OK, if you don't already follow Dr. Rex Jung, you should. He studies the Neurobiology of Creativity at the University of New Mexico. A man after my own heart, he started with the top 3 myths of popular brain science, each with a wacky, yet memorable made-up name:
1. You have to be a genius to be creative (plebophobia) - the idea that there's a bell-shaped curve with Einstein at one end and Homer Simpson on the other is flat out not true; in his research with undergrads "in the middle of the curve," everyone has creative capacity.
2. You have to be crazy to be creative (mentallyillophillia) - again, just not true. While there have been many people who have struggled with mental illness and who also have demonstrated great creativity, there are also many who have not, and just as many who do not have a mental illness but are highly creative. Personally, I find that creative activity is what keeps me sane. My sister, a therapist, once told me that the creative process as I described it was much like the process of coming out of an episode of mental illness - you have an idea, you listen to others' critique of it, you take in what you think is right and reject the rest, and move on with your idea. I also think that this is one myth we really need to fight because parents who believe this are not likely to expose their children to arts education!
3. Horribly Overinterpreting Research Regarding Neurosurgical Interventions (HORRNI) - this is the myth that the the brain is neatly split into a creative (right) and an analytical (left) hemisphere. The Neurosurgical research had to do with severing the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres. In epileptic patients who had had this intervention, all sorts of interesting things were noted about which hemisphere took over control of what. However, for the rest of us whose brains are intact, there is a real collaboration between the two hemispheres. In creative work, we may imagine things more on one side, but we need the other side to plan and execute their design. And, all along, impulses are firing back and forth between them. Those of you who attended the MN Retreat for the Arts at Perpich in '06 heard a similar message from Eric "You name it-ing With The Brain In Mind" Jensen. Take home point is that developing all sides of the brain as much as we can will strengthen our creative capacity.
From the Ugly Myths he went on to the Good and the Bad(ass).
There were three important parts to the Good:
First (and aligned with #3 above) is that Creativity has both Emotional and Cognitive domains that cross Spontaneous and Deliberate processes. OK, this completely fits with the old Essential Learnings: something Emotional and Deliberate might be the work of a playwright, say, Tony Kushner, whose Angels in America has a highly emotional impact on the audience, but went through a deliberate process from idea to manuscript to produced play. Emotional and Spontaneous might be someone like Miles Davis, improvising to create an emotional connection between himself and his audience. Cognitive and Spontaneous might be someone like Robin Williams on Letterman's couch coming out with spontaneous commentary on the day's events or the previous guest's remarks. Cognitive and Deliberate creativity might be Einstein working through one of his "thought experiments."
Second - To have a brilliant idea, you need to have lots of ideas. Scott Weston, early VSAA Photo teacher used to say this about photos - to get a good one, you need to take lots of them. Apparently there's a Picasso web site that has now cataloged over 20,000 works by him. They were not all Guernica.
Third - and this goes along with Plato's ideas about teaching by Uncovering (previous post) - In the cycle of creative production, there need to be 4 elements:
Preparation (read: skill acquisition)
Incubation (mulling it around)
Illumination (AHA!)
Verification (hypothesis testing - is it novel? useful? matching the intent?)
According to Dr. Jung, schools are spending way too much time and energy on Preparation and Verification, when what kids need is more downtime for Incubation in order to uncover their AHA!
Well, laundry calls - getting Nat ready for his hike through northern Spain! Next time I'll go over the Badass technology that has uncovered the brain processes (or lack thereof) that coincide with creativity.
1. You have to be a genius to be creative (plebophobia) - the idea that there's a bell-shaped curve with Einstein at one end and Homer Simpson on the other is flat out not true; in his research with undergrads "in the middle of the curve," everyone has creative capacity.
2. You have to be crazy to be creative (mentallyillophillia) - again, just not true. While there have been many people who have struggled with mental illness and who also have demonstrated great creativity, there are also many who have not, and just as many who do not have a mental illness but are highly creative. Personally, I find that creative activity is what keeps me sane. My sister, a therapist, once told me that the creative process as I described it was much like the process of coming out of an episode of mental illness - you have an idea, you listen to others' critique of it, you take in what you think is right and reject the rest, and move on with your idea. I also think that this is one myth we really need to fight because parents who believe this are not likely to expose their children to arts education!
3. Horribly Overinterpreting Research Regarding Neurosurgical Interventions (HORRNI) - this is the myth that the the brain is neatly split into a creative (right) and an analytical (left) hemisphere. The Neurosurgical research had to do with severing the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres. In epileptic patients who had had this intervention, all sorts of interesting things were noted about which hemisphere took over control of what. However, for the rest of us whose brains are intact, there is a real collaboration between the two hemispheres. In creative work, we may imagine things more on one side, but we need the other side to plan and execute their design. And, all along, impulses are firing back and forth between them. Those of you who attended the MN Retreat for the Arts at Perpich in '06 heard a similar message from Eric "You name it-ing With The Brain In Mind" Jensen. Take home point is that developing all sides of the brain as much as we can will strengthen our creative capacity.
From the Ugly Myths he went on to the Good and the Bad(ass).
There were three important parts to the Good:
First (and aligned with #3 above) is that Creativity has both Emotional and Cognitive domains that cross Spontaneous and Deliberate processes. OK, this completely fits with the old Essential Learnings: something Emotional and Deliberate might be the work of a playwright, say, Tony Kushner, whose Angels in America has a highly emotional impact on the audience, but went through a deliberate process from idea to manuscript to produced play. Emotional and Spontaneous might be someone like Miles Davis, improvising to create an emotional connection between himself and his audience. Cognitive and Spontaneous might be someone like Robin Williams on Letterman's couch coming out with spontaneous commentary on the day's events or the previous guest's remarks. Cognitive and Deliberate creativity might be Einstein working through one of his "thought experiments."
Second - To have a brilliant idea, you need to have lots of ideas. Scott Weston, early VSAA Photo teacher used to say this about photos - to get a good one, you need to take lots of them. Apparently there's a Picasso web site that has now cataloged over 20,000 works by him. They were not all Guernica.
Third - and this goes along with Plato's ideas about teaching by Uncovering (previous post) - In the cycle of creative production, there need to be 4 elements:
Preparation (read: skill acquisition)
Incubation (mulling it around)
Illumination (AHA!)
Verification (hypothesis testing - is it novel? useful? matching the intent?)
According to Dr. Jung, schools are spending way too much time and energy on Preparation and Verification, when what kids need is more downtime for Incubation in order to uncover their AHA!
Well, laundry calls - getting Nat ready for his hike through northern Spain! Next time I'll go over the Badass technology that has uncovered the brain processes (or lack thereof) that coincide with creativity.
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