Creating Passionate Users

Creativity on speed

It's been said that art, creativity, and innovation are about the recognition and mastery of constraints.

"Man built most nobly when limitations were at their greatest."
— Frank Lloyd Wright

"In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed."
— Henri Matisse

One of the best ways to be truly creative--breakthrough creative--is to be forced to go fast. Really, really, really fast. From the brain's perspective, it makes sense that extreme speed can unlock creativity. When forced to come up with something under extreme time constraints, we're forced to rely on the more intuitive, subconscious parts of our brain. The time pressure can help suppress the logical/rational/critical parts of your brain. It helps you EQ up subconscious creativity (so-called "right brain") and EQ down conscious thought ("left brain").

(One of the best ways to quickly test the dramatic power of shifting from left to right is with Betty Edwards Drawing on the right side of the brain work.)

Ad-lib Jams

I'm not talking about the kind of time pressure we get from trying to get real work done under unreasonable deadlines. I'm talking about a specific technique for using speed as a creativity driver. I talked about this earlier in Build something cool in 24 hours, based on a talk by Ritual Entertainment game guru Squirrel Eiserloh. Squirrel is one of the founders of the Ad Lib Game Development Society, and an active participant (and advocate) of the Jam model for creating both games and music.

Squirrel said one of their main mottos is from the Glengarry Glen Ross movie, where Alex Baldwin tells/threatens the sales people to "always be closing." You aren't there just to do things...you're there to make things. To get something finished, no matter how crappy and ultimately unusable, in the given--insane--time constraint.

Creativity Deathmatches

Another jam format that's been gaining ground is the deathmatch or "battle". But unlike the live Battle of the Bands format (or Poetry Slams), which are simply live competitions, the creativity deathmatch/battle is about creating in real-time. In other words, you aren't just playing your pre-written music or reading your pre-written poems in front of a live audience, you're also creating something from scratch.

Of course, this idea is nothing new to improv artists from comedy to jazz musicians, but it's not something one normally associates with things like graphic design or writing code. (Although there have been code-offs (like bake-offs for geeks), typically held at developer conferences.)

Squirrel sent me this link to the Laptop Deathmatch held recently in Dallas, covered in this Dallas Observer article. From the article:

"The monthly competition...pits 16 people in a tournament to find the most talented laptop musicians in town. Players get three minutes to whip up whatever noise they want, as long as it comes from only a laptop and a MIDI controller device. The most exciting thing about the event, really, is that nobody actually has a clue what "most talented laptop musician" means."

But Skyler has been raving about the Art Battle held at the Installation Art Gallery/Skateboard Shoe store here in Boulder.

Sponsored by (who else) Pabst Blue Ribbon, artists Scot Lefavor and Ray Young Chu battled it out before a live audience. Every 30 minutes the host would announce a word or phrase and the two artists had to race to depict it.

[photos by ronnie innes, via Scot Lefavor's site]

I found plenty of other examples of creativity battles including this one from Portland's Music and Video Art Invitational described as:
"10 video artists and 20 musicians create original works in a limited time frame using provided source materials.... contributors will be supplied with 10 visual or audio samples, which they will in turn use as source material for an original piece of music, sound, or video."

[no pre-arranged material was allowed]

But perhaps my favorite is the Comic Art Battle, also in Portland. (Why does so much cool stuff happen up there?)

When you're crafting something -- a final product like a software app, painting, piece of music, etc. -- slowing down can make all the difference between crap and not crap. But when you're trying to make creative breakthroughs, slowing down gives the rational part of your brain all the time it needs to stop an idea before you're barely aware of it. When it comes to building/creating/playing something you didn't even know you were capable of, speed is your friend.

(I read that Vincent Van Gogh completed every one of his paintings in less than 24 hours. Then again, there is that whole ear thing...)

But this brings me back to the picture at the top, and Squirrel's motto "Always Be Closing. As most of you already know, Tim O'Reilly's geek campout, Foo Camp, has spawned a number of other 24 to 48 hour "camps" and "jams" including Bar Camp, and the recent Seattle Mind Camp. While these are awesome experiences, and I wish there were more--these events should not be confused with creativity jams.

While Foo Camp is where I first learned of the Game Jam format, from Squirrel's talk, Foo Camp was itself not a make-something-cool-while-you're-here-to-demo-at-the-end kind of thing. The camps are more about talking about things people have built rather than actually building them in real-time. The camps offer a different form of creativity--more about synthesis and getting new ideas than tapping into the power of your subconscious creativity.

It would be fun to see a combination camp where the first half of the weekend was about actually making something, solo or collaboratively, and the other half was about exchanging ideas with the other participants (including the things you made during the first half, and lessons learned).

I'll leave you with an article on creativity, by Randy Thom, aimed at those who do sound for motion pictures. While not at all speed-related, it's an interesting perspective on creativity:

"The Tyranny Of Competence
In the movie industry a high value is justifiably placed on technical competence. It is assumed that every craftsperson should know how to use the tools of the trade and be able to perform on cue, under pressure. The trouble with paying so much attention to skill and technical prowess is this: The frame of mind in which interesting things germinate is often more confused and desperate than organized and confident. "