Agenda 2 for Class Meeting on January 24

Last updated: 1/24/02
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Agenda for Creativity Class Meeting on January 24

Announcements:
1. During the WSU lunch in honor of Martin Luther King on Monday, one of the speakers mentioned Dr. King's perseverance - his focus on Civil Rights and related issues for ? years. Perseverance is one of the necessary conditions for high levels of Creativity. Dr. King was, in my view and in the view of most in the field, creative. His Creativity was patterned after Gandhi, one of the subjects of the textbook Creating Minds.
2. Do an online signin tonight
3. May not have registered for this course: Vernon Parks
4. Fill out the course information form: Ken Corley, Lu Jennings, Vernon Parks.
5. Do weekly course reports: Ken Corley, Theresa Jones, Vernon Parks. Everyone: one per week, rain or shine.
6. Computer conference - who needs to post on which topics -
  1. Introduce yourself:
  2. Creative people we know: Ken Corley, Linden Lewandowski
  3. What about creativity...: Ken Corley, Ryan Partington, Theresa Jones, Vernon Parks
8. Online writing and grammar guide at http://www.cll.wayne.edu/isp, then click on "Special Projects" button, then scroll down and click on link "Online Writing and Grammar Tutor". Also an Online Math Tutor has a link at the same place.
9. Internet tips
  1. Single Vs double clicking. On the web, everything is single clicks. Double-clicking sometimes causes trouble - that second click can do something unpleasant.
  2. Connection problems, especially if writing a long message. Don't change anything, don't leave and start over, just redial and reconnect and pretend nothing happened.
  3. Pushed the wrong button and "lost everything"? - use your Browser's "back" button
  4. Change in online course information page. Please let me know if there are any problems. The benefit is that you can now double-check your course information and update it. To view or update your course information, you will need the password that you gave yourself when filling out the form the first time. This will also be your password for online grade reports. To view your information, click on the link to change it - just don't make any changes.
Pictures for the course web site.
1. Having your picture on the course web site is NOT a requirement of this course. Your picture will be publicly available, but no other information will be made publicly available because your picture is. My motivation here is to help create a community -- if you want to know who made that comment on the computer conference, go back and look them up in the photo gallery.
Ideas about or descriptions of creativity
1. Quotes
  1. Something new that solves a problem or meets a need
  2. (Howard Gardner) "Solving a problem within a domain in a way that is initially perceived as unusual but comes to be accepted within at least one area of culture."
  3. (Margaret Bodin) "Creativity is a puzzle, a paradox, some say a mystery."
    1. Paradox - tension between discipline and freedom
  4. (quoted by Margaret Bodin, without attribution) "Novel combinations of old ideas"
2. Two contrasting ideas
  1. Creativity is a mystery that cannot be broken down and understood, because to analyze it destroys the Creativity
  2. Creativity is a step-by-step process that we must break down in order to understand
    1. Creative people are usually not much help in understanding their process - unconscious. But many will describe it as intense, sometimes work, sometimes play
    2. Two strings example
3. Possible models for creativity
  1. Flash of inspiration - aha! - and that's all that we can know about it
    1. I mentioned Poincaré, and his narrative is on the course web site. But probably the most famous aha of all times is the Greek Archimedes, who was trying to discover why he floated in water. He was floating in the bath house when he realized that he would float if the water his body displaced weighed as much as he did, and ran naked through the streets shouting, "Eureka! I have found it!" (translated of course). The death of Archimedes illustrates another characteristic of creative people. His city was invaded the Romans. An invading soldier found Archimedes and told him to follow the soldier to the king, but Archimedes told the soldier to wait because he (Archimedes) was thinking about a problem. The soldier grew angry and killed Archimedes. (There are several variations of this story.) Now that is concentration! Further, Archimedes had to wait for about six centuries before the value of his work was realized.
  2. Creativity comes from people who have a great level of output, some of which happens to be highly creative - it is a random and unremarkable consequence of a high level of activity.
    1. Suppose that one in every 1,000 paintings or drawings is creative. I have probably made 10 in my life. I have a one-in-one-hundred chance of being though to be creative. Picasso may have made 10,000 drawings and paintings, and on this theory the chances are that about 10 of them would be highly creative.
    2. Creative people have more failures than non-creative people.
    3. This is sometimes carried further by trying to trace out the exact unconscious steps and processes - the "cognitive" approach. Even here there are two approaches, one that says that no individual step is remarkable, and the other that says, "look how wonderful this is."
  3. Making a connection between two specific ideas or fields
    1. Example - joining two types of popular music - Afro-Irish; club and techno
    2. Example - short story and novel merged to make a novella
  4. Making an analogy from another domain (from music to poetry, for example)
  5. Invention and refinement of novelty
    1. Particularly for the Surrealists (flourished around 1930, artists Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, poets Rimbaud and Baudelaire) automatic writing, pouring paints (started in 1950's (?) as a way of randomly generating new patterns for later refinement using traditional techniques, but Jackson Pollock developed techniques). One technique became known as "Exquisite Corpse". Here, a group would circulate a piece of paper, everyone would contribute a word or phrase, the paper would be folded over to hide some or all of this, and passed to the next person. The collective result was used for raw material - a starting point.
