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A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

#11

Post by colechristensen »

uxhacker wrote: post #9
colechristensen wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish ancient Greek techne τέχνη hadn't gone through the split that left "art" on one side and "technology" (or work?) on the other. The split of art vs. design you're talking about or one of the many ways to divide the act of creation into a classical/romantic divide or one of the many other ways to describe it should be considered harmful. And I'm not trying to split hairs here but wishing the dichotomy you're tal…

Where is the harm? You can be in both worlds at the same time. If we think of Leonardo da Vinci he created both art that created problems, and inventions that solved problems. But these world where very separate.

Your mental models of the world are reflected in how you interact with it.

If you have an idea that there's a split between "creating beautiful stuff" and "creating useful stuff" then your world turns into one where something is only one or the other where someone creating only does one or the other.

These days it's thought of unique or special if something is both and the fact this isn't standard is influenced by the mental model of them being separate.

Re: A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

#12

Post by lkm0 »

fao_ wrote: post #10
lkm0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's a failing of science. Reading the early volumes of Nature from the 19th century shows how much more of an open dialogue it was back then: https://www.nature.com/nature/volumes Though education was much more limited, so take "open" with a grain of salt.

I think the difficulty is we know vastly more, and have experimented with vastly more since the 19th century, that the majority of university learning these days, and the inherent challenge within that learning, is "how do we condense 200+ years of investigation, experimentation, and knowledge building into only a handful of years of learning?" For a lot of sciences, we are very lucky that it is still possible. But t…

Certainly, I'm also aware of how difficult it is to implement open dialogue in practice. Perhaps my hope is that general education could help develop that sort of transversal insight that talented scientists use to naturally understand topics which they are not familiar with, by working with analogies and fundamental principles. I know that knowledge of the nitty gritty generally requires years of actually struggling with the thing, and this cannot be asked of any layman. Still, for example, I'm thinking of times when you deal with a topic that is nominally in the same field as yours, but that is so foreign that the only knowledge relevant to it is something barely above undergraduate, say Newton's laws or thermodynamics. Many scientists have managed to either take some lessons from other fields and bring them into theirs, or contribute despite their relative lack of education in that subfield.

I'd like to believe there is a sort of education that allows people not to understand details, but at least to be able to get the rough shape of the topic at hand and shape their ideas in a way that benefits the other party. Perhaps this is just a matter of language and shouldn't need so much more education than the basics and curiosity. Or perhaps it's a pipe dream.

As for the crackpots, well, I know some people spend time and energy with them, but it is hard to believe their true objective is learning or contributing. It is, fortunately, very obvious when you meet one in the wild.

Re: A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

#14

Post by SiempreViernes »

fao_ wrote: post #10
lkm0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's a failing of science. Reading the early volumes of Nature from the 19th century shows how much more of an open dialogue it was back then: https://www.nature.com/nature/volumes Though education was much more limited, so take "open" with a grain of salt.

I think the difficulty is we know vastly more, and have experimented with vastly more since the 19th century, that the majority of university learning these days, and the inherent challenge within that learning, is "how do we condense 200+ years of investigation, experimentation, and knowledge building into only a handful of years of learning?" For a lot of sciences, we are very lucky that it is still possible. But t…

> And then of course, there's the frequent crackpots. Pretty much anyone within a science discipline who is even decently well known, especially if they're in physics, gets multiple emails a day from crackpots about how their theories are going to "totally blow a hole in the established knowledge"

I think at this point most of these people talk to chatbots instead, anecdotally the crank flow seems to have lessened.

Re: A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

#15

Post by rainingmonkey »

NonHyloMorph wrote: post #7
arlobish wrote: post #4

Am I right in saying the conclusion of the experiment was: people who spend more time thinking about a problem before acting tend to find it more engaging and were therefore more successful? I wonder if the quality of the art suffered within the context of the experiment because of the time constraint, even if in the long run those people tended to create better art.

No. People who are confronted with a task that don't search for a solution but for a priblem within it are more creative. The consequence was that some barely produced solutions within the time constraint. Those were more succesfull as artists, the article states, while a quite a few of the other folks dropped out of art. Consequentially I'd like to add: They found the solution to the problem of living as an artist i…

This is the conclusion of the article (and presumably the researchers) but I don't think it necessarily follows.

It seems to me equally plausible that one group were more interested in the craft of an accurate depiction, while the other was more interested in the arrangement of a pleasing aesthetic - both could be considered "solutions" to the given task.

Re: A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

#16

Post by 7402 »

That experiment might simply divide artists into those who understand bullshit assignments and can adapt to that context, and those who don't and can't.

There are plenty of artists who can do well on SATs, and can fill out bureaucratic forms, and complete one-hour timed tests. They might well take a lot of time to think and explore when they are making their own art on their own schedule.

But I know artists who just can't function well under artificial constraints and can't adapt well to someone else telling them how to create art.

Re: A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

#17

Post by reg_dunlop »

gh0stcat wrote: post #13

I'm struggling to understand what they define "problem finding" to be in this context, did anyone come away with a more concrete definition?

No.

Here's one interpretation though, for the discourse:

When given a task, some artists focused less on the objective and more on the process of observation. Observation of what, would be a logical next question. And I have to imagine and indulge in some projection here and guess that any of the artists may have been looking for more of a challenge, or more meaning. How to select some combination of objects, relative to the constraints of the circumstances for the task, paired with the skills they possess to produce the task at hand.

Given the proper acumen and a relatively subordinate task, I imagine some would tend towards Parkinson's law.

So following this, maybe problem finding could be seen as: how is this beautiful/aesthetically pleasing, or what do I really want to compose to fulfill this demand? What innate qualities do these things have which express some quality? Or maybe: how can I waste an hour of this man's time?

YMMV

Re: A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

#18

Post by throwway120385 »

colechristensen wrote: post #11
uxhacker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the harm? You can be in both worlds at the same time. If we think of Leonardo da Vinci he created both art that created problems, and inventions that solved problems. But these world where very separate.

Your mental models of the world are reflected in how you interact with it. If you have an idea that there's a split between "creating beautiful stuff" and "creating useful stuff" then your world turns into one where something is only one or the other where someone creating only does one or the other. These days it's thought of unique or special if something is both and the fact this isn't standard is influenced by th…

Moreover the people who create useful things don't often take the time to try to make them beautiful, with the result that everything is a utilitarian grey box with some buttons on it.

Re: A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

#19

Post by woolion »

colechristensen wrote: post #5
uxhacker wrote: post #3

I was always told that the difference between art and design is that the artist creates the problem, and the designers solve them. I thought it followed the Socrates tradition in that the true philosopher is the one asking the questions, and it is the role of the student to answer them. I wish I remembered who I am quoting here

I wish ancient Greek techne τέχνη hadn't gone through the split that left "art" on one side and "technology" (or work?) on the other. The split of art vs. design you're talking about or one of the many ways to divide the act of creation into a classical/romantic divide or one of the many other ways to describe it should be considered harmful. And I'm not trying to split hairs here but wishing the dichotomy you're tal…

To echo your point, there is no "art" at all without "technology"; from cave paintings, paint tubes, to digital tablets...

Re: A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

#20

Post by everyone »

I program and project manage games, I am certainly a problem solver on the team, and I definitely view the artists as problem creators. They will make everything harder for everyone else, but it's cus they are just 100% focused on the art, they want the art to be as good as possible and to realize their vision, so having them on the team means a lot more work in general but a far better looking game.
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