Imagining Creativity

Imagination and Creativity have long been considered to separate humanity from machines. This is seen as an element of the soul or some supernatural power. However, deep brain studies have failed to find any antennae to tune in to any such creativity broadcasts.

So what makes humans creative? Can creativity be explained with what we already know?

a) Common Likes

We are products of evolution and so the whole of humanity instinctively finds few things amazing. Colours represent fruits or leaves and reflect an environment of abundance naturally making us happy. Sweet taste shows a food item gives you the energy you need. Smell of flowers, scent of the sea and feeling of water all refer to environments where survival chances are best for humans.

Everything we enjoy by default have a connection to friendly environment, meaning every organism that liked these would have had higher survival chances and thus got through ‘natural selection’.

b) Visualising creativity

When someone creates art on a white canvas or when someone composes a melody, they visualise it in their mind.

c) Parallel and “Right Brain” Processing

When we can recollect thought, it means we thought in a sequence, one thought leading to another. This process is called sequential processing. However, parallel processing works differently – using exclusions. This means multiple permutations and combinations are generated simultaneously. The results are simply excluded or selected, based on a set of rules of reference. This leaves you with just the final product of thought. And no trail as to how you got it. These are sometimes called intuitions.

d) Deconstructing Art & Music:

Art is nothing but a collection of pixels. The permutations and combinations of different colours in different spatial positions can produce all forms of art. Music similarly is composed of notes in a timeline.

So what is creativity?

An artist’s brain has highly developed parallel processing. He processes different permutations and combinations of colours and patterns and gauges them against the common likes (which he has a clear idea of). The final result is a picture that will be liked by most people. However, the artist will have no recollection of how it came to his mind.

The world wonders where it came from and dubs the highly developed brain as creativity and the supernatural.