Creativity

Modified: 2023-11-30 7:34 PM CST

Creativity is difficult to study and can be found in scientific and artistic contexts. We will examine several ways of looking at creativity and end up by assessing our own creativity with a fun exercise.

Creativity

• Divergent Thinking
  • Finding many uses for object
    • low frequency answers judged as creative
    • We will use this definition in our exercise below
• Convergent Thinking
  • Linking several weakly associated elements into one
    correct concept (similar to crossword puzzle thinking)

• Intelligence analysis is often convergent
• Three Days of the Condor
  • CIA analyst uses convergent thinking to piece together a plot involving oil.
  • He is sole survivor of a plot and has to save himself.
  • He figures out his problem using convergent thinking.
• Scientific and Artistic
  • Scientific
    • Christidou, Dimopoulos, and Kouladis (2004) reported that science was reported as a construct that "...involves inspiration, originality, imagination and creativity, as
      well as, skillful or even artistic handlings;" (p. 352)
    • Simonton argues for a combinatorial approach to scientific creativity
      • He posits a mandatory connection between:
        • combinatorial activity
        • trial and error
        • generate and test
        • illumination and verification
        • blind variation
        • selective retention
      • While he focused on individual scientists, he noted, "the scientific community plays a much bigger role then has been treated here"
    • Loeb looked at scientific creativity and stated:
      • "In sciences and the arts alike, creativity appears magically as an unpredictable fountain of inspiration from the subconscious."
      • Creativity has the effect of "often taking people out of their comfort zone because it is ahead of its time."
      • He cites the examples of:
        • Alfred Wegener and continental drift
        • Fritz Zwicky and dark matter
        • Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin for positing that the sun's surface was hydrogen
        • Gregor Mendel's research on genetics
        • van Gogh and expressionism
      • All were ahead of their time
    • Technology follows science (usually)
      • AI
        • from computer science
      • Medical imaging
        • from different techniques from X-rays to magnetism
      • Antibiotics
        • from accidental discovery
      • Internet
        • from ARPANET
    • DNA
      • from Watson, Crick, and Franklin
  • Artistic
    • Artistic creativity is difficult to study
      • Campbell Soup Cans (Andy Warhol) Image from MOMA
        • Why were those considered creative?
      • Cubism (Picasso and Braque)
        • Tried to alter the rules of realistic art by using geometric shapes and a single plane
        • Portrait of Picasso by Juan Gris
  • Encyclopedia of Creativity
    • Lindauer on arts, artists, and arts audiences
      • What is Studied?
        • What about artistic creativity is studied? The focus is usually on cognition, personality, or some other process like motivation. Much less attention is paid to what artists actually do, the work itself, and what makes it creative. Yet it is the creative end-product that ultimately matters; it has an impact, makes a difference, changes things. Creative outcomes are original; the individuals who bring them about are, in the final analysis, secondary.
        • The public also holds some strong opinions, some would say myths, about creative artists (often shared with artists themselves). They are alienated recluses, Bohemian, starving, working in obscurity (in a garret), suffering (tubercular), overly sensitive, rejecting worldly success, divinely inspired, engaged in a sacred pursuit, and slightly mad. The extent of these beliefs should be empirically investigated. For example, are they correlated with attendance at arts events?
• Investment Theory (Sternberg and Lubart)
  • Buy low, sell high approach to ideas
    • creativity is taking undervalued idea and promoting
      it, then "selling" it to a now-understanding world
      • think of Xerox, first invented in 1938 and not made into a commercial product until 1959
      • Why? Most people thought that carbon paper was good enough

Exercise

• Six word story
  • Write a six word story
  • Explain it
    • Example: For sale: baby shoes, never worn. (Hemingway)
• Haiku
  • A haiku is a poem with only 17 syllables
    • a Japanese poetic form that consists of three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third (Britannica)
  • Here are three topics (pick one and write a haiku):
    • Winter
    • Water
    • Mother
• 30 Circles
  • You have 3 minutes to fill as many circles as you can.

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Six-word Stories

My dealing with writer's block is...

Found her, lost her, miss her.

First play, then work, then what?

Winter
Oh no, not again
Old man winter is here now
Cold ice snow to plow

Water
Cold I like to drink
Hot is much better in sink
Hard water is ice

Mother
Baby slides out soon
Light noise now people gather
Tired happy both now are