6. Random Word Association

Random word/image association is an idea generation method that applies a systematic way with a fixed formula to garner new ideas. It provokes and intrigues our mind to react, resulting unorthodox solutions and concepts.

This technique can be used to stimulate open and divergent thinking and seek creative new ideas. When you are running out of ideas, this is the one of the best ways to acquire your lost sense of creativity. With some practice, even the most conventional people who rely on logic and analytical thinking can produce genius creativity.

For this lesson, our task was to create an image/object that will instill fear amongst people. We are given a random word - cat - to carry out random word association.

Here is a mini mind map of my ideas:

With the word "cat", i am reminded of four main characteristics:

i) claws - Cats have nasty claws which they sharpen by scratching on carpets, wood planks etc. It is one of their important self-defense tools and they can climb steep objects easily.

ii) fish - Cats in cartoons are always portrayed eating fish, but the real reason is unknown. In reality, cats feed on many other types of food. This is a much stereotypical judgement of a cat.

iii) night vision - Felines have very good night vision because they are nocturnal animals. They often hunt in the night (that includes big cats like the tiger) and laze around, taking long naps during the day.

Click to enlarge. Yes, that's a finger in her mouth.

Fish: What's a scary fish? A man-eating fish, that is! Piranhas are one of the omnivorous species of fish in the world that consumes large amount of meat. They have sharp teeth and a big appetite for human flesh. What are the chances you'll survive in the middle of a river with a school of piranhas? Thank goodness most of them only exist in the Amazon basin.

5. Juxtaposition

The "We've Won It" supplement papers comes together with the "Terror Bombs Explode Across London" Evening Standard for free.

A ragged, old man sitting on the pavement while looking upon a nicely dressed young lady.

Old vs New: The Trinity Church in Boston.

Juxtaposition is the act of placing two unrelated objects together to indicate a relationship between them. Stimulation of creative thinking occurs when  two contrasting objects are in close proximity. The analogy of the juxtaposed subjects can be categorized into two - metaphor and simile.

Metaphor is a figure of speech that uses one thing to mean another and makes a comparison between the two. For example, "All the world's a stage" is a metaphor from a play written by Shakespeare. It compares the world to a theatre stage and life to a play (of seven stages).

Simile is pretty much the same as metaphor, but the key to their difference is that simile uses the conjunctions, "like" or "as", while metaphor connects the two subject directly.

Metaphor: "All the world's a stage,"

Simile: "The whole world is like a theatre stage."

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The tasks this week was rather fun, because really random and odd ideas were conjured thanks to entire class juxtaposing almost everything.

Task 1

Firstly, we were given two lists of words, and we had to choose three pairs of numbers (00 to 99).

Click to enlarge

I picked three pairs of numbers and ended up with these combinations:

i) Flower & Root

ii) Ice & Mountain

iii)Duck & Rain

Then, we built sentences using these words, and with those sentences, we illustrate it out using our imagination. The fourth part, we had to draw out the combination of words instead of the sentence.

i) flower root

ii) ice mountain

iii) duck rain

Task 2

We were asked to choose two animals and combine them together, forming a new species of animal. Their characteristics need to be merged, but it has to be impossible for them to survive on Earth (land creature with sea creature).

This is a seahorse. Literally. It is a mutated horse with the body of a real seahorse. Horses are grazing animals while seahorses consume tiny crustaceans and shrimps, invertebrates and small fishes. Although they have similar physical features such as their long, nozzle-like "faces", almost everything about them - their breathing mechanism, reproductive system etc - are different.

Task 3

Candle vs Life

You start out life standing bold and tall,
With a flame so bright you outshine all.
To give so much, you burn from the core,
Time after time, others still ask for more.

Life's glory so brief, you were an untold legend,

Insignificant being, your death was hastened.

A fickle light towards the end,
There is nothing before that you can mend.

Ice cream vs Pain

Sweet and silky, freezing cold,

A scoop or more for young and old.

Chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and mint,

Every flavour with a different tint.

A spoonful or two can be delightful,

But have too much and it'll get frightful.

What's more irresistible to a child with cavities,

Than cold hard cream with flavours of candies?

Chilli vs Love

Your love is hot and dangerous,
A taste of you makes me delirious.
The trace of your lips like fire,
They are all my heart's desire.
Being with you it's always summertime,
Feisty, erotic, yet so sublime.
You are my greatest temptation,
Loving you is a sultry sensation.

4. Mind Maps

I'm sure you are no stranger to this visual thinking tool. A mind map is used for idea generation, visualization  and organization, and is great for a structured planning of writing, classifying notes, problem solving and studying, and has been vastly applied throughout our education process for its efficiency. It usually consists of a network of branched out categories with the main topic/theme in the middle. Here are a couple of examples of mind maps:

Tony Buzan, the inventor of mind mapping, claims that the mind map is a vastly superior note taking method because it does not lead to a "semi-hypnotic trance" state induced by other note forms. There are some guidelines to follow in order to create a good mind map:

a) Start in the center with an image of the topic.

b) Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your mind map.

c) Keep the topics label as short as possible.

d) Vary text size, color and alignment.

e) Use multiple colors throughout the mind map, for visual stimulation and also to encode or group.

f) Use emphasis and show associations in your mind map.

