Demystifying Creativity

Margareta Ackerman

Based on Keith Saywer’s Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation and Zig-Zag: The surprising path to greater creativity.

History of Creativity

Creativity is a culturally and historically sensitive

concept.

Ancient views on creativityThe ancient Greeks believed that the inspiration for originality came from the gods and invented heavenly creatures - Muses - as supervisors of human creativity.

Studio apprenticeships

• From ancient times and into part of the Renaissance:

• Artists worked in hierarchically structured teams

• All final products were attributed to the master!

Leonardo De Vinci apprenticed with Andrea del Verrocchio.

Creative freedom?• Artists did not create whatever they wished.

• Art served specific functions, often religious.

• Artists were paid to produce exactly what the patron wanted (portraits, landscape, etc).

• Art was a trade.

Status?

• Status was based on financial standing

• Artists were considered lower status than butchers and silversmiths.

• This started to change during the Renaissance

Creativity before the Renaissance

• The ability to imitate established masters

• Accurately represent nature

Towards conceptions of the modern artist

• Renaissance (14th to 17th century)

• The art of the portrait was born (15th century)

• Artists started signing their work - aligned with the new idea that an artist has a unique vision and special abilities.

Institutions of Art Formed

• Museums opened

• Schools of art run by the state

• Artist started working independently from Church and court

New Views of Artists: 16th Century

• Members of a prestigious minority

• Independent of society’s norms and tastes

• Inspired innovators

• Communicate inner insights

Industrial Revolution (late 1800s-mid 1900s)

Largely agrarian, rural societies became industrial and urban. Prior, manufacturing was typically took place in people’s homes, with

simple machines and hand-tools. The industrial revolution transitioned to powered, special-purpose machinery, factories and

mass production.

“Breaker boys,” whose job was to separate impurities from coal by hand in a coal breaker.

What impact did the industrial revolution have

on the arts?

The rise of the individualistic view of the artist

• Prior to the revolution, artists needed studios to make their own paints, brushes, frames, etc.

• Now they became available for purchase.

• Allowed artists to work independently.

The notion of an inspired, independent, isolated artist rests on social and economic developments.

The dark side of the revolution

• Initially unregulated

• Child labour

• Long work days (10-14 hours, 6 days a week, no pair holidays)

• Dangerous work conditions

• No compensation for work injury

Declined quality of life• Much faster pace work

• Significantly less leisure time

• No holiday celebrations

• Declined sense of community

Backlash to the Industrial Revolution

Romanticism: a movement in the arts and literature that emphasizes emotions, inspiration, subjectivity, and the importance of the individual.

Has a huge impact on today’s views of the artist.

Rationalism VS Romantiscm

• Creativity is generated by the conscious mind

• Rationality is needed for creativity

• Creative comes from the unconsciousness

• Rationality interferes with creativity

Romantic creativity

• Requires escape from the conscious ego

• Setting one’s emotions and instinct free

• Values imagination over mastery

Romantic creativity

• Gave rise to the idea that artists were inherently privileged

• Artists got higher status than craftspeople

Are artists often crazy?

Birth of the crazy artist• Romantics believe that

madness was a side effect of creativity.

• As a result, many Romantic poets proclaimed madness

• Now psychologists believe that creative people may be more rational and effective than others

Today’s view of an artist:

A unique, inspired person who expressed themselves

through their art. This view is less than 200 years old.

Postmodern art: challenging romanticism

• Minimalism, pop art,

• Unemotional, rejects personal engagement, and denies expression

• Maybe this is why many don’t like modern art: We hold dear our Romanticist view of creativity.

Other arts

Drama

• Melodramatic acting

• Stanislavski’s technique (late 1800 to early 1900)

• Emphasis on real emotion

• Personalizing

Dance• Ballroom

• Ballet

• Dance: Modern dance

• Focus on self-expression

Music• Classical

• Used to focus on Church and Court

• Jazz

• Rock and Pop

• Electronic

• Includes everyday sounds

• More accessible than ever

Less structure

What trends do these art forms share?

How does computer creativity fit with our Romantic views that

creativity is an expression of the human spirit?

Given the Romanticism backslash to the Industrial Revolution, how might our views of creativity today be influenced by recent progress in computing?

