a syntopical dialog
for the 2004
7 Domians Workshop
|
| There
are several key words central to this 7 Domains:
design, creativity, GroupGenius, enterprise, ValueWebs,
systems,
no-things, power-laws, time-lags, recursion:
society, organization, individual, synergy, knowledge-economy,
experience, fields, community-of-practice,
living-systems, open-source, scale-free networks,
reinvention, Bower-birds, control, long-term... We
start with the issue of CREATIVE GENIUS. The quotes, below, are lengthy. They deserve a careful reading. My commentary will draw upon them extensively both in terms of what they say and also in what they demonstrate. |
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| “A
strong ambivalence that is not resolved can
manifest in this sort of displacement behavior,
or show itself as paralysis, an inability
to act or think at all on matters touched by
the ambivalence. |
| “How
could such an unfortunate mental state have
a positive role in creative vision? |
| “We might start to answer that question by
considering an interesting piece of research.
A few years ago scientists found that when they
presented people with conflicting or incongruous
information dyssynchronous brain waves, indicating
alertness, appeared. The investigators concluded
that conflict can be a source of drive which
causes increased learning and attention. Ambivalence
is derived from conflict and it arouses the brain.
If the ambivalence in some areas or context is
not denied, suppressed or resolved but instead
is ‘tolerated’ it leads individuals to experience
a state which Desy Safan-Gerard, a UCLA psychologist
who is a painter, described as ‘an enrichment
in our appreciation of reality and ourselves.’ |
| “The
creator’s ability to tolerate ambivalence may
be what romantic poet John Keats called a ‘Negative
Capability,’ that is, when a person ‘is capable
of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,
without any irritable reaching after fact and
reason.’ Keat’s idea is an echo of de Vinci’s
belief in the ‘tension’ between things. Famed
physiologist Claude Bernard said doubt is crucial
because ‘those who have an excessive faith
in their ideas are not well fitted to make
discoveries.’ Margaret Mead insisted, ‘The
only people who can get a thing done well are
those who think they can’t do it.’ Sculptor
Jean Arp described something like negative
capability in terms that tie it to the circular
paradoxes we discussed in the last chapter.
Arp said that the creator must maintain a state
in the ‘the fire of balance,’ in a movement
‘between Above and Below, light and darkness,
eternity and transitoriness.’ |
| “Such
sustained uncertainty probably involves some
discomfort. In fact, LaViolette points out
that the loop between the limbic system and
the prefrontal cortex - the loop that amplifies
emotional nuances - is also concerned with
psychological pain. When the connections of
that loop are
severed, there’s a reduction in the intensity
of pain. Thus a type of psychological pain
may be a price required for adhering to nuances
with all their doubts and uncertainties. |
| “Erich Fromm wrote that a ‘condition for creativeness
is the ability to accept conflict and tension resulting from polarity, rather than to avoid
them. This idea is very much in contrast to the
current climate of opinion, in which one attempts
to avoid conflict as much as possible’” |
John Briggs
2000
FIRE IN THE CRUCIBLE - Understanding the Process
of Creative Genius
pp 104-105 [rbtfBook]
[link]
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S C A N
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| The
points made in the quote above directly address Many of the
conditions (but not all) that must be created in order
to accomplish a successful SCAN. In an
individual, a team, a group, an organization, a
society, ambiguity is essential to sustaining the
effort necessary to true creativity. Many - if
not most - personal and work habits make this almost
impossible. The creative habits that are practiced
by geniuses help deal with this conflict [link]. |
| No matter self aware of it or not, creative people have ways of self inducing mental ambiguity at the beginning of any form of creative process. This shakes them out of their normal mental modalities and old solution sets This opens the channel for new ideas and viewpoints, even perceptions. Even those who are well practiced, have long established creative habits and are self aware of this aspect of creativity, do not necessarily know how to do this in a group situation. In fact, everyone’s most cherished habits are likely to clash with one of several of the others thus stalling the group process. More oft than not this is perceived as a content and values clash. This is where appropriate process design and facilitation (Domain 2) is appropriate and valuable. The broader a subject, the range disciplines involved and the greater the number of experts involved, the more critical this facilitation becomes. |
| If there are not clear signs of cognitive dissonance in the Scan process then it is not a scan - it is, at best, a review of known information based on, at best, prior experience. The conditions for emergence [link: zone of emegence engine] have not been set up. |
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“DESIGNING UNITY TEMPLE
HAD Doctor Johonnot, the Universalist pastor of Unity Church, been Fra Junipero the style of Unity Temple would have been predetermined---“Mission.” Had he been Father Latour it would have been Midi-Romanesgue. Yes, and perhaps being what he was, he was entitled to the only tradition he knew---“back East.” If sentimentality were sense this might be so.