Mind maps can be classified into two categories: logical and associated. A logical mind map consists of words directly linked together based on stereotype. It is useful for taking down notes and organizing information. On the other hand, an associated mind map connects words that seems to have no related meanings, but are actually associated by memory. The two mind maps shown above are logical mind maps, as you might've guessed. Here's an example of an associated mind map:

I wasn't complete sure about the random word method at first because it seems to divert too much from logic. The truth is, associating two totally different things together produces more interesting and unexpected outcomes. This is why associated mind maps are perfect for idea generation and unconventional brainstorming.

We've tried out the method in class, first with a logical mind map and illustration of our friend sitting beside us.

Images courtesy of Heng Pei Ling.

Then, our lecturer gave us the task of creating an invention that would become something common in the future based on a mortar and a pestle with the help of this associated mind map:

This was what i came up with:

Click to enlarge

Exercise: A suit designed for running can be made with pestles around the body and a cap and dumbbells using mortars.

Coconut: The mortar and pestle can be used as a coconut crusher.

Brad Pitt: Brad Pitt will set new trends in the future with an Oscar outfit made of a mortar and pestle.

3. Biography: Google Founders, Sergey Brin & Larry Page

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the founders of Google, currently the Internet's most popular search engine, while they were only graduate students at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.

Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan where his parents were computer science professors at Michigan State University. Page attended the Okemos Montessori School in Okemos, Michigan from 1975 to 1979, and graduated from East Lansing High School (1991). He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan with honours. Eager to advance in his career, Page decided to study for a Ph.D degree. He was admitted to the prestigious doctoral program in computer science at Stanford University. On an introductory weekend at the Palo Alto campus for new students, he met Sergey Brin.

A native of Moscow, Russia, Brin was also the son of Michael Brin and Eugenia Brin, both graduates of Moscow State University. His father is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother is a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He came to the United States with his family when he was six. His father taught math at the University of Maryland, and it was from that school's College Park campus that Brin earned an undergraduate degree in computer science and math.

Brin was already enrolled in Stanford's PhD program when Page arrived in 1995. He was working on data mining, the idea of taking large amounts of data, analyzing it for patterns and trying to extract relationships that are useful. One weekend Brin was assigned to a team that showed the new doctoral students around campus, and Page was in his group. According to interviews and reports, the two often disagreed with each other and argued a lot, but soon found themselves working together on a research project. That 1996 paper, "Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine", became the basis for the Google search engine.

Page and Brin invented an algorithm that searches all the hypertext documents in cyberspace, which are the basis for Web pages on the Internet. They wanted to create a search tool that would find the most relevant Web page first. "PageRank", the search engine with Page and Brin's unique algorithm is named after Page.

Page and Brin  named their company "Google," after the mathematical term Googol, which specified the number one followed by a hundred zeros. They took it to Andy Bechtolsheim who offered to write them a check of $100,000 on the spot. They went on to raise more money from friends, family, and then from venture capital firms that funded new businesses. By the end of 1999 they had set up headquarters in an office park in Mountain View, and had officially launched the site.

"Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world." 

- Sergey Brin

References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page

http://www.notablebiographies.com/news/Ow-Sh/Page-Larry-and-Brin-Sergey.html

2. Novelty, Creativity, Innovation and Invention

nov·el·ty [nov-uhl-tee]

–noun

state or quality of being novel, new, or unique; newness.

cre·a·tiv·i·ty   [kree-ey-tiv-i-tee, kree-uh-]

–noun

the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination.

in·no·va·tion   [in-uh-vey-shuhn]

–noun

the process that renews something that exists; make changes in anything established.

in·ven·tion   [in-ven-shuhn]

–noun

new composition, device, or process.

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All of the above mentioned words have interrelated meanings, but they are merely branched out definitions of Creativity. On the right of every image i've accompanied my ideas on those concepts.

Novelty is the quality of being new, unique and interesting. There are two categories of novelty:

a) Subjective novelty - a perception of something as being new by an individual or a group of people.

b) Objective novelty - something new for all humanity in its development/evolution through a long period of time.

For example, compare a new, creative design for knife holders to a young kid from the States learning how to use a pair of chopsticks.

Creativity is a big word. It is comprised of novelty, innovation, originality etc, and is very subjective depending on the individual's perception. A simple definition would be the ability to create something new but of value as well.

Compared to the amusing knife holder, this coffee cup that can even hold cookies seems more useful, but that may be just me.

You might not realize this, but everything in this world requires creativity. The computer screen you're looking at, the ceiling fan, that English essay you've just completed...

