Patterns of Creativity in Design

Abstract

One of the most remarkable features of the human mind is its creativity. During the course of this talk we shall be presenting some examples of the creative use of scientific models such as Chua's attractors and Cellular Automata in design. Our aim is to offer an enlightening glimpse into the relationship between scientific research into dynamical systems and the translation of these results into other media. As you all know, scientific research methods involve many kinds of cognitive processes such as, for example, categorization, reasoning, problem solving, analogy formation, which usually take place when representations are shared across representational media, as happens in the processes of data processing and transformation in order to create published scientific papers ( [HUT95], [LAT86]). Others are, for their part, widely distributed processes which involve the spreading of ideas across scientific communities. Yet there is a class of cognitive processes that occur in the interaction between scientists and with material representations, which is really action embodied in cognition, that is, pure creativity. There are two different methods by which people engage in the search for creativity, and each of these is associated with a different pattern of discovery. There are Experimental creators who work by trial and error, and arrive at their most important contributions in a gradual fashion. Conceptual creators, on the other hand, make sudden breakthroughs by formulating new ideas, and by this means they impose new ways of thinking and a new vision of the world. Today, the principal environment in which this form of creativity is represented is the computer ( [GER96], [BC01]), a new tool of and for the imagination that can shape our feelings and thoughts, and us the opportunity to communicate them to others. Computer based tools can be used to enhance the expressive potentials of our creativity, making it possible for everyone to express themselves.