Every day we play with a creative challenge. What we create doesn’t have to be grand. It doesn’t have to be perfect. We aim to stretch our creative muscles, be playful, and have fun!
Every day we take a little journey with some unexpected turns. That’s the beauty of creativity. If you just let it, it will fill you with wonder.
The Challenge
Our creative challenge today is made of the following set. If you are familiar with the creomondi building blocks, use the set to explore, imagine, and create. Alternatively, read how we played with it for inspiration first.
The Playground We Will Explore
The Seed We Will Use in our Exploration
And We Are Aiming to Create…
Let’s Play
Our Playground today is Google Earth. This is where we explore, observe, and discover surprising things we will then use as inspiration for our creation. To guide us in our exploration and focus our attention, we will use the Kandinsky Seed.
How to play with the Seed in the Playground we’ve picked is entirely up to us. For example, you could read a bit about Kandinsky and navigate Google Earth to where Kandinsky was born or where he lived. I took a different approach. I just chose a random location to explore and started to look for a piece of land where yellow, red, and blue create a colorful composition.
Without any particular reason, I flew over Glasgow and decided to descend. Somewhere outside the city, I found this location with the yellow, blue, and red geometrical shapes.
This is the essence of creative exploration. Just looking around mindfully, in this case, using Google Earth. The Seed just helped me tuned into something which I might have dismissed otherwise.
Next, I explored my discovery details and used it as inspiration for doing something different tonight. In this step, you might want to focus again on the Seed, but I chose to focus mainly on the frame I’ve captured.
My first thought was inspired by the four yellow squares. I thought of dividing everything I’ll do this evening into four parts, even if it doesn’t make sense. This is an example of taking ordinary tasks and just performing them differently — a great way to notice new things or become aware of the automatic way we do certain things.
But then, this building at the top of the frame caught my attention. I zoomed in, and it looked like an origami artwork in the making. And so, I decided that tonight I will experience Origami for the first time.
The Evening-Routine Breaker is not designed as a conceptual insight. Its goal is to actually apply it and not just think of a new way to spend the evening. And so, I found a square sheet of paper and the (not so easy) instructions for creating an origami crane.
After 20 minutes, this is what managed to make.
It’s far from being perfect, and it was really not trivial to make. At least with my two left hands. But that’s not important. It was the experience that mattered. Reading the instructions and translating them into physical gestures was an activity I am not used to doing.
But I didn’t stop there. When I reflected on my experience, I began to wonder how does one invent an origami model? None of the steps in the instructions I followed looked even remotely like the end result. So designing such a model seemed magical. I played with this question in my head a bit before looking for the answer online.
So, I started by exploring a random place on a virtual model of Earth, looking for something connected to Kandinsky. I ended up experimenting with Origami and asking myself questions about the process which Origami artists follow. No part of this short journey was planned or predictable. And that’s precisely how it should be.
Now, It Is Your Turn…
Don’t follow my steps! Take the set of cards and play with them. Use them as a guide and not as a set of rules. Let your imagination lead the way. Don’t dismiss your ideas.
Have fun! Be creative!