Innovation Creativity and Leadership - Research and practice
Soundings
the emergence of meaning
Susan Ryland (PhD)
University for the Creative Arts (UK)
[email protected]
City University London Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice
Creativity, innovation and leadership
Metaphors
• Journeys (Sam Elkington)
• Windows (Kate Hammer)
Attributes
Artists are inherently risk-takers –
they have courage. Increasingly, this
• Unknown / unforeseeable
is seen a transferable skill from the
• Risk
arts to business and other spheres.
• Autonomy
For example speaker: Caroline
• Ambiguity
Southard (musician: flute) talking
• Acknowledging emotions
about 'tolerance for novelty'.
• Collaborative
• Experiential, in the moment, tangible
• Open source / peer-to-peer sharing
Interventions
• Improv: Neil Mullarkey (dynamic dialogue)
• Planning for the unplanned: Sam Elkington
• The destructive task - creating space: Alistair Dryburgh
I will:
• discuss how new meaning is generated
• describe key cognitive mechanisms in creative thought
- out-of-placeness (metaphor) and
- overlookedness (metonymy and synecdoche)
• give a reflective account of the development of a new
exhibition and performance: Soundings: thought over time
• sum up and offer conclusions.
Susan Ryland
Meme:brain.
Digital study for
Soundings:
thought over time
Metaphor: bringing together disparate entities to
find common features that provide access to
more complex, abstract ideas.
Metonymy : peripheral (overlooked) partwhole / partonomic / part of. A new
perspective on something familiar.
Synecdoche: category relations / taxonomic /
kind of. Meaning expansion from a lesser to a
more comprehensive category
Louise Bourgeois Maman outside the National Gallery of Canada
METONYMY: same domain relations based on contiguity
PART-WHOLE
MARCHING FEET FOR ARMY
Cornelia Parker
The Negative of Whispers,
( Ear plugs made with fluff
gathered in the Whispering
Gallery, St Paul’s Cathedral,
London), 1997
relations
Butter bean (species-genus relations)
Twenty-five beans
With a number of beans we encounter a process of ‘domain annexation’ or ‘microdomain annexation’. Brigitte NERLICH, Synecdoche: a trope, a whole trope, and nothing but
a trope? In: NERLICH, B. & BURKHARDT, A. (eds.) Tropical Truth(s). 2010: 310.
Metaphor: bringing together disparate entities to
find common features that provide access to
more complex, abstract ideas.
Metonymy : peripheral (overlooked) partwhole / partonomic / part of. A new
perspective on something familiar.
Synecdoche: category relations / taxonomic /
kind of. Meaning expansion from a lesser to a
more comprehensive category
See Seto 1999, Nerlich 2010, and Ryland 2011 for further information
Susan Ryland. Core Sample Encyclopaedia Britannica (2011). Photograph
Soundings: thought over time
Susan
collaborative touring exhibition
Ryland (artist) Helen Thomas (musician/composer)
Michael Beiert (electroacoustic composer)
Soundings: thought over time
considers how metaphors ‘frame’ our world.
Geological metaphors such as:
‘deep in thought’
‘buried memories'
‘just scratching the surface’
turn abstract notions of knowledge into tangible objects
that can be lost and found.
Knowledge metaphors
Ice core sample with sheet music.
Light
'Kept in the dark',
'See what you mean',
'Shed/throw some
light on the matter'
Light:Strip (2009) Scanner image of striplight
Encyclopaedia Britannica core sample (2010)
(maquette)
Avant garde music scores and
geological studies share visual
and linguistic characteristics
Meta-staseis by Iannis Xenakis
Music score for 61 musicians
(1953-4)
Volumina by György Ligeti for Organ
(1961-2)
path track route channel road direction journey avenue bend fold
crease joint articulate speculate manipulate train course steer suggest
support coerce cajole conform reform mold make assemble
accumulate acquire acquiesce give way release reveal remind recall
realize respect retrospect represent present present now remember
retreat retread resume repeat repeat repeat noise sound sonorous
sonic sensuous
subtle sudden softly surreptitiously nuanced balanced
discrete separate associated assembled aside side-by-side suggestive
shifting sliding spreading relating connecting contiguous amalgamate
joining blending proximity transition translation transformation extending
mapping out-of-placeness over-lookedness inbetweeness interventions
intervening interval pause break review recur recall restate resound
sound sonorous sonic resonance rebound rhetoric postulate proposition
dispersal rehearsal retrieval retain retry recover reveal restrain re-edit
real reel-to-reel tape bind blend bend contend send mend pretend
defend offend resist insist persist sustain refrain rephrase utter words
meaningful colourful ephemeral transient passing passage corridor
cavity activity relativity relations cousins genus category continuity
continuum potential tolerance integral noise tipping-point brink turning
tuning touching thoughts emotions emotive welling feeling incite
incisive cutting
Core samples and partially decayed sheet music
Analogue to digital conversion
0101101111111111111101101010010000000000000100010011011101111111111111011010100100000000000000100101
Fossil coral
PERSON AS BOOK metaphors: 'an open book'
STORY AS WEAVING: 'tangled plot', 'narrative thread'
Encyclopaedia
Britannica core
sample cutting
Studio view
(Susan Ryland 2012)
Detail of Encyclopaedia Britannica core sample (Susan Ryland 2012)
Beiert & Thomas (2009) Two Similar for tap
dancer, oboe and live electronics,
The Cornerstone Festival, Liverpool
'Max Patch' created by Michael Beiert - software allocates sound
fragments with letters of the alphabet. Here the word typed is 'Hello' as
seen in the red band.
Play sound track:
Rehearsal for S/core
Improvisation for
Oboe and electronics
Susan Ryland.
Pumpkin:Poetry (2012).
Digital drawing.
Conclusion
The principal cognitive mechanisms for creative thought are:
• metaphor
• metonymy
• synecdoche
Interventions for encouraging creative thought use
• out-of-placeness (metaphor and irony)
• overlookedness (metonymy and synecdoche)
The aim is to create a situation or environment where
multiple (unforeseeable) possibilities can emerge
Metaphor studies:
Digital drawings
Coral:Articulated (2012)
Coral:Poetry (2012)
END
Susan Ryland
University for the Creative Arts (UK)
[email protected]
http://soundingscore.wordpress.com/
Please cite this document as follows:
Ryland, Susan (2012). Soundings: the emergence of meaning. Innovation Creativity and Leadership Research and Practice conference. Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice . City University London.
REFERENCE LIST
BARCELONA, A. Metaphor and metonymy at the crossroads: a cognitive perspective,
Berlin/New York, Mouton de Gruyter, 2003.
BURKHARDT, A. Between poetry and economy: Metonymy as a semantic principle. In:
BURKHARDT, A. & NERLICH, B. (eds.) Tropical Truth(s): The Epistemology of Metaphor
and Other Tropes. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010.
CHEVALLET, A. Origine et formation de la langue française. 2 parties en 3 vols. Paris:
Dumoulin Imprimérie Impériale 1853-7.
McCAFFREY, A. Innovation Relies on the Obscure: A Key to Overcoming the Classic
Problem of Functional Fixedness, Psychological Science. 23(3) 215–218. University of
Massachusetts Amherst, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Tobin Hall, 135 Hicks Way,
Amherst, MA 01003-9271 E-mail: [email protected]
NERLICH, B. Synecdoche: a trope, a whole trope, and nothing but a trope? In: NERLICH,
B. & BURKHARDT, A. (eds.) Tropical Truth(s): The Epistemology of Metaphor and Other
Tropes. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010.
RYLAND, S. Resisting Metaphors: A metonymic approach to the study of creativity and
cognition in art analysis and practice (PhD thesis). University of Brighton/University for the
Creative Arts, http://eprints.brighton.ac.uk/ 2011. See also: www.susanryland.co.uk
SETO, K.-I. Distinguishing Metonymy from Synecdoche. In: PATHER, K. U. & RADDEN,
G. (eds.) Metonymy in Language and Thought. Amsterdam ; Philadelphia. John
Benjamins. 1999.
After note
Generic-parts technique and metonymy
Cognitive Psychologist, Tony McCaffrey from University of Massachusetts
suggests that
uncovering aspects of the human semantic, perceptual, and motor
systems that inhibit the noticing of obscure features would enable
people to identify effective techniques to overcome ‘functional fixedness’,
which is a classic inhibitor to problem solving.
He claims his generic-parts technique can help people unearth the types of
obscure features needed to overcome those obstacles by:
devising techniques that facilitate the noticing of obscure features in order
to overcome impediments to problem solving (e.g., design fixation).
McCaffrey's technique uses metonymic thought processes
to draw attention to, or 'highlight' peripheral elements.
McCAFFREY, A. Innovation Relies on the Obscure: A Key to Overcoming the Classic
Problem of Functional Fixedness, Psychological Science. 23(3) 215–218.