What inspires greater creativity, freedom or constraint?

Great Debates
1

Let’s define the terms:

Creativity is the ability to create that which was not there before;

Freedom is the power to do anything within current material constraints (no time travel);

Constraint is the sum total of the parameters that keep us bound in daily life (funds, schedules, etc).

To illustrate, imagine a film director who has no budget limitations, access to any acting, crew, and technical talent (again, no time travel!), and the right to shoot in any city location (no shooting on Mars!) or sound stage. Then, imagine that same film maker with a shoe-string budget, access to perhaps one name actor, otherwise using no-names, and the right to shoot in Cleveland.

The trouble of this question is in the definition of ‘greater’; I wouldn’t use anything as crude as box-office receipts or award nominations to gauge creativity, for their crudity and also for the fact that they do not necessarily measure creativity. I guess that’s why I’m bringing the question here. I encourage examples, theoretical or experiential, of any creative endeavor to illustrate points, as well as suggestions for changing any definitions of the terms.

Indeed, I’m introducing it in GD (rather than GQ) because I would lean towards constraint as the spur to greater creativity in any endeavor. Being forced to make choices, meet deadlines and budgets, and basically sit at the mercy of others gets our creative juices flowing most productively.

2

Where is the source of the “freedom”? If the artist is independently wealthy, then they can presumably create whatever they want. That is true freedom. However, if an artist relies on the generosity of wealthy patrons, they will be limited by whatever those patrons want to see. Or what they don’t want to see.

If we are talking about a commercial endeavor, swap “patron” with investor and it gets even more proscribed. The artist will have to sell what they want to do before they even begin creating. If it’s not marketable, then no dice. To make something marketable, usually the artist has to sacrifice something, perhaps replacing a unique element with something more conventional and less shocking. Maybe the artist has to interject something in it to make it more sexy, when sexiness wasn’t what he or she had in mind at all. Everything, even money, has a cost. The more money is involved, the more likely an artistic work has been altered from the artist’s true intention. Which is why “selling out” has the stigma that it does.

Seems to me it’s not the constrained budget that matters as much as where the budget is coming from, but even that isn’t enough. If the artist is funding a project for a small amount of money, in some ways they will be “freer” than an artist who’s being funded for a larger sum from an external source. However, the latter will likely be able to reach a bigger audience no matter what they create. If no one gets to see your five-minute film where you explore the poignancy of crashing waves on a beach, does it even matter that you were more creative than a “richer” you would have been? Maybe you could have created a film about the destructive power of the oceans waves–which lacks originality–but you would have been able to showcase some original cinematography in the process. Interesting enough to grab people’s attentions, yet challenging enough to give it artistic value.

We can define success in art in a million different ways, but I’m thinking it’s safe to say that artwork that ends up on the rubbish heap before the artist dies represents a fail of some sort.

3

The creative urge is not something that is constrained by cash. The materials will differ but creatives have produced art in such awful places and Concentration camps and prisons. Without constraints one introduces ones own constrains. Handed a blank check one immediately starts with the constraint of what interests you, you eliminate everything else. You like the sea, so no inland filming, you like the waves, so no lakes then…etc etc.

4

It depends on the individual, and may not even be consistent for that individual. However, using history as a guide, things like money, power, love, lust, and revenge are the great motivators of creativity.

5

Both. A lack of constraints means that a person is less likely to be creative because they don’t need to be. Too much constraint mean that the person involved won’t be creative because they have nothing to be creative with, and no cushion for taking risks with. Someone who is merely poor is likely to find clever ways of using every bit of space they have and of using what resources they have in nonstandard ways; someone who is outright destitute and on the street doesn’t have any property to “cleverly use”; and someone who is rich won’t bother to use their home and property with the same cleverness and efficiency that a poor person would.

I also think that “constraints” in this context are relative to what is being attempted. Someone with huge resources still has constraints to impel him to be creative when he’s working on an equally huge project.

6

It’s an interesting question. I don’t know the answer but two of the great American musical art forms, Jazz and Blues, came out of poverty and the constraints that poverty imposes.

7

On the other hand, there weren’t very many homeless waifs who became known for their classical compositions.

8

A lot of poetry has been written in prison.

Sculpture, not so much…

Another way to look at it: think of all the people who say that they work best under a deadline. Some degree of exogenous pressure can enhance creativity, at least for a great many people.

9

Well I tend to side with Der Trihs on this one. We have a great example of artificially composed constraints on movie makers, for instance, in the form of movies made under the duress of the Hayes Code. Some people feel that the inability to show characters naked or having sex, or even doing much more than kissing while fully clothed, made the movies better. I don’t agree. If you look at the raunchier movies that were made before the Hayes Code put American movies into a time warp for thirty years, you’ll see that filmmakers were quite capable of using sex and nudity to good purposes, way back in the early 1930s. Preventing filmmakers from dealing directlyh with sexual topics made them mostly back off from them. And those that did get made were kinda weak and phony. Plus, it ruined sword and sandal movies, which never really were worth watching until the 1980s.

