Should Creators Learn from the Masters?

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Should we teach artists and other creatives to recognize, understand and dissect classic works in their field or should we encourage them to plunge into creative self-expression, apart from the cultural context?

If beginners are taught to internalize the classics before finding their own voice, won't they be nudged to conform to expectations and tempted to stay inside the box of what has gone before them? Are they wasting time learning how others express themselves rather than learning how to do so themselves? Will stepping in the shoes of the masters cause them to avoid pursuing ideas outside of the norm? 

Unconventional artists and visionaries have often been shunned by peers—only later to be revered by another generation. If these craftsmen had conformed to their time, if they had stifled their inner voices, they might not have stepped away from the crowd. We would have never had the chance to appreciate their genius. 

On the other hand, if we teach students to venture out on their own, aren't we just treating them like toddlers, telling them to go play in the paint—without adult guidance and supervision? Failing to study the masters means missing the opportunity stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before and peer further down the road. Keeping them away from the classics could mean failing to grasp the value of the great works that have stood the test of time. How can students understand where their own feet are planted in history unless they know about others who have struggled and flourished? 

Perhaps we need both sides, and the danger lies in slavishly taking one extreme position or the other. Perhaps we can learn the rules before breaking them and avoid simply mimicking the masters. Perhaps we can tap into the echoes of their inspiration rather than plunging into our own narcissistic self-expression.

Asking, "Am I creating to please myself or to please others?" may bring clarity. If you are creating to please yourself, then diving into what’s culturally hot may take you away from your goal. But if you have decided to create for the crowd, then knowing what is already valued seems like a reasonable starting point. 

Stephen Goforth

18 Articles about AI & the Creative Arts

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Responsible by Design – Why AI Must Be Human-First – Unite.AI  

An Illustrator Confronts his fears about AI Art – New York Times 

The Grammys Chief on How AI Will Change Music – Wall Street Journal

Approaching AI as a design leader: rethinking the customer journey with a layer of AI-first - Jehad Affoneh

AI, Search and the Future of News Once again, distinctiveness is the best defense - Richard J. Tofel

Music streaming service Deezer adds AI song tags in fight against fraud – Associated Press

‘M3gan 2.0’ Review: Everyone’s favorite campy killer doll returns in a movie that has some thoughts about AI - Wall Street Journal

Madison Avenue Braces for the AI Apocalypse – Hollywood Reporter  

What Hollywood wants from the AI industry – Washington Post

Music Producer Timbaland Introduces New AI Artist – Rolling Stone

Australian authors say no to AI using their work – even if money is on the table – The Conversation

AI learns how vision and sound are connected, without human intervention – MIT 

How political cartoonists are bringing AI into their work – Harvard’s Neiman Lab

There should be no AI button - Kojo Osei 

Fortnite’s Darth Vader Is A.I.-Powered. Voice Actors Are Rebelling. - New York Times 

Why AI Interviews Could Be Bad News For Honest Designers - Andy Budd

‘Nobody wants a robot to read them a story!’ The creatives and academics rejecting AI – at work and at home – The Guardian  

I write novels and build AI. The real story is more complicated than either side admits – Fast Company

Encouraging Critical Thinking in Children

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If we want our children or students or employees to express themselves creatively, then we have to give them the opportunity to do so. It doesn’t matter much if we tell them that we value their creative thinking, and then criticize or forestall every idea they propose.

From time to time, I do workshops for teachers, parents, and businesses that are eager to encourage open-ended, exploratory, creative thinking. One unfavorable sign is when someone asks me exactly what they should do to encourage creativity. They want me to tell them step by step, blow by blow. Their desire is an unfavorable sign because if they want a recipe for creativity, the won’t find it. Moreover, someone who wants to be told exactly what to do is not likely to model a creative style, no matter how much they may wish to do so.

Ultimately, you must encourage creative thinking by modeling it. It is hard to encourage creative thinking if you do not model it.

Robert Sternberg, Thinking Styles

Effectively Remixing Other People’s Materials

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According to Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist, the so-called “original” thinkers and creators are simply people who effectively learned to remix other people’s materials.

