April 17, 2009

 1) We looked at the chair project, round two, Evil Twin. With this week's chair sitting next to a photo of the previous chair, each person described the ways that their work on the second chair exhibited strongly lateral thinking.

We also looked at the flotsam and jetsam projects.

We watched a film called Edward James, Builder of Dreams. This showed the surrealist sculpture garden he built in Mexico. In "Las Posas," he built his own creative sanctuary on earth.

After the break, we did a guided visualization exercise, called "creating your inner sanctuary."

Next, we talked about things that kill individual creativity, and we discussed our own individual needs for the things that nurture our creativity.

Next week, the chair project-round three, is due. The goal for this piece is to be radically different than both chair one, and chair two. The chair might evolve in a way that makes it the perfect chair for your inner sanctuary.

Also due next week, are the sketchbooks. I provided a list of items that should be included.

There was also a short reading hand-out, called "Confused Mind," and I asked that some of the concepts from reading be related to the process of working on the chair, round three.

April 3rd - creativity part two

 We began taking a look at the chair project, round one period the goal of this piece was to transform a simple foamcore chair in an amazing and personal way.

We briefly talked about creative moments that have been observed in the past seven days.

We listened to a 20 minute audio by creativity expert, Shakyi Gawain. There was a hand out with notes on her talk, and a list of questions, including things like present, and future creativity. Specifically, there was a question asking each of us to imagine what it would be like to make a good living doing something we intrinsically enjoy spending our time on.

After the break, we briefly discussed the principle of lateral thinking, and as an example of lateral thinking, we saw video clip of an individual who makes huge, but temporary, drawings on the beach sand.

We did a classic brainstorming exercise called Crossing the chasm.

After that, we attempted to solve a pressing individual problem, using an exercise called "Visiting Ancient Egypt."

The assignments for the next class meeting, which is in two weeks, include:

1) making an evil twin version of the chair project

2)"Flotsam + Jetsam" chair project-- and making a series of found object chairs, which are actually only tiny sketch models, of junk from the beach or an alley quickly turned into simple abstractions of chairs.

INSTRUCTIONS: step one: go to a place of abundant flotsam and jetsam. Comb the beach, or its urban equivalent, such as an alley, and gather whatever small bits of castoffs in debris you find. This might include fragments of weathered glass, parts of Styrofoam cups, little bits of metal, or scraps of wood.  Step two: get a glue gun, some white glue, some tape, possibly an exact a knife and scissors, and very quickly and without any concerns about craftsmanship, combine the sound bits of debris into small chair like objects. These only need to be an inch or two tall. The image shown above is of some sketch model chairs, by artist, Lucas Samaras.

Strive for quantity and variety, rather than quality or craftsmanship.

3)Finally, there was a handout from the book "Lateral Thinking", which is to be completed before our next on-campus meeting.

Create class part one

We began the study of tactical creativity.

First we examine the origins of our current creative identity. We did this by recalling early educational experiences, and by watching a clip from the film seven up.

We went through a slide show called 12 creation myths.

We made two chairs from Clay, and then we discussed the process of letting go, and the fact that highly creative people need to not get attached to their ideas.

Small foamcore shares were given out, for an out of class assignment, which involves transforming the chair and a fresh personal and novel way.

Finally: we watched the video about the artists Man Ray.