Keith September 2nd, 2009
At yesterday’s Creative Performance Exchange meeting, we held an “unconference” session. People nominated to present twenty minute “mini-sessions” on a range of topics at one of three tables, and the rest of us chose to sit in on whichever topic was of interest. We cycled through the mini-sessions three times, so there were nine in total. Great fun, and a great way to spark new ideas and innovation. (See the tweetstream here.)
One of the sessions I attended was led by Don Miller, of the Melbourne Centre for Ideas. Don briefly spoke about the comparison between western ideas of freedom, and how “total” freedom can actually limit creativity. (My paraphrase.) The point is – when we are given some form of constraint, we can often become more creative. Some creative fields come with built-in constraints. For example, an architect will usually be constrained by the available land area, and by design restrictions imposed by materials, technology, planning regulations, etc. When we start to test imposed limits, we can also frequently break new creative ground.
To my mind, a classic case of this is the design of the Sydney Opera House. When Jørn Utzon first drafted his designs for the famous “sails”, it was said that it would be impossible to build with the concrete technology available at the time. The design was changed during the development process, yet it is unlikely that the current globally-recognised design would have ever been built if the construction limitations had not been pushed as they were.
Don led us in a brief exercise to illustrate creativity under constraint. We were asked to spend 10 minutes writing – on whatever topic we chose – with the constraint that every word must include the letter ‘e’. We were also asked to write at least six lines of text.
Given that ‘e’ is the most common letter in the English language, this is not as severe a constraint as restricting other letters, yet still enough of a constraint to encourage some creativity! For one thing, it completely rules out the conjunctions ‘and’ and ‘but’, forcing some creative use of punctuation to replace them. (Try it for yourself.)
At the end of the session , we all read out our pieces. The seven or so of us at the table were all able to complete the task, with a very varied set of results. One was a “meta-text” – a piece about the task itself. For reference, here’s my piece:
Wearily, Eve went westerly. She previously called her boyfriend, when her vehicle expired. He delayed. She waited; she waited. Darkness fell. Remoteness, loneliness grew. She called repeatedly – response lacked. Heavily, she trudged ahead, seeking help.
Lightness somewhere, beyond the trees. Her prayers went heavenward; her feet westward.
Where’s Edward?
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