5 June 2022
This week’s challenge activity was designed to get our creative juices flowing. We were introduced to a range of creative ideation techniques, including brainstorming, mind maps, crazy eights, round robin, opposite thinking, collages, cut-ups, mash-ups, and SCAMPER. We then had to choose one or more of these techniques and use them to remediate a creative artefact into another form.
I was a little confused by the term ‘remediate’ to start with, as I’ve only come across it in the sense of correction – that is, finding a remedy for something. Here, though, we mean literally to ‘re-mediate’, i.e. to recreate a creative artefact by borrowing from and refashioning other media. We were allowed to choose any artefact we wanted, be it a book, song, film, piece of art, short story, or anything else we found interesting.
In some ways, I wish I hadn’t glanced over the challenge activity brief before I read through the other course materials, as I found myself immediately jumping to ideas for potential ‘finished products’ before I’d even read about the ideation techniques, let alone used any of them to help me generate initial ideas. I tried to take a step back and read through the topic materials relatively slowly so that I could immerse myself as fully as possible in the creative process. I may try to refrain from looking at the challenge brief until I’ve read through the weekly course materials next week, so my ‘get-things-done-quick’ mind doesn’t get carried away with itself.
I’m writing this blog ‘live’ as I try out different ideation techniques, so I’ll keep adding to it over the next few days. One thing I’m going to try to keep in mind in particular from the challenge brief is that “the point is not to aim for perfection and instead [to] generate many ideas that could be improved upon if they show potential”.
Before I start generating ideas for how I might remediate my chosen artefact, I decided to employ a couple of ideation techniques to figure out which artefact I’d actually choose to remediate. I brainstormed ideas for ‘creative things I love’, generating six main themes in the two minutes I set myself. I chose a short sprint for this part, as “quick sprints drive creative sessions and avoid burnout” (IDEO U 2022).
My six main themes were Musicals (more than a little inspired by the musicals medley section of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Party that was playing on the TV in the background while I was brainstorming…), Writing, TV shows, the music of Taylor Swift, the music of Sara Bareilles, and (something of an outlier perhaps) Biscuits. I then framed these in a mind map, and spent some more time adding branches to specific examples for each theme:
That’s enough for tonight – I can feel myself getting sleepy, and I want to practice Geoff Petty’s (2017) incubation stage by literally ‘sleeping on it’. According to Petty, “relaxation and sleep seem to give the unconscious an opportunity to contribute creative ideas to the conscious mind” (ibid: 194). Dr Rangan Chatterjee goes a little deeper on the science: “When we stop focusing on the task in front of us, there’s a part of the brain called the default mode network, or the DMN, that goes into overdrive [...] that part of the brain helps us solve problems and helps us be more creative” [Hyman 2019]. In other words, our brain wants to solve problems for us – we just need to give it a break.
On that note, I'll say night night for now.
6 June 2020
Having let my ideas swirl around my subconscious overnight and throughout the workday today, I decided to try out the opposite thinking technique to question my assumptions about the challenge activity itself:
I didn’t think for too long about my assumptions and instead just wrote down whatever came into my head. I surprised myself a little with my assumption that remediation has to be visual. As soon as I read the challenge activity brief, I immediately assumed that I had to produce some kind of visual artefact – which scared me, as I don’t consider myself as particularly skilled in the art department. Challenging this assumption, though, gave me the confidence to lean into whichever form of remediation struck a chord with me.
(Since writing this originally, I've also come across David and Tom Kelley's wonderful book called 'Creative Confidence', which states that, all too often, people equate 'creative' with 'artistic', which fundamentally and unequivocally isn't the case (2015: 1).)
I also like my solution to my assumption that remediation can only happen with one artefact at a time. While making my mind map last night, I was already struggling with how I could possibly choose just one artefact to remediate. Using opposite thinking, I realised that I didn’t have to restrict myself to just one – the point was to be creative, so what was stopping me from combining different artefacts to create a new one?
This got me thinking about the connections between the various branches on my mind map, as well as the direction I seemed to be going on with the opposite thinking exercise. It didn’t take too long for me to see that writing (text) and storytelling were strong themes across my entire mind map (except for biscuits, though I do use them as sustenance when carrying out writing tasks…).
Seeing this connection, I asked myself: could I create a (short) story or poem or song that combines my favourite lines from the music I had included in my mind map – that is, the music of Sara Bareilles and Taylor Swift, plus my favourite songs from the musicals I noted down?
I started by listing out my favourite lines on post it notes. I realised part way through that this was essentially a version of David Bowie’s ‘cut-ups’, a technique by which he would write out lines from newspaper, books, his own and other people’s songs, diaries, and other forms of writing, cut the sentences up into short sections, mix them up, then reconnect them. He called this “a kind of ‘story ingredients’ list” (cited in Rae 2020).
I then assigned each of them a category – love, storytelling, or hope / confidence, and grouped them together so I could see what lines went together:
Then I just started writing – not overthinking, just seeing what words and themes I thought went well together and going from there. My resulting piece is here. It's a mash-up of the lines that speak to me most from the music of Sara Bareilles, Taylor Swift, and Waitress the Musical. I think I’d probably describe it as a kind of love poem, or perhaps an ode to storytelling. :
I got a huge amount out of this challenge activity. The opposite thinking technique really helped me to break out of the boxes I’d subconsciously been forcing myself into, helping me give myself the freedom to do what felt right. I really enjoyed getting to work with the things I love, words and storytelling being key themes that I’d like to revisit as often as I can as the weeks and months go on.
I think I’m getting closer to finding my intrinsic motivations, which is a beautiful feeling. I’m so excited to turn the next page...
An epilogue of sorts
I found a wonderful quote in Rae’s book (2020), attributed to Brion Gysin, which I’ve yet been able to find in its original form, but which captures my approach to this activity so beautifully I couldn’t not include it:
"Take your own words or the words said to be ‘the very own words’ of anyone else living or dead. You’ll soon see that words don’t belong to anyone. Words have a vitality of their own and you or anybody else can make them gush into action.”
💛
References
Board of Innovation. (2020). Opposite Thinking - Board Of Innovation. [online] Available at: https://www.boardofinnovation.com/tools/opposite-thinking/ [Accessed 26 September 2021].
HYMAN, Mark [presenter] and Rangan Chatterjee [guest]. 2019. ‘Is there an antidote to stress?’. The Doctor’s Farmacy [podcast]. Available at: https://drhyman.com/blog/2019/12/31/podcast-ep87/ [accessed 5 June 2022].
IDEO U. 2022. ‘Ideation Method: Mash-Up’. IDEO U 2018. Available at: https://www.ideou.com/pages/ideation-method-mash-up [accessed 5 June 2022].
KELLEY, David and Tom Kelley. 2015. Creative Confidence. London: William Collins.
PETTY, Geoff. 2017. How to be Better at Creativity. Lulu.com.
RAE, Casey. 2020. ‘Watch That Man: Splicing Tape with Burroughs and Bowie’. In James Curcio(ed). MASKS: Bowie and Artists of Artifice. Bristol: Intellect.
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