See my creative project and mini-exegesis here: https://lizzieandcreativity.wordpress.com/creativity-project/
Creative Project
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Google Mobile Payments
I saw this article today, which is about a new service that Google has launched where people are able to pay for things through their mobile phone. I thought this was relevant to last week’s class exercise and the group that came up with the idea of iMoney.
Contemplating My Creative Project
It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I realised that, along with the blogging, we had to do a creative project for this unit. This of course was due to my inattention when reading the unit outline, and at first was a bit panicked. Since then I have been thinking about it a lot, and have actually become quite excited about it, and a little overwhelmed due to the amount of work that would be required for me to be satisfied with what I produce. I figure that discussing the process and ideas I have been thinking about through doing this blog post will help give me more clarity and help to define my point of view more easily.
Having worked for two years in online marketing, and then studying web design at Tafe last year, my first thoughts on what I would do was based around design and advertising. However, recently I have finally realised and acknowledged (after years of the idea sitting dormantly in the back of my mind) that writing is what would like to do for a career, what I am most passionate about and is the main outlet for my creativity. After this I started brainstorming ideas on how I can demonstrate and reflect this in the project.
As I am not so much of a creative writer, I began thinking about writing a feature article as I have been learning a lot about this writing style in other units. Given that I am so passionate and inspired by music, I began looking at the music/creativity scene in Perth, and have noted the rise in popularity of Perth musicians and artists of late. This lead me to the idea of how the current generation of Perth artists and musicians are slowly helping to rid Perth of its “Dullsville” tag. I began discussing this idea with several friends who are involved in the arts and music scene to try and generate an idea to write about. What I found particularly interesting and a common point in these conversations, was that even though Perth was a hugely creative hub, it was the state government’s laws and regulations on artistic space, venue closing times, liquor licenses etc that was really stunting Perth from losing its “Dullsville” moniker as well as enabling its artists to grow creatively. Although, I do note that the state government’s strictness also has benefit in that this requires artists and musicians to have a stronger work ethic and be more tenacious to get their work seen and heard than they do in the other Australian states. This struck me as an intriguing topic to focus on for the article, and found there were a lot of people who had an opinion on and are being affected by this.
I am finding problems with narrowing down my ideas as this is topic is quite broad and affects a lot of people. I am thinking I might just focus on the electronic music/street art scenes and how they are affected, rather trying to do the whole of Perth which I could imagine would be a large undertaking.
Currently I am brain storming to solidify what exactly I want the article to say, formulating questions and finding sources to interview.
I found this recent blog post on the Triple J website, which could be used as a useful source – http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/homeandhosed/blog/s3201864.htm
I will be updating this post with my progress.
Creativity and Digital Technologies
Using the National Academy of Sciences reading as a starting point, try to imagine how the following digital techniques may be used creatively in your discipline.
These techniques are used all the time in my disciplines – web/article copy writing, (web)design and online marketing – and are very useful creatively.
Automation –
Data Display and Management –
Information/Data Analysis –
Connection to the Physical World –
Communications –
The Creative Psyche
Briefly define:
Active imagination – Where one actively confronts one’s unconscious mind and shadow.
Individuation – Process whereby the ego integrates its shadow and after cohering itself, seeks union with others and society.
Archetypes – “Blue prints” and “ideal” types of behaviour, the king: father/protector, great mother: goddess/creator, warrior: disciplined aggressor, sage: wise mentor, and lover: care/compassion.
The shadow – Hidden aspects of the ego.
Anima and animus – Anima is the feminine and animus is the masculine.
Mythopoesis – Mythopoeia is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where a fictional mythology is created by the writer of prose or other fiction. (Source: Wikipedia)
Listen to the following description and pay attention to the images and emotions it evokes:
You find yourself outside, on a path. You follow the path, walking until your feet are blistered. You occasionally hear animals moving to one side, but don’t see them. You keep walking until ahead you see a tree by a river, and beyond that a high wall. A voice calls out from the other side of the wall. It sounds almost like an animal cry, but you feel sure it is a person. You walk over to the river and bend down to touch it. The water is freezing cold. You suck your chilled knuckles and look around. The voice repeats again, almost incomprehensible. You look around and see a small raft amidst the reeds of the riverbank. You pull it out and realise that you have no means of pushing it. You look at the tree and see that its branches cross the river and reach towards the wall. You move over and try to climb up, but the sides of the tree are too smooth. You slide down and cut your finger on a piece of glass embedded in the wood. The blood runs warm down your forearm and drips into the river. You hear laughter.
Spend 30 seconds “completing” this mental scene.
There are many ways that “completing” can be interpreted. This can be literally, what you would do after you hear the laughter – would you leave or keep investigating?, by how the scene looked in your head – completing the scene with how you imagined it in your mind or what emotions you felt when reading different parts of the passage.
