I used to be. Now I'm just old and tired.
Creativity is easy. Creativity that isn't crazy or stupid is the hard part.
Does anyone find it to be a useful category? I think it's most often trotted out to hold oneself apart from or disparage people who make stuff.
I happen to be very creative software developer in the service of corporate America. So, next time you fill out an insurance form on the web, and think "hey, this is really creative," maybe that was me.
Is creative a category? Isn't it more like there are areas of your life where you're creative, and areas where you get easily stumped?
I think it's most often trotted out to hold oneself apart from or disparage people who make stuff.
Also to compliment kids. But that's clearly not what I was doing here.
I should've known creative types are never online at this hour.
Yes, but in a destructive way.
I think it's most often trotted out to hold oneself apart from or disparage people who make stuff
Really? Then maybe I didn't used to be creative. Because I think of the era when I made stuff as my creative days. Bread and bagels and clothes and costumes and a table or two... What the hell is creative if it's not making stuff?
that's what I meant. I think it's rare for a person to come out and say "I'm creative."
text has apparently not spent much time reading personal statements on college applications.
I shouldn't have pooped on creative so hard. I don't like the word, but so what, some people don't like the words stromboli or heyjerkface.
Was 13 to 12? I'm in the middle of reading a bunch of personal statements right now, and boy do a lot of kids just say "I'm creative". Okay, kiddo, how about creating a well-crafted essay?
essar at 4 said what needs to be said on this subject.
If only I were creative enough to have said it first....
I mean, it's fabulous to have a creative person in a committee meeting when everyone's quarrelling, and they throw out an unexpectedly novel proposal that satisfies everyone's gripes. It is actually a really great trait.
Yeah, I should really just take the stupid post down. What a stupid post.
(Bad essays make me grumpy.)
(Contrarian commenters make me grumpy.)
I'm not actually that grumpy, just riffing on 18 and 19.
I'm anti-grumpy. Though I've been told my maiden name is an old form of the word contrarian.
I've creative in the capacity of being a jerkface. The post must stay! Would it be creative to write a bunch of comments under different pseuds to fan the flames?
Which last name do you go by, these days?
I'm creative at gardening! I make my own compost!
Would it be creative to write a bunch of comments under different pseuds to fan the flames?
No, it's much more creative to fawn over me.
Arsenio Rumplebottom is a great handle, though.
from a tilda swinton profile. "'i used to write poetry'--isn't that the saddest line you can say?"
This Kreative Kat has to go to bed now. Night.
thanks, long time lurker.
26: UNG's, to match Rory and because my professional rep is tied thereto. But I tell people it's because I refuse to give him the name back after everything else I gave him.
I'm a creative dresser. Some would say I'm at 100% clown.
I reuse plastic bags in unexpected ways.
I've wondered before whether I'm creative. My first inclination is to say no, because I don't do much that's crafty (unless I'm being pulled along by a roommate). Then I look around my brightly colored house and wonder if that counts, since it isn't standard and I came up with it. Whole-house scale creativity is usually called decor, right?
I am often the person at the meeting who throws out a whole different take on things. But I don't know if that is creative either, because that happens when the situation reminds me of that other situation. Does having an excellent memory and decent pattern recognition, so you can re-apply something someone else did, count as creativitiy? It looks like creativity from the outside, but I know I'm copying something because I remember the source.
If I am creative, I definitely need prompts or seeds from outside. I don't think I originate much.
Creativity is rarely a case of parthenogenesis.
Does having an excellent memory and decent pattern recognition, so you can re-apply something someone else did, count as creativitiy? It looks like creativity from the outside, but I know I'm copying something because I remember the source.
I dunno, but you just described me. I wouldn't call that skill creativity, precisely. I think of it as a kind of applied librarianship ("knowing where to find things" is a skill, including if the "where" is your own memory bank).
There's also an element of reducing the situation to the elementals and realizing the other situation was the same, even though the context may be very different. That part feels very satisfying. The long slog to explain to people that actually, your comparison is valid and the same solution could work is less satisfying.
This post was needed to help raise the creative class' consciousness. Time for a latte with my gay friends !
Librarians can be creative though, in their own doings. Also, liars.
If I am creative, I definitely need prompts or seeds from outside. I don't think I originate much.
Prompts don't work for me; they make me feel dumb, and then I am dumb. But constraints! Constraints are an opportunity to feel clever by coming up with a solution where people thought it couldn't be done! Cleverness ensues.
I realize this is not a new phenomenon; it just continues to amaze me that my brain's estimation of its own capacities is so easily manipulated, on such short time-scales.
40: Yes, absolutely. So great when it happens.
Yeah, constraints help a lot. The problem definition is a prompt, no?
17: Yeah, I should really just take the stupid post down. What a stupid post.
It's a fine post, Heebie, considering you're doing all the posting around here. AHEM.
I agree with 4, but I would say I almost ridiculously creative, but, you know, nobody wants to hear it.
max
['Oh, well.']