xxxxBut the pastor was out of luck. Circumstances brought him to yield himself up in the cause of architecture. And to that cause everyone who undertakes to read what follows is called upon to yield a little. |
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“OUR building committee were all good men and true. One of them, Charles E. Roberts, the mechanical engineer and inventor I had mentioned, was himself enlightened in creation. One, enlightened, is leaven enough in any Usonian committee lump. The struggle began. It is always a struggle in architecture for the architect where good men and true are concerned.
xxxxFirst came the philosophy of the building in my own mind.
xxxxI said, let us abolish, in the art and craft of architecture, literature in any symbolic form whatsoever. The sense of inner rhythm deep planted in human sensibility lives far above all other considerations in art. Then why the steeple of the little white church? Why point to heaven? |
“I told the committee a story. Did they know of the tale of the holy man who, yearning to see God, climbed up and up the highest mountain---climbed to the highest relic of a tree there was on the mountain? There, ragged and worn, he lifted up his perspiring face to heaven and called upon God. He heard a voice bidding him get down... go back!
xxxxWould he really see God’s face? Then he should go back, go down there in the valley below where his own people were---there only could he look upon God’s countenance...
xxxx“Why not, then, build a temple, not to God in that way---more sentimental than sense---but build a temple to man, appropriate to his uses as a meeting place, in which to study man himself for his God’s sake?
xxxxThe pastor was a liberal. His liberality was thus challenged, his reason was piqued and the curiosity of all was aroused. What would such a building look like? They said they could imagine no such thing.
xxxx“That’s what you came to me for,” I ventured. “I can imagine it and I will help you create it.” Promising the building committee something tangible to look at soon---I sent them away.
xxxxThe first idea was to keep a noble room for worship in mind, and let the sense of the great room shape the whole edifice. Let the room inside be the architecture outside.
xxxxWhat shape? Well, the answer lay in the material. There was only one material to choose---as the church funds were $45,000--- to “church 400 people in 1906. Concrete was cheep.
xxxxWhy not make the wooden boxes or forms so the concrete could be cast in them as separate blocks and masses, these grouped about an interior space in some way such way as to preserve this sense of the interior space, the great room, in the appearance of the whole building? And the block-masses might be left as themselves with no facing at all? That would be sheep and permanent and not ugly either.
xxxxWhat roof?
What had concrete to offer as a shelter? The concrete slab---of course. The reinforced slab. Nothing else if the building was to be thoroughbred, meaning built in character out of one material.
xxxxToo monumental, all this? Too forthright for my committee I feared. Would a statement so positive as that final slab over the whole seem irreligious to them? Profane in their eyes? Why? But that flat slab was cheep and direct. It would be nobly simple. The wooden forms or molds in which the concrete building must at that time be cast were always the chief item of expense, so to repeat the use of a single form as often as possible was necessary. therefore a building, all four sides alike, looked like the thing. This, reduced to simplest terms, meant a building square in plan. That would make their temple a cube---a noble form in masonry.
xxxxThe slab, too, belonged belonged to the cube by nature. “Credo simplicitatem.” That form is most imaginative and happy that is most radiant with the aura or overtone of super-form. Integrity.
xxxxThen the Temple itself---still in my mind--- began to take shape.
