learning creativity reflection
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Week3-Intro_Product_full.pptxIntroduction to creativity Studies
PRODUCT
Defining Creative Products
Novel, unique, original
Appropriate, useful
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Useful but not novel…
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Novel but not useful…
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Novel AND useful!
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Novel AND very useful!
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Novel AND very useful!
http://www.instructables.com/id/baby-flask/
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Creative stuff(?)
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The Arboreal Office.
Rob Gonsalves
Son of Man
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“Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see.”
Rene Magritte
F.H. Varley, Stormey Weather, Georgian Bay, National Gallery of Canada
Keeping an open mind
Things/people need not always be overwhelming novel to be considered creative
If you dig deeply, you can find creativity in many places that you may not have thought it was present
Often entails taking a different view (often zooming out)
Being creative about what is creative
‘little c’ vs. ‘Big c’ Creativity
creativity
“Creativity is a new mental combination that is expressed in the world.”
Creativity
“Creativity is the generation of a product that is judged to be novel and also to be appropriate, useful, or valuable by a suitably knowledgeable social group.”
Sawyer, R. Keith. Explaining Creativity. New York: Oxford UP, 2012. 7-8
little c or Big C Creativity?
This guy forgot his bongo on the way to the drum circle.
He got the idea to use a bucket instead.
The sound wasn’t what he was used to, but added a unique element to the session.
little c or Big C Creativity?
Jean-Jacque Perrey, instead of using traditional instruments, used a novel experimental music laboratory (incoroporating an Ondioline, scissors, splicing tape, and tape recorders) to invent "a new process for generating rhythms with sequences and loops”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05sAxt8zNZI
Jean-Jacques Perrey
Perrey was born in France in 1929. He was studying medicine in Paris when he met Georges Jenny, the inventor of the Ondioline. Quitting medical school, Perrey travelled through Europe demonstrating this keyboard ancestor of the modern synthesizer. At the age of 30, Perrey relocated to New York, sponsored by Caroll Bratman, who built him an experimental laboratory and recording studio. Here he invented "a new process for generating rhythms with sequences and loops", utilising the environmental sounds of "musique concrète." With scissors, splicing tape, and tape recorders, he spent weeks piecing together a uniquely comique take on the future. Befriending Robert Moog, he became one of the first Moog synthesiser musicians, creating "far out electronic entertainment". In 1965 Perrey met Gershon Kingsley, a former colleague of John Cage. Together, using Ondioline and Perrey's loops, they created two albums for Vanguard — The In Sound From Way Out (1966) and Kaleidoscopic Vibrations (1967). Perrey and Kingsley collaborated on sound design for radio and television advertising. Perrey returned to France, composing for television, scoring for ballet, and continuing medical research into therapeutic sounds for insomniacs.
Roadhouse blues
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE32pvvaDT8
On future of music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWmMVmiGJD0
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The Socio-cultural Model of Creativity
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
American Psychology Professor (started by studying sociology)
Flow
Sociocultural Model of Creativity
*Creative Person*
*Creative Press*
*Creative Product*
How do we determine if something is creative?
Domain
The area in which an individual creator operates.
“all the created products that have been accepted by the field in the past, and all other the conventions that are shared by members of the field.”
Great works
Shared terminology, jargon, and processes
Shared skills, talents, and practices
Literature: (great works) Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Rushdie, Atwood, Achebe; (terminology) metaphor, sonnet, cliché, epic poem, romance, historiographic metafiction, etc.
E.g., visual art, literature, music, business, science, video game design, upholstery,
Domain
Field
Person
How do we determine if something is creative?
Person
Draws and expands upon the great novelties in the domain to create an innovative product.
Usually takes 10 years or ‘10,000 hours’ to learn the knowledge and skills within the domain.
Submits the creative product to the field for evaluation.
Domain
Field
Person
How do we determine if something is creative?
Field
A group of recognized experts who evaluate if the creative product is novel and appropriate.
Expert knowledge of the domain. Decide if the creative product is innovative compared to those in the domain.
Decide which new innovations enter the domain.
Domain
Field
Person
Cosette Swart
A case study using the sociocultural approach to creativity.
Are Cossette’s Paintings Creative?
Person
Is the creative knowledgeable of the domain?
Does the person have the skills and talent associated with the domain?
Has the person put in his/her 10,000 hours of training?
Field
Who are the recognized experts who would evaluate the work?
What works within the domain might the experts compare Cossette’s creative product to?
Would the experts label the creative product as novel and appropriate?
David Bowie Space Oddity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D67kmFzSh_o
Bowie first came to the attention of the public in July 1969 when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust.Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture."The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.
Wikipedia
David Buckley says of Bowie: "His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure.
Cmdr. Chris Hadfield Space Oddity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo
Case Study: Domain, Field, Person
“Space Oddity” by Chris Hadfield
Space Oddity: Person
Producer: Joe Corcoran
Vocals/Guitar: Chris Hadfield
Piano: Emm Gryner
Lyrics/song: David Bowie
Film maker: Andrew Tidby
Promotion: Evan Hadfield, Canadian Space Agency
Space Oddity: Domain
Other great renditions of classic songs (i.e., covers)
The techniques, instruments, and styles of music needed to create the sound and lyrics.
(Music Video) choreography, settings, camera angles, plots, and colours from other great videos
Space Oddity: Field
Musicians, producers, etc.
DJs, VJs, and anyone who makes influential playlists
Influential reviewers and critics
Influential artists
News outlets
High hit rates on Vevo and Youtube
David Bowie
“possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created.”
Media
“This is ground control to Commander Hadfield: you’ve more than made the grade and the papers want to know how a former farm boy from Canada with a love of David Bowie has accomplished a one-man mission to make space cool again.”
Independent (UK)
Is that creative?
