Material Fusion is at the core of all creativity.
Material Fusion is a creative mechanism in which established ideas are taken from the environment and combined together in such a way that they react to create new ideas – giving off creative energy and creative direction in the process.
How does 'Material Fusion' Work?
All creativity moves from the specific (the subject of interest that is being analysed through creativity) to the general (the new creative ideas coming from material fusion).
Nearly all creative work is a recombination of existing creative ideas and elements to produce something new, creative and exciting.
There is no idea that exists in isolation. Every idea is a link in a chain.
As an example – The idea of a table is a link in a chain of ideas concerned with food, or work, or administration, or ornamentation (etc).
A newly formed (i.e. newly fused) general creative idea only becomes of value to you if one of the chains of ideas, to which your new idea can be connected, leads back to the specific material that you are working on.
If a chain of ideas connects your specific ideas (i.e. the project you are focussing on) to your newly fused idea, you have discovered a new and useful idea that can grow your creative work (or even provide new direction to your creative work).
This new idea now needs to be combined into your established creative work - and there are many creative techniques to help in that process.
Glanside Creative Techniques are divided into Mixology and Cultivation.
Mixology Techniques are ‘material fusion’ techniques designed to produce new ideas.
Cultivation Techniques are designed to assist with the integration of these new ideas into your creative work.
The Fusion of Materials
Nearly all new creative work is a recombination of existing creative ideas and elements.
For instance:
- A picture is a recombination of established colours, shades and textures
- A melody is a recombination of established sounds and rhythms
The most important ability in producing creative work is to bring these established elements into new combinations.
Material Fusion is a process that helps combine established ideas into new and useful creative ideas. Material Fusion is carried out by the brain’s Default Mode Network.
This fusion of material is one of the core processes of the human brain.
The process of Material Fusion can be assisted by a range of creative techniques.
Creative techniques are important because they provide a process that helps identify new possible relationships between old elements, and then help organise these new combinations of elements to provide possible solutions to the creative objectives you have set yourself.
Defining the Creative Objective
A creative work well defined is a creative work half completed.
The three essential questions at the core of defining a creative work are:
- Where are you starting from?
- In which direction are you going to travel?
- What ideas will take you there?
A creative work needs a starting point (a specific idea) – and a direction of travel (defined by general creative ideas).
Stepping from the Specific to the General
Every person is creative.
If your brain has a Default Mode Network (and it does) you have all the machinery you need to be highly creative.
There is also no reason why any particular mind should be faster at seeing relationships between ideas than any other.
The two things of importance in creativity are:
- The process by which scanning the environment identifies possible solutions to a creative problem
- The process with which these solutions are sifted and organised to provide a creative outcome
There are three basic principles at work here:
- The ability to identify promising creative material
- The ability to see connections between different elements of this creative material
- The ability to combine this material into new creative possibilities through using these connections to reorganise material into creative work
Material being gathered should be of two sorts – specific – that is related to the creative starting point – and general – that is related to a possible creative direction that we could take working from this initial starting point.
There are three basic principles at work here:
- Define a creative starting point – what creative problem are you examining?
- Define an initial creative direction – what is your initial creative solution to this problem?
- Gather raw material from which this creative solution could be fashioned.
The Search for the Specific & the General
Specific Ideas come from your environment – books, museums, galleries, lectures, historic sites, football, films and so on.
What interests you? What engages your curiosity? What do you want to examine? What do you – or don’t you – understand? What view do you have? What view do you want to establish?
General ideas can come from anywhere at any time.
Glanside Creative Techniques provide a system that forces the creation of general ideas.
Glanside Techniques are designed to create the Eureka Moment where and when that Eureka Moment is required.
Creative Techniques provide a process in which established ideas are reacted together to create new ideas. These new ideas are then sorted – so that those that can add value to the creative problem you are working on are identified.
A creative reaction occurs – and creative work is produced – when these general ideas combine successfully with your specific ideas.
Creative Chains
Each idea derived from a creative technique is a link in a chain of different ideas.
The use of chains can be seen in the Chains Creative Technique.
A newly created idea is only of use to the creative process if a chain of ideas – to which your new idea (i.e. your new ‘idea fusion’) is connected – links back to the specific ideas you are examining or analysing.
One core function of the Glanside – or the sideways glance – is to find relationships between established and new ideas – and so form these ‘creative idea chains’ that give rise to creative work.
These creative chains when connected back to your specific starting ideas provide the creative insight that advances the construction of your creative work.
An idea that is interesting - but not of immediate use because there is no clear link back to your specific idea - can still be stored in a safe place for future use. It is possible that a linking chain will be found later in the creative process.
There are many processes that can help in the creation and management of ideas to produce creative work.
One such process is Essential Glanside.
Material Fusion
Material Fusion is at the core of the creative process.
Material Fusion is the reaction that occurs when material concept A is forced together with material concept B.
The core principle of material fusion is that it has to start with some material. The gathering of such material is the process of scanning the environment: that is not just seeing but scanning.
Everything you read, everything you see or hear or feel, is trying to tell you something.
You will only receive the ideas that are offered to you if you are open to receiving those ideas.
Ask yourself: what is this place, picture, text, experience trying to tell me? How does it relate back to the creative problem I am working on? Is this idea a useful link in a chain that connects me back to the creative problem in question?
Scanning to generate ideas for a creative work takes two forms:
- Look for specific ideas – that is material that you wish to examine and build into a creative work.
- Looking for general ideas – that is creative idea chains that can be connected back to the specific material you are working on, and so provide a direction for your creative work to take.
Fusion on the Brain
Creative processes – and the creative techniques that can support those processes – are so important because of the way the creative human brain works.
The Default Mode Network of the brain – that is the parts of the brain that combine to form a network that searches for creative connections – switches on as you switch off.
Gathering specific and general ideas provides material for the Default Mode Network, which will then begin working on creative solutions as you sleep, daydream, or think about something else.
When you return to your creative work the solutions that the Default Mode Network has found are then presented to you.
The working of the Brain’s Default Mode Network gives rise to the two steps in the Glanside Creative Process for the production of a creative work.
The First Step is Mixology
Mixology Techniques create general ideas that feed into the brain’s Default Mode Network.
The Second Step is Cultivation
The brain will deliver back to you the threads (chains) of ideas that have been created in the Default Mode Network. These threads of general ideas – that connect back to your specific (starting) idea – now need to be woven into a recognisable creative work.
The Cultivation Techniques are designed to help you weave these new idea threads into a finished creative work.