The Creative "I" - Defining Creativity
Interview With a Composer
In this part of The Creative “I” assignment series I interviewed Mr. Lajos Zeke, Ph.D. Lajos (lah-yosh) is a composer and musicologist with a special interest in musical theory. He is currently writing a book about the relationship of the human mind and musical structure. Lajos lives in Miami, and works as a professor in Miami-Dade Community College.
The question of creativity is so central in Lajos’ life and occupation that our interview was extended to three separate, hour-long conversations. Still, creativity remained an elusive concept for him to concisely define. In my understanding the nuts and bolts of his view on creativity are the following. Lajos believes that we are perpetually creative since our minds create our experiences. Our principal experience is that we exist, and all of the events we “witness” unfold within this frame. Our minds and the sense of our existence our minds create are inseparable yet simultaneously they are the same.
Apparently, Lajos is talking about something very different from creative insight, a spark of genius, a revelation, or the processes of perception, patterning, abstracting, etc. that we examine in this course. How does his take on creativity relate at all to the meaning of the word as we use it in CEP 818? Lajos thinks that the two meanings of the word are very much connected. He thinks that we experience sparks of creativity as fleeting instances of ingenuity because normally we live in the unquestioned “narrative” of our projections. According to him, if we would become more aware of the creativity that gives rise to the most mundane of our experiences we would recognize that we are constantly creative in the same sense of the word used in CEP 818.
Lajos explained to me that certain fundamental elements of music are universal across time and geographic location, and don’t result from cultural contexts. Music is the perception and recreation of pattern in the quality and arrangement of sound, rhythm, timing, and as such it is a reflection of our minds' workings.. Since music is mathematical (or is it the other way around?), the questions of mind and experience and creativity are accessible through music and mathematics.
What did I learn from the articles presented in CEP 818, and from my interview with Lajos, that relate to my personal and professional life?
My interview with Lajos has confirmed the difficulty of coining a working definition for the concept of creativity. To utilize creativity in teaching and learning, steps need to be taken towards deconstructing it into measurable elements, this is what The Deep-Play Research Group does in “A NEW Approach to Defining and Measuring Creativity”. Once we can measure creativity on some arbitrary but meaningful scale, we need to also examine its components; this is what the course aims at doing by breaking down creativity into the seven constituents of Modules 2-7. In some way we try to perceive patterns in our occasional sparks of creativity in order to be able to evoke them in our teaching work. In my job as a mathematics teacher creativity is relied upon in two areas. First, I need to be creative in my presentation of the given topic I teach in order to provide my students with as many depictions and meaningful connections about and around the topic as possible. Embedding information into contexts that captures students’ imagination and doesn’t exceed their capacities requires creativity in daily action. I often try to build connections and analogies between seemingly unrelated topics in order to surprise my students. Along with my them, I often surprise myself with the creative connections I find, these are learning moments for me as well. In the creative exploration of a topic students don’t only learn about the topic itself but appreciate the beauty of the presentation and eventually become creative presenters themselves. Secondly, I need to allow my students to engage in creative problem solving, even if that doesn’t result in the solution I was looking for. Nurturing creativity and encouraging its use in conceptualizing a problem sets students off on their individual ways as thinkers and problem solvers. Teachers often react to students’ occasionally unusual view on mathematical problems by interrupting them and leading them back to the “proper” steps of problem solving (I do this as well). This of course is a reaction that undermines the exercise of independent and creative thinking, and trains students to become procedural problem solvers dependent on memorization rather than reasoning and imagination. To become more creative one has to be attentive to one’s own surrounding environment. One also needs to have the habit of reflecting on newly gathered information, as well as on one’s own habitual associations. Finally, one needs to avoid mental stress in order to become creative, stress prohibits creativity. A balanced (between work and play, and mental and physical activities) while not overly routinely lifestyle fosters creative thinking.
Click here to read part 2 of The Creative "I".
Interview With a Composer
In this part of The Creative “I” assignment series I interviewed Mr. Lajos Zeke, Ph.D. Lajos (lah-yosh) is a composer and musicologist with a special interest in musical theory. He is currently writing a book about the relationship of the human mind and musical structure. Lajos lives in Miami, and works as a professor in Miami-Dade Community College.
The question of creativity is so central in Lajos’ life and occupation that our interview was extended to three separate, hour-long conversations. Still, creativity remained an elusive concept for him to concisely define. In my understanding the nuts and bolts of his view on creativity are the following. Lajos believes that we are perpetually creative since our minds create our experiences. Our principal experience is that we exist, and all of the events we “witness” unfold within this frame. Our minds and the sense of our existence our minds create are inseparable yet simultaneously they are the same.
Apparently, Lajos is talking about something very different from creative insight, a spark of genius, a revelation, or the processes of perception, patterning, abstracting, etc. that we examine in this course. How does his take on creativity relate at all to the meaning of the word as we use it in CEP 818? Lajos thinks that the two meanings of the word are very much connected. He thinks that we experience sparks of creativity as fleeting instances of ingenuity because normally we live in the unquestioned “narrative” of our projections. According to him, if we would become more aware of the creativity that gives rise to the most mundane of our experiences we would recognize that we are constantly creative in the same sense of the word used in CEP 818.
Lajos explained to me that certain fundamental elements of music are universal across time and geographic location, and don’t result from cultural contexts. Music is the perception and recreation of pattern in the quality and arrangement of sound, rhythm, timing, and as such it is a reflection of our minds' workings.. Since music is mathematical (or is it the other way around?), the questions of mind and experience and creativity are accessible through music and mathematics.
What did I learn from the articles presented in CEP 818, and from my interview with Lajos, that relate to my personal and professional life?
My interview with Lajos has confirmed the difficulty of coining a working definition for the concept of creativity. To utilize creativity in teaching and learning, steps need to be taken towards deconstructing it into measurable elements, this is what The Deep-Play Research Group does in “A NEW Approach to Defining and Measuring Creativity”. Once we can measure creativity on some arbitrary but meaningful scale, we need to also examine its components; this is what the course aims at doing by breaking down creativity into the seven constituents of Modules 2-7. In some way we try to perceive patterns in our occasional sparks of creativity in order to be able to evoke them in our teaching work. In my job as a mathematics teacher creativity is relied upon in two areas. First, I need to be creative in my presentation of the given topic I teach in order to provide my students with as many depictions and meaningful connections about and around the topic as possible. Embedding information into contexts that captures students’ imagination and doesn’t exceed their capacities requires creativity in daily action. I often try to build connections and analogies between seemingly unrelated topics in order to surprise my students. Along with my them, I often surprise myself with the creative connections I find, these are learning moments for me as well. In the creative exploration of a topic students don’t only learn about the topic itself but appreciate the beauty of the presentation and eventually become creative presenters themselves. Secondly, I need to allow my students to engage in creative problem solving, even if that doesn’t result in the solution I was looking for. Nurturing creativity and encouraging its use in conceptualizing a problem sets students off on their individual ways as thinkers and problem solvers. Teachers often react to students’ occasionally unusual view on mathematical problems by interrupting them and leading them back to the “proper” steps of problem solving (I do this as well). This of course is a reaction that undermines the exercise of independent and creative thinking, and trains students to become procedural problem solvers dependent on memorization rather than reasoning and imagination. To become more creative one has to be attentive to one’s own surrounding environment. One also needs to have the habit of reflecting on newly gathered information, as well as on one’s own habitual associations. Finally, one needs to avoid mental stress in order to become creative, stress prohibits creativity. A balanced (between work and play, and mental and physical activities) while not overly routinely lifestyle fosters creative thinking.
Click here to read part 2 of The Creative "I".