The site was noisy, by the lake Street car-tracks .Therefore it seemed best to keep the building closed on thee three front sides and enter it from a court to the rear at the center of the lot. Unity Temple itself with the thoughts in mind I have expressed, arrived easily enough, but there was a secular side to the Universalist church activities--entertainment often, Sunday school, feasts and so on.
xxxxTo embody these with the temple would spoil
the simplicity of the room--the noble Room in the service of man for the worship of God. So I finally put the secular space designated as “Unity House,” a long free space to the rear of the lot, as a separate building to be subdivided by movable screens for Sunday school or on occasion. It this became a separate building but harmonious with the Temple---the entrance to both to be the connecting link between them. That was that.
xxxxAnd why not put the pulpit at the entrance side of the rear of the square temple, and bring the congregation into the room at the sides on a lower level so those entering would be imperceptible to the audience? This would preserve the the quiet and the dignity of the room itself. Out of that thought came the depressed foyer or cloister corridor on either side, leading from the main lobby at the center to the stairs in the near and far corners of the room. Those entering the room in this way could see into the big room but not be seen by those already seated within it.
xxxxAnd, importatnt to the pastor, when the congregation rose to disperse, here was the opportunity to move forward toward their pastor and by swinging wide doors open beside the pulpit allow the entire flock to pass by him and find themselves directly in the entrance logga from which they had first come in. But it seemed more respectful to let them go out thus toward the pulpit than turn their backs upon their minister as is usual in most churches.
xxxxSo this was done.
xxxxThe room itself---size determined by comfortable seats with leg-room for four hundred people---was built with four interior free standing posts to carry the overhead structure. These concrete posts were hollow and became free-standing ducts to insure economic and uniform distribution of heat. The large supporting posts were so set in plan as to form a double tier of alcoves on four sides of the room. I flooded these side-alcoves with light from above to set the sense of a happy cloudless day into the room. And with this feeling for light the entire ceiling between the four great posts became skylight, daylight sifting through between the intersecting concrete beams, filtering though amber glass ceiling lights. Thus managed the light would, rain or shine, have the warmth of sunlight. Artificial lighting took place there at night as well. This scheme of lighting was integral, gave diffusion and kept the room-space clear.
xxxxNow for proportion--- for the concrete expression of concrete in this natural arrangement---the ideal of an organic whole well in mind. And we have arrived at the question of style. For observe, so far, what has actually taken place is reasoned arrangement.
The “plan” with an eye to the exterior in the realm of idea but meantime “felt” in imagination as a whole.
xxxxFirst came the general philosophy of the thing as repeated in the little story to the trustees.
All artistic creation has its own philosophy. It is the first condition of creation. However, some would smile and say, “the result of it.”
xxxxSecond there was the general purpose of the whole to consider in each part: a matter of reasoned arrangement. This arrangement must be made with a sense of the yet-unborn-whole in mind, to be blocked out as appropriate to concrete masses cast in wooden boxes. Holding all this diversity together in a preconceived direction is really no light matter but is the condition of creation. Imagination conceives here the Plan suitable to the material and the purpose of the whole, seeing the probable form clearer all the time.
xxxxImagination reigns supreme, until now the form the whole will naturally take must be seen.
xxxxBut if all this preliminary planning has been well conceived that question in the main is settled. This matter of style is organic now.
xxxxWe do not choose the style.
No. Style is what is coming now and it will be what we are in all this. A thrilling moment in any architect’s experience. He is about to see the countenance of something he is invoking with intense concentration. Out of this inner sense of order and love of beauty of life something is to be born---maybe to live long as a message of hope and be a joy or a curse to his kind. His message he feels. None the less will it be “theirs,” and rather more. And it out of this love and understanding that any building is born to bless or curse those it is built to serve. Bless them if they will see, understand and aid. Curse them as it will be cursed by them if either they or the architect fail to understand each other This is the faith and the fear in the architect as he makes ready---to draw his design.
xxxxIn all
artists it is somewhat the same fear and the same faith.
|
“NOW regard this pure white sheet of paper! It is ready for recording the logic of the plan.
xxxxT-square, triangle, scale---seductive invitation lying upon the spotless surface. Temptation!
xxxx“Boy! Go tell Black Kelly to make a blaze there in the work-room fireplace! Ask Brown Sadie if it’s too late to have Baked Bermudas for supper! Then ask your mother---I shall hear her in here---to play something---Bach preferred, or Beethoven if she prefers.”
xxxxNow comes to brood---to suffer doubt, hesitate yet burn with eagerness. To test bearings---and prove ground already assumed by putting all together in definite scale on paper. Preferably small scale study at first. Then larger. Finally still larger scale detail studies of parts.
|
“An aid to creative effort, the open fire. What a friend to the laboring artist the poetic baked-onion! Real encouragement to him is great music. Yes, and what a poor creature, after all, creation come singing through. About like catgut and horsehair in the hands of a Sarasate.
xxxxNight labor at the drafting board is best for intense creation. It may continue uninterrupted.
xxxxMeantime glancing side reflections are passing in the mind---“design is abstraction of nature-elements in purely geometric terms”---that is what we ought to call pure design?
xxxx... This cube---this square---proportion.
