A 1960s art school experiment that redefined creativity

ppseudolus about 7 hours ago 20 commentsRead Article on thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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uxhacker•about 5 hours ago

I was always told that the difference between art and design is that the artist creates the problem, and the designers solve them.

I thought it followed the Socrates tradition in that the true philosopher is the one asking the questions, and it is the role of the student to answer them.

I wish I remembered who I am quoting here

colechristensen•about 4 hours ago

I wish ancient Greek techne τέχνη hadn't gone through the split that left "art" on one side and "technology" (or work?) on the other.

The split of art vs. design you're talking about or one of the many ways to divide the act of creation into a classical/romantic divide or one of the many other ways to describe it should be considered harmful.

And I'm not trying to split hairs here but wishing the dichotomy you're talking about didn't exist and encouraging folks not to frame the world that way.

uxhacker•about 4 hours ago

Where is the harm? You can be in both worlds at the same time.

If we think of Leonardo da Vinci he created both art that created problems, and inventions that solved problems. But these world where very separate.

gh0stcat•about 2 hours ago

I'm struggling to understand what they define "problem finding" to be in this context, did anyone come away with a more concrete definition?

reg_dunlop•about 2 hours ago

No.

Here's one interpretation though, for the discourse:

When given a task, some artists focused less on the objective and more on the process of observation. Observation of what, would be a logical next question. And I have to imagine and indulge in some projection here and guess that any of the artists may have been looking for more of a challenge, or more meaning. How to select some combination of objects, relative to the constraints of the circumstances for the task, paired with the skills they possess to produce the task at hand.

Given the proper acumen and a relatively subordinate task, I imagine some would tend towards Parkinson's law.

So following this, maybe problem finding could be seen as: how is this beautiful/aesthetically pleasing, or what do I really want to compose to fulfill this demand? What innate qualities do these things have which express some quality? Or maybe: how can I waste an hour of this man's time?

YMMV

squidsoup•43 minutes ago

> And I have to imagine and indulge in some projection here and guess that any of the artists may have been looking for more of a challenge, or more meaning

I think one reason it may be so difficult to express this concretely, is that artists are often looking for an ineffable quality.

everyone•about 1 hour ago

I program and project manage games, I am certainly a problem solver on the team, and I definitely view the artists as problem creators. They will make everything harder for everyone else, but it's cus they are just 100% focused on the art, they want the art to be as good as possible and to realize their vision, so having them on the team means a lot more work in general but a far better looking game.

7402•about 2 hours ago

That experiment might simply divide artists into those who understand bullshit assignments and can adapt to that context, and those who don't and can't.

There are plenty of artists who can do well on SATs, and can fill out bureaucratic forms, and complete one-hour timed tests. They might well take a lot of time to think and explore when they are making their own art on their own schedule.

But I know artists who just can't function well under artificial constraints and can't adapt well to someone else telling them how to create art.

arlobish•about 5 hours ago

Am I right in saying the conclusion of the experiment was: people who spend more time thinking about a problem before acting tend to find it more engaging and were therefore more successful?

I wonder if the quality of the art suffered within the context of the experiment because of the time constraint, even if in the long run those people tended to create better art.

NonHyloMorph•about 4 hours ago

No. People who are confronted with a task that don't search for a solution but for a priblem within it are more creative. The consequence was that some barely produced solutions within the time constraint. Those were more succesfull as artists, the article states, while a quite a few of the other folks dropped out of art. Consequentially I'd like to add: They found the solution to the problem of living as an artist in quitting art - quite reasonably

lkm0•about 5 hours ago

This whole thing strikes me as coming from the wrong direction. Tying artistic and financial success, trying to apply some cargo cult "problem" engineering mentality to art. I feel like these articles illustrate quite well why the academic plastic arts have become so irrelevant today that we could say they are not part of human culture at large, in the sense that they have vanishing influence on public discourse.

smokel•about 4 hours ago

Interestingly, most of scientific research is also not part of the public discourse.

lkm0•about 4 hours ago

Yes, that's a failing of science. Reading the early volumes of Nature from the 19th century shows how much more of an open dialogue it was back then: https://www.nature.com/nature/volumes

Though education was much more limited, so take "open" with a grain of salt.

everyone•about 1 hour ago

I mean it's so advanced and esoteric.. we've been "digging" for centuries, the journey to the current coal face where new work is being done is so long you need a phd just to reach it.