Week 9 Creativity on Art and Multimedia Design

Most people associate creativity with the fields of art and multimedia. In these fields, originality is considered to be a sufficient condition for creativity, unlike other fields where both originality and appropriateness are necessary.

Within the different modes of artistic expression, one can postulate a continuum extending from "interpretation" to "innovation". Established artistic movements and genres pull practitioners to the "interpretation" end of the scale, whereas original thinkers strive towards the "innovation" pole. Note that we conventionally expect some "creative" people  to perform while allowing others more freedom to express the new and the different.

Creativity is the invention of any new things that has value. When these combines, one could create a whole new work piece that has its value based on one's ideation.

Examples of Creativity on Art and Multimedia design

Image from Kevin Mazutinec's Meridian.

The result is Meridian: A Multimedia Performance Event, Friday, March 16 at 7:30 pm (doors open at 7). In addition to the screening of Meridian, there will be contributions from Marian van der Zon (vocal and acoustic instruments), Justin McGrail (spoken word) and Robin Davies (soundscapes with software instruments.

Mazutinec expects the free performance to last about an hour but the format, like the animated images, remains fluid.

During Art Basel, the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden displayed 103 lanterns by the artist Jorge Pardo.

Week 8 Random association

Random association is a creative technique whereby we use random words to solve problems. Random Word technique, the most basic and obviously creative technique where you use a random word (hence the name!) to generate new ideas. By getting a random word as a prompt and forcing yourself to use it to solve your problem you are practically guaranteed to attack the problem from a different direction to normal. You take a word from a random word generator, extract its underlying principles and then apply them to your problem to see how they can help. The skill is stopping your mind from (a) thinking this is silly and (b) directly using the actual principles behind the word to your problem without changing them to ones which are easier to apply.

Based on random association, we were given an exercise entitled, "How to make a person stop smoking in 6 months time?"

COLOR~Use red color for the body of the cigarette to indicate danger in smoking.

METAL~Design metal rings around the cigarette so that the cigarette will get hot faster and it is uncomfortable to hold.

DIRTY~Place some dust to the surface of the cigarette. This will make the smokers to feel disgusted.

SIGN~Add danger symbol on the body of the cigarette.