It is interesting to see how people interpret the scene differently, even though there is no adjectives describing what is happening, the class’s general response was that it was a creepy, unpleasant and invoking of anxiety even though there is nothing to really say this. This was also my experience of the passage and had the instinctual feeling that I wanted to leave the situation as soon as possible. I imagined the scene to be dark and gloomy, on an overcast day, and that the voice was connected to something dark or evil, which if in real life I would be not be in that situation alone, and would probably still feel the same if I was with more people.
Compare your emotional and creative response to the scene to the person next to you and consider why you may have responded differently. What might this reveal about your personality, unconscious motivations, or present mental state?
Through comparison of response from this scene, was that most people found it unnerving however, a few people felt that it was intriguing and whimsical. My creative response to this passage is that of dark imagery and feelings. I think that my response to this would reveal that part of my personality is sensitive, alert and cautious especially when confronted with the unknown and suspicious. In saying that my personality has these aspects, I also know when I am rationally or irrationally responding to these sorts of stimuli. Which when considering the passage it is difficult to tell if your instinctual interpretation – mine being of fear – is in fact rational or not, which I find to be quite interesting. Which leads me to questioning what is it that shaped my personality and unconscious motivations so that my imagination to instinctually react to this passage in this way when presented with a situation where rationality can not be determined? What can I do explore this aspect of myself and reinterpret creatively? This type of questioning is what Jung describes as the analyst role in relation to an active imagination. Jung often points out that the active imagination is more a natural process rather than a technique, with the analyst being where one questions their own fantasies/dreams/reactions to see where and why this came about, what connections it has and how these reactions can be elaborated on to form new ideas. Jung suggested techniques to his patients such as drawing, singing and dancing to see what they could reveal through the symbols, colours and shapes. I would think that if I sat down a drew my interpretation of the passage that I would be able to get further insight and understanding into my initial creative response and possibly even form new ideas to build upon creatively.
The Creative Personality
The 10 personality traits of a creative person that Csikszentmihalyi identifies are:
1. Have physical energy, yet can be quiet.
2. Tend to be smart, yet naive at the same time.
3. A combination of playfulness and discipline.
4. Alternating between imagination and fantasy and one end and reality on the other.
5. Harbour tendencies between extraversion and introversion.
6. Both remarkably humble and proud at the same time.
7. Escape a rigid gender type stereotype.
8. Can be creative without being conservative.
9. Can be conformative yet rebellious.
10. Can be passionate yet objective.
Name an individual (historical or contemporary) who you consider to be extremely creative and consider to what extent you think the above attributes are reflected in what you know about them.
When discussed in-class the individual we chose was Meryl Streep.
We found that some of the traits in the list were more difficult to be able to relate to Meryl Streep, as we do not know her personally and can’t know if she has them or not. In saying that, we can relate these traits to her work and characters she has played in movies. For example number 1, having physical energy, yet can be quiet, the characters she plays in movies differ from that of high physical energy (Julia Childs in Julie and Julia) to quiet and withdrawn (Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada). This example can also be related to traits 3, 5 and 8.
You would assume that for trait 2 she would be “smart” given her long and decorated career, given that and the fact she is a creative person, you would also think that she could be be naive at times, which is a little more difficult to relate without asking her in the first place.
Trait 4 is possibly the easiest trait to recognise that is reflected in Meryl Streep. Working as a actor would require one to be imaginative and recreate fantasy for her roles in movies, as well as living her personal life in reality.
I think trait 6, being humble yet proud, is a trait that she, and probably most actors, would like their persona to seen by the public. Being proud about winning awards but not gloating, being humble when being interviewed or infront of the media will garner them positive attention which would aid their career and business relationships.
I think Meryl Streep does reflect trait 7, escaping a rigid gender type stereotype, she can play roles where her character shows more masculine traits than feminine (The Devil Wears Prada), but she also plays roles in rom-coms where her character is required to predominantly feminine (It’s Complicated). However, it appears she brings an aspect of masculinity to alot of her roles as she tends to play a lot of strong female characters, like in Sophie’s Choice.
Traits 9 and 10 are mostly reflected in Merly Streep. It is apparent that she is passionate about her work, and is also conformative as she works in Hollywood which is a conservative business, but would also have to be objective to be able to work in that environment for such a long time. I think that rebellion can be reflected by Meryl Streep by the fact that she is not a type cast actor and can play parts that rebel against stereotypes.
Through examining Meryl Streep and the 10 creative personality traits, it would seem that she does have most of these traits and is a good example of Csikszentmihalyi’s theory.
Phantom of the Opera v The Room
For the in-class presentation, Teigan and I are doing a comparison between movie trailers and their advertising. I am majoring in Advertising and Teigan in Theatre studies, so we came up with the idea of looking at theatre/movies and their advertising. We will be doing this through comparing two movies, The Phantom of the Opera and The Room. The Phantom being theatrical, widely popular and successful and The Room having been labelled ‘one of the worst movies ever’ and due to this has amassed a large cult following. Through these differences in perceived success, we will examine how this came about through the use of their trailers, advertising and word of mouth.
Below is the full-length trailer for The Room:
Lizzie and Creativity 