And all poverty does is grind yhou down, as an artist and a creative person. Well, as a human being period.

10

Go to the patent office and see in what period there were more new inventions.

11

Indeed, an independently wealthy person has fewer material constraints.

I think this gets to the essence of the question: are people who are forced to do things they would not do if they were perfectly free likely to lead them to create something greater?

Can we discuss the products of creativity without regard to the audience? Jaime Oliver light be constrained to fifteen minutes and to whatever is in the cupboards for certain meals, but he knows his dishes must look appetizing and be tasty. I probably focused too much on thing like time and money in my definition of constraint; it should include the creator’s anticipation of the audience. What are we to make of creators who say “I create only for me!” and mean it?

Agreed. See above.

12

I don’t know if the constraint of what interests you would count as a constraint in this situation because no matter how the interest came to you, it would be yours; it would be the starting point of any creative endeavor, rather than a little voice telling you to reconsider the choices you were making, like the anticipation of the audience or user’s reaction to the work, which I would say is a constraint.

13

I would say that it’s a continuum instead of a dichotomy. Unlimited freedom probably doesn’t inspire much creativity. Absolute constraint would, by definition allow no room for creative expression.

It’s a question of where the sweet spot is. :wink:

14

I admit that I worded the question poorly; I should not have used “inspire”, which connotes the introduction of a creative impulse, rather than the conditions that produce a creative work. Imagine that the impulse is there, no matter what (and I would argue that all action is creative), but that the degree of freedom or constraint lies in the conditions.

Thinking of it as a spectrum, I would have to admit that enjoying pure freedom would bring greater creativity than absolute constraint, as one would be able to create something (regardless of value) in such a free state and nothing under such constraint. Hmm…

15

Please see my comment on the poor wording of the question.

This is how I’m leaning.

Not that they wouldn’t bother because they don’t need to, but rather because they are left to their own caprices in their decision-making, which is far less likely to produce a work of greater creativity (IMHO).

Agreed. Likewise, a $2 million budget would be considered shoestring for a movie these days…

16

Again, I should not have focused on things like time and money in the definition of constraint. Do you think Mozart could have composed the Requiem Mass if he had ignored contemporary music theory?

17

[quote=“Trinopus, post:8, topic:657537”]

If a sculptor were in prison, and forced to meet his creative impulse with the written word rather than sculpted image, would it be a greater creative work than if he had access to every manner of material and tool?

Indeed, that’s how I lean.

18

I’m reminded of a sonnet by William Wordsworth on the topic, one I had to memorize in high school:

Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room
And hermits are contented with their cells
And students with their pensive citadels.
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at this loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness fells
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells.
In truth the prison unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is, and hence for me,
In sundry moods ’twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground,
Pleased if some souls–for such there needs must be–
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.

I knew that memory work would pay off some day :slight_smile:

19

This is a topic I’ve had long interest in, and it is my belief that it is a balance of the two. Like what Der Trihs said upthread, too much freedom is just as much of a roadblock to creativity as too many constraints. Speaking from my own experience artistically, I often have trouble getting inspiration when I’m given complete freedom. As a musician, a few times I’ve had people ask me to compose something. Given nothing more than that, I didn’t even know where to start, but given a topic or a style or whatever, I had a place to start working from.

Or in more practical terms, creativity is as much, or more, about problem solving as it is about coming up with ideas no one else has had before. If you just want to come up with ideas no one else has come up with before, its utterly trivial. Imagine trying to write a sentence no one has written before, choose words essentially at random and, other than making sure it has proper grammar, it wouldn’t take more than a few tries to get a never-before-said sentence. Or to paint a painting no one has, throw colors at random on the canvas. Or to compose a song no one has before, choose notes at random. But, does that sentence, painting, or music have any meaning? At least in the arts, the big “problems” we’re solving is having a message that we want to convey in a medium, certain style and aesthetic constraints, and it’s successful based on how well it conveys that message.

And this works exactly the same in not artistic ways too. I work as a programmer, and if I’m given a problem where processing time and space just don’t matter, why should I put any effort into finding a more efficient approach when I can just brute force it easily? Or, OTOH, give me a project where I have a really tight development time, resources, and ridiculous political red tap, and you’ll probably get a crappy result. But give me some freedom and some constraints, not just something along the lines of processing time or space, but interacting with users, dealing with data that is incomplete or has errors, replication and network delays, all that sort of stuff, but give me a lot of freedom in other areas and I’ll come up with some really cool solutions.

20

This is a valuable example. I would consider myself one of those who think that the Code made movies more interesting, not because I’m a prude, but because I disagree that film makers backed off from sexuality. While they may have had to avoid nudity, didn’t they have to tiptoe with clever dialogue and situations that may never have otherwise been created. I’m thinking Billy Wilder in particular (but of course I would offer such a genius as an example!).

That said, the Hayes Code is pretty shocking in what it did ban, situation-wise.