Conceptual Blending

Jonah Lehrer in his new book “Imagine: What Creativity looks like” talks about unrelated ideas coming together in a moment of insight. He describes this process as Conceptual Blending. I’ll post more on Lehrer’s work, as he investigates some of the concepts I myself am looking into.

Let’s look at two examples to start with.

Wall-E

While working on Wall-E Stanton was at an impasse with how to make the main character more empathic with audience. One thing Stanton was sure of was that he didn’t want the robot to have human eyes. This caused a problem, as so much emotion is conveyed through the eyes, that Stanton felt it needed to be addressed. After an impasse of some time and with the frustration building Stanton attended a baseball game with his editor. During the game the editor used a pair for small binoculars to see better what was happening on field. At that moment Stanton had an insight that the way the binoculars looked when moved up and down looked expressive. This realization led him to instantly connect this to his robot character.

Inanimate Character

John Lasseter went through the  same process when coming up with Pixar’s first character. Luxo Jr. Lasseter was also at an impasse in finding the right character to show off the newly created Pixar’s computer animation technology.

After sitting at his desk thinking through the problem he looked at the old desk lamp sitting beside him. Suddenly it became clear, that the lamp itself had character and could convey emotion as a living entity. I’ve talked more about this idea of the inanimate coming to life in a previous post.

Conceptual Blending draws parallels with Margaret Boden’s ideas of Conceptual Space. Boden in her book "The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms" talks about the ability to explore conceptual spaces as one would explore a landscape. Prior knowledge acts as a map which gives us some idea of the terrain, but by exploring beyond the boundaries we can expand our “known territory” and make the room for more ideas.

Reflection, Refraction and Fresnel

Reflection, Refraction and Fresnel

Three Principles for Creative evaluation. Reflection, Refraction and Fresnel. All three offer us different perspectives as we move through a creative domain. Let’s start with the more obvious one of the three: Reflection.

Reflection

Reflection is known to us as a way of stopping. It is a way of re-evaluating. To step back from the closeup view of ourselves or work and to reconsider our heading. By its nature reflection is looking into oneself. Examining the entity before us we look at the details and how they pertain to the whole. Once we have stepped back and observed we then take action to change or concur that we are in the right place. Reflection shows us what is.

Refraction

Refraction is the bending of light. The distortion of vision. Most commonly seen in a glass of water but also occurs when a filter of some kind is placed over our vision. Refraction breaks our fixation on the regular and focus our attention on what is the essence of what has been. Consider the scientist who used a glass of water and a straw to argue that reality is based on perception. He asked his colleagues whether straw’s true nature was straight. They all agreed it was. He then took the straw and placed it in a glass of water. Of course, now the straw appeared to be bent. Their perception of the straw had changed the straw had not. By using refraction to look at our work and ideas we can see things in a different way.

Fresnel

Lastly there is Fresnel. Augustin-Jean Fresnel was a french inventor and scientist who lived in the 1800’s he is most famous for inventing the Fresnel lens which is used on lighthouses to maximise the throw and intensity of the light behind. Fresnel is also known for his observation of a phenomena in water. When one stands back from a body of water what is visible is the reflection of the sky. As you get closer to the edge of the water the angle of light changes and you begin to see down through the water to the bottom.

So Fresnel is another way of looking. By moving closer to a concept we can see what lies underneath. Moving closer may mean immersing ourselves in a topic so we understand the contexts in which we work. Again this gives us a different perspective from which we can branch out from to move forward into new areas.


We should then make use of Reflection, Refraction, Fresnel in our creative practice to shift us through different conceptual spaces to enable more creative work to happen.

Innovation from the 1960's

A great educational video on innovation and creativity from the 1960's. Love the animation style. It could well be a contender for one of my outputs.

Aristotle: The Godfather of Augmented Reality.

What is Augmented reality? For that matter what is reality?
Everyday we augment our reality. Our brains change the way we perceive things around us. Everyone's perceptions differ slightly, no one sees or hears things in exactly the same way. Our brains are particularly good at filling in or leaving out bits of information that make up our perception of reality.

Visual and aural stimulus can change our perception of reality. Our physiological state can be altered by sight and sound. Our reality becomes augmented. And all this without any technology!

