Nickerson Summary:
Justin Curtis
ART 335-01
October 14, 2017
Article 7: Summary for “Enhancing
Creativity” A chapter in the “Handbook of Creativity”
Main Idea: The article by Nickerson, found in the
“Handbook of Creativity”, focuses on creativity and strategies concerning how
it can be enhanced. It starts with assumptions and definitions of creativity
before focusing on past, structured approaches to enhancing creativity and
their effectiveness. Following this, he recommends new approaches to enhancing
creativity.
Supporting Key
Concepts:
·
Nickerson begins
by listing eight assumptions about creativity, focusing on two assumptions:
o
Tenuous evidence
suggests creativity can be enhanced
o
How to enhance
creativity is not well understood, but there are possibilities that merit exploration
·
There are
differing definitions for creativity, provided by Mumford, Reiter-Palmon, and
Redmond; Gilhooly; Gardner; Bruner; Perkins; and many others.
o
Novelty and
originality
o
Socially valued
products
o
Problem solving
o
Something that
creates surprise (paired with useful product)
o
Something
different from the reference it is based on, but different for a reason other than for the sake of being different
(useful/valuable/etc.)
o
Appropriate,
correct, or expressive of meaning
·
Nickerson does
not agree with making creativity’s existence dependent on its recognition, as
by definition this would mean much of creativity would go unnoticed
·
Nickerson
explores many of creativity’s ties to other traits
o
Novelty/Originality
o
Problem-Solving
o
Insight
o
Intelligence
o
Ethics
o
Critical-Thinking
·
Nickerson
explains types of creativity:
o
3 degrees
o
Little c, Big C
o
Historical and
Psychological
·
Nickerson
explores previous structured approaches to enhancing creativity:
o
Brainstorming
o
Productive
Thinking Program
o
CoRT [Cognitive
Research Trust]
o
Project
Intelligence
o
Exploring their
effectiveness, Nickerson found little hard data due to the conceptual and
practical difficulties. Additionally, creative talent in measured activities do
not appear to guarantee creative productivity in adulthood
·
Nickerson
recommended different strategies to enhance creativity
o
Establish purpose
and intent
o
Build basic
skills
o
Stimulate and
reward curiosity and exploration
o
Build motivation
(Especially internal)
o
Encourage
confidence and willingness to take risks
o
Focus on mastery
and self-competition
o
Promote
supportable beliefs about creativity
o
Provide
opportunities for choice and discovery
o
Develop
self-management (meta-cognitive) skills
o
Teach techniques
and strategies to facilitate creative performance
o
Provide balance
o
Teach by example
o
Encourage
acquisition of domain-specific skills
Example &
Assessment: The strongest
example used in the article is at the beginning, where Nickerson cites over
five different sources for the possible definition of creativity. It does well
to illustrate the difficulty of measuring the enhancement of creativity when
there is no widely accepted ideal to base it upon.
Personal
Response: I deeply enjoyed the article, the
only wish I had was that it was somewhat more focused. It is a chapter in a
book, which makes the size understandable, but tries to fit in a lot of
subjects in such a short space. If it had removed one section to expand
another, it might feel much smoother to read.
Questions: How can we apply the suggested approaches to
education?
Marshall Summary:
Justin
Curtis
ART 335-01
October 11, 2017
Article 6: Summary for “Five Ways to
Integrate: Using Strategies from Contemporary Art”
Main Idea: The Marshall article is about the integration
of art into the academic curriculum. This is proposed due to the knowledge that
interdisciplinary integration enhances learning and understanding of concepts
and ideas. There are five strategies (paired with examples) that are explored
in the article: depiction, extension/projection, reformatting, mimicry, and
metaphor.
Supporting Key
Concepts:
- · Integration, specifically making connections across disciplines, enhances learning and understanding of significant ideas.
- Art is inherently connected to all disciplines, as it addresses content and ideas from outside art. Art is also a form of inquiry with processes and goals similar to other areas of study.
- Learning requires the application of skill or information to be learned. Art making is useful for learning as it is the active process of application.
