Tag: Creativity

Music and embodied creative space

  • Zvonimir Stephen Nagy

JOURNAL OF GENIUS AND EMINENCE, 5 (1) 2020

Article 6 | pages 6474

Issue Copyright © 2020 Tinkr

Article Copyright © 2020 Zvonimir Stephen Nagy

ISSN: print/2334-1149 online

DOI: 10.18