I love to observe. Observing, though it may sound passive, requires a lot of focus and energy. First, you need to overcome the natural tendency of your brain to gravitate toward immediate goals and toward the known and familiar. When you are walking to the office, for example, your mind is focused on getting to your destination. Everything else is, by default, less important. And then there are the modern distractions in the form of repeated notifications from our smart-devices — notifications that grant our mind immediate rewards, and gradually create a real, chemical addiction.
So mindfully observing the world is far from being trivial. Exploring the world around you and seeing everything as the inspiration requires deliberate, repeated work until it becomes a habit. When seempli was launched, this was my first and immediate goal: to help people be more mindful and observant. I realized that this skill is essential if we wish to realize our creative potential. Observing the world was a lever to being more creative.
And that’s why the basic seempli gameplay — the one captured in the Exploration Prism — was focused on observing and capturing what you find. As a photographer, the connection between observing and creating was clear and immediate for me. For me, photographing what I see is not an act of recording. It is an act of creating.
As seempli evolved, more Prisms were added. Some of them were designed for creating a specific type of Insight, like a short story or a collage. But most of the Prisms kept using the deliberately vague phrasing: “Capture an Insight…”.
With version 4.1, we are adding to the seempli Platform a new building block that will enhance your gameplay and challenge you to be even more creative: the Insight Type cards. The idea behind it is as powerful as it is simple: with any Prism and one or more Seed you pick, you will now see an Insight Type too. Now, instead of leaving the phrase “Capture an Insight” open for interpretation, you can challenge yourself to create that specific Insight Type. And the next time you pick that Prism, you might just find a different Insight Type accompanying it.
Sounds easy? Imagine playing with the Exploration Prism, finding something inspired by the Seed, but instead of taking its photo, writing a Haiku that captures its essence. Or drawing something inspired by what you saw. Or creating a dance… The options are limitless as they always were, but with the introduction of Insight Types, we translated them into constraints that push us to work with a medium we might not feel natural with. The experience of creating something different — something we might not be accustomed to — is powerful, and it helps us to gradually develop and enhance our creative skills.
But what you create is not the only dimension that is now enhanced by the new Insight Type building block. The flow of most Prisms is now open to interpretation.
Let’s take for example this combination:
One way to play with this challenge is to to create music, inspired by Picasso without leaving the room you are in. Unless you happen to have a musical instrument near you, this means creating music with just what you have around you. Interesting, isn’t it? Especially if like me, you don’t play any musical instrument and never created music.
Another way play with the same combination of cards would be to look around you and find something inspired by Picasso, just like you would have done before the introduction of the Music Insight Type. Once you found something, try to compose music inspired by what you found. Let what you found be the inspiration for creating the music.
Do you see how these two flows can result in two completely different creations? And as always, there’s no right or wrong way, no right or wrong answer. Anything goes, as long as you feel it is challenging. You can always change the Insight Type, the Seed, or both. There are endless ways to play with any challenge. Surprise yourself.
The latest version of seempli turns the platform from merely vast to practically endless. While every Seed, Prism, Gear, and seempli Spot Activity is carefully crafted, if you would decide to play with a different challenge every hour, 24 hours a day, it would take you more than 100 years(!) to play with all of them. And if that’s not enough, we are adding new building blocks daily.
And need I mention that seempli is 100% free for personal use?
So, what are you waiting for? Go to the Master Your Creativity channel, play with the generated combination of cards, smile, and have fun. Come back to play more, and in no time, you will notice you are more creative. Guaranteed!