Design in Society: Creativity from without

Last week in Design 001 lecture, Professor Housefield showed us a short film that relates with creativity. It is a film about a designer, Lisa Hoke, who creates her designs from things that surrounded her. In the film, we could see how she designed art for a gallery by using plastic cups that she had collected from her daily life. Regardless of the cups’ age, color, shape or texture, she gathered them and transformed them into prismatic art pieces on the gallery wall. From the video I have also noticed that Lisa Hoke did not have any drafts or plans for her created pieces, instead she spontaneously created the pieces outside herself by using those plastic cups. Finding inspiration or creativity is essential for every designer. The way Lisa Hoke find inspiration is by connecting to the daily world around her, such as tissue paper or plastic cups. To me, I would say creativity cannot completely come from “without,” but it also tends to encompass the things we had once encountered and experienced as its fuel. For example, inspiration can come from things such as an action of a friend, an image in a book, a sound from the park, or a sign in a restaurant. Creativity can be acquired from everything in our society and may happen to anyone at anytime. It is something like what we did on the Stone Soup activity last Tuesday, where no one can predict what the final piece would be like. On the other hand, everyone just let the objects lead itself into its final form while inspiring one another to complete the Stone Soup. In another case the same idea was shown in another film from design 1 class, where designer Andy Goldsworthy find inspiration for his creativity outside of himself through nature surroundings.