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.

Constructive Improvisation

"Your Brain on Improv" by Charles Limb gives a fascinating insight into the brain and improvisation.


There’s two main areas of scientific research into creativity. Cognitive Psychology and NeuroScience. Both have made attempts at understanding where creativity comes from and where in our heads it is located.

Updates in scanning technology are allowing new information to be found. the use of fRMI scans in particular is giving an insight into what’s happening in our brain during the creative process. The fMRI works by basically photographing the blood flow in the brain. Where a surge of blood flow appears during an activity there is a correlation to the about of activity that part of the brain is doing.

Charles Limb is a Head and Neck Surgeon. Earlier this year he conducted research into creativity with Jazz musicians using fMRI.

He got some of the best Jazz musicians in America to lie inside an MRI scanner with a modified MIDI keyboard on their laps. the participants memorized a piece of pre-written music and played it. Limb took scans of their brain while they were playing. Then he asked them to play the same piece but at certain points to improvise.

Limb discovered that during these points of improvisation self-monitoring went down and self-expression went up. Interestingly the part of the active part of the brain was the same part which connects to auto-biographical information. Limb replicated this experiment with the participation of freestyle rappers. the artist would rap to a pre-written lyrics and then at a specific moment interject with freestyle lyrics. the scan results shown an infusion of blood to the same area of the brain as the Jazz musicians. So there’s a belief that there is a neurological basis for creative.

What I want to connect here is the idea that production artists use different creative methodologies to produce a constructive improvisation which essentially tricks their brain into shutting down these self-monitoring, more analytical, portions of the brain and open up the self-expressive creative parts of the brain.