Magnetic Creativity

The genius machine is a fascinating article featured in New Scientist about research into the brain and the seat of genius and creativity. Allan Snyder, the professor behind this research is persuing a way to override the brain's normal functions of pattern matching, in order to achieve a heightened ability to process certain information.

"In Snyder's view, what savants lack is mindsets. They experience only raw sensory information, and their precise drawings are a reflection of that. The reason most people can't draw like that is because their mindsets get in the way. Once the brain forms a concept, it inhibits the conscious mind from becoming aware of the details that created that concept in the first place. So instead of drawing what you see, you draw what you know."

Edward de Bono has long looked at creativity and ways to enhance it. His technique of Lateral Thinking is about getting a different perspective on a problem in order to solve it creatively. To escape your preconceptions or 'mindset'.

The idea of being able to enforce this change in mindset through magnetic fields is intriguing, if a little scary. The New Scientist article goes on to argue that perhaps this will or won't lead to leaps in creativity, but tests show it certainly does something.

Any research I've done into creativity seems to hinge on this concept of shifting logic, or indeed turning it off. Roger von Oech's Creative Whack Pack and Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies use cards of random concepts to jolt or suprise the user into a different thought pattern. When tied back to the original problem (the 'lateral' bridge of thought), new and innovative solutions can be found.

In art college, you are taught to draw looking at negative space (the space in between objects, rather than the object itself), or using your less dominant hand. The results are always surprising. Not always better, but looser and more natural and somehow realistic. In design school, we were taught word association as a tool for creating original concepts. Our 'creativity' became stronger with practice, showing the brain to be merely another muscle that develops according to how it is used, rather than being bestowed with certain gifts. All these tools exercise the right hemisphere, or the creative side of the brain. Perhaps Allan Snyder is sticking magnets on the wrong side of people's heads.