I once got creative in a Burger King bathroom. No, really. Had some far out thoughts in there.
I was in a stupid presentation about working in which I said that creativity could be good for some jobs but not all. (I was thinking of bankers--1.) too much creativity is bad for the markets and 2.) too much creativity can keep you from being the robot they want.) The person said that she thought that creativity was always useful in all jobs, i.e. it was about solving problems.
In her job, her monitor was broken and nobody was able to furnish a new one, so she picked up her computer tower and took it into the other room.
Is that actually creative?
The problem definition is a prompt, no?
Um. Yes. Yes, it is. I feel that I had an example of an unhelpful, unconstraining prompt in mind when I said prompts weren't helpful, but now of course I have no idea what it was. Something to do with wide-open creative writing assignments in HS? Quick, somebody give me a constraint...
Quick, somebody give me a constraint...
types of apples as indicators of apple personality traits!
I was doing some research using microfilm and the machine I was using didn't have a very clear lens. So I took a lens from one of the out-of-order machines and swapped it for mine. Then, since no one else was there, I took all the best removable components from the other machines and put them on mine and dumped all the bad stuff onto the out-of-order machines.
That's creative, right?
50: mcintosh -- enthused by classic stereo equipment.
granny smith -- made queasy by aging.
fuji -- tempestuous and ringed by golf courses.
macoun -- keeps wild animals as pets.
golden delicious -- glenn beck.
honey crisp -- enthusiastic, thoughtful advocate for manned space flight.
TAKE IT BACK! I love Golden Delicious apples.
Your gains achieved investing in gold(enness) are illusory.
American's Southwest's got talent!
Nothing gold can stay, Megan.
Winesap: Marmaladov.
...aaaaaand the dark side of constraints is that when they don't make you feel clever, and you promised that they would, you feel extra dumb.
They grow some good apples in Texas, but they're ripe in July and August, when it's sweltering around here, so it just feels wrong to have these delicious fresh crisp apples but none of the other fall foods I associate with them. Plus it's too hot to bake pies or make cider etc. etc.
Wow. The idea of summer apples is bending my brain. Why would nature ever give you apples at the same time as stonefruit?
Speaking of stone fruit, I wouldn't mind summer apples if we could get sour cherries to grow around here. We do get very good peaches in central Texas, due to stubborn German immigrants being determined to grow them despite a climate quite unsuited to it.
Creative? This seems to get it right:
5: Does anyone find it to be a useful category?
On the other hand, my housemate is a creative person, at least based on his sculptures, which would be wildly beyond the capabilities of most of us. I am not creative in that way, not in the slightest. But he can't arrange furniture or plants or wall decorations for shit, and also can't cook to save his life, so. It's kind of weird.
I'm freshly arrived from a show at a venue that seemed to be the setting of Dirty Dancing. I hit stuff with sticks; people drank and bopped and bought stuff we made. I created stuff.
Does that count?
No, sorry. It just doesn't sound like you did those things creatively.
So by 'creative' we mean 'artistic' - is that it?
max
['Seems silly.']
Well, hey, I created a new post per max's 46. Look at me go.
I'm not just creative, I'm a fucking creative. And I hate my job. I wish stocking the frozen food aisle paid a decent wage.
Does this notion of creativity have to do with possession of an aesthetic sense of some sort? (That's what's odd about my housemate, for example; he has such an incredible eye for line and flow and tension/harmony in his work, and can make that out of nothing, but can't seem to see outside that context.)
Unless creativity just making stuff. But then I can introduce you to the fellow who made a sculpture comprised of a coiled up garden hose next to a child's keyboard/synthesizer with two of its keys taped down to play a constant chord. Creative for sure. In a show, even.
I don't think we have a coherent notion of creativity.
For instance, a good novelist, that person is creative, a bad novelist, maybe not. Someone who comes up with a new business model, that's creative, someone who implements it, that's not. What connects all of these attributes, besides the word itself?
Whoever's next in line for the Unfogged recording project has not been creative, at least in the sense of creating something. AHEM.
Someone who comes up with a new business model is creative?
Are you just thinking: people who think outside the box (such as it is)?
I'm just thinking of how the word is used. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm a little low on sleep.
I mean basically all people have a creative impulse, and some more than others, but what's interesting about that? What's interesting is what individuals happen to do that makes us want to say they're creative, but there's no way you can make it a category to include all of them and have it mean anything but good new stuff we like.
that was a golden delicious move, sifu.
76: I agree. I'm a little low on sleep as well, and I've just recalled there's going to be a house guest here tomorrow evening by the time I get home, which I just heard about an hour ago, so 'night all.
69: Unless creativity just making stuff.
70: What connects all of these attributes, besides the word itself?
NUDEY NEWNESS!
76: What's interesting is what individuals happen to do that makes us want to say they're creative, but there's no way you can make it a category to include all of them and have it mean anything but good new stuff we like.
Nobody said it had to be *good*.
max
['If you don't play, you can't win.']