- There are different approaches to integration:
- There are concept based models:
- Taylor, Carpenter, Ballengee-Morris, and Sessions
- Ohio State Transforming Education Through the Arts Challenge
- Common to all approaches:
- Focus on ideas that transcend disciplinary boundaries.
- Involve interpretation, reinterpretation, and/or re-contextualization. Ways that artists change perception of things by re-framing them.
- There are five main strategies:
- Depiction: Renders a subject from observation. The most common and easy way of integrating art with science and social studies, it is appropriate and useful for all age groups.
- Extension/Projection: Speculation about possible outcomes using the impact of a given idea as a basis. Age appropriate and useful as it’s easy to grasp.
- Reformatting: Setting thins in a new context to understand them differently. Aimed at slightly higher levels of education, specifically middle and high school.
- Mimicry: Mimic methods and use tools from other disciplines, a form of ‘play-acting’. Must be done differently depending of level of education, but still widely applicable.
- Metaphor: The description of one thing in terms of another. Not a simple comparison where linked things are essentially the same, metaphor is more revealing when they are more different. Only appropriate for later schooling, recommended at high school levels.
Example &
Assessment: The example
taken from Cornelia Hesse Honeggar is very useful and well done. It explains
her history with the technical side of depiction before exploring her use of
depiction in art. Her watercolors of insects collected at nuclear sites to
reveal physical abnormalities shows signs of both artistic expression and
meaning paired with a method and background that show its use in science.
Personal
Response: I really enjoyed the article and
found its concepts and ideas to be very interesting. I’m always interested in
learning different methods and approaches to education, the integration of art
while still focusing on the subject matter is a very worthwhile effort that
promotes innovation and creativity while still valuing the principles of other
disciplines.
Huang Summary:
Justin
Curtis
ART 335-01
September
4, 2017
Article 2: Summary for
“Understanding Digital-Synthesized Photographs through Theories of Knowledge: A
Case Study of Tom Bamberger’s Cultured Landscapes”
Main Idea:
The Huang article’s focus is on Tom Bamberger’s Cultured Landscapes and
the artist beliefs of the dissonance between truth and reality. A discrepancy
that Bamberger attempts to fix through the use of digital-synthetization in
order to uncover the second layer of reality hidden beneath the first captured
by traditional photography.
Supporting Key Concepts:
·
-Bamberger
differentiates truth from reality. His definition of truth being agreed upon
facts. Whereas he defines reality as being tied to individual experiences and
sensations, like a punch to the stomach.
·
-Bamberger
utilizes layers of reality in his work. The first layer of reality indicates a
problem, posed by sensory experiences gained from the outside world. The second
layer is Bamberger’s response, where he tries to create a better version out of
the sensory experiences, through experimentation, to arrive at the truth.
·
-In order to tell
the truth, a photograph needs to be beautiful. The more beautiful it is, the
truer it is. From Bamberger’s experience in the Rocky Mountains, he concludes:
Straight photographs do not tell the truth.
·
-Artists/photographers
who use digital tools have certain messages that they can convey only through
the digital-synthesized style.
Example & Assessment: The key example used in this article is Bamberger’s
experience in the Rocky Mountains. It is an excellent example to use, as it
both explains the artists history and why they turned to photography in the
first place, as well as being a prime example of the dissonance explained
throughout the article between Bamberger’s definition of reality and truth.
Personal Response: I have very mixed feelings about the article. To start with the
negative, Bamberger displays something that is my chief pet-peeve when dealing
with artists. Misusing words or concepts and then explaining the misusing words
or concepts to sound deep. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary: Truth –
“the body of real things, events, and facts. Actuality.” And Reality – “a real
event, entity, or state of affairs. Something that is neither derivative nor
dependent but exists necessarily.”
Bamberger is wrong in his assertion that “Reality is what you make of it”. Reality is, by definition, independent from one’s own experience. Reality and truth are not, by definition, in conflict, and Bamberger’s misuse of the words are signs of either ignorance or pretentiousness, and I don’t think Bamberger ignorant.
