Lecture
Throughout art history, many artists have tackled the same subjects and offered a variety of creative approaches, finding different solutions to the same problem. Several years ago, this simple observation prompted our research, which led us to identify 51 ways of working with the content of a painting. These concern space, colour, shapes, viewpoints, the ideas expressed and subjects skilfully transformed into distinct aesthetic solutions. Starting from the aesthetic results, we have identified the underlying way of thinking—the creative process, as we call it—that produces this diversity of form and content.
Seminar
This seminar explores more than 51 creative perspectives and approaches to transformation: 51 ways of changing an artistic reality, whether a musical motif, a character in a novel, a painted form or a theatrical gesture. Each participant should bring a work of their own with which they are dissatisfied—something they feel is missing an element or does not fulfil their original intention. Starting from the needs expressed by the participants, we will explore how to use this handbook of creative techniques so that they are not ends in themselves but tools serving a constructive intention. That intention may initially be unclear, but it is essential for setting a direction; it will change and become clearer as the work develops.
Seminar Topics
● 51 ways of thinking and acting creatively
Who It Is For
For anyone who wants to learn a method for looking at things from different perspectives. Maximum of 15 participants.
Duration
The seminar lasts 16 hours over Saturday and Sunday, plus a two-hour lecture on Friday evening.
Cost
The fee for each seminar is agreed upon with those interested.
Download workshop information sheet (PDF, Italian)
Lecture preview
Allenare la mente con un vademecum di operazioni creative
Imagine the computer as an extension of our mind and its programs as ways of making that mind work. Increasingly powerful technologies make it possible to carry out ever broader and more complex operations. In theory this is true, but to make the best use of these tools we need not only to know their specifications but, above all, to have a reason to use them. A program with a thousand functions may be used only minimally. Likewise, a handbook of fifty creative techniques may be meaningless if we have nowhere to apply them. Once we have identified an application, we need to understand the software’s functions.
What fascinates us about this collection of techniques is the opportunity to study the mind’s capacity for transformation, whose full potential remains unknown to us. The real work of the seminar begins after some creative methods have been studied: it consists of applying this knowledge to one’s own artistic practice.
In studying these methods, we have observed an enrichment of our students’ thinking, partly through the acquisition of a vocabulary that enables them to use techniques they may not previously have known.
A mind trained in different strategies begins to behave differently: it becomes more open, flexible and attentive to variations and processes of transformation.
The central theme of the handbook is therefore metamorphosis: the constant, potentially infinite transformation of a form until it becomes what we were seeking.
The use of these techniques must be guided by our own feelings. Artists have pursued creative techniques by following their intuitions. Consider an example: the dematerialisation of reality achieved by Impressionist painters through touches of brushwork—taken even further by the Post-Impressionists—would have had little meaning in itself. It becomes valuable as a way of conveying on canvas the sensation of vibrating light. Unfortunately, creativity today often seems to serve technique for its own sake and thus becomes an end in itself. Our main interest is in discovering techniques capable of expressing new mental processes and conveying the experiences and feelings of artists in the new millennium.