Aristotle in his work on tragedy— The Poetics —understood the place of the senses in augmenting people's reality. He set down clear guidelines as to the best way to affect people's state of mind. He saw that this idea of the artist (or Poet) being able to "conjure" dead heroes from the past, to unleash the demons from the underworld and to kill and re-kill loved characters was almost part of a divine calling. The power the Poet could hold over his audience was great, and therefore, the poet had a grave responsibility to perform the best he could. Aristotle's Poetics gives a framework for the Poets to adhere to in order that the performance touch as many of the senses as possible and therefore elicit the most powerful response from the audience. This notion of impacting people by predetermined methods flows through all creative production work. 

Emotional Shapes from Rad Sechrist. The Art Center Blog

Disney of course has been using prescribed forms and colours to deliver stories which make us feel a certain way. Character design often uses set shapes to give us emotional clues about a person we see on screen. Round shapes for soft, fun, friendly characters and Angular shapes for evil and menacing characters.

A Bridge Between Minds

Nowhere is the connection between artist and audience more prevalent than in the comic industry. Telling a story in small compressed panels is a tough ask. conveying the right information at the right moment to get the audience to suspend disbelief and to engage with the work takes some effort.

Scott McCloud’s, Understanding Comics goes along way to revealing the artistry and philosophical underpinnings of what are and how they came about. He delves into the history of the medium and breaks down the structure of comics to their essence.

The Journey McCloud takes us on is one of deconstruction and all presented through the very medium he seeks to explain. A comic book.

As a long time comic lover I have a bias to this medium. However I think that they is some terrific points in McClouds’ text that not only relates to comics but to the whole realm of visual creation and to the special relationship between creator and audience.

The Space Between Us

The Space between comic panels is where relationship exists. This space, or Gutter in comic terms, is a hidden device that allows the viewer to make connections through the narrative. McCloud focuses on the psychological concept of mental closure. Closure is the brains’ way of filling in the rest of the details we can't see based on previous information and knowledge. we observe the parts but perceive the whole. We are "Mentally completing based on past experience" pg.63. This idea of closure is what enables our minds to connections between shapes. I find this process analogous with the generative process known as “Clouding”.

Clouding is where the we take abstract elements, overlay them together, in order to create interesting positive and negative shapes. We then try and see what forms emerge from the abstraction. Aaron sims Creature Design in Photoshop is a great example of this. This act of deliberate shape seeking, much akin to children looking at clouds for dragons or ships, etc is all about closure.

“Clouding” Aaron Sims: Creature Design in Adobe Photoshop

Closure not only connects between shapes but also between narrative. In the case of comics the creator can lead an audience through particular narrative points and set up story points which the viewer then closes the story loop or themselves.

This makes the audience a "willing and conscious collaborator" pg.65 joining with the artist in a conceptual space to become "partners in the invisible" creating something out of nothing, time and time again." pg.205

I believe that this synthesis between audience and artist happens in all designed or created works and It it is the chosen medium the artist uses that becomes the dialect for this communication. As McCloud says, The “medium serves as a bridge between our minds” pg.195


-matt

Idea Execution Audit

The 99% Idea Execution Audit is an interesting snap shot of what Creatives operate. They ran a survey of all their members and created an insightful infographic as a result. The point that stood out for me was that 63.1% of respondents said that their best creative insights happen when they are taking a break and letting their mind wander.

This anecdotal evidence supports much of the theorizing of creativity from the psychology and science groups which see the two areas of hard work and relaxation as hand in glove when it comes to generation new ideas.

This down time is the point at which our minds can sift through what we have been working on an connect ideas together which we may not have previously associated.

-matt

Filters for Seeing

David Sequeira, a Canberra artist, gave an interesting talk at the University of Canberra. David was discussing his work in the context of colour and space. I found it intriguing that he was talking about his installations being visual forms of space and how that relates to the “Spaces between people and objects” This idea of the “space between” things and people echo’s Scott McCloud’s point of the space between comic panels being where the audience engage with the story, occupy a conceptual space and connect the narrative elements together without being told what is actually happening.

I think Augmented Reality is really a dialogue that occurs in the spaces between the real and the virtual. This stood out in David’s other points regarding Indian windows.

Indian Windows are a celebration of exquisite pattern created in stone work. Their intention is to facilitate a “augmented” view of the outside. To let you see something different. They create a layer between what is and what you see. In effect they become a filter for seeing. In many ways this is analogous with Augmented Reality (AR). AR is a filter for seeing that can enhance and change our view causing us to reflect on what we think.

-matt