Creativity Myths

Myth #1: Creativity comes from the unconscious

• Comes from the Romantic movement

• Supported by Freudian psychoanalysis

• Presents the creative agent as passive

• Similar to ancient divine muses

Myth #1: Creativity comes from the unconscious

• Creativity is hard work

• It is mostly conscious

• The most creative people are also the most productive

Productivity theory

• The best way to find a good idea: Come up with many ideas and then evaluate them

• “Geniuses” are wrong as often as everyone else - they just produce more!

• High correlation between productivity and producing impactful work

Productivity theory

• Picasso produce ~20,000 works of art

• Einstein published over 240 papers

• Bach composed a cantata per week

• Edison filed over 1000 patents

Myth #2: Creative ideas come fully formed in magical moments of insight

• Creative ideas often form in a “zig-zag”

• The come in many “mini-insights”

• Often redirected and refined many times

Netflix

Hasbro (lollipop failure)

Starbuck

Myth #2: Creative ideas come fully formed in magical moments of insight

• Most successful businesses abandon their original business plans

• They tend to get it “right” around the third try

• Research often ends up being very different than originally intended, and tends to go through many iterations

Myth #3: children are more creative than adults

• Children are creative by nature

• Schooling interferes with the creative impulse

• Comes from the Romantic movement’s view of children as pure and close to nature

• The road to creativity is long and requires training

Myth #4: Creativity is the expressive of an inner force

• A relatively new expectation

• Some artists feel that they end up having to impose such “messages”

• Creativity is a function of culture and society

Myth #5: Creativity must break convention

• We like to think of creative people as those who break convention

• This is a recent idea that also originates from the Romantic era

• Formal training is essential for creativity

How much training is optimal?

• You must learn the domain before contributing to it!

• College education greatly aids creativity

Myth #6: Most creative work is unrecognized in its time

• There is no evidence for this! :-)

• Only a few popular anecdotes

Myth #7: Creativity lies in the right brain

• Notion that left brain is rational and right brain is creative

• Idea popularized in the 1970s

• No one found a brain location for creativity - it appears to require the whole brain!

Creativity as a personality trait?

Attempts to define creativity as a personality trait

• Many different traits were identified in highly creative people (autonomy, belief in one’s creativity, 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, etc.)

• A variety of creativity tests (like IQ tests) have been developed, many were disproved.

Exercises

Use (only) this shape to create a

picture.

Combine these shapes to make a

picture.

Keep these shapes where they are, and

complete the picture.

Attempts to define creativity as a personality trait

• Ultimately this approach failed - creativity is NOT a personality trait!

• It is a combination of basic mental capacities & training

• Creativity is Domain Specific

Who Creates?

The conscious creator

• We tend to think of creativity as a personality trait

• When something is created, we search for a creator

• The watchmaker analogy

Nature as a creator• Evolution produces many creative results

• Can we think of evolution (or nature) as a creator?

• Creativity without consciousness

If nature can be creative, what does this imply about

computer creativity?

Group creativity• In the 1600s, creative products (e.g. a watch)

typically had a single creator - not anymore!

• Think of how things are made today:

• Movie

• Band performance

• Creative products/services like Plated, amazon.com, and Netflix

Group creativity

• Can you think of anything that is done truly independently?

• When using software to be creativity, are we working alone or in a group?

Defining creativity

So what is creativity?

• Originality

• Appropriateness (sometimes “usefulness”)

Attempts to make it more concrete

• Four criteria for creativity by Alan Newell, Cliff Shaw and Herb Simon

1. Novel and useful

2. Rejects ideas that were previous accepted

3. Results from intense motivation and persistence

4. Clarifying a problem that was previous vague

Attempts to make it more concrete

• Can you find counterexamples for each criteria?

H and P Creativity• Margaret Boden

• H-Creativity: A new idea for all of human history

• P-Creativity: Creative processes were utilized

Big-C vs little-c creativity• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• Little-c creativity: used in everyday life

• Big-C Creativity: transforms a domain

Big-C vs little-c creativity• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• Little-c creativity: used in everyday life

• Big-C Creativity: transforms a domain

Please provide examples of each

Big-C vs little-c creativity• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• Little-c creativity: used in everyday life

• Big-C Creativity: transforms a domain

Do they require difference cognitive functions?

Sources

• Keith Saywer. Zig-Zag: The surprising path to greater creativity. Wiley, 2013.

• Keith Saywer. Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation. Oxford University Press, 2012.