Creative Entrepreneurship

The idea of starting a business has been brewing for some time among my friends and I. It takes courage and conviction, but the payoff could be good in terms of monetary payoff and impact on a field.

I think the direction I would want to head in is some sort of creative consulting. But this would not be anything new. There are creative consultants in many fields, and they have to do with marketing, advertising, and positioning a product in a new and meaningful way. What I think I would like to pursue is creative problem solving. Actually helping in the design process for products that, preferable, are dedicated to helping people be creative. I like to deal with creativity at a meta-level and think about how it works and how to facilitate it.

I’ve been starting to work on the neuroscience of creativity by integrating biofeedback into the creative process using NeuroSky’s MindSet. In my most recent PhD project, I am recording brainwaves to analyze how creativity affects the mind, and also to integrate those neural impulses into the creative process.

I’ve long dreamed of a creative medium that directly interfaces with the brain and allows one to dream up creations and then manipulate them with the hands. Very similar to an early video that envisions the future of augmented reality in World Builder:

Time Art

A theme running through my artworks and art musings in the past few years (and one touched on in my last post on the stock market) is the concept of art through time. I like to think about the creative process through time.

There are many methods for capturing this process. One is to record the process and play it back. I have briefly experimented with this medium with a quick sketch that I posted on youtube. It was only a half-hour doodle with oil pastels, but I did quite like the result:

How do stocks fit into a creative life?

I must admit, I am an individual of diversified passions. I’m an artist, and this is, perhaps, the side I identify with most, and like to identify with most. However, I am also extremely interested in technology, design, urban planning, and the stock market.

What may be the common thread in these seemingly diverse activities, you may ask? Dynamism. At heart, I think I am a futurist. Content in constant flux. Finding awe in the natural flow and rhythm of production, creation, destruction. For this reason, I wonder at natural phenomena such as the beating drone of a water fall. Trying my eyes to focus on one point and conceptualizing what it means to have all that water in constant motion. And further expanding this thinking to conceive the river as both a flowing entity, teaming with the dichotomy of molecular holism. The river existing as an extension in time and space linking distant lands-a flowing thread made of singular bits convinced to travel together.

The Two Step Dance of Creation: Act, Think

Continue from last post…..The desire for creative liberty seems to be like a pressure valve that needs to be released every so often, at indeterminate intervals. Depending on what kind of problem, one’s mood, how efficiently one is working, the pressure rises, and once it reaches a threshold, one will run into a problem or creative roadblock in the project.

At this point, it is necessary to do some action to relieve this creative urge. This can be in a number of ways. The difference between the two poles of the model I have just presented in the last article, supporting creativity, is that stage one, creative liberation, could be summarized as action, and stage two, creative delibaration, could be summarized as thinking. However, this is a slightly different kind of thinking in the head. This type of thinking follows more closely with the distributed cognition definition of thinking. Humans use our environments in order to work out problems and manipulate material and physical entities (words, paint, objects, etc.) to help conceptualize a problem.

I will give a concrete example. Say I am painting, and I have a particular line that I am developing, and this line has a certain radius to it. This radius needs to be extended because that is what the perceptual logic of the piece dictates. In order to deliberate over this problem, I can look at it and imagine what it looks like, taking the perceptual logic and running with it, so to speak. Simulating future circumstance based upon the foundation I currently have, building up. This is all constructive, vertical, rule based thinking, all relating to the perceptual logic and to the thinking part of the process. However, within this process lies action (part of the first stage). The action is me taking my brush and moving it along the curve to see how it would feel to make this kind of curve. This is a mini two step cycle in itself actually, because I perform the curve and I evaluate if it resonates with the perceptual logic that has developed within me. But these are mini performance and mini evaluations that would cause a small spike and dip on the larger dampened oscillator model.

Supporting Creativity from within the Concept

The four step theory of creativity widely cited in the creativity theory literature is a good place to begin thinking about computational approaches that can augment and supplement the process.

1. Preparation
2. Incubation
3. Illumination
4. Implementation

This kind of thinking usually happens in the context of problem solving. It is usually not an open ended creative context, such as the scenario of abstract art I have discussed before. However, on this side note, the abstract art previously discussed enters into this phase after a perceptual logic has been constructed.

Context in Art and Science

The art of science. A seeming dichotomy, which may be less distinct than once imagined. Science is the careful crafting of knowledge through experimentation and verification. Methodology varies, but verification typically relies upon statistical, computational, logical, or a combination thereof in order to make its way into the realm known as knowledge. Science, as a totality of human effort, is an organic being. And knowledge, as its extension, is also an amorphous, far-reaching entity in itself. The digestion and interpretation of knowledge in humans breeds an entirely new creature: thought. (These terms are here loosely defined in order to put forth a feeling of an idea that I have. This may be a typical occurrence in this space, analytic philosophy aside…)

Creative Spirit

Learning how to craft new materials enables the mind to conceive of novel manipulations, therefore expanding the realm of thinkable thoughts within one’s mind. For example, a sculptor may look at a pile of scrap metal and see a creation, whereas a layperson will see trash.

There may or may not be a difference between an artist and a creator. I’ll explore this line of thought here, as a fun tangent. An artist, let us say, a sculptor, as the example earlier utilizes, may view the pile of rubble as a potential. However, he may not view a pile of sticks as a potential art piece, or a tree as a sculpting aparatus, as a land artist would (a medium that has inspired me lately, and one I have explored in the past). However, a creator, always seeking to enrich and enliven one’s environment sees potential whenever in the write mood. If in the creative spirit, the creator can make art out of whatever is close by. Paint is a convenient method of expression and is often close to the creator, that is, if he is well versed in listening to the ever-so-subtle whisper of creative force coming from within.

Let us now dispatch with the distinction between artist and creator, as we have now discovered a more useful distinction: the mood of creation verse the mood of utility and normalcy. This psychological difference can be contrasted against the earlier mentioned behavioral distinction and social tag of artist, non-artist, etc. Cognitively speaking, each man is endowed with near equivalent brain functions, however, it may be the skill with which one endorses, builds upon, magnifies, that subtle intuition and desire to craft reality. Once developed and refined, the creative mood becomes a behavioral and personality trait which can acquire a label known as ‘artist’, but there is this cognitive dimension that spurred the human to act in a particular way over time in order to achieve such status.

What is the point of such a discussion and such a distinction? I believe that developing this creative force is essential for the character of a human. It teaches one about the human condition and the plastic nature of the universe. It can inform one that each individual has the power to influence society in an enormous and positive manner, given the right tools (and intelligence to seek them) and motivation.

It is thus socially responsible to learn the art of creation. Following from this, it is a ethical responsibility to investigate the nature of this mental state and develop the right tools to manage and nourish the creative state of mind, so that humans may reach creative equilibrium with nature and with each other, rather than utilizing some of the more toxic methods of creation.