But---nature-pattern and nature-texture in materials themselves often approach conventionalization, or the abstract, to such a degree as to be superlative means ready to the designer’s hand to qualify, stimulate, and enrich his own efforts ... What texture this concrete mass? Why not its own gravel? How to bring the gravel clean on the surface? ... I knew. Here was reality. Yes, the “fine thing” is always reality. Always reality? ... Realism, the subgeometric, however, is the abuse of this fine feeling... Keep the straight line clean and keep all significant of the idea---the flat plane expressive and always clean cut. But let texture come into them to qualify them in sunlight.
xxxxReality is spirit---the essence brooding just behind all aspect. Seize it! And---after all you will see that the pattern of reality is supergeometric, casting a spell or a charm over any geometry, and is such a spell in itself.
xxxxYes, so it seems to me as I draw
with T-square, triangle and scale. That is what it means to be an artist---to seize this essence brooding everywhere in everything, just behind aspect. These questionings arising each with its own train of thought by the way, as the architect sits at his work.
xxxxSuddenly it is morning. To bed for a while.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
1932, 1943
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
pp 153-157 [rbtfBook] |
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|
E N V I R O N M E N T
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| This is a little better than half of Wright’s description of his experience of birthing Unity Temple - a rare, and easily the longest, reflection on his creative process that he ever wrote. I will address the second part later in this work. First, some comments to pull some threads together. |
| Notice how many times Mr. Wright used the word “sense” - and “sensible” - in just a few pages. It would be a mistake to take his use of it in the common modern interpretation which is tilted toward logical, or “common-sensible” meaning reasonable or OK. His use is more to the root of the concept as deriving from the senses. This description of Unity Temple is sensual. It is useful to take Wright’s words literally and in their most basic meaning - it is clear that he took great care with his crafting of this statement. He is describing the making of a design, the making of an environment while living and working in an environment of his own making [link: creative_ environments]. He is reflecting on his own sense of cognitive experience while doing so. He is revealing his method - his way of working - while at the same time providing an authentic record of his thinking and the “inner voice” dialog that he took part in as he worked. He is sharing vulnerabilities and setting the stage for the second haft of his description which tells the story of the decision process and his experience of the opening of the church - he did not go but stayed home waiting the verdict. |
| For those who have enough personal experience of the creative process, the group dynamics associated with it and the demands imposed by the task of creating a a dynamic, complex, innovative work, this is one of the most useful descriptions ever written by a master of any art. |
| The SCAN process is illustrated. And so it the importance of ENVIRONMENT (the 4th Domain). Notice how tactile Wright’s response is: the fire, music, food, light, the instruments of expression - the white surface offering a challenge and an opportunity. Notice, despite the clarity of the idea as it had development in his mind, the pause of uncertainty, the acknowledgement that the scale drawing was a test of the concept. This recollection is 28 to 38 years after the experience (depending on which edition) yet it is clear that the memory of it is still, for Wright, laden with physical nuance. This reveals a great deal about him, as an individual, it also illustrates the creative process in general even as it is different for everyone. |
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| In the Solution Box Model, Wright was at INSIGHT-SYNTHESIS, PHILOSOPHY-POLICY and the beginning of PRELIMINARY - having done the PROGRAM and SCHEMATIC work largely in his head which was his practice - when he he regarded “this pure white sheet of paper” and embraced the “seductive invitation lying upon the spotless surface.” |
|
| Here is a master knowledge worker who knew how to prepare himself mentally, and to organize and employ his physical environment, to facilitate creativity and innovation. He produced what is recognized as one of the great benchmark works of 20th Century architecture and produced a room which is still regarded as one of the most outstanding in the world. |
| A careful reading of Wright’s story reveals that he was completely aware that each iteration of work requred a recreating of the concept in order to preserve its integrity. |
|
Briggs:
“Erich Fromm wrote that a ‘condition for creativeness
is the ability to accept conflict and tension resulting from polarity, rather than to avoid
them.’” |
Wright:
Out of this inner sense of order and love of beauty of life something is to be born---maybe to live long as a message of hope and be a joy or a curse to his kind. His message he feels. None the less will it be “theirs,” and rather more. And it out of this love and understanding that any building is born to bless or curse those it is built to serve. Bless them if they will see, understand and aid. Curse them as it will be cursed by them if either they or the architect fail to understand each other This is the faith and the fear in the architect as he makes ready---to draw his design. |
Briggs:
“Famed
physiologist Claude Bernard said doubt is crucial
because ‘those who have an excessive faith
in their ideas are not well fitted to make
discoveries.’ Margaret Mead insisted, ‘The
only people who can get a thing done well are
those who think they can’t do it.’ Sculptor
Jean Arp described something like negative
capability in terms that tie it to the circular
paradoxes we discussed in the last chapter.
