Coffee with a Curator - Craig Petersburg: "The Mind & Creativity" Wednesday, May 4, 2016 Coffee with a Curator is a focused, theme-oriented presentation on a variety of Dali-related topics. The talk is presented by one of The Dali Museum’s Curatorial/Education team or an invited Speaker. For this entertaining and informative talk, Craig Petersburg, The Dali Museum School and Community Education Manager, explores the creative drive of the human mind through an array of visually engaging images. Following on his 2015 talk about “Dalinian Science, Perception and Brain Research,” Petersburg focuses on how we perceive creativity, from changing historical descriptions to scientific characteristics. Looking to Dali, he reviews techniques for jump-starting creative thinking, and suggests how creativity can improve our lives. View live presentation: http://ow.ly/WsG030drQFp For information on upcoming events at The Dali visit: http://thedali.org/events

1. krēāˈtivədē

2. presentation sections:
 seen in the previous episode,
“dalínian science, perception and brain research,”
coffee with a curator, 2015
 definition and history of creativity
 studies of the creative process
 how creative people differ from others
 neuroscience of creativity
 creativity, intelligence + social personality
 nap like dalí
 dada, minimal + conceptual art
 art is the absence of fear
 create the future you want
 how to create

3. dalínian
science,
perception
and
brain
research,
2015
 seen in the previous episode,
“dalínian science, perception and brain research,”
coffee with a curator, 2015

4. daniel pink, in his 2005 book a whole new mind,
repeating arguments posed throughout the 20th century,
argues that we are entering a new age where
creativity is becoming increasingly important

5. from the agriculture age to the conceptual age:
agricultural age (farmers) 18th century
industrial age (factory workers) 19th century
information age (knowledge workers) 20th century
conceptual age (creators and empathizers) 21st century

6. in this conceptual age, we will need to
foster and encourage right-directed thinking
over left-directed thinking

7. right-directed thinking:
representing creativity and emotion

8. left-directed thinking:
representing logical, analytical thought

9. daniel pink’s six senses of the conceptual age
we are evolving as thinkers:
not just function, but also ………………. design
not just argument, but also ……………. story
not just focus, but also ……………………. symphony
not just logic, but also …………………….. empathy
not just seriousness, but also ………… play
not just accumulation, but also ……… meaning

10. dalínian
perception
portfolio:

11. design:
choose things in your life that will endure,
that are a pleasure to use
• never let things be more important than
your family, friends, and your own spirit
story:
we are our stories
• they provide context enriched by emotion,
a deeper understanding of how we fit in
and why it matters
• we are each the authors of our own lives

12. symphony:
i am best at what i can’t do
• feel free to move, listen to your heart, learn, and
act, even if it means that you will make mistakes
• if you want a creative life, do what you can’t
and experience the beauty of the mistakes you
make
empathy:
empathy is neither a deviation from
intelligence nor the single route to it
• sometimes we need detachment;
many other times we need attunement
• we need androgynous minds able to toggle
between them both

13. play:
the opposite of play is not work, it’s depression
• to play is to act out and be willful,
exultant and committed as if you are assured
of your prospects
meaning:
you will only find meaning by giving meaning
to life from inside yourself
• we are not human beings on a spiritual path,
but spiritual beings on a human path

14. cre·a·tiv·i·ty
krēāˈtivədē / noun
the use of the imagination
or original ideas, especially in
the production of an artistic work
 definition and history of creativity

15. creativity is a phenomenon whereby something
new and somehow valuable is formed

16. the created item may be
intangible or a physical object

17. creativity is viewed differently in different countries

18. most ancient cultures lacked the concept of creativity,
seeing art as a form of discovery and not creation

19. muses were mediating inspiration from the gods

21. it was during the renaissance that creativity
was first seen, not as a conduit for the divine,
but from the abilities of "great men”

22. this could be attributed to the leading intellectual
movement of the time, aptly named humanism,
which developed an intensely human-centric
outlook on the world, valuing the
intellect and achievement of the individual

23. from this philosophy arose the renaissance man, an
individual who embodies the principals of humanism in
ceaseless courtship with knowledge and creation

24. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading
mathematicians and scientists began to reflect on
and publicly discuss their creative processes

