Creativity Project

Mini-Exegesis

I have come across many difficulties in trying to come up with an idea for this creative project. As mentioned in a previous blog post, I had the idea of writing a feature article about creativity in the Perth electronic music scene. However, the further I went through the process of researching and writing, I found that it would be a large undertaking that I did not have the time for. Another difficulty, possibly the biggest one I faced – and continue to face creatively – is that of creating my own boundaries when given a task that does not have limitations placed on it. I tend to have lots of ideas creatively, but have great trouble into boiling them down into a neat and achievable package. Hence my lack of, in my opinion, a volume of quality creative work. The creative work that I have done and like the most, is mainly disposable, such as doodles that I draw on scraps of paper that I find lying around the house and are eventually thrown out.

So when thinking about what I should do for this project after scrapping my first idea, I remembered the reading on the creative psyche by Jung that we had read earlier in the semester and how I was intrigued about Jung’s ideas about the process of finding and tapping into one’s active imagination. What I was particularly interested by was his method of getting his clients to recreate dreams through painting/dancing etc to see what symbols or imagery they could uncover to reveal more about themselves creatively. I decided that I would give this a try for this project, as it seemed like an interesting way to explore my active imagination and creativity as well as reflecting on the unit and myself. The above picture is a recreation and merging of several memorable dreams that I have had over the past few weeks.

I dream every night. My dreams are usually very vivid and bizarre, and I often wake up experiencing the emotions I was feeling in the dream. I often have dreams that are a complete story, that I can remember from beginning to end, and that contain characters and events that are seemingly not connected with my waking life. For instance, the sea demon, little girl and mermaid in the picture represent one particularly strange dream I had. The little girl was on a yacht with her parents, it was night time, stormy and the sea was very rough. Evil mermaids were trying to take  the little girl, who had super powers. Several mermaids attempted to take the girl down into the swirling sea, but were unable to. Then the sea demon, who the mermaids worked for, rose up out of the water and over the boat and scared off the mermaids because the little girl had the power to rule the whole ocean. The obvious symbols in this dream were water, demons, mermaids, power, protection and darkness. Most notably, water in dreams is recognised by most as being symbolic of the subconscious mind. Which is interesting as Jung’s technique is about exploring the unconscious mind for active imagination and creativity. Since reading the Jung reading, I’ve realised that my active imagination is truly coming to the fore in my dreams and that it is something that I should look to when looking for inspiration and ideas.

I decided to represent my creativity through the combination of digital design software and hand drawn images as these are some of my most commonly used avenues of my creativity. I decided to use my own hand drawings to create this representation, as I felt that using images that weren’t mine to create this would mean it was not wholly my own work and creative design. I also wanted this image to be not affected by any outside sources or inspiration and be purely from my own mind and creative personality. While the image is a combination of about 5 dreams, I have tried to link the imagery through use of colour and pattern to unify the image as a whole. I feel that my creativity is reflected in the image through the use of humour and absurdity. Most of the things I am inspired by and aim towards creatively have these two elements.

Through the exploration of my own creativity in this project and unit I have discovered that what I most need to work on is harnessing  my creativity into solid ideas. I have also found that simple ideas can turn out to be the most rich, as I had previously thought that large and complicated ideas were the best way to create something rewarding. This creative project especially has helped me to understand my own creativity and how I can create my own boundaries for an idea through using different techniques, such as Jung’s dream method. Hopefully I will use this experience as a lesson and a stepping stone to further my future creative pursuits.