Creativity, Order, and Awareness - By Doc Nolan, AI image from Xenon Darrow

Creativity, as with many things, is more honored than practiced.  There’s a lot of confusion about what it is, which is not hard to understand.  Let’s start with a dictionary definition: “the ability to generate something new, usually to solve problems, communicate with others, or entertain.”  

That’s not enough.  Creativity may be a popular buzzword, but many don’t seem to accept that it demands a high level of knowledge of what is accepted and routine, as well as the ability to think outside standard parameters.  When Michaelangelo decided to carve the Pieta, he didn’t just grab a hammer and chisel and “get to work.”  He immersed himself in the project, and we’ll never know how many alternative depictions went through his head before he even bought his Carrara marble.  His level of focus and ‘awareness’ must have been incredible.  A mastery of skills and materials underlays good choices.  Michaelangelo not only these – but beyond them, he had a clear vision.

Creativity does not involve novelty for its own sake; willy-nilly everywhere.  That’s just chaos!  And a bit of imagination (like hot sauce) goes a long way.  No one appreciates an accountant who ‘wings it’ when preparing tax returns.  And a lot of unhappiness has been generated by people who only wanted to be ‘free’ and refused to hold steady jobs because they ‘limited their creativity.’  (Charles Ives, a famed American composer, was a successful insurance executive.  So much for the idea that one can’t hold a pedestrian job and still be creative!) There’s another dimension of creativity, and that is the process of generating new things: thoughtfulness. 

Making something new within the context of the ordinary is hard mental work.  “Why am I doing this?” “What effect do I want to achieve?” “Which of my ideas are foolish and which are sensible?” “How will I know when I’ve gone far enough and not too far?” All of these require self-examination, sometimes known as “awareness.”  It’s a bit Zen.  You spend time suspended in a mental place of paradox and uncertainty.  Here’s an old Zen koan. 

Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind.

One said, “The flag moves.”

The other said, “The wind moves.”

They argued back and forth but could not agree.

Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch, said: “Gentlemen!  It is not the flag that moves.  It is not the wind that moves.  It is your mind that moves.”

The flag exists.  The monks exist.  The wind exists.  How they relate to one another is in the mind.  The line between Michaelangelo and the marble – or the monks and the flag – gets hazy.  It’s within that grey zone where human will imposes order on chaos with a bow in the direction of tradition. 

Many virtual worlds overflow with painful examples of chaos and lack of discipline masquerading as creativity.  Placing gas stations in the middle of a cotton field beside snow-covered volcanos is “novel” – but I find that image painfully ugly.  This variety of activities is not what we generally mean by creativity, is it?).  If creativity breaks old forms, images, ideas, and habits to substitute new ones, there must be some substrate of things that are “accepted and routine,” too.  Constraints.  A background in which what’s new and different stands out.

I have been experimenting with images using artificial intelligence agents to generate images (MidJourney).  It has reminded me that AI is a tool that can only assist in creativity, not ‘be creative’ as I’ve described above.  Unguided, it may put a gas station in the middle of a cotton field beside a snow-colored volcano.   So far, artificial intelligence doesn’t seem able to include elementary design and composition principles when it makes up images.  (That may change in the future!)  Here we get into a swamp!  The underlying question, usually ignored, comes into play here: What is “good” taste?  What is “bad” taste?  What is a “good” composition?  And so on.  Is there anything wrong with a gas station in the middle of a cotton field beside a snow-colored volcano?  I think there is.  Others might not. 

A final thought: People disagree.  Your opinions are constraints on me, and mine are likewise constraints on you.  Between us, new forms arise -- born of paradox and uncertainty.  Out of the clash of conceptions and ideas, new forms emerge.  That’s a form of creativity, too.  Or is it just more chaos?  “Gentlemen!  It is not the flag that moves.  It is not the wind that moves.  It is your mind that moves.”