Originality isn’t about doing what’s never been done in a strict sense, but it’s about the unique way in which each individual gives expression to his or her artistic influences. Quoting Jonathan Lethem, Kleon argues that “when people call something ‘original,’ nine out of ten times they just don’t know the references or the original sources involved.”

It’s a simple idea, but not as simple as “copy the people you like” and you’ll be an instant genius.

The kind of stealing Kleon refers to is not about pretending you came up with somebody else’s idea or just modifying a few details, but it’s about being strategic and selective with the process of choosing your influences, taking what resonates with you, making other people’s ideas your own, and being diverse enough to find unexplored points of intersection between your various influences.

TK Coleman, 5 Ways to Steal Like An Artist

Jobs on Creativity

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Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it; they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Steve Jobs (born Feb, 24, 1955)

Creativity’s link to dishonesty

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Creative people who can “think out of the box” are prized in the business world, the arts, and science. But a new study has found that creative thinkers are also more likely to cheat to get ahead, and to rationalize away less-than-ethical behavior. Harvard Business School researchers gave personality quizzes to hundreds of study participants and then asked them to perform quick games or other tasks for cash. Participants who scored high on a creativity test were more likely to falsify their results so they could earn more prize money. People who were merely high in intelligence, however, were not more dishonest. It appears that the same “divergent thinking” and “cognitive flexibility” that enable creative people to come up with innovative ways of looking at things also equip them to circumvent ethical norms—and to justify their cheating to themselves. “When you’re a creative person, you can use that creativity to come up with reasons for why unethical behaviors may be okay,” researcher Francesca Gino tells The Boston Globe. These “self-serving rationalizations,” she said, can include deciding that “other people would cheat under the same circumstances or that a little cheating will not hurt anyone.”

The Week magazine

15 Articles about AI & the Creative Arts

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The Impact of AI on Creativity in a Dozen Recent Articles

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Get in a creative mood by visiting large spaces

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If you’re in a cramped space, say your office is a little cubicle, your visual attention can’t spread out. It’s focused in this narrow space. Just as your visual attention is constricted, your conceptual attention becomes narrow and focused, and your thinking is more likely to be analytical.

But if you’re in a large space – a big office, with high ceilings, or outside — your visual attention expands to fill the space, and your conceptual attention expands.

That’s why a lot of creative figures like to be outdoors, to take long walks in nature, and they get their inspiration from being in the wide, open spaces. If you can see far and wide, then you can think far and wide.

Brigid Schulte writing in the Washington Post

The Impact of AI on Creativity in 19 Articles

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Don’t Wait for Inspiration

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Chuck Close said, “Inspiration is for amateurs. Us professionals, we just go to work in the morning.”  One thing I really love about that quote is it relieves you a lot of pressure. It’s not about waiting for hours for this moment where inspiration strikes. It’s just about showing up and getting started. All that matters is that you enable the chance for something amazing to happen.

Christoph Niemann

16 Articles about AI & Creativity

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Disrupter’s DNA

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Clay Christensen (who wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma and came up with the idea of “disruptive innovation”) put together a study called The Innovator’s DNA, which attempts to take us inside the minds of successful innovators. Christensen and his fellow researchers believe it's more than a case of good genes when it comes to disruptive innovators. Christensen found five habits common among them:

  1. associating: Innovators connect seemingly unconnected things (He writes, "Innovative breakthroughs often happen at the intersection of diverse disciplines and fields).

  2. questioning: Innovators keep asking why things aren’t done differently ("What would happen if we did this?"). Questions outnumber answers in conversations and a good question is respected as much as a good answer.

  3. observing: Innovators are also intense observers. They pay attention to detail.

  4. networking: They are great at networking ideas. They are constantly "finding and testing ideas through a diverse network of individuals."

  5. experimenting: Innovators are constantly trying out new experiences and ideas. They "explore the world intellectually and experientially, testing hypotheses along the way."

Read more here.

11 Articles about AI & Creativity

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13 creative things people are trying to get AI to do

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Can AI Read my mind?

A.I. Is Getting Better at Mind-Reading In a recent experiment, researchers used large language models to translate brain activity into words. – New York Times

Can AI translate the Bible?

USC researchers use AI to help translate Bible into very rare languages – Religious News Service

Can AI make astrological readings?

Is A.I. the Future of Astrology? – New York Times

Can AI Do your taxes?

Ready for AI to help you do your taxes? Taxfyle’s got you covered – Refresh Miami

How about answering questions from a ‘biblical’ perspective?

Christian creators build chatbots with ‘biblical’ worldview – Religious News Service

Can AI change the way wars are fought?

Our Oppenheimer Moment: The Creation of AI Weapons – New York Times

Can AI replace humans?

We Went to the Fast-Food Drive-Through to Find Out – Wall Street Journal

Can AI build websites?

Mobile website builder Universe launches AI-powered designer – Tech Crunch

Can AI write sermons?

Start-up AI Platform Aims to Help Pastors Make the Most of Their Sunday Sermons – Christian Standard 

Can AI write a song?

We asked Google’s new AI music bot to write us a song. We instantly regretted it – Science Focus

Can AI pilot airplanes or drones?

AI pilots, the future of aerial warfare – Air Force Tech

Can AI bring historical figures to life?

AI Chatbots Now Let You Talk to Historical Figures Like Shakespeare and Andy Warhol – My Modern Met 

Can AI create decent headshots?

I Used AI To Create My Professional Headshots And The Results Were Either Great Or Hilarious – Digg

Managing Yourself

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If you understand how you think and work, you have more control over who you will become. Abilities can improve as you understand how your mind works.

Creative and critically thinking people open a conversation with themselves that allows them to understand, control, and improve their own minds and work.

Ken Bain, What the Best College Students Do

When Habits Imprison Us

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Like the professor who sticks to a daily routine of a quiet supper, an evening walk, and early to bed, we all need space in our lives where unthinking habits relieve us of deciding simple tasks. By finding comfort in his sedentary home life, the professor provides thinking room to explore creative ideas in his field.

When we do the same, these daily habits can be critical in providing us with needed balance and continuity. However, when the routine becomes an end in itself, maintaining our cherished inconsequential details can become a way to avoid life's bigger issues as we neglect the needs of others. The box we build (and hide within) keeps us away from the things that refresh our spirits and give our lives meaning.

Stephen Goforth

Experiencing more awe

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Experiencing more awe is associated with living healthier and more meaningful lives. A 2021 study reported that feeling more awe is correlated with reporting feeling lowered levels of daily stress.

Positive experiences of awe have also been found to increase feelings of well-being, life satisfaction and sense of meaning. Emerging research shows that experiencing awe may make us more curious, creative and compassionate people.  

Richard Sima writing in the Washington Post

Does refusing to act your age delay aging?

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In a UK study, researchers found "people who thought old age began earlier were more likely to have had a heart attack, to be suffering from heart disease or be in poor physical health generally when they were followed up six to nine years later."

Becca Levy of The Yale School of Public Health "followed more than a thousand people who were at least 50 at the time. She found that people who had positive ideas about their own ageing (who agreed with comments such as "I have as much pep as last year" and who disagreed that as you get older you get less useful) lived for an average of 22.6 years after they first participated in the study, while the people who felt less positively about ageing lived for just 15 years more on average."

Claudia Hammond writing for BBC Future suggests "People who think old age starts later in life may be more conscious about their health and fitness and therefore take active steps to stay in better shape. They think they are younger and so behave in younger ways, creating a virtuous circle."

Wanna be creative? Get some sleep!

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One of the most interesting discoveries of neuroscience of the last 20 years is that when you acquire memories, they’re stored in temporary, fragile form, like cement. When you pour it, initially it’s soft, but when it dries and hardens, it becomes strong and durable. Memories are like that. They become hardened through a process of consolidation, which happens largely during sleep.

Memory consolidation actually transforms the memory, as well. It brings out details, hidden relationships. That can be the stuff of creativity and insight.

That’s why there are so many stories of people waking up in the middle of the night with a new idea or solution to a problem. Like Paul McCartney. He was awakened one morning with this melody in his head. It was the song, “Yesterday.” It just appeared to him. Sleep supercharges creativity.

Brigid Schulte writing in The Washington Post