Arp said that the creator must maintain a state
in the ‘the fire of balance,’ in a movement
‘between Above and Below, light and darkness,
eternity and transitoriness.’” |
Wright:
“Now comes to brood---to suffer doubt, hesitate yet burn with eagerness. To test bearings---and prove ground already assumed by putting all together in definite scale on paper. Preferably small scale study at first. Then larger. Finally still larger scale detail studies of parts.” |
Briggs:
“Such
sustained uncertainty probably involves some
discomfort. In fact, LaViolette points out
that the loop between the limbic system and
the prefrontal cortex - the loop that amplifies
emotional nuances - is also concerned with
psychological pain. When the connections of
that loop are
severed, there’s a reduction in the intensity
of pain. Thus a type of psychological pain
may be a price required for adhering to nuances
with all their doubts and uncertainties.”
|
Wright:
“An aid to creative effort, the open fire. What a friend to the laboring artist the poetic baked-onion! Real encouragement to him is great music. Yes, and what a poor creature, after all, creation come singing through. About like catgut and horsehair in the hands of a Sarasate.” |
Wright:
“Yes, so it seems to me as I draw
with T-square, triangle and scale. That is what it means to be an artist---to seize this essence brooding everywhere in everything, just behind aspect. These questionings arising each with its own train of thought by the way, as the architect sits at his work.
“Suddenly it is morning. To bed for a while.” |
Briggs:
“Ambivalence
is derived from conflict and it arouses the brain.
If the ambivalence in some areas or context is
not denied, suppressed or resolved but instead
is ‘tolerated’ it leads individuals to experience
a state which Desy Safan-Gerard, a UCLA psychologist
who is a painter, described as ‘an enrichment
in our appreciation of reality and ourselves.’” |
|
| Briggs is speaking for the vantage point of research - from the observation of the creative process. Wright is describing his experience of it. What is interesting is how congruent there statements are. There is, of course, much more to be said on the subject as we will shortly see. |
| The creative process is still considered by the many to be a mystery. I do not see it that way. Complex, yes. A mystery, no. Different for everyone, yes, in detail this is true. More complex than our present science and philosophy can totally understand - certainly. Yet, making the conditions conducive for individual and group creativity are relatively simple. There is only one problem with this. The conditions necessary for creativity largely fly in the face of social habits and conventions. In fact, it can be acurately said that society and its major institutions actively work to suppress creativity even as they now claim they want it. |
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| ReBuilding
- Syntopical Dialogs INDEX |
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| ReBuilding
- Syntopical Reading 500 #1 |
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| GoTo: Solution Box Architecture |
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| Return: MG Taylor Modeling Language 1 |
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Matt
Taylor
Elsewhere
July 4, 2004
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SolutionBox
voice of this document:
VISION • PHILOSOPHY • PROGRAM
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posted
July 4, 2004
revised
November 3, 2006
• 20040704.133400.mt • 20061022.681091.mt •
• 20061103.879010.mt •
(note:
this document is about 50% finished)
Copyright© Matt
Taylor 2004, 2006 |
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