Innovation is the process of renewing something that already exists. Any invention, design, idea, strategy is open to improvements and recreation. The world is so full of them that went through countless innovation that no one really knows true originality. Again, this depends on the inventor/creator/designer themselves.

This image shows a camera holder for self-portraits. Initially, tripods are used, but this design would be the preferred option for people who can't be bothered setting up a tripod or even carrying it.

Invention is anything that has been created based on an idea the inventor conceived him/herself, or derived from ideas that already existed.

The earliest recorded evidence of the production of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 B.C. in Ancient Babylon. Michel Eugene Chevreul, a French chemist, was the first person to make soap from fats, glycerin and fatty acids in 1811.

References: http://dictionary.reference.com

http://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.sabkuchchalega.com

http://www.edinformatics.com

1. Thinking & Creativity

Although it was not the official week 1, actual Creative Studies classes started today. Our lecturer, Mr. Radzi Bedu, began the lecture with an introduction to the module. Basically, i found it very interesting - it was something i'd willingly listen to and not doze off - but the prospect of managing yet another individual weblog as the first assignment rather dismayed me. We are to create an online journal focusing on our views and thoughts of the topic in the lecture which should be updated weekly.

The topic of the day is Defining Creativity. To me, "creativity" is the ability to make/design something totally new and different, or to develop ideas and concepts that the world has never come across. After listening to some of Edward De Bono's speeches on "creativity" and "thinking outside the box", i realized something else. There is a thin line between creativity and being different. Sometimes, a new invention could be completely out of this world, never before seen and mind-blowing. But for it to be considered "creative", the idea/invention should be useful and has value and relevance. Otherwise, people are simply creating something different for the sake of being different.

We also learned about some common myths and misconceptions about creativity. Each myth is followed by my comment about it.

1. Only special people are creative.

Perhaps we should take a look at past examples of creative people - each and every inventor, designer or philosopher that were creative enough to be considered great had to go through much hardships. Becoming a creative being involves years of hard work and constant practice to polish their thinking skills and acquire vital knowledge. They had to go trough countless experiments, failed or succeeded, to gain experience and new insights. As the great inventor Thomas Edison once said, "Creativity is an attitude, combined with effort; 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".

2. Being creative is hard.

That may be somewhat true. As i have mentioned, to become a creative person, you'll have put in a lot of effort and sacrifices. But with the correct methods of thinking, being creative might not be that difficult after all. Many people fail to come up with new ideas because they are often stuck midway, unable to move forward or find an alternative to solve a problem. Some of them give up easily simply because they were too blinded by limitations of the norms. There are so many ways to develop and improve creative thinking skills because the world is open to infinite possibilities.

3. Problems are in our life to make it more difficult.

I'd like to think of problems as stepping stones to a well-developed, advance society. It is when times are difficult that humans try to create and improvise to solve problems and make life better. Why, can you imagine life without problems from the very beginning of humans as babies? It is impossible that we could survive! As we progress, solving problems with creative thinking also allows us to develop and perfect our thinking skills, often discovering new methods and ideation

4. I am not creative.

This is all a matter of perspective. No one is not creative. Or rather, no one does not have the chance to be creative. We were all born the same, only outer factors create obstacles for us. To quote from above, "Becoming a creative being involves years of hard work and constant practice to polish their thinking skills and acquire vital knowledge."

5. Innovation is the domain of geniuses.

It doesn't take a world-class architect to build a house, and the same goes for this statement. Being innovative is similar to being creative in some ways because they both require long term dedication to hard work. It's not only the brains that matter.

6. I have to have brand new ideas in order for me to be considered creative.

Here's one shocking secret i've discovered in class: There are no new ideas! Over the millenniums, it is hard to determine what is truly original and creative. We are subconsciously influenced by the outside world because we cannot help being exposed to it. A new concept could be formed by combining two existing ideas  or improving one idea, also known as innovation.

7. Brainstorming is hard work.

... if you're doing it the wrong way. There are many approaches to brainstorming, and a lot of them could be fun. Whichever technique floats your boat will ease the process of thinking.

8. Only artists need to be creative.

It saddens me how people misunderstand the term "creativity". It is often labelled as something you need to have if you're involved in arts. According to how i defined it from above, "creativity" is all around us. You can never escape from the need to be creative because even the basics in life involve it - building a new book shelf, creating new recipes for dinner, figuring a new way to solve a math problem etc.

9. Writer's block is the greatest obstacle in the creative process.

We are no strangers to writing and writer's block, but i'm sure you wouldn't consider it the greatest obstacle in the creative process. I think it's more about our attitude, really. Often, we are blinded by frustration that we can't figure out a way to cure our writer's block. It is when we have completely given up that we truly fail.

10. Using structured creative techniques will hinder my ability to be creative.

This is a very subjective statement. Everyone either develops their own creative techniques and skills, or they loosely follow methods created by creative thinkers. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, then the problem lies with you. YOU need to find a way that works, be it structured or not.