The Sideways Commandments

Some suggested steps to finding personal paths to creativity
(not in any particular order and based on previous sections of this class - we may or may not do the things listed below, but even if we don't you can)
or
The Sideways Commandments

• Take an everyday object and try to do something unusual or surprising with it (the egg)

• Give yourself over to random chance and use what you encounter as a starting point or a direction for creative experimentation (bible dipping)

• Grapple with a huge abstract concept and explore it from different angles (time)

• Ask questions (what if)

• Try to answer a question you did not ask (what if redux)

• Explore how you encounter and interact with the world (senses)

• Work with other people to generate ideas (brainstorming)

• Look to other areas of inquiry outside of your normal realm of experience (what the bleep)

• If you agree or disagree with something, ask yourself why (what the bleep)

• Give yourself some time and freedom to be yourself (bliss)

• Examine what it is that excites or inspires you (inspiration)

• Research someone or something and see what you can incorporate from that into your own work (research project)

• Solve a problem in a different way (red light mental exercise and taking a break in our chairs)

• Explore your motivation and understanding of concepts and ideas (questioning your inspiration)

• Ignore your first idea and try multiple approaches (roadblocks)

• Be willing to compromise (roadblocks)

• Stop just thinking about things or coming up with ideas and go do something. (final project)

• Don’t be afraid to play (take the rest of class and do something fun)

• Share your ideas/successes/failures/musings (blog)

• Exchange ideas (discussions)

• Listen to yourself

• Listen to others

• Explore what is important to you (what moves you)

• Judge ideas by your own measure

• Experience as much as you can

• Question rules

• Humor is not frivolous

• Stop expecting inspiration to come from outside yourself

• Stop expecting someone else to give you all the answers

• Stop being afraid to fail

• Don’t be lazy (too often)

• Give up preconceived notions of how to learn

• Do what works for you

• Don’t disregard creative exploration as unimportant or something you will do “if you find the time”

• Make the time to practice creative thinking

• Set your own goals

• Try to attain

• If someone laughs at you or disregards your idea then smile along with them but keep to your own goals

• Try again

• Build on your successes

• Cherish your failures

• Learn from everything

• Know your motives

• Become friends with your inner (or outward) 5-year-old

• Wonder and wander

• Don’t be too cynical

• If you are cynical don’t be too bitter

• Be proud of your ideas

• Not all ideas or projects are very creative

• Sometimes mediocre is OK

• But don’t settle for mediocre very often

• If you find yourself doing something the same way more than a few times try doing it a different way next time

• Even if you are finished with a project are you sure the project is finished with you

Repercussions

Every action has a repercussion... Why would I say that?

The nose on your face

During the course of a normal day how many times do you find yourself making a decision? Do you ever weigh two (or more) options before making a choice?

For example, if your car gets stuck in the snow (true story, BTW) how do you solve that problem? What do think of immediately? Does thinking about the problem make it any better? At what point to you act? More importantly, what do you DO? How do you decide to do one thing over another? What if the first thing you do does not work? If the first idea does not work don't you then go through a list of possible solutions? What if none of them work?

Be conscious of your daily thoughts and I think you will be surprised how common this thought process is.

Enter the "50 "What if...?" exercise.

So why is it so hard (pointless, silly, boring, dumb, easy, blow-off, insert your own thought here) to have a formal exercise where you ask 50 "What if...?" questions? Don't you already do it all the time? But do you ever think about doing it on a daily basis?

Isn't it odd to see something you already do in a new light?

Often tools to help unblock our creative minds are right in front of us - we only need to see them and use them in a different way.

Did you struggle with the exercise? Why?

Could the problem with the "What if...?" exercise be that this it is unfocused and the questions you ask are random or just stream-of-conscious? It is fun (for some of us,) but does it really help you do anything????

Did you find it easier, and more meaningful, to point the "What if...?" question at your classmates' egg projects?

Did a question posed to you by someone else about your egg help you see the project any differently? Does it still feel so dumb? (yes and/or no answers are completely fine - there is no right answer to these...)

So how can harnessing this innate sense of inquiry and problem solving help you be more creative with new media projects?

Creat... Innovat... Inqui...

What are the different ways you can finish those words?

What does each one REALLY mean?

Why would I ask that?

Red Golden Pheasants

Check out my newest feathered children!

Pottery stuff

Here is the raw info I sent to a regional art website (at their request) about my pottery. I hope you enjoy it and I am interested to see what they do with it. http://www.spyroterra.com/pottery/morning-glory.html

Check out this semester's syllabus!

The items are in reverse order, but the beauty of this is that you can pick and choose what you want to read... Of course, all students read every word of all of their syllabi! (If you are not into this alternate version there is a full text version in the resources in the class in Oncourse.)

http://sidewayssyllabus.blogspot.com/

Some of my new Photoshop work

Click the title of this entry (above) to see the full gallery (with links to bigger images)... All of these images are 100% photography, altered using only image enhancement techniques and layer blending modes in Photoshop. No filters were used nor were any parts of the images drawn. Let me know what you think.

Goofing around with After Effects

Bravery

This exercise was probably the best test of my convictions... Either that, or I am a stark raving lunatic (which some of my colleagues suspect...) I don't want to post too much about this until I see what the students come up with, but just say suffice it to say that I do practice what I preach. And boy is it scary sometimes! But it's all good. Once I see what they come up with I will give my 2¢ worth... I see a paper in this if all goes well... If not, then public humiliation, which might be very similar to a peer reviewed paper...