Creativity in Virtual Worls

1. Creativity, Technology and Second
Life
Nelson Zagalo, University of Minho, Portugal
10 Oct 2012
Universidade do Minho

2. Technology is “anything useful invented by
a mind”.
Art is the material result of anything aesthetic
imagined by a mind.
Notes
. For the sake of the construction of the arguments, will be using simplified definitions
of technology and art.
. We defend a perspective of the world based in evolutionary psychology (Leda
Cosmides) in which people have evolved through biological and social selection,
and in which people are accepted as not being a blank slate, being born
differently and with specific intelligence orientations (Howard Gardner).

3. Why do we need to put Technology and Art together?

4. Creativity is the word of the XXI century, the word that
defines major education, economic and social goals.
Creativity is commonly accepted as the
invention of any new thing.

5. How then do we create the New?

6. Technology Art

7. Technology
Learn old work
Ruled
Focused

8. Art
Emptying Old
Unruled
Unfocused

9. Creating the new
Learn Old work Emptying Old
Ruled Unruled
Focused Unfocused
First phase Second Phase

10. common reality
sense
First phase
Learn Old work difficult hard
Ruled (Technology)
Focused
Second Phase
easy
Emptying
(art)
harder
Unruled
Unfocused

11. Why is the first phase hard to achieve?
Learn Old work
Ruled
Focused
Requirements
Learn interacting with others (Watch, listen, interiorize)
&
Learn until master (Do the same thing over and over)
Outcome
Mastery can come after 10,000 hours (~6 to 10 years) (Anders Ericsson)
The Problem
It is not related to the time needed to mastering. It is a question of having
the motivation to keep doing and learning till mastery.

12. Why is the second phase even harder?
Emptying
Unruled
Unfocused
Requirements
Mastery (passed through entire first phase)
&
Go beyond the already Know
Outcome
Teach yourself to learn.
The Problem
Formatted mind to do the same over and over. After mastery, learning
can never stop, thus we need motivation to keep learning.

13. What is the biggest challenge then?
We don’t have a problem with motivation to keep learning. We suffer of
“avidity for pattern” (Edward Purcell) for information forming, arrangements
that stimulate in us inferences, relaxing us.
We’re never satisfied until we find patterns.
This is why we love storytelling.

14. Understanding and Doing
Our “avidity for patterning” is a question of making sense of the world. But
it’s not only done in terms of understanding it.
Whenever we face a problem our mind builds on top of the problem, we
work with what is given to us. We build from it new meaning.
We are biologically rewarded when we find the solution for a problem on
our own.

15. DRIVE - Intrinsic motivation
Our biggest challenge is then finding what Drives Us. This is the key for
creativity. Find what in the world keeps us hunger for doing more.

16. Intrinsic motivation, Socialization and Doing
We are mammals, and so intensely gregarious creatures. We crave to be
acknowledged by our peers. This means that the intrinsic motivation, is
something coming from inside, but that needs social reinforcement to
flourish.
This means the most important is what we do, not what we think.
We need to find what we do best, not what we think we do best.

17. How to help finding Drives?
1. Creating technologies that facilitate creation by non-specialists.
2. Creating technologies that allow collaboration, sharing,
participation and all other forms of socialization.
3. Creating technologies that primarily compensate effort through
community acknowledgement and not financial retribution.
4. Creating technologies that permits and stimulates the DIY.
5. Creating technologies that foster self-discovery.
These are the ones we call Creative Technologies.

18. Creative technologies
Sumo Paint
Second Life Wordpress
Scratch
SketchUp
AudioTool

19. Second Life - easy editors for non-specialists

20. Second Life - communication tools to socialize

21. Second Life – creating to be acknowledged by peers
First map: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Porto/66/160/117/
All others: http://indidesigns.wordpress.com/beautiful-places-in-second-life/

22. Second Life – permit the DIY
By Applonia Criss slurl.com/secondlife/Laguna%20Arenal/148/50/23

23. Second Life - self-discovery, learn about own drives
Virtual Sculpture
Virtual Photography
Videogames
Virtual Film (Machinima)
Digital Arts
Virtual Fashion
Virtual Architecture
Programming (Behaviours, etc)
Business (Selling Virtual Goods)

24. To end…
On this subject, I’m finishing the editing of a special number of the
journal Communication and Society dedicated to Creative
Technologies. It will be available free during this second semester.
I’m supervising theses on the subject and we’re at Univeristy of
Minho preparing a new doctoral program specifically on this
matter of Creative Technologies.

25. Creativity, Technology and Second Life
Nelson Zagalo, nzagalo@ics.uminho.pt
B. http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt
H. http://nelsonzagalo.googlepages.com
F. http://www.facebook.com/nelsonzagalo
Universidade do Minho