Creativity

[GZA]

Are you creative, and in what ways are you creative?

How do you think creativity works in the mind?

Are there ways to increase creativity?

Is creativity correlated to intelligence and/or mental illness and depression?

[Jeffster]

Yes, it's one of my strong points. Though I haven't been using my creativity enough lately, been doing other stuff.

But I have written a bunch of lyrics, created all kinds of radio formats, done a lot of audio editing, taking existing shows and putting clips together for compilation CDs - like back in May I gave my mom a CD with old radio shows from her childhood on there, with some news clips from the year she was born and stuff like that.

When I was a kid, I made up entire sports teams with players I made up, I had the entire lineups written out and kept track of the team's place in the real standings of the real leagues. I was just talking at work today about how I made a basket for basketball in my room using a trashcan and putting some stuff in it to soften the blow, and used a tennis-ball-sized plastic pumpkin as a basketball. I also made up entire television networks with the schedule for the week, had all the titles of the shows and cast lists for them.

I try to put my creative stamp on everything I do. My work can seem like tedious paperwork, but I find ways to change up the way I do stuff, and I get different opportunities to talk to people on the phone all day and make up new words when people ask me "how are you?" like "I'm superfantabulisticlicious!"

I have absolutely no idea how creativity works in the mind. For me, it's random bursts of inspiration, usually followed by leaving projects unfinished because I have moved on to creating something else.

[Sling]

hmm..As far as creativity goes, my brain likes to produce elaborate plotlines and plans without any intentional encouragement. Like a vivid movie playing in my head 24/7. I can actually harness it if I want to, usually in the form of music or writing. Sometimes inventions. I suck at art and crafty things like that.

I think creativity is what happens when some mental process that allows random thoughts, meanings, and memories to form together.

Intelligence and creativity definitely do hand in hand. Mental illness can be kind of a broad term, but I'd say schizophrenia is creativity amped up and running wild. I'd speculate dreams are probably from the same source as creativity too.


"Marvel is the motivation of imagination"

[Edahn]

Originally Posted by GZA

Are you creative, and in what ways are you creative?

With ideas (intellectual) with words (expression, persuasion, and humor) and with stuff (artsy crap).

How do you think creativity works in the mind?

I think it emanates from a place of silence. If it sounds mystical, it is. Take a place of peace and mix it with some sensitivity to how to combine things to produce a desired result and viola. It's essentially a place of low expectations and high sensitivity to artful combinations.

I think, though, that artistic creativity and intellectual, although related, are somewhat different. Artistic creativity doesn't require comprehension in the same way that intellectual creativity does. Still though, I think they both come at moments of being settled and not trying too hard.

Are there ways to increase creativity?

Yeah, practice and study people who are creative.

Is creativity correlated to intelligence and/or mental illness and depression?

Death Keith Simonton (UC Davis) would have a lot to say about that. He's written extensively on the subject, being a self-proclaimed genius. I don't know about mental illness and depression, but it would somewhat fit what I was saying above. Although depression usually sounds terrible, I think it provides relief from pressures and stress and lets people sink into themselves without fear of where they're gonna go (because they're already at the bottom, anyway). Not everyone, but some people. As for mental illness, maybe with manic depression and schizophrenia, yes. Mania would be conducive to all sorts of mental feats, and schizophrenia would probably assist creativity too by unhinging the mind.

[toonia]

Are you creative, and in what ways are you creative?
I am creative in the areas of aesthetics and expressive communication - primarily in sound.

How do you think creativity works in the mind?
This is a loaded question, but in its simplest terms it has to do with being able to work within a wide spectrum of thought. One must be free spirit and merciless critic. There is also an exchange that occurs between the conscious and subconscious mind. The subconscious mind can actually work on solving problems. Being able to access one's full mind, I have found, results from a combination of filling the mind with a rich pallet of experience, information, understanding, and learning how to allow the resulting synthesis and intuition to flow without judgment at the creative moment of inspiration. Then we must use our knowledge base to critique what we have produced, think on it again, let go of our sense of judgment and allow inspiration to flow freely again. This is a difficult cycle to master, but I have found it is quite necessary to achieve my best potential in creativity.

