{"id":1099,"date":"2012-07-08T10:36:02","date_gmt":"2016-10-10T15:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/?p=1099"},"modified":"2020-06-24T07:29:31","modified_gmt":"2020-06-24T07:29:31","slug":"making-sparks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/?p=1099","title":{"rendered":"Making Sparks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michelangelo&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Creation of Adam,\u00a0<\/em>painted\u00a0on\u00a0the\u00a0\u00a0Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512,\u00a0depicts creativity as a gap\u00a0<em>between<\/em>\u00a0two distinct, independently coherent human bodies. A complex and controversial visualisation of the account of Creation given in the Biblical\u00a0<em>Book of Genesis<\/em>, it\u00a0is one of the\u00a0most\u00a0 familiar and by now most conventional \u00a0images we have of creativity: \u00a0the\u00a0new appears between forces of\u00a0tension and release, of energy building up in separate structures (these are strong, independent\u00a0bodies) and discharging across the gap between them. \u00a0In fact\u00a0one such spark could account for the painting&#8217;s\u00a0own genesis.\u00a0 It jumped improbably between a powerful ancient text, profoundly implicated in conditions of social and economic upheaval\u00a0in Renaissance Italy, and the mind of one free reader of that text and resident of that time and place.\u00a0 it had enough energy to illuminate a new way to see&#8211;and to think.<\/p>\n<p>It may seem awkward, or at least unfamiliar to model creativity arising in confrontation\u00a0 between two different kinds of energy.\u00a0 Awkwardness notwithstanding, this essay argues,\u00a0 the idea of\u00a0 &#8220;creativity&#8221; needs to be rescued from its current associations with entertainment or therapy or even art, because although creativity can be, it is not necessarily any of these things.\u00a0 It isn&#8217;t &#8220;extra,&#8221; but a will to overcome the resistance between them&#8211;to make them &#8220;work&#8221; &#8212; if not exactly to work together, to determine what new conditions&#8211;what \u00a0new universe would be capable of accommodating both in terms of \u00a0&#8220;sparks&#8221;&#8211; jumps between significantly different, independently coherent &#8220;bodies&#8221; of \u00a0memory, thought, skill, or perception.\u00a0 Writing continues to shape the way most of us perceive the world around us, conceive of time, speak, relate to others, and remember, it perhaps inevitably looms large even here, in such a modest sketch of a way to rethink creativity. \u00a0The essay, finally, draws heavily on the thought of Vilem Flusser, and tries to be\u00a0consistent with the way he\u00a0describes and values creativity. \u00a0In a sense, it tries to extend his thinking into areas he himself did not explicitly discuss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michelangelo&#8217;s\u00a0Creation of Adam,\u00a0painted\u00a0on\u00a0the\u00a0\u00a0Sistine Chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512,\u00a0depicts creativity as a gap\u00a0between\u00a0two distinct, independently coherent human bodies. A complex and controversial visualisation of the account of Creation given in the Biblical\u00a0Book of Genesis,&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,176],"tags":[353,351,352,354],"class_list":["post-1099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-creativity","tag-creation-of-adam","tag-michelangelo","tag-sistine-chapel-ceiling","tag-visualizing-creativity"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1099"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1957,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1099\/revisions\/1957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyannroth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}