I don't think of myself as creative, not at all. Hm.
I'm a creative person. like, for example, I found these rip-off pantone chairs in white plastic which is hard to get clean, and I have a great idea for making a dining set out of them. I'm going to tag the backs and stencil "post no bills" on them, and print old punk rock flyers from the internet out and then paste them on all over each other and then tear them off in a peeling way until the back of each chair looks like the plywood lining a NYC construction site in 1986. it's going to be awesome. but I don't know if anyone will buy it, narnians are incredibly conservative. I guess if it fails to sell I'll put it in my (new) house for a while, although it's not really the classic colonial look.
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This is like a summary of the internet. In light of recent goatse-avoiding mentions, this bit stood out:
If you've never seen a goatse image, now is not the time to start. Never is the time to start.
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In middle school and high school, I participated in creativity competitions. Odyssey of the Mind, anyone? One year our team came in third in the spontaneous category, but fourteenth overall because I was on meds for pneumonia and knocked over the scenery for our prepared piece. Actually, the meds probably helped with the spontaneous round as well.
So I don't know whether or not I'm creative, but I know that I'm creativer than many.
eb, I love that you can link to the middle of a youtube video. You just improved my life.
I like this question. Whenever I hear something like it, it's prompted from (dare I say this, to such a snarky bunch?) sincere inquiry. It's a huge matter, isn't it? Creativity is action.
My creativity is in the kitchen. Not sure why it's there, but I love to cook, love to eat, love to feed my partner, love to find ingredients in odd markets. Pulling disparate elements together to make a whole is creativity to me.
Creativity ia like way overrated
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I heard on NPR that Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, and I thought it was a joke. I wondered whether there was a fall April Fool's date.
I mean, for what? My favorite bit was that they gave it to him for hoss words about multi-lateralism rather than any actions.
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The Swedish Academy was torn between giving Obama the Peace Prize and taking out a billboard in times square that said "We are trying to influence American politics."
Also to compliment kids. But that's clearly not what I was doing here.
You compliment my kid right now, Heebie, or so help me....
I am surprisingly uncreative for someone in my field. Which is why I like to define my field as "problem solving" and not as "creating stuff creatively with the creativity." I'm also not a great drawerer, which I think I've mentioned before. But I'm a good architect! Puzzling, isn't it?
My dad once described architecting as being a broker between the client and the engineer. The client doesn't understand that ductwork is necessary, and the engineer wants seven-foot crawlspaces and four-foot ceilings.
On the original post, I like making stuff, but in a very uncreative way -- I really enjoy following difficult directions accurately (baking, knit/crochet/tatting, origami back when I did it more). I'm not much with the creating new stuff that no one had thought about before me.
I like doing creative things -- I play guitar, I take photographs - but I'd find applying the epithet 'creative' to myself to be a bit ... presumptious. As it happens I don't think I'm amazingly brilliant at either, but I have a few things I'm OK at, and I'm fairly versatile. Whether that counts as creative or not, I have no idea.
The Swedish Academy was torn between giving Obama the Peace Prize and taking out a billboard in times square that said "We are trying to influence American politics."
I thought Sweden was largely left-wing. Surely they must know this will only have bad effects on American politics.
Pretty much anybody can be creative if they want to be. Just like pretty much anybody can play tennis. The difference is that if you play tennis but you are not good enough to play at Wimbledon people don't make fun of you/ look down on you.
The difference is that if you play tennis but you are not good enough to play at Wimbledon people don't make fun of you/ look down on you.
Lemmy has never been around when I've played tennis.
I'm moderately creative, but I think I'm more suited to telling creative types what to do. MCMC, life's too short to work a shit job. Start looking for a new one.
See?
No one else is going to comment on Ttam's creative spelling?
I'm very uncreative, I think. My brother got all the creative genes in our family.
re: 100
I had to look at that about 10 times before I spotted the mistake. Gah.
100: So your brother has like 30 goddamned kids or something?
This thread really demonstrates why Richard Florida is full of shit.
Argh! I'm way too slow to keep up with unfogged.
37: That doesn't just look like creativity. That's what creativity is. I'm reminded of a couple passages I read recently:
A long time ago an older and well-known number theorist made some disparaging remarks about Paul Erdös's work. You admire Erdös's contributions to mathematics as much as I do, and I felt annoyed when the older mathematician flatly and definitively stated that all of Erdös's work could be "reduced" to a few tricks which Erdös repeatedly relied on in his proofs. What the number theorist did not realize is that other mathematicians, even the very best, also rely on a few tricks which they use over and over. Take Hilbert. The second volume of Hilbert's collected papers contains Hilbert's papers in invariant theory. I have made a point of reading some of these papers with care. It is sad to note that some of Hilbert's beautiful results have been completely forgotten. But on reading the proofs of Hilbert's striking and deep theorems in invariant theory, it was surprising to verify that Hilbert's proofs relied on the same few tricks. Even Hilbert had only a few tricks!
...
Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, "How did he do it? He must be a genius!'"