Are there ways to increase creativity?
Yes. Study a variety of examples of created works within your area of interest and understand how the systems work. Appreciate contrasting types of creative output. Attempt first to mimic, and then to create your own rules. Intuition must be honed, or it is merely snap judgments.

It is also important to work within our means. Every human being has some capacity for rich, expressive, creative thought. Not everyone has the technical or intuitive skills to write a symphony, but may realize and sing a new lullaby. Maintaining humility of thought, understanding our limitations is part of the foundation to growth beyond those limitations.

Is creativity correlated to intelligence and/or mental illness and depression? I will have to think on this one. I am aware of the stereotypes, and there have certainly been intensely creative people with mental illness. It is possible that both intelligence and certain types of mental illness can allow an individual to examine connections and relationships between ideas that another person may not consider. On the other hand, it is a deeply entrenched stereotype that we tend to nurture and pay more attention to than when we see examples of mentally healthy creative people.

[LostInNerSpace]

Originally Posted by GZA

Are you creative, and in what ways are you creative?

How do you think creativity works in the mind?

Are there ways to increase creativity?

Is creativity correlated to intelligence and/or mental illness and depression?

It's funny you should ask. I just rewrote this from an earlier post of mine:

The brain can be thought of as a self organizing information system. Similar thoughts and ideas are stored close to each other in clusters but not necessarily linked. People basically think in straight lines--or at least on a single path. One thought leads to the next, which leads to the next. Think of a field of thoughts with train lines running through the field. Thoughts stored close to a track are likely to be most similar to those on the portion of track that is closest. To find such divergent thoughts one must jump off the train as it runs through the field. You essentially want to introduce an element of randomness into your thinking. This is based on Edward DeBono's ideas about creativity.

The idea is that thoughts closest to the track are not truly random. They are thoughts that may in some way be related to the main "train of thought", i.e. sound similar but have different meaning.

The technique works well but does require some practice.
Humor and creativity are closely related. We tend to find funny thoughts that are divergent but in some way similar to thoughts on our "train of thought". If you substitute something somewhere in the chain
of thoughts for a closely related but unexpected thought, we often find that funny.

I am an idea generating machine. I wish I could tell you some of the things I've cooked up, but I can't.

[01011010]

Are you creative, and in what ways are you creative?
I like to build things. What I build varies, anything from computers to flower hair barrettes.

How do you think creativity works in the mind?
I'm not sure. It feels entirely random to me, if that means anything.

Are there ways to increase creativity?
Get in touch with whatever the individual's source of creativity is.

Is creativity correlated to intelligence and/or mental illness and depression?
It can be linked with all three and none at all.

[ofugur]

My creativity only extends to listening to music, apply the lyrics and beats to my own life, feelings and thoughts then and then imagining a "music video" for that song. Then again, I'm not so sure how creative that actually makes me, since I never write my own lyrics or poetry.

[spirilis]

I guess my "creativity" is mostly in the ability to apply frameworks or systems that I am already aware onto things where they've never been applied or associated with before, but make sense together. Like seeing the intrinsic structure in something and discovering just what kind of "structure" it is, considering other things with similar "structures" in a very abstract scope and seeing what I've learned from those other things and what I can apply to this new thing.

And far more recently, I've found a creative spark in considering & expressing more sensory stuff, like photography and music. (I'm currently toying with the idea of mixing the two somehow... like still photography captioned by lyrics)

[Victor]

The problem is that creativity is passe.

Both creativity and empathy are products of literacy.

And the Age of Literacy is passing.

We are entering the age of the telegraph, the telephone, the television and the internet.

We are entering the Noosphere.

And the Noosphere produces Presence.

As we drive forward into the future, we look in the rear vision mirror and see creativity and empathy.

But as we look through the windscreen, we see Presence.