In Amy Tan’s TED talk, she discusses where creativity comes from. She explains that some people think that creativity is something that an individual is born with. She then questions whether it is from past lives, as her mother thinks, or if it’s from mental illness like with Van Gogh. Narrowing the origin of creativity to simply being born with it or not doesn’t seem extremely accurate to me, however Tan continues to debate about the source. She says that creativity can also be learned, through parenting or some other form of learning over time. This makes a bit more sense than simply being born with the ability to create. Personally, I feel that creativity is something that grows over time after a certain spark the artist experiences. This is what Tan describes more towards the end of the talk, as she starts to describe a type of muse that people find that leads them to create.
In Stan Brakhage’s “Stellar”, the title very clearly screams “voyage through space”, I kept seeing much more than just this. It wasn’t very hard to get the feel of going through space, I kept noticing things that looked vaguely like arms, faces, and people smiling and such. I’m not sure if it’s the rapid movements and large amounts of black that make me see some strange or creepy images, or a combination of the two. I almost feel like the piece was created with intent to have a Rorschach-like effect, that or I’m just seeing things. At the end of the video, Brakhage explains that the video is a collaboration with Sam Bush, the printer. The video is described like music, though the creating process was likely very similar to making music, as the piece was created through various layers of paint.
In Spoon’s “Inside Out”, in an interview for Song Exploder, the drummer explains the process of creating the song. Like Stellar, the song was created through the layering of different elements. With the song, some of the elements are referenced through other artists, and instead of simply capturing the sound of the other artists, they intend to capture the feeling the artist was going for, or the process that was used to create this sound. In both “Stellar” and “Inside Out”, the layering of different effects help to create the final product.
