Collaborative creativity is when a group of designers/artists get together to find a game plan. The best way to find a well-rounded and effective final product is to have a group work on it. Mary Stewart talks about some of the steps collaborative groups should take part in to ensure that the process is effective. The summarized version is as follows:
Sharpen your focus.
Use playful rules (make the process seem fun when you're being effective).
Number your ideas.
Build and jump (pose questions and goals that help the group continue to move forward).
Leave space for a visual representation of your ideas.
Warm up, get to know your group if people are new.
Keep physical resources out so you can make things on the spot.
What I noticed about this list is that collaborative creativity sounds like a video game. Seriously. When you begin a new game, you sharpen your focus by educating yourself on the game until you know everything about it and exactly what you'll be doing to reach your goal. Playful rules are like the activities that are within some games, like various fights you participate in to develop more experience, or different points along a storyline. If its a storyline game, or anything that has some sort of order, or you collect various skill points or objects along the way, sequences and numbering is involved. Building and jumping is obviously something found in games - whether you actually reach new levels, or just advance through varying tasks, you're being prompted to increase in experience and move toward the goal. There is constant visual representation of ideas through life, energy, amo, inventory, etc. bars or visual representations on your screen. When you begin a single-player game with a storyline, like Halo, you are introduced to your "group" or teammates, and in a live game online, you quickly learn the important details about the other people playing so you can use them to your advantage. And finally, physical resources are always available for leisure or neccesity - building blocks and tools in Minecraft, food, valuable materials, etc. in Skyrim, amunition, weaponry, etc. in a million others.
So yes, creative collaboration is very much like gaming. Does that proove that games are art now?
Monday, December 15, 2014
Design: A Practical Take
In Launching the Imagination, Mary Stewart spells out the difference between art and design for all of us who like to go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth on what the difference is.
Design solves a problem, and art makes one.
To me, this idea is rather hard to grasp, or at least it is hard to understand why it even matters. However, I just had a stroke of genius enlightenment, and will bestow upon you a wonderfully practical take on the argument. First of all, Stewart defines the questions designers ask at the begining of a new design task, which are essentially the proof that designers are solving an established problem:
What do we need?
What existing designs are similar to the design we need?
What is the difference between the existing designs and the new designs?
How can we transform, combine, or expand these exisiting designs?
So, here's the practical example: headphones. I've been doing a serious amount of review-reading on headphones because I finally decided I needed to get a pair after a year of saying I would and not actually deciding which one I thought was the best. Headphone reviews are quite enlightening, because they talk about the difference between all different types of headphones on a highly technical level, and in comparison to others. This is the same process that happens in design, at least for me and the people I know. When designing something, my analysis of the design is highly technical, determing if any little piece of the product has a flaw or looks out of place or strange. And throughout the process, I am constantly looking at similar design styles, products, and the rest of the line I'm creating, to determine if the design is going in the right direction.
With headphone design, what do we need is a question that I would think is asked last, so I'll skip that and come back. So say the problem is, your company is competing with Beats, so you need to make something that is better than their headphones. What existing designs are similar to the anti-beats design we need? Find other companies who are in high regard and rate well in comparison to beats. What is the difference between the existing designs and the new designs? That is, what is the difference between those headphones we just looked into and our ideas for our headphone design? Once those are defined... how can we transform, combine, or expand these exisiting designs? In other words, how can we bridge the gap between our headphone design and those successful anti-beats headphones to come out on top? Then finally, what do we need to accomplish this?
There you have it, the problem-solving designer in a practical life-application. :) Here are my headphones with a review attached, just for fun.
Design solves a problem, and art makes one.
To me, this idea is rather hard to grasp, or at least it is hard to understand why it even matters. However, I just had a stroke of genius enlightenment, and will bestow upon you a wonderfully practical take on the argument. First of all, Stewart defines the questions designers ask at the begining of a new design task, which are essentially the proof that designers are solving an established problem:
What do we need?
What existing designs are similar to the design we need?
What is the difference between the existing designs and the new designs?
How can we transform, combine, or expand these exisiting designs?
So, here's the practical example: headphones. I've been doing a serious amount of review-reading on headphones because I finally decided I needed to get a pair after a year of saying I would and not actually deciding which one I thought was the best. Headphone reviews are quite enlightening, because they talk about the difference between all different types of headphones on a highly technical level, and in comparison to others. This is the same process that happens in design, at least for me and the people I know. When designing something, my analysis of the design is highly technical, determing if any little piece of the product has a flaw or looks out of place or strange. And throughout the process, I am constantly looking at similar design styles, products, and the rest of the line I'm creating, to determine if the design is going in the right direction.
With headphone design, what do we need is a question that I would think is asked last, so I'll skip that and come back. So say the problem is, your company is competing with Beats, so you need to make something that is better than their headphones. What existing designs are similar to the anti-beats design we need? Find other companies who are in high regard and rate well in comparison to beats. What is the difference between the existing designs and the new designs? That is, what is the difference between those headphones we just looked into and our ideas for our headphone design? Once those are defined... how can we transform, combine, or expand these exisiting designs? In other words, how can we bridge the gap between our headphone design and those successful anti-beats headphones to come out on top? Then finally, what do we need to accomplish this?
