Name: Anonymous 2013-09-12 11:45
Creative Jenga
Think of your work like a game of Jenga: success relies as much on what you're prepared to take away as on what you decide to leave in place.
The idea of Jenga can be applied to creativity. Take a look at some of your own creative work and see if you can isolate the basic building blocks, both in terms of perceivable elements or attributes (specific sections, words, colours, columns. etc.) and in terms of the ideas and concepts which helped the work come into being. By doing this, you should already be looking at your work in a different way - seeing it as a series of dependencies and interrelated pieces rather than as a whole.
Having surveyed and catalogued those pieces, start taking some away. If we're looking at, say, a photograph, you could physically crop it so that we see only two-thirds of what the photographer saw. If it's a digital image, you could take away specific parts of the picture - rub out the person whose portrait you were taking and leave an empty space instead. Does this photo perhaps stand up as some kind of 'still life'? Is the absence of the sitter actually informing the piece?
Naturally, as you take things away, there will be a point where what you have simply isn't enough any more and it collapses into a formless mess. But this is information in its own right. You now know so much more about how your work actually 'works'.
Pete place a piece of Jenga on top.
Pete : "AHA ...JUST! SAFE! I'LL GO MAKE SOME TEA NOW."
Pete went out of the room.
Pete : "LET ME KNOW WHEN IT'S MY TURN AGAIN, OKAY?"
Ken and Hayley looked at each other mischievously.
As Ken touch a piece of Jenga.
Hayley : "WAIT, PETE - IT'S STILL WOBBLING -"
CRASH!
Ken : "OH DEAR! BAD LUCK, MATE!!"
Hayley : "HOW STRANGE!"
Pete : "..."
Think of your work like a game of Jenga: success relies as much on what you're prepared to take away as on what you decide to leave in place.
The idea of Jenga can be applied to creativity. Take a look at some of your own creative work and see if you can isolate the basic building blocks, both in terms of perceivable elements or attributes (specific sections, words, colours, columns. etc.) and in terms of the ideas and concepts which helped the work come into being. By doing this, you should already be looking at your work in a different way - seeing it as a series of dependencies and interrelated pieces rather than as a whole.
Having surveyed and catalogued those pieces, start taking some away. If we're looking at, say, a photograph, you could physically crop it so that we see only two-thirds of what the photographer saw. If it's a digital image, you could take away specific parts of the picture - rub out the person whose portrait you were taking and leave an empty space instead. Does this photo perhaps stand up as some kind of 'still life'? Is the absence of the sitter actually informing the piece?
Naturally, as you take things away, there will be a point where what you have simply isn't enough any more and it collapses into a formless mess. But this is information in its own right. You now know so much more about how your work actually 'works'.
Pete place a piece of Jenga on top.
Pete : "AHA ...JUST! SAFE! I'LL GO MAKE SOME TEA NOW."
Pete went out of the room.
Pete : "LET ME KNOW WHEN IT'S MY TURN AGAIN, OKAY?"
Ken and Hayley looked at each other mischievously.
As Ken touch a piece of Jenga.
Hayley : "WAIT, PETE - IT'S STILL WOBBLING -"
CRASH!
Ken : "OH DEAR! BAD LUCK, MATE!!"
Hayley : "HOW STRANGE!"
Pete : "..."