From: hal@finney.org
Date: Tue Sep 07 1999 - 09:27:45 MDT
Dan Fabulich, <daniel.fabulich@yale.edu>, writes:
> The NY Times printed an article today on computers in advertising, but
> sold it with a distinctly more philosophical bent, suggesting that
> artistic creativity has more to do with constraints and limitations than
> freedom and imagination.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/090799sci-mind-creativity.html
It is an interesting article, but I don't think their conclusion
follows from their premises. They basically copied ideas from clever
commercials and compared them with new ideas from average developers.
The copied ideas won. So the moral is not necessarily that constraints
help creativity, but rather that an old good idea is better than a new
mediocre one.
Having said that, I have seen situations where constraining a great
artist seemed to make them even greater. The constraints force them
to work at their very highest level. Architecture is a good example of
this, expecially when the architect must work in a severely constrained
situation due to the local environment. An example would be what is
perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest masterpiece, "Falling Water",
the home built onto a waterfall.
Years ago I worked in the video game business. At a time when the
hardware was crude, the pixels blocky and the sound chips little better
than penny whistles, we had artists who could really bring the system
to life. The graphics flowed smoothly, the sounds were cleverly done to
complement the game. One project I worked on (unfortunately cancelled
before release) used a film-score musician who was fascinated by the
abilities and limitations of the built-in sound chip. He made that
thing jump through hoops, experimenting with alternative musical scales,
integrating sound effects into the music, and really doing imaginative
stuff with it. The constraints of the system got his creative juices
flowing.
Hal
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