What affords being creative? Opportunities for novelty in light of perception, embodied activity, and imaginative skill

Abstract

An affordance perspective highlights how resourceful the ecology is for creative actions of all sorts; it captures how creativity is grounded in materiality. In contrast to “canonical affordances” (i.e., “ready-to-hand,” mundane instances), creative affordances point to unconventional or surprising action opportunities that are nonetheless valued. Our initial aim is to discuss how to frame the affordance concept to make it attractive for the study of creativity. We propose a dialectic position that reconciles aspects of the realism of ecological psychology with the constructivist view more typical of creativity scholars. We stress that novel options frequently depend on constructive actions; novelty cannot always simply be “found” or just waits to be used. Many creative opportunities only emerge from how person actively engages with the ecology. Our second aim is to explore specific ways that creativity is mediated through affordances, based on illustrations from crafts and dance. These suggest that affordances span various timescales and mediate in multiple ways, from noticing existing potentials, via active affordance shaping, to background activities that indirectly invite or enable novelty. In conclusion we discuss how a person’s creative “vision,” imagination and combinatoric ability, all fundamental creativity mechanisms, relate to affordances and how fruitful creative directions may be perceptually hinted at.

An “in vivo” analysis of crafts practices and creativity—Why affordances provide a productive lens

“…Other views prefer to slot the imagination as a partner mechanism to affordances, notably Glȃveanu (2020) who posits a dialectic between affordances and wider "perspectives" imparting creative orientation. The wisdom required to recognize the utility of a perceived serendipity is a similar partner mechanism reclaimed by creativity researchers Ross and Vallée-Tourangeau Prima facie, both interpretations are compatible with an ecological perspective, where the former defends an inclusive view, and the latter sees affordances in a more partial capacity for explaining cognition (on their theoretical scope see Golonka andWilson, 2019, Kimmel andGroth, 2023).…”

“…Christensen recommends a middle position and suggests that creative process should be described as an "oscillation between the actual, and the possible and the impossible" (p. 88). In a partner paper to this one (Kimmel and Groth, 2023) we present a framework, which probes into ways of bringing together the best of the realist and constructivist worlds and which treats perception and directed creative engagement as complementary loci of skill.…”

“…We have selected a crafts context as an illustration, an activity which involves tangible performative and embodied aspects and which throws into relief material and tool related affordances. Our partner paper (Kimmel and Groth, 2023) additionally discusses a dance example, treating interpersonal affordances in analogous fashion. Before reporting our case-study and analyzing it through the lens of affordances it will help to introduce the nature of crafts practices and what kinds of creativity to expect here.…”

“…Many affordances are genuinely emergent; they cannot arise without an extended and unique interaction history. Creative opportunities thus require continuous and multi-layered enaction (Kimmel and Groth, 2023). They do not depend on perceptual acuity only, but equally depend on a creative perspective, proper technique, and "process savviness", all of which conjointly make interesting affordances likely and mesh in the self-organizing causalities of continuous engagement.…”

Objects as knowledge: A case study of outsight

“…Rather than working out which one has the power, we wish to focus on their connection, their entanglement, and how new thoughts are formed through relatedness. We seek to expand the methodology of problem-solving research by developing a procedure where objects play a constitutive role, which in turn yields data that expand the theoretical scope of a psychology of problem solving, one that does not always forefront the causal relevance of mental representations in problem solving, in other words, a post-cognitivist account of discovery and creativity (see Kimmel & Groth, 2023). In order to do so we need to populate the problem-solving space with objects that can do things.…”