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 Seeds We Will Use in our Exploration
And We Are Aiming to Create…
Using Also the Constraint…
Let’s Play
Taking photos is now easier than ever before. Thanks to smartphones, most of us carry a camera with us wherever we go. And with it, many of us take hundreds if not thousands of photos a year — most of which will probably remain unused.
And yet, each photo captures something we noticed and wanted to recall later. These unused photos are a kind of a time capsule — fragments that we can use not only to remember but also to imagine new things.
The archive of our old, unused photos is our Playground today. To help us explore it, we will use not one but two Seeds today: Interchange and Weightless. In the creative exploration step, we will use the Seeds as filters to tune into the one or more photos that we can relate to or associate with the Seeds. Any association will be perfect, even if you can’t really explain it.
I used my Google Photos archive and rapidly scrolled hundreds of photos. Somewhere around August 2019, I came across pictures from a trip to London. They were visually different, and so they made me slow down. And then, I came across the photo that made me stop.
I took this photo at the Tate museum. It is an installation called Rainbow by Olafur Eliasson. The image helped me recall the experience of walking into this dark room with nothing but a constant haze and a source of light pointed at it. With no other distraction, anyone walking into this room was immediately immersed in the ever-changing rainbow that filled the space.
As powerful as this experience was, I haven’t used this photo till now. In fact, I didn’t even remember taking it. But now, thinking about change (although it is only part of the word “Interchange”) and lack of weight, this photo was a perfect match. With this visual discovery, I took a few minutes to imagine a story with exactly 50 words.
The set we are using today also includes a Constraint card: Surreal. I have to admit, though, that this constraint naturally wrote itself into the story given the image I found.
She didn’t feel gravity. Mesmerized by the tiny raindrops, falling in slow motion, she felt as if she was floating in the air. The sky was black, empty, and infinite, just like her past and future. She wished the haze would continue to dance around her forever. And it did.
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!