There you have it, the problem-solving designer in a practical life-application. :) Here are my headphones with a review attached, just for fun.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Fragmentation
"As an object moves, it sequentially occupies various positions in space. Visual fragmentation can be used to simulate this effect in art." - Mary Stewart in Launching the Imagination
Fragmentation is the ability to communicate movement through a sort of all-at-once stop motion type of art. Imagine taking many photos of a bicycle moving, and then photoshopping them together to create one photo that has all the positions of the bicycle in it. Essentially, what you're doing is attempting to simulate movement by showing all the parts of the movement in the same place. I shared a photoshopped image of this type a while back, of a dog moving:
Fragmentation is the ability to communicate movement through a sort of all-at-once stop motion type of art. Imagine taking many photos of a bicycle moving, and then photoshopping them together to create one photo that has all the positions of the bicycle in it. Essentially, what you're doing is attempting to simulate movement by showing all the parts of the movement in the same place. I shared a photoshopped image of this type a while back, of a dog moving:
On the other hand, there are other ways to create fragmentation. One could draw or paint all the positions of a moving figure, which obviously allows for the artist to manipulate the figures as he or she chooses. Or, sticking with photography, it is possible to achieve the fragmented look with a different length of exposure. The phenomenal example Stewart used in the book is Thomas Eakins' Double Jump from 1885.
Kineseeyousquirm
The Kinesthetic Response is how we mentally and physically respond when we see something caught in motion. Because we are so familiar with kinesthetics and are accustomed to applying our understanding of reality to art, it is easy to react to things that show movement. Mary Stewart talks about how the mind can easily connect many images in a Disney movie as a continuous event due to our understanding of time and movement. We apply what we know to what we see.
And that is why images like this...
And that is why images like this...
...and this....
...and this...
....aaaaand this...
All make you feel extremely uncomfortable, mildly unballanced, and a tad bit anxious. When you see these, your mind identifies them as frozen movement that you've experienced before. You know that it's a drawing, but it feels like it's full of movement that hasn't been allowed to continue yet. If you're extra special, you might even start to fake the movement just to try to get the satisfaction of the movement continuing all the way to the end. Are you squirming?
So there you have it, folks. The Kinesthetic Response.
Space 2.0! Illusions
Obviously, space is something we're all familiar with, and it takes no technical explanations to understand that in art, there is a certain creation of space that takes place. How realistic that spacialization is, is up to the artist; a piece may be very realistic, or it may be exaggeratedly unrealistic. There are three types of space that I'll talk about today, based on Mary Stewart's explanations in Launching the Imagination.
The first illusion of space is Amplified Perspective: "the exaggerated us of linear perspective to achieve a dramatic and engaging presentation of the subject" (Stewart). Essentially, amplified perspective uses a realistic understanding of space, but in an unusual way. For example, you may use a birds eye view, or slightly distort a simple linear perspective to show more space than one could realisitically see. Stewart uses the example Christ of St. John of the Cross by Salvador Dali.
The first illusion of space is Amplified Perspective: "the exaggerated us of linear perspective to achieve a dramatic and engaging presentation of the subject" (Stewart). Essentially, amplified perspective uses a realistic understanding of space, but in an unusual way. For example, you may use a birds eye view, or slightly distort a simple linear perspective to show more space than one could realisitically see. Stewart uses the example Christ of St. John of the Cross by Salvador Dali.
Another illusion of space is Fractured Space: "when multiple viewpoints are combined in a single image" (Stewart). David Hockney is practically the king of fractured space, and has made many many phenomenal photo compilations like the one below. This is a spacial trick that is a lot easier to create with photos than with painting, because you can use lots of photos of the same thing from different angles to create the look, instead of trying to imagine a different angle and paint it. Henry Moore Much Hadham 23rd July 1982:
The final illusion of space is Layered Space: "when the foreground, middle ground, and background are clearly defined" (Stewart). Layered space is in most normal things, like movies, paintings, etc. Because generally, every realistic space has an obvious foreground, middle ground, and background it is easily depicted and noticeable in a piece. Mary Stewart further explains how layered space, like a movie scene with people in it can emphasize a narative through the placement of the people within the layered space. For example, someone in the middle ground could be emotionally standing between the two people in the foreground and the background.
This has been a test, I repeat, a test of the spacial recognition system within your art knowledge.
Got Rhythm?
For the record, there is rhythm in more than just music and the perfect rhythm of a honky-tonk badonkadonk.
In fact, rhythm is in all kinds of art, from poetry to painting. Mary Stewart says, "Rhythm is a sense of movment that is created by repetition of multiple units in a deliberate pattern." So obviously, if you don't got rhythm, you've got a problem, because you're probably not walking or breathing correctly. Anyway! Rhythm is seen in a lot of art, and Stewart gives some phenomenal examples. One of them is Sink or Swim by Sue Benner...
One of the great things about this piece of art is that it educates us in the versatility and abilities of rhythm. Rhythm isn't static or uniform, in fact it is really the opposite. This piece shows a lot of movement through the different shapes involved, but also through the color choices. The warmer lighter colors come to the virtual surface, while the cooler darker colors drop lower. These are powerful illusions that are created within rhythmic art pieces, and anything but static and uniform.
Take a look at the things around you, whether in the art gallery or in your clothes or things around your house. See if you can pick out the details that give rhythm the vibrance and movement that make it interesting!
One of the great things about this piece of art is that it educates us in the versatility and abilities of rhythm. Rhythm isn't static or uniform, in fact it is really the opposite. This piece shows a lot of movement through the different shapes involved, but also through the color choices. The warmer lighter colors come to the virtual surface, while the cooler darker colors drop lower. These are powerful illusions that are created within rhythmic art pieces, and anything but static and uniform.
Take a look at the things around you, whether in the art gallery or in your clothes or things around your house. See if you can pick out the details that give rhythm the vibrance and movement that make it interesting!
Dolls & Bows
Here is also the website I made all by myself from scratch! It's nothing I'll be bragging about, but it works and it looks decent, so I'm satisfied.
Basically, this displays the dolls I collect and the bows I make. Yay!
Basically, this displays the dolls I collect and the bows I make. Yay!
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