Limitations as a source of Creativity
In the beginning»
Time flies. No blog post for over a month. That’s not how I imagined it, now that I have a blog. However, on the one hand it was holidays and on the other hand I was much more interested in the technology of the blog and the server than with the content. But I have a lot of ideas for more posts. If only I had would take the time to focus…
Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something somehow new and somehow valuable is formed. (Wikipedia)
So this post is primarily about Creativity and only in the end turns over into Creative Coding. Creativity arise in different ways. The result has not to be completely new. Often creative projects combine different, existing ideas, either from others or from yourself. The combination / composition turns out to be something new, something of value.
And because it might not be so easy to start being creative, it can be useful to get inspired by existing things. So the inspirational parts might be at the same time a limitation. If you want to reuse them, you self-limit yourself but in return enhance your creativity. And so even seemingly arbitrary restrictions and limits can lead to more creativity. On one side you might ewant to stay close to your inspirational source, on the other side, you have the freedom to do whatever you want.
In Politics»
In Germany we recently had Bundestag election and before that there were public discussion between the three most promising candidates to become Bundeskanzler, successor of Angela Merkel. One of them is Annalena Baerbock from the Greens. What she said was heavily discussed and written about, e.g. by @FAZ_NET or @taz_news.
“Jedes Verbot ist auch ein Innovationstreiber”
“Verbote bedeuten oft Fortschritt”
— Annalena Baerbock
It translates to “Every ban is also a driver of innovations” and “Prohibitions often mean progress”. And of course many got upset right away, because who would want bans? But you have to deal objectively with the statement whether what Annalena is saying is perhaps true.
A comedy format from television @heuteshow analogously said on Twitter: “If bans drive innovation, why isn’t North Korea Silicon Valley?”
But maybe you have to think again and if you replace the word “ban” with “limitation” and “innovation” with “creativity”, then maybe a new perspective opens up.
“Every limitation is also a driver of creativity” (me)
Of course I understand that new bans by our politicians can have very far-reaching consequences. Therefore, such a general statement taken out of context is difficult to judge as good or bad. But in terms of creativity, limitation can be quite beneficial.
In my studies»
In any case, I remember my studies and very much liked a course with Professor Fries. One day we got a sheet of paper with different lines and our task was to create pictures that contained these lines, time was also limited. It was one of these mind-opening moments. We came up with lots of drawings in a very short period of time, maybe not the most beautiful pictures but very different motifs. Back then we made a portfolio and so I still have the starting sheet as well as my attempts.
I think it was the same professor who set a different example in one of his lectures. At that time users of StudiVZ (a german Facebook clone) only had few possibilities to stand out from the crowd, so there were limitations in what the tool did offer. But there was no limit to the length of the group names. That’s why people started to let their creativity run free and to differentiate themselves from one another by sometimes very long group names.
Btw. a comparison with North Korea would not work here, because it had no negative consequences to come up with groups with long names. ;)
In Art (and in general)»
I checked what is already available on this topic and I came across the Wikipedia page on Creative limitation as well as this article “The Psychology of Limitations: How and Why Constraints Can Make You More Creative”. Both mention the story of Phil Hanson and his TEDx talk.
In that talk he shares his eye-opening moment and that, on the contrary, it is very difficult for him to be much creative when he suddenly had all the tools at his disposal. There were too many options and yet he was sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper and couldn’t begin. It was only when he returned to the limitations that he was able to become creative.
And creativity also arises from the reason to bypass the restrictions, to break through or to use the scope to the maximum.
There are a lot of possible limits, like you when painting you could restrict the number of colors or you could draw your image using basic shapes, e.g. cirlces or rectangles only. This reminds me to the example on the left, I’ve seen in a tweet of @neilsardesai. He re-created the Mac OS X Finder Icon image using only Icons on his Desktop. So the possible icons hav been his limitation to make this artwork.
In Code»
When you look at my twitter posts, you might have noticed, I like doing some creative coding experiments and also retweet those from others that I did enjoy. I follow people who inspire me, and sometimes I am able to come up with something new out of their ideas.
There’s a vibrant community of people doing this with different (web-) technologies, either HTML, Javascript, canvas or SVG graphics, WebGL, shaders, but also processing or even CSS only. Using only one technology can already be the limit. Other limits can be just like in painting to restrict the number of colors or the visuals to use basic shapes, e.g. cirlces or rectangles only.
Beside technology as a limitation, sometimes it is different an more about Math. And some people created challenges for others to participate. A good starting point, if you’re interested in doing and sharing stuff with HTML/JS/CSS, could be #CodePenChallenge.
Things out of checkboxes»
It was only recently that I became aware of Checkboxland through a tweet from @BryanEBraun. It consists of a link to his blog post “I keep making things out of checkboxes”, and that is exactly what he does. He renders pictures, animations and even a webcam stream just using checkboxes.
Luckily a previous blog post of him reveals his source of inspiration, a sign built with black and white “mechanical pixels” which would flip to display text and animations.
So his restriction to checkboxes is what really made him very creative and allowed this form of rendering to be combined with all sorts of other things.
Swirled Series (a mathart challenge)»
Craig S. Kaplan (@cs_kaplan), a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, came up with a completely different way of getting creative.
I think, this is his initial blog post about his Swirly Squares. His own weekly posts of looping animations as well as external hints led him to turn it into a challenge for others.
So he made verry clear constraints and a deadline, the important one being that your own animation loop need to begin and end with the same frame, an 8×8 checkerboard with white in the lower-right corner.
I became aware of it through the tweet from @matthen2 and his loops. You can look up much more entries on Twitter when you search for swirlysquaresunday.
Tixy.land»
And then there’s my favorite “most minimalist creative coding environment” called Tixy.land, created by Martin Kleppe alias @aemkei November last year. It all started with a tweet.
Control the size and color of a 16x16 dot matrix with a single JavaScript function. The input is limited to 32 characters – but no limits to your creativity!
So I very much like that Martin is playing with the concept that restrictions lead to more creativity when he says, yes, there are limits, but hey, there’s no limit to become creative.
Do not be put off by the fact that this is about mathematics. A formula, a mathematical function, is used to render beautiful things. So everyone was asked to come up with a function and to be creative. The function is given four parameters: t(ime), i(ndex), x- and y-coordinates. That’s where the name Tixy comes from. The function is limited to 32 characters and should return a value between -1 (red) and 1 (white). The result ist rendered at a 16 x 16 dot matrix. That’s all.
And people became very creative and a lot of tweets later there were other forms of creativity around Tixy. Beside coming up with functions, people came up with other ideas like different renderers, in different programming language, at a text console, in a different coordinate system (e.g. polar coordinates) or even hardware hacks and LED matrices showing Tixy functions. I’m going to cover that in a different blog post.