Bamberger’s notice of the dissonance between reality and experience/perception, however, is a worthwhile concept. He notes the importance of beauty to human beings, and the disappointment we face when the reality shown doesn’t match the excellence experienced. Both of which are interesting ideas and worthier of exploring than Bamberger’s incorrect personal definitions.
Bamberger is wrong in his assertion that “Reality is what you make of it”. Reality is, by definition, independent from one’s own experience. Reality and truth are not, by definition, in conflict, and Bamberger’s misuse of the words are signs of either ignorance or pretentiousness, and I don’t think Bamberger ignorant.
Bamberger’s notice of the dissonance between reality and experience/perception, however, is a worthwhile concept. He notes the importance of beauty to human beings, and the disappointment we face when the reality shown doesn’t match the excellence experienced. Both of which are interesting ideas and worthier of exploring than Bamberger’s incorrect personal definitions.
Questions:
How can this dissonance between perception and reality be explored for artistic
use? Should digital-synthetization be used more frequently in photography to
better align experience and reality?
[Image created on Mindmup.com]
[Summary in response to Yi-Hui Huang's Understanding Digital-Synthesized Photographs through Theories of Knowledge: A Case Study of Tom Bamberger's Cultured Landscapes]
Milbrandt Summary:
Justin Curtis
ART 335-01
August
30, 2017
Article 1:
Summary for “Creativity: What are We Talking About?”
Main Idea: The Milbrandt article’s focus is
the western definition and perception of creativity, citing its ambiguity and
the fact no common agreement for the word existing. Using this starting point,
it explains three viewpoints for the term: domain-changing creativity,
self-expression and search for meaning creativity, and creative problem-solving
creativity.
Supporting Key Concepts:
·
-Creativity is elusive and abstract in definition and
discussion. The existing definitions for creativity are clustered by viewpoints
and purposes.
·
-One viewpoint is ‘Domain-Changing creativity’, modeled
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “Any act, idea, or product that changes an
existing domain, or that transforms an existing domain into a new one”. Bruner,
Dewey, Parnes, and Stein are clustered in this viewpoint.
· -
Another viewpoint is the ‘Self-Expression and Search
for Meaning creativity’ which stems from What
is Art For?, written by Dissanayake. It takes an anthropological approach,
claiming creativity and art are biological necessities for homo sapiens,
additionally suggesting that creative enterprises have survival value. Dewey,
Lowenfield, Vygotsky, and Peter London are clustered in this viewpoint.
·
-The third viewpoint is the ‘Creative Problem solving
creativity’, developed by parnes and suggests that creativity results in
multiple solutions, neither right nor wrong, but dependent on context and
criteria can be more or less successful. Osborne, Eberle, and Roukes are
clustered in this viewpoint.
Example & Assessment: Milbrandt’s use of artist’s
viewpoints in multiple areas is wonderful in highlighting the ambiguity and
complexity in defining creativity. Using Dewey under both Domain-Changing
creativity as well as Self-Expression and Search for Meaning creativity. First
using Dewey to support the educational theory of Bruner for the development of
students to allow them to change or transform domains in the future. Then,
Milbrandt uses Dewey as the basis for education supporting Dissanayake’s
anthropological approach. Dewey’s viewpoint has not fundamentally changed, but
because of the complexity of the discussion it is useful for the support in
multiple viewpoints.
Personal Response: I enjoyed the article and
considered it a very positive read. I thought the breakdown of the definition
into viewpoints and purposes was a clever way of breaking down the definitions
into more component parts and explaining parts individually. Then using
components in multiple sections to reinforce the complexity and depth of the
discussion. I definitely agree with the sentiment of complexity in defining
creativity, as the varying viewpoints referenced facets of creativity while
still being separate form one another.
Questions: What are the key components that
all viewpoints agree upon? Is there any component that is more key to
creativity than the others? How can the three outlined viewpoints be broken
down to more fundamental components or ideas?
Milbrandt MindMap:
[Image created on Mindmup.com]
[Summary in response to Melody and Lanny Milbrandt's Creativity: What Are We Talking About?]
Individual Response:
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