and explain why.

First up, my sister Jessica is an incredibly creative person herself. She's a talented author and musician (her debut novel is out very soon, along with accompanying soundtrack!), and I'm sure she could tell you all about the hard work being creative actually entails!

Anyway, a few hours ago she mentioned me and my research journal on her blog - mentioning in particular my question as to why design hasn't been explored as a way of looking at the creative process in the same way art has.

So far, there have been some really interesting comments left by her followers. I'd like to share one in particular left by Stephen Parrish... and thank him for taking the time to share his thoughts!

Hi. I don't really understand the distinction between art and design, or at least the need for a distinction. Both are obviously creative, neither less than the other. I don't think the typical person sees a fashion designer as anything less than very creative.

My background is cartography, and most people don't think of mapmakers as graphic designers. After all, you have no control over the shape of the continents, or the layout of a city. Yet cartographers must make a myriad choices as they work, in every aspect of graphic design: balance, contrast, figure-ground, etc. My advisor and mentor went so far as to use the word "euphoria" to describe what he felt when he designed maps.

I can well understand how a fashion designer would feel the same, when all elements come together, and the project just clicks. Funny, I also draw and paint as a hobby (i.e., traditional "art"), and although the creative process is satisfying, as is nailing down something I'm depicting realistically, I never feel anything like "euphoria" when I work---as I did when making maps. Design not only deserves equal footing with other creative endeavors, there's something about it that sets it apart, and if I had to venture a guess, I'd say it's because the designer is always restricted in some way (the clothes have to fit the model, the continent has to look like Africa). That very restriction is what releases a powerful creative drive and results in, well, euphoria.

The idea of restriction benefiting the creative process has intrigued me ever since I took on this topic. A few posts back I related the idea of inspiration to constraint, a concept that has featured in a couple of the articles I've written as well.

I would say that designers (fashion designers or cartographers) have to be creative in their approach to a design problem so that functional or innovative solutions can be generated. Without that restriction, the possibilities are endless and I doubt any designer would know where to begin.

Having said that, art can have a function too... to provoke, for example, or to make a political statement. Perhaps art is considered more 'creative' because of its seemingly emotional, intuitive nature? But... if restriction is the guiding point, maybe the restriction in art is that a work is directed by a particular emotion, or a desire to make comment on a particular issue. Then again, fashion designs can be spawned from exceptionally emotional origins, and also make the wearer experience emotion in how the clothes make them feel.

Anyway, it has been a long day and I'm probably going to start talking in circles if I don't stop here. Thanks again to my lovely sister and all of the comments left by her followers!

In the back of my mind...

Summary of the things in the back of my mind as I have been researching, was well as a 'where to go from here' list of things to still do....

• First up... of all the reading I've done into what creativity is (or different ways of approaching the creative process), there seems to be a lack of writing relating to design (specifically fashion). Many of the articles use either art or science to illustrate how breakthroughs are made when creating, or how inspiration might strike. Articles written from a neurological perspective in particular seem to use art as a point of reference, with expositions into how the brain interprets colour, line, etc, and how this is a fact of biology.

• This leads me to wonder why design hasn't been explored as a way of looking at the creative process in the same way art has. Has design somehow been deemed to be less creative? Or perhaps less 'accessible' to the reader of these articles?
  

• On a related topic... might be good to really define/highlight the difference between art and fashion design. At a superficial level, I suppose it would be easy to say that design concerns itself more with function and practicality, and perhaps even with considerations into production/mass production. Yet there are overlaps, too... some fuzzy edges. Fashion designers might occupy themselves with the creation of distinctly unwearable pieces, so the functional aspect (at least in the sense of it being a body covering) is rendered a moot point. Hmm... yes, definitely need some clarity here.
  

• This brings me to definitions, of which I still need more. In particular, explanations for particular steps in the design process such as inspiration, theme, concept, prototyping... See earlier posts for more terms that might need defining.

• Given the need for design specific definitions, it might be beneficial to look at textbooks to get a distilled view of the design process from a teaching perspective. These could then be evaluated from the viewpoints of different creativity theories, to see if the approaches in teaching design are in fact making the most of creative potential in students.

• I need to start asking questions to people - to get different perspectives on their creative processes. I feel as though practicing designers, students and lecturers will be able to offer invaluable insight. Given that I want to focus my project on how designers might make the most of their creative dispositions, and on techniques that might assist the creative process (with what creativity might be as a background), featuring interviews with such people might be the best way to illustrate various approaches to being creative.
  

That's all for now. I'll probably be back in 5 minutes having thought of something else to add!

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: Serious Creativity

Oh, the idea of the different coloured thinking hats really tickles me. I'll be going into more detail on this article later. Right now the thing that is standing out to me the most is I might need to make a distinction between creativity and creative thinking. This raises a number of questions, too!

Edward de Bono proposes that anyone can think in a more creative way by using lateral thinking skills. But can you make someone more creative? Are there certain dispositions - genetic or otherwise - that make one person more creative than the next? And could these thinking techniques be of use to those already out there being creative and creative?

Know Thyself

This year I've just been telling myself, quite consciously and constantly, to be intuitive with my work, to go with my gut feeling.

Often as students, we wonder what we "should" be doing. I often see my classmates struggling with how to approach their work (we all do, all the time), or wondering about how to interpret their inspirational material.

Ideally, I'd love to be able to generate something useful to students at the end of this project... a bit of a guide as to what creativity is/might be, and outline some different approaches to being creative as a designer.

Creativity would certainly not be impeded by an understanding of yourself and how you work.

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.

Reading: A Three Facet Model of Creativity (Robert J. Sternberg)

Small list of personality attributes which creative people are said to possess:

• -tolerance of ambiguity
  
• -willingness to surmount obstacles
• -willingness to grow
• -intrinsic motivation
• -moderate risk-taking
• -desire for recognition
• -willingness to work for recognition

Am still trying to process this article properly, so I'll come back and edit later. Right now the idea of having a 'tolerance for ambiguity' intrigues me. I guess in a creative field you have to deal with a lot of overlapping concepts and general fuzziness.

Combinations and Permutations

If creating something is simply a matter of selecting different combinations - choosing colour, fabric, texture, shape, pattern - then why would we say that a machine making these selections was not creative?

Thinking about this last night, I pondered upon the idea of writing a computer program that could 'design'. In my daydream, all that would need to be done would be to select a few inputs such as fabric/colour/garment type, or perhaps even a theme... and design options would be generated.

Of course, there would be millions of permutations of each design, so there'd need to be a filter to draw out the less successful ones. Maybe you could set it to present designs that would cost a particular amount to manufacture... or were judged against a certain aesthetic (perhaps picking out ones that conform to the proportions of the golden ratio?)

Because here is where it gets tricky. What makes a design more successful or not? A group of designers looking at the range of options generated would invariably have differing opinions on what the better designs were.

All designers undertake a process that at least vaguely resembles this computer program, I imagine. As I wrote the other day, we select 'inspirations' in order to narrow down our choices when designing, so that we're not creating every garment there ever was or ever will be. So what drives the design decisions we make? Why put a seam in a certain place and not another? Why choose that particular print?

The only thing I can think of at the moment is that there is a deep seated emotional response, or a recognition of 'yes, that's what I wanted to create'. We pick things that we like, that please us aesthetically. Machines are not (or should I say, 'not yet'?) capable of making these choices rapidly, at what we would call an instinctual level based on emotion or personality. The human mind is excellent rejecting anything it deems to be irrelevant.

Yeah, that's all I've got right now. Also, this has set me off on thinking about what determines an individual's aesthetic sense. Hmmm...

PS. Would the process of creating this 'computer program' be deemed creative, even if the outcomes are not?

Reading notes: Artistic Creativity, Style and Brain Disorders

Another definition: "The production of novel, motivated or useful material defines creativity, which appears to be one of the higher, specific, human brain functions."

From a neurological perspective, this article attempts to understand the creative process by studying brain disorders and their effect on creative output.

• "Neurological diseases in artists provide a unique opportunity to study brain-creativity relationships, in particular through the stylistic changes which may develop after brain lesion." (Thought: do these brain lesions affect motor control, etc, which would alter physical appearance in the creative works?)

• Four 'classical' phases of creativity are identified - "preparation, incubation, inspiration and production".

• Psychological mechanisms identified as being behind creativity include replication, redefinition, forward incrementation, redirection, reconstruction, re-initiation and integration.

• Characteristics of creative persons: openness, lack of conventionalism, playful thinking with risk taking.

• "Imagination abilities and integration of dream memories into reality are... features which may facilitate creativity."

• Ability to disengage from 'repressed' and 'controlled' mental processes can be beneficial in producing spontaneous expressions. Sleep and dreams have been connected with the dis-inhibition of brain mechanisms - 'next morning creativity'.

• Interesting definition of 'ambiguity' - "a possibility for the brain to evoke several perceptions, interpretations or solutions simultaneously." (From other readings, a tolerance for ambiguity has been highlighted as a personality trait in creative persons).

• Many areas of the brain are used in the process of creativity - a "complex combination of sensory, cognitive and motor activities" indicate that being creative is engaging the functions of the brain in an holistic capacity.

• "... style is the most personal signature of artistic production, which corresponds to the uniqueness of each individual and each brain."