Week 2

Last week I chose the Subject for my first walk through The Creative Process – Birds.

My goal for this week was to seek out as much Kindling for Inspiration that I could find, and I have been overwhelmed by the amount of material that is available for this Subject!

As I gathered these ideas for Kindling, I realized that after you choose your Subject, you have to explore it’s aspects and find a medium within which to express it.

“There are almost infinite Aspects to a Subject, you must decide whether to blend Aspect(s) of your Subject with a Medium”

Considering how to Proceed with my current Subject – Birds

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Aspects of a Subject

Understanding the Aspects of a Subject can help provide Kindling for Inspiration. Aspect comes from Latin, meaning the direction from which a Subject is looked at.

When you are trying to create something new, you must look at your Subject from as many perspectives as possible and try to understand the attributes and traits your Subject possess.

You could look at your Subject from any point of view to discover different Aspects including:

• Physically
• Scientifically
• Artistically
• Technologically
• Culturally
• Personally
• Upside-Down / Sideways / Etc…

These options don’t even consider any sub-disciplines or increasingly granular approaches!

This week I have gathered an array of Aspects on my Subject, Birds.

Aspects of Birds

Birds fly, sing, and dance. Birds are wildly diverse, with unique behaviors and habitats. Birds are used as metaphors in art and culture (Owls “Haunt”!). Birds are living dinosaurs, with lineage tracing back to 160 million years ago. Some birds perch, others swim, all hunt.

Recent research into Bird intelligence suggests that some may have greater cognitive ability than Great Apes!

Some Bird’s respiratory systems are connected to their skeleton to improve their abilities in flight!

Studies of Bird populations inform Phylogeography, the study of historical processes that are responsible for the contemporary geographic distributions of individuals.

Aspects of birds that I have been considering:

• Birdwatching
• Feeding Birds
• Song
• Flight
• Behavior
• Migration
• Perching
• Falconry
• Phylogeography (How individuals are where they are today)
• Their role in our understanding of Evolution
• Their use in slang
• etc…

Please share any Aspects of Birds that you find particularly interesting in the comments below!

Your ideas could provide the Spark to Kindling that propels me to the next step in The Creative Process!

🎨 🎭 🎻

Medium for the Subject

Medium also comes from Latin, meaning the material or form used by a Creator.

There are huge variety of mediums available to blend with, or explore into the Aspects of a Subject. Mediums differ by field of study and involve any number of physical materials and techniques for the use of those materials.

Medium for a Subject is, to an extent, personal, because it requires Expertise and Experience (or not!) .

The existing creative corpus for the current Subject (Birds) encapsulates a wide array of Media that capture a variety of Aspects of Birds including:

• Field Journals
• Sketches
• Watercolors / Paintings
• Photographs / Cinematography
• Stories
• Sculptures
• Dances
• Musical Compositions
• Scientific Studies
• Etc…

Some of these Mediums are blended with the Aspects of Birds that they capture, while others are efforts to capture Aspects of Birds.

The difference in Creative approach appears to be Creativity within a Traditional Medium versus the Creation of a Blended Medium.

Please share any Creative Products related to Birds that you find particularly interesting and let me know what about the Medium and/or the Creation you find interesting in the comments below!

👁 ➕ 🎨

Blending Aspect with Medium

or

Exploring a Subject through a Medium

There are almost infinite Aspects to a Subject (including birds), but ultimately you must decide whether to Blend Aspect(s) of your Subject with your Medium, or whether to explore the Subject through a Media Tradition.

Ultimately, I think the Aspects of the Subject and the Medium for Expression must interact in a unique way to realize something new and truly creative.

True Creativity doesn’t require the Creative Product to be a blend of the Aspects of the Subject and the Medium, or an exploration of the Subject through a Media Tradition – it can happen in either scenario – it’s about the interaction between the two.

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What next?

I will post next Monday on how I have narrowed down the Aspects and Mediums that are available for Subject (Birds!!!).

Please comment below if you have thoughts on these musings.

I want to hear your ideas!