    2. Experiment here - an assignment
      1. Contribute a word using the "Exquisite Corpse" link on the course web site
      2. I will assemble words and post the "sentence" on the computer conference
      3. Individual reactions can "play" off of this - this will be raw material, but not assigned
    3. Use of keys in music. (Keys have different "feels" - cheerful, somber, etc.) Pre-Renaissance musical compositions used only a single key. Musicians started experimenting, first by moving to a second key briefly, then coming back. Later musicians made more excursions, perhaps shifting keys continuously, while still maintaining a "home key." For earlier musicians and composers, such music would already have been unpleasant and jarring. Finally, Schoenberg (late 19th century and early 20th) suggested doing away with the home key and even with keys altogether (atonal music) - a transition from evolutionary to revolutionary. (Schoenberg is really an example of restrucruing, see below.) In today's popular music we still see keys as being important. Popular songs are overwhelmingly brief and confined to a single emotional state, although there are some key changes. Does this mean that atonality is a dead end, that popular musicians and the musical public are behind the times (either temporarily or permanently), or that the breakthrough atonal work has not yet been composed? Stay tuned! (pun intended)
  6. Restructuring the field, for example going back to basics ("a new paradigm") [paradigm - a pattern or model, here, for the way in which the field is conceived. Example 1950's life paradigm for a male was grow up, get a job, get married, buy a house, have children, participate in the community, grow old, retire, die soon afterwards]
    1. What are the assumptions in the field, even the unspoken assumptions?
    2. What would happen if we reversed this one, that one?
    3. Example - Euclidean geometry (life on a flat surface) says that parellel lines never meet. What if we negate this - parallel lines do meet? Geometry of a spherical surface, or other types of surfaces.
4. I think you will find that Creativity is not a well-defined field with a strong consensus. In such a situation, I think the goal of the course must be for you to become aware of the range of thought, to recognize where a given opinion fits within the range. Also, there are many different types of studies, and you should try to understand their strengths and weaknesses.
5. Here is a working hypothesis about creativity, patterned after Gardner in Creating Minds. Do not treat this as authoritative.
  1. Creativity involves someone who freely chooses to focus on a situation or discipline. They continue working, dividing and subdividing the situation, analyzing it, building detail upon detail. Those around this person are likely to think him/her obsessive.
  2. This person follows through on his/her interest and is active in the area, interested in talking and comparing notes with others in that area. They innovate, although their work may be innovative only within a restricted circle. The more involved they are, the larger the circle of people for whom their work must be new.
  3. Childhood interests and "near" role models played an important part. From my readings, it seems to be important that the child have the experience that if s/he has an interest they take it seriously, pursue it in more detail, especially as a subject of imagining, that they elaborate on it, and that the have an accessible role model. Activity and work in the are of the interest need to be pursued.
  4. At some point they break free of the others in their field
6. The scope of Creativity
  1. Affects how long the effects will last, and the number of people it will affect
  2. Range of scope
    1. Personal
    2. Family
    3. Regional/National
    4. International
    5. Civilization (the culture)
  3. Something new that solves a problem or meets a need
    1. Something - does there have to be a product for a person to be considered creative? Can Creativity be a personal style or attitude? ("Oh, she's so creative.")
    2. New - new to whom, to how many people?
    3. Solves a problem or meets a need - sometimes only the creative person sees the need beforehand
7. The study of Creativity is interdisciplinary
  1. Examples of Creativity in all disciplines
  2. Many disciplines are needed to study Creativity
  3. Can we be Creative in the study of Creativity?
8. Refinement of statement that Creativity is shut down if it is evaluated or required. There is one type of evaluation that seems to foster Creaticity - evaluation from someone who understands and even appreciates what you are trying to do, like a colleague
  1. That is one of my personal goals in this course - to help you identify what you are interested in and what some next steps might be. If I make wrong assumptions about what your goals are, correct me.
9. Pretend that you are a newspaper reporter, and your editor assigns you to do a story on the most creative visual artist in the area, including examples of what s/he has done that is creative? Where do you start?
Review of Essay form from Syllabus
1. Alternatives to Essays
  1. A creative work, such as a short story. I want to change what I said during the first class about this option - no need to check with me first. Blanket permission is give, no need to ask. I would appreciate knowing that you intend to do this, and I am always ready to discuss your ideas
  2. Start for an ISP web site on the Harlem Renaissance
    1. Period of great creativity in Harlem during the 1920's. The best-known artists are probably the poet Langston Hughes and later the photographer Gordon Parks who also made the "Shaft" movies, among others
  3. Start for an ISP web site on Martin Luther King
  4. I will not be interested in work that portrays these people as perfect saints or as artists whose every work is perfect or of major importance.
Section on plagiarism added to Syllabus
Discussion of reading
Choosing fourth book for 4-credit people
1. Discussion of interests Vs books
2. Follow your interests - Creativity is about going with it, not hanging back.) But must be ruthless in discarding dead ends.)
Assignments
1. Conference postings - see names at top
2. Weekly course report
3. Exquisite Corpse - link off of "Online tools" - see section above in this agenda for purpose and further information
4. File test - link off of "Online tools". This is a test to get ready for online submission of homework - essays
  1. Download and save the file by clicking on the "File test" link
  2. Open the file, and resave it adding your three initials in from of the file name (for me, my middle initial is "R", so I would change the file FileTest.doc by adding "drb" in front, to get "drbFileTest.doc", and save under this name
  3. Follow the directions in the file.
  4. Email the file to me at "d.r.bowen@wayne.edu"
  5. I will return it with an additional change (an additional word or phrase at the end). Email me what the change is.
5. Essay 1 coming up
6. Choice of fourth book coming up (four-credit people only)