Creative Practices Embodied, Embedded, and Enacted in Architectural Settings: Toward an Ecological Model of Creativity

An "in vivo" analysis of crafts practices and creativity-Why affordances provide a productive lens

Scholars are increasingly recognizing that creativity is grounded in the active sensorimotor engagement with the environment and materiality. Affordances-recognizable pointers to action opportunities in the ecology-provide a helpful prism for analyzing how this happens. Creative practitioners, as they seek aesthetic opportunities or innovation, depend on their sensitivity toward potentialities in their action space. Presently, we apply a high-zoom lens to a crafts process, giving our micro-genetic research design an affordance focus. By investigating one of the authors, a ceramicist and a practitioner-researcher, through her process of making of a vase, we tracked how affordances are responded to, developed, shaped, invited or, where necessary, rejected, as the ceramicist "routes" her creative trajectory. Several insights emerge: (1) The ceramicist's decisions-initially about general directions, then about aesthetic details-unfold while engaging with the clay; they emerge in stepwise fashion, but with a holistic orientation. (2) Choosing among affordances requires parallel sensitivities to object functionality, aesthetics and creativity, as well as technical feasibility; adhering to the proper technical procedure that provides the very basis for creatively relevant affordances to later arise. (3) While the hands and eyes engage with short-lived affordances the ceramicist must keep in view higher-timescale affordances that ensure a good task progression for making a vase, and affordances for the material's overall "workability". (4) The ceramicist typically relates to momentary affordances in light of expected as well as imagined others, to ensure a coherent end product. (5) Affordances contribute to material creativity in more ways than typically recognized in the literature. They range from serendipitous "finds" to options developed with a large degree of creative autonomy; affordances may also be indirectly invited and practitioners strategically change probability distributions as well as providing an enabling background for generative action. Thus, a crafts practitioner brings forth unconventional affordances through active engagement, using a mix of exploration, strategy, and imaginative potential. Affordance theorists err when stressing the possibility to just "find" creative options or that perceptual acuity is the sole skill.

The value revitalization model of Qajar religious schools in Tehran

Religious schools are institutions for teaching Islamic sciences. Nowadays, many religious schools in Tehran, which were built during the Qajar period, have been destroyed due to natural erosion and urban expansion. Since there is no comprehensive research on the conservation and revitalization of these schools, the present study aims to model the value revitalization of Qajar religious schools in Tehran. The present research is a mixed-methods study (a qualitative-quantitative study using a simulation). The data required are collected using a questionnaire. The statistical population includes school teachers who complete the structured questionnaire after visiting the schools through a virtual tour. The teachers are selected using a random sampling technique and the sample size (number of participated teachers) is 948. The sampling adequacy is confirmed with the KMO test. The reliability and validity of the questionnaire are also verified by Cronbach's alpha and the model fit index, respectively. The data are analyzed by modeling and path analysis in SPSS and AMOS software. Research results show that architectural phenomena (i.e., independent variable), through value conservation (i.e., mediator variable), have the most significant effect on the value revitalization (i.e., dependent variable) of Qajar religious schools in Tehran. Also, the path analysis shows three essential relations with a large effect size in the model: (1) The conservation of compound values influenced by social interactions in the building revitalizes the semi-tangible aesthetic factor of the building; (2) The conservation of physical values influenced by the building structure revitalizes the tangible aesthetic factor of the building; and (3) The conservation of semantic values influenced by the moral values of the building revitalizes the intangible aesthetic and educational factors of the building. In value revitalization, two basic aesthetic and educational factors play the most important role because they do not influence any other variable while all variables influence them.

How Radical Is Embodied Creativity? Implications of 4E Approaches for Creativity Research and Teaching

Modern ideas of embodiment have been influential in cognitive science for the past several decades, yet there is minimal evidence of embodied cognition approaches in creativity research or pedagogical practices for teaching creativity skills. With creativity research in crisis due to conceptual, methodological, and theoretical issues, radical embodied cognitive science (RECS) may offer a framework to move the field forward. This conceptual analysis examines the current state of creativity research from the 4E (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) cognition and RECS perspectives. Two streams are critiqued for their potential to further knowledge about the development of creative expertise and inform educational practices. Promising directions for future research is discussed, including ways dynamical systems approaches, such as those used in improvisational and musical creativity, might yield new insights about how people develop creative expertise and help address the "higher order thinking" criticisms of RECS.

The Cognitive Neuroscience of Design Creativity

Design cognition is a human cognitive ability that is characterized by multi-faceted skills and competencies. This skill requires finding solutions for a vague problem, where the end point is not specified and the transformations from the problem state to the solution state are also flexible. Designers solve such tasks regularly, but the mental processes involved in such a skill are not known completely. Design research has involved empirical studies and theoretical modeling to understand the cognitive processes underlying this skill. In lab-based studies, a sub-class of problem-solving tasks called “ill-structured” tasks has been used to study the design process. However, the use of a cognitive neuroscience perspective has only been nascent. In this review, some defining features of design creativity will be elucidated and a few cognitive neuroscience studies of design creativity that shows the underlying brain networks will be highlighted. Results from these experiments using ill-structured tasks along with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) show that the brain networks underlying design creativity only partially overlap with brain networks underlying other kinds of creativity. This argues for studying design creativity as a unique subset of creativity using experiments that mimic the real-world design creative processes.

Sources of Embodied Creativity: Interactivity and Ideation in Contact Improvisation

Drawing on a micro-phenomenological paradigm, we discuss Contact Improvisation (CI), where dancers explore potentials of intercorporeal weight sharing, kinesthesia, touch, and momentum. Our aim is to typologically discuss creativity related skills and the rich spectrum of creative resources CI dancers use. This spectrum begins with relatively idea-driven creation and ends with interactivity-centered, fully emergent creation: (1) Ideation internal to the mind, the focus of traditional creativity research, is either restricted to semi-independent dancing or remains schematic and thus open to dynamic specification under the partner’s influence. (2) Most frequently, CI creativity occurs in tightly coupled behavior and is radically emergent. This means that interpersonal synergies emerge without anybody’s prior design or planned coordination. The creative feat is interpersonally “distributed” over cascades of cross-scaffolding. Our micro-genetic data validate notions from dynamic systems theory such as interpersonal self-organization, although we criticize the theory for failing to explain where precisely this leaves skilled intentionality on the individuals’ part. Our answer is that dancers produce a stream of momentary micro-intentions that say “yes, and”, or “no, but” to short-lived micro-affordances, which allows both individuals to skillfully continue, elaborate, tweak, or redirect the collective movement dynamics. Both dancers can invite emergence as part of their playful exploration, while simultaneously bringing to bear global constraints, such as dance scores, and guide the collective dynamics with a set of specialized skills we shall term emergence management.