25. in his work art of thought, published in 1926,
graham wallas, a pioneering theorist, presented
one of the first models of the creative process
 studies of the creative process

26. in the wallas stage model, creative insights
and illuminations may be explained by a process
consisting of five stages:
1. preparation
2. incubation
3. intimation
4. illumination or insight
5. verification

27. 1. preparation: preparatory work on a problem
that focuses the individual's mind on the problem
and explores the problem's dimensions

28. 2. incubation: where the problem is
internalized into the unconscious mind
and nothing appears externally to be happening

29. 3. intimation: the creative person gets a
"feeling" that a solution is on its way

30. 4. illumination or insight: where the creative idea
bursts forth from its preconscious processing
into conscious awareness

31. 5. verification: where the idea is consciously
verified, elaborated, and then applied

32. wallas considered creativity to be a legacy of the
evolutionary process, which allowed humans to
quickly adapt to rapidly changing environments

33. the progressive development of man is vitally
dependent on invention. it is the most important
product of his creative brain… nikola tesla

34. highly creative people who excel at creative
innovation tend to differ from others in three ways:
 how creative people differ from others

35. 1. they have a high level of specialized knowledge

36. 2. they are capable of divergent thinking
mediated by the frontal lobe

37. the american psychologist and researcher,
j.p. guilford, drew a distinction between
divergent and convergent production or thinking

38. divergent thinking involves creative
generation of multiple answers to a set problem

39. convergent thinking involves aiming
for a single, correct solution to a problem

40. 3. they are able to modulate neurotransmitters
such as norepinephrine in their frontal lobe

41. the neuroscience of creativity looks at the
operation of the brain during creative behavior
 neuroscience of creativity

42. the frontal lobe appears to be the part of
the cortex that is most important for creativity

43. the cerebellum's adaptive models of
working memory processing
are then fed back to especially frontal lobe
working memory control processes where
creative and innovative thoughts arise

44. all processes of working memory
(responsible for processing all thought)
are adaptively modeled for
increased efficiency by the cerebellum

45. the cerebellum consisting of 100 billion neurons
(more than the entirety of the rest of the brain)
is also widely known to adaptively model
all bodily movement for efficiency
100,000,000,000,000

46. a number of researchers include creativity
as a key component of intelligence
 creativity, intelligence + social personality

47. this possible relationship concerns creativity and
intelligence as distinct, but intersecting constructs

48. creative response is the antidote to the
individualism, consumerism and cynicism
that now define our culture

49. the collective mind is an expression of our
human spirit, and we must always find and embrace
new ways to release it … antonino d’ambrosio

50. several attempts have been made to
develop a creativity quotient (cq) of an
individual similar to the intelligence quotient (iq)

51. some researchers have taken a social-personality
approach to the measurement of creativity

52. in these studies, personality traits such as
independence of judgement, self-confidence, attraction
to complexity, aesthetic orientation and risk-taking are
used as measures of the creativity of individuals
luke…
i am your social
personality!

53. dalí was intrigued with the images which occur at
the boundary between sleeping and waking
 nap like dalí

54. creativity involves the forming of
associative elements into new combinations
that are useful or meet some requirement

55. rem sleep aids this process

56. it is proposed that rem sleep adds creativity by
allowing neocortical structures to reorganize
associative hierarchies, in which information
from the hippocampus would be reinterpreted in
relation to previous semantic representations or nodes

57. dalí experimented with various ways of
generating and capturing these fantastical images

58. michael michalko
one of the world’s leading creativity experts
and the author of:
“how was salvador dalí able to conjure up these
extraordinary images from his subconscious
that he used in his surrealistic paintings?”

