occasional scribbles
I am 100% certain this song could never have been created by AI. Well, almost 100% certain.
I first posted about it in 2009, but it deserves to be brought back from obscurity. And, since it’s December — it does have seasonal lyrics.
(You can also read more about it here.)
Towards a personal theory of creativity
A continuation from my last post.
Creative activity is […] what makes man a creature focused on the future, capable of shaping it and changing his current situation.[1]
In 2012, Mark Runco and Garrett Jaeger wrote a piece for the Creativity Research Journal entitled “The Standard Definition of Creativity”.[2] In it, they review historical and contemporary accounts of creativity and support a definition that requires two criteria for defining creativity: originality and usefulness. They also acknowledge that many (including Margaret Boden, who I referred to in my last post) require surprise as a third criterion.
In my previous post, I expressed scepticism over this inclusion of “value” as a criterion, as it focusses attention on the product of creativity, rather than the process. When I examine creativity, I am interested in the process both in individual creativity and group creativity.
I have found support for this in an article from 2015 where Robert Weisberg quite thoroughly debunks the argument for using “value” as a criterion.[3] He does this by showing how value judgements have changed over time, thus leading to absurd conclusions such as Van Gogh not being creative during his lifetime as his art was not valued by the accepted gatekeepers of the day but subsequently “became” creative after death.
Weisberg goes on to argue for using «intentional novelty» as a measure for creativity. It is an improvement over the standard definition, but still looks primarily at the product. When he writes about «novelty», he is clear that this is about measuring the novelty of the results of a creative process and using this as a way of measuring whether or not it is a result of creativity.
An article that takes issue with the standard definition for the same reasons I do — the traditional emphasis on product or result rather than process — is «Creative Experience: A Non-standard Definition of Creativity» by Vlad Glăveanua and Ronald Beghetto.[4] In it, they define 4 necessary criteria for creativity (although they open up for others as well):
A very useful take on creativity is from Chetan Walia, in the article “A Dynamic Definition of Creativity”.[5] Walia starts with a very good overview over the different definitions and discussions around creativity from the past several decades. He identifies “…three distinctive dynamics at play: creativity, creation, and creator.” [emphasis in original] and goes on to show how the so-called standard definition, with it’s emphasis on novelty and usefulness, applies to only one of those: the creation.
Walia elaborates on this further:
Herein lies the problem in studying creativity as synonymous with creation, because creation can be judged only when it has concluded, whereas creativity is active throughout the process and may not even end after having led to creation. (p. 239)
He further breaks creativity into 4 elements:
He also specifies that creativity is an ongoing act, independent of the creation. From this, he arrives at what he calls a “dynamic definition of creativity”:
Creativity is an act arising out of a perception of the environment that acknowledges a certain disequilibrium, resulting in productive activity that challenges patterned thought processes and norms, and gives rise to something new in the form of a physical object or even a mental or an emotional construct. (p. 242)
It is also worth looking at Vygotsky; while he is better known for his work on child psychology and learning, leading to social constructivist learning theories, he wrote The Psychology of Art (1930 / trans. 1971) early in his career. In an article first published (in English) in 2004, he writes, “It is precisely human creative activity that makes the human being a creature oriented toward the future, creating the future and thus altering his own present.”[7] In this article, he also emphasizes the crucial part played by imagination: “…imagination, as the basis of all creative activity, is an important component of absolutely all aspects of cultural life, enabling artistic, scientific, and technical creation alike.”
Vygotsky goes on to highlight the social aspect of creativity, and point out that human development owes its existence to tiny individual acts of creativity and creations that combine to become crucial for society, innovation, and art. He also relates that imagination and creativity are a necessary condition for existence. He places imagination at the centre of creativity, and points out that imagination primarily consists of recombining in new ways the products of our past experience and is thus inseparable from reality. This process also requires emotion, which becomes the motor for both selecting elements to combine and for interpreting the products of imagination: “Feeling as well as thought drives human creativity” (p. 21).
Where does all this lead me in my attempt to define creativity? After all, being responsible for educational programmes in the art means that we are, by definition, preoccupied with creativity. We are teaching people, if not to become creative, then at the very least to develop their own creativity.
First, I think it’s key for me to understand that in the triad creator — creativity — creation, it’s the middle one — creativity — that interests me in this context. I think it’s also a useful place to focus on in education. The individual, or, in this context, creator, must in large part be responsible for themselves. As an educational programme, we need to provide a stimulating and supportive environment, but I am a firm believer in the necessity of intrinsic motivation for learning and development. The question of whether one can educate people to be creative is not uncontroversial, but I think in this case Berys Gaut makes a good case for education in his essay “Educating for Creativity”,[8] and in many ways becoming a creator involves being motivated to become a creator and to do the work — because learning is hard work — to develop yourself.
As for the creation, this is less interesting to me as an educator. We live in a society where we are judged by results on a daily basis in most parts of our lives. I believe this is often detrimental to learning, and perhaps especially in fields where discovery and creativity are key. By focussing on the process — creativity — we can provide our students with the space and encouragement to expand their own creative horizons, to learn to examine their experiences and knowledge and how to use this as raw material in their creations, and the freedom to test and experiment knowing they will not be judged based on the success or failure of their artistic result.
And so where does this leave my definition? Or, as the title of this blog post indicates, my personal theory of creativity? I think that in the end, creativity can be explained through 4 elements:
There needs to be something that begs the question; something that calls for a solution. This can be an internal drive brought about through some dissatisfaction with the world as it is. It can be a practical obstacle or problem that needs to be overcome. It can be a scientific, logistical, or aesthetic puzzle that needs solving.
In short, what in traditional film dramaturgy is called the “inciting incident“.
Given that there needs to be some stimulus for creativity to arise, another key element is intention — someone (or group of someones) needs to consciously decide to address this stimulus. From what I can see, and what I have read, the fact that it is a conscious intent is key. While it might be possible to produce a creative result through serendipity, a creative process requires both will and intent in order to exist.
John Dewey writes about this in Art as Experience[9] when he states,
Because interest is the dynamic force in selection and assemblage of materials, products of mind are marked by individuality, just as products of mechanism are marked by uniformity. No amount of technical skill and craftsmanship can take the place of vital interest; “inspiration” without it is fleeting and futile. A trivial and badly ordered mind accomplishes things like unto itself in art as well as elsewhere, for it lacks the push and centralizing energy of interest. Works of art are measured by display of virtuosity when criteria are carried over from the field of technical invention. (p. 266)
I suppose I also could have called this “imagination”. Regardless, the key here is the ability to create with the intention of it being new or original. This does not mean conjuring something from nothing, but looking at the world, searching through ones own experience and finding elements that can be used and combined in new and innovative ways.
Vygotsky (cited above) wrote about this. Dewey also points out the central place of imagination in combination with experience when he writes about imagination:
It is the large and generous blending of interests at the point where the mind comes in contact with the world. When old and familiar things are made new in experience, there is imagination. When the new is created, the far and strange become the most natural inevitable things in the world. There is always some measure of adventure in the meeting of mind and universe, and this adventure is, in its measure, imagination. (p. 267)
and,
[… W]hile the roots of every experience are found in the interaction of a live creature with its environment, that experience becomes conscious, a matter of perception, only when meanings enter it that are derived from prior experiences. Imagination is the only gateway through which these meanings can find their way into a present interaction; or rather, as we have just seen, the conscious adjustment of the new and the old is imagination. (p. 272)
A fourth element of creativity is action. Creativity does not just happen, but must be driven forward. This is closely related to the intent point above, but while intent signals a conscious decision to do something, the action point is the actual doing. They must go together for a creative process to occur.
These four elements are not a linear process. Creativity, like life itself, is messy and full of stops and starts. The elements may all occur simultaneously or they may exist in different combinations at different times. Even the “original stimulus” does not need to be a one-time occurrence, but may recur several times during a creative process.