Why or why not?
Songs
Backstreet Boys- Backstreet’s Back, Quit Playing Games, As Long as You Love Me, I Want it That Way
Britney Spears- Hit me Baby, Crazy, Oops I did it again
Pink- So what
Ariana Grande- Problem
Bieber ft. Nicki Minaj- Beauty and a Beat
Katy Perry- Roar, Dark Horse, I Kissed a Girl, Hot n Cold, Wide Awake, ET, TGIF
Taylor Swift- Shake it off, Style, Never Ever Getting Back Together
The Weeknd- Can’t Feel My Face
Justin Timberlake- Can’t Stop the Feeling!
ARE THESE SONGS creative?
Why or why not?
Karl Martin Sandberg aka Max Martin
8 time winner of Songwriter of the Year Award
(American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers)
3rd most #1 singles of all time (behind McCartney & Lennon)
Most Top Ten hits all time (54 vs. Beatles with 34)
His trademark during the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s was a danceable, keyboard-laden pop sound that blended music styles such as funk and Europop. …Martin stepped back into the spotlight after reinventing himself with a heavier, rock-tinged sound.
(Wikipedia)
Domain
Field
Person
Formula http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/hit-charade/403192/?utm_source=SFTwitter
“Sonically, the template has remained remarkably consistent since the Backstreet Boys, whose sound was created by Max Martin and his mentor, Denniz PoP, at PoP’s Cheiron Studios, in Stockholm. It was at Cheiron in the late ’90s that they developed the modern hit formula, a formula nearly as valuable as Coca-Cola’s. But it’s not a secret formula. Seabrook describes the pop sound this way: “ABBA’s pop chords and textures, Denniz PoP’s song structure and dynamics, ’80s arena rock’s big choruses, and early ’90s American R&B grooves.” The production quality is crucial, too. The music is manufactured to fill not headphones and home stereo systems but malls and football stadiums. It is a synthetic, mechanical sound “more captivating than the virtuosity of the musicians.” This is a metaphor, of course—there are no musicians anymore, at least not human ones. Every instrument is automated. Session musicians have gone extinct, and studio mixing boards remain only as retro, semi-ironic furniture.”
http://www.cato.org/blog/dematerialization-update#utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Cato-at-liberty+%28Cato+at+Liberty%29
Creativity: connections and combinations
Conceptual pairings/combinations
Unifying two things can yield a never before seen entity
Another example: Food
A majority of novel dishes are some combination of familiar ingredients put together and prepared in an unfamiliar way
FOOD
Chocolate éclair hotdog, bacon milkshake and cappuccino crisps: Are these the world's WEIRDEST food combinations?
Garlic chocolate to blue cheese martinis - bizarre mash-ups are on trend
Some strange ideas have soared in popularity, others haven't taken off
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3019759/Chocolate-clair-hotdog-bacon-milkshake-cappuccino-crisps-world-s-WEIRDEST-food-combinations.html
Example: Dog breeds
Dogs have been selectively bred for thousands of years, sometimes by inbreeding dogs from the same ancestral lines, sometimes by mixing dogs from very different lines.[1] The process continues today, resulting in a wide variety of breeds, hybrids, and types of dog. As such, dogs are the only animal with such a wide variation in appearance without speciation, "from the Chihuahua to the Great Dane.“
(Wikipedia)
Dogo Argentino
In 1928, Antonio Nores Martinez, a medical doctor, professor and surgeon, set out to breed a big game hunting dog that was also capable of being a loyal pet and guard dog. Antonio Martinez picked the Cordoba Fighting Dog to be the base for the breed. This breed is extinct today, but it was said that as a large and ferocious dog, it was a great hunter. Martinez crossed it with the Great Dane, Boxer, Spanish Mastiff, Old English Bulldog, Bull Terrier, Great Pyrenees, Pointer, Irish Wolfhound and Dogue de Bordeaux. Nores Martinez continued to develop the breed via selective breeding to introduce the desired traits.
Landfill Harmonic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJxxdQox7n0
Creative insights occur by making unusual connections… All of our existing ideas have creative possibilities. Creative insights occur when they are combined in unexpected ways or applied to questions or issues with which they are not normally associated. Arthur Koestler describes this as a process of bi-association: when we bring together ideas from different areas that are not normally connected, so that we think not on one plane as in routine linear thinking but on several planes at once. Creative thought involves breaching the boundaries between different frames of reference.
Out of our Minds, p. 158
Another view…
Family resemblances approach
“Consider the proceedings that we call “games.” I mean board -games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic-games, and so on. What is common to them all? —Don’t say: “There must be something common, or they would not be called ‘games’”—but look and see whether there is anything common to them all. —For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to them all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that” [Wittgenstein, 33, pp. 31–32].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5962028/
In 1964, Ausubel argued that creativity represented “one of the vaguest, most ambiguous, and most confused terms in psychology” (p. 551). Since that time, despite decades of empirical research and theorization on the concept, the literature remains "murky but plentiful" (Hennessey & Amabile, 2010, p. 576). Several reasons exist as to why this is the case. For one, the most commonly used definitional criteria, novel and useful (Plucker), lie on a continuum with relatively fuzzy boundaries. Further, the term creativity is used to denote a large number of distinct aspects of psychology pertaining novel and useful ideas (i.e., product, process, press, person; 4 Ps citation). Also, many researchers from diverse areas of academia approach the study of creativity, characterizing it from the neural to the societal levels, leading to great diversity in conceptualization of a common construct (H & A). In all, the complex and diverse nature of creativity does not fit well within a strict homogenous definition, but rather seems better conceived as a natural kind with graded membership. Here, we argue that by adopting a family resemblances view of creativity, we can make more manageable the quest to conceptualize one of the most important, yet difficult to pin down, topics in psychological science.