59. 1. think about your challenge
• consider your progress, your obstacles,
your alternatives, and so on
then push it away and relax

60. 2. totally relax your body
• sit on a chair
• hold a spoon loosely in one of your hands
over a plate
• try to achieve the deepest muscle relaxation
you can

61. 3. quiet your mind
• do not think of what went on during
the day or your challenges and problems
• clear your mind of chatter

62. 4. quiet your eyes
• you cannot look for
these images, be passive
• you need to achieve a total absence of any
kind of voluntary attention
• become helpless and involuntary and
directionless
• you can enter the hypnogogic state this way,
and, should you begin to fall asleep, you will
drop the spoon and awaken in time to capture
the images

63. 5. record your experiences immediately
after they occur
• the images will be mixed and unexpected
and will recede rapidly
• they could be patterns, clouds of colors, or
objects

64. 6. look for the associative link
• write down the first things that occur
to you after your experience
• look for links and connections to your
challenge

65. dada and conceptual art is art for which the
idea (or concept) behind the work is
more important than the finished art object
 dada, minimal + conceptual art

66. conceptual art emerged as an art movement
in the 1960s and the term usually refers to art
made from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s

68. the central principle is that not the artist’s expression,
but the medium and materials are the works reality

69. a work of minimal or conceptual art
should not refer to anything other than itself

71. the eye of time, 1949, salvador dalí: the exquisite
brooch is made from diamonds and platinum that form
the eye lids with a small gold watch in blue enamel that
makes up the eye ball, invoking multiple meanings

72. the eye of perception, 2016, craig petersburg,
also evokes multiple meanings created by the
multiple ways of seeing each individual viewer

73. over 6,000 crystals and mirrors to demonstrate
the reflection, refraction and distortion of light

74. dalí on the “fly” art mobile creatively teaching
visual art integrated standards based curriculum

75. short film to introduce dalí’s creative combination
of math, science and dreams to create his art

76. exterior mural
interior wall graphics + reproductions

77. eight salvador dalí reproductions displayed
alongside supporting wall graphic images and 3D
sculptures to creatively educate and inspire students

78. elementary student artwork inspired by their
dalí on the “fly” museum fieldtrip

79. aligning our creative needs can be
a critical step in reaching our potential

81.  art is the absence of fear

84. when we are curious, we see things differently;
we use our powers of observation more fully

85. we sense what is happening in the present moment,
taking note of what is, regardless of what it looked
like before or what we might have expected it to be

86. betty edwards, ph.d., california state university,
long beach, author of: the new
drawing on the right side of the brain, 1979

87. drawing an image upside down transfers your
perception from the left to the right side of your brain;
the “horse” becomes lines, shapes, edges and curves

88. practice means to perform, over and over again in the
face of all obstacles, some act of vision, faith and desire
practice is a means of inviting the
perfection desired … martha graham

91. how did salvador dalí view this painting from
20 meters while working in a hotel room?

92.  create the future you want

93. the potential for
fostering creativity through education
and training, especially as augmented by technology

94. the application of creative resources to
improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning

95. tony wagner, innovation education fellow at harvard's
technology & entrepreneurship center and author of:
“creating innovators: the making of
young people who will change the world"

96. the link between creativity and
better mental and physical health
is well established by research

97. creating helps make people happier,
less anxious, more resilient and better equipped to
problem-solve in the face of hardship

98. imagining and creating give us
a sense of purpose, wagner says

99. the creative path can be an unconventional one, and
choosing it may sometimes be a difficult pursuit

100. scholarly interest in creativity involves definitions
and concepts pertaining to a number of disciplines,
covering the relations between creativity and…

101. 1. general intelligence

102. 2. mental and neurological processes

103. 3. personality type and creative ability

104. 4. creativity and mental health

105. young or old, wagner says,
"you must, first and foremost, be a creator"
 how to create

106. 1. shut out the noise

107. 2. believe in yourself and your vision

108. 3. continue to learn

109. 4. redefine failure and embrace iteration

110. 5. have fun

111. 6. practice listening to many different
kinds of people and ideas

112. 7. work hard at mastery

113. 8. engage in self-reflection

115. presentation sections:
 seen in the previous episode,
“dalínian science, perception and brain research,”
coffee with a curator, 2015
 definition and history of creativity
 studies of the creative process
 how creative people differ from others
 neuroscience of creativity
 creativity, intelligence + social personality
 nap like dalí
 dada, minimal + conceptual art
 art is the absence of fear
 create the future you want
 how to create

116. if the passion for and benefits of creativity are ageless,
then imagination, creativity and innovation
cannot just be a young person's game
salvador dalí (1904-89) henri matisse (1869-1954) iris apfel (1921- )

118. THANK YOU