Creativity and creative processes in art and design

Abstract

Humans have created since the dawn of civilisation. Generating a design, leaving a mark, producing an artefact, communicating a concept, or changing a tradition, all involve the transformation of an idea into reality. This expression is often an advance on the status quo and contributes something new. At the same time such creations, and the ideas behind them, are inescapably connected to the social and cultural experiences of individuals and communities within which they were created. They also often play a significant part in the development of cultures, traditions, and the economic growth of organisations and nations. They often define these cultures, secure their place in history, and provide a legacy for future generations. An important component of creativity is communication. This presupposes a degree of openness on the part of the communicator and the recipients(s). Such openness indicates a readiness to receive new ideas and new cultural contexts, and also reciprocate by sharing information and searching for new explanations of disparate concepts. Thus the development of human creativity has depended to a large extent on speech, writing, images, reading, observing, and printing. The latter took a major step forward with the development of the printing press. This has greatly facilitated the process of learning and the sharing of information. Increased potential for communication has led to communities being more open and innovative. Multiple channels are now available. Open ways of thinking and working are able to support the generation of new concepts and ideas more readily than closed environments. In addition, the increase in the use of digital environments provides new frameworks, tools, and opportunities for the expression of new ideas and new designs, as well as providing new kinds of interactions and environments within which ideas can be generated, displayed, and explored. The extent to which new technologies may advance the creativity process is discussed. Factors governing creativity and the degree to which they may be augmented and enhanced are analysed. The massive increase in the volume of information being generated and circulated by digital systems is analogous to that brought about by the printing press, and could thus constitute a new technological paradigm. The extent to which this may constitute a paradigm shift on the status quo is analysed. Extracting meaning and knowledge from very large sets of information is a significant challenge often requiring multidisciplinary expertise of the kind provided by teams of mathematicians, statisticians, social scientists, data visualization specialists, and presentation experts.