November 22nd, 2006 Fred McVittie
Creative processes involve a cycling through various phases, with the created ‘product’ (an idea, image, text etc) emerging onto the stage of consciousness after a period of initial research and ‘incubation’. Wallas refers to this emergence as ‘illumination’, although it is referred to differently by different theorists. In all understanding of the creative processes this illumination phase is followed by a terminal phase in which the events or products are evaluated, verified, or elaborated. This final phase in when the second draft of the novel are written, the bugs are ironed out of the invention, the experimental results are analysed.
As has been noted earlier, the creative cycle operates at a number of scales, the overall process has an arc or trajectory, and within this arc there are numerous other, smaller cycles (1). It is interesting to note that each of these smaller cycles of development has the characteristic cyclical form described above, and the entirety of a process, from initial inception through to final analysis also moves through the same phases. Constantly throughout a process, we are typically allowing small ‘illuminations’ to drive the work forward, one emergent idea forming part of the the ‘preparation’ for the next. At a larger scale, the same cycles is also present; the final ‘verification’ or ‘elaboration’ phase taking place after the object of the cycle, the created product, has emerged into the public domain and is, to that extent, a ‘finished’ product.
The fact that, at this larger scale, the final phase in the cycle exists post performance, after the apparently final illuminated moment of public display, tends to separate this phase from the preceding phases. It is common to regard any engagement with the created object after its revealing as an additional, possibly superfluous act disconnected from the rest of the creative process. In some ways this is clearly correct; from the perspective of the wider culture the artefact has been newly introduced as a discreet element into that culture and must now enter into the various cultural processes of production and consumption. Just as the individual, during the earlier phases of the creative cycle, employed the mechanism of individual thought and feeling to carry out an ongoing evaluation of their own illuminations, their own ideas, so the social organism has its own mechanisms for verifying the validity of the big idea, the ‘finished’ artifact. These processes include critique, documentation, archiving, curation, valuation, sale, collection, publication etc. Because of the fact that the artefact has now moved into this different domain these processes are typically carried out by other individuals than those involved into its original creation.
1. (It could argued that corresponding cycles also can be found at the level of individual human psychology, in which the operation of mind has this general form, with the ongoing state we call ‘consciousness’ being a standing wave of illumination preceded and anteceded by unconscious processes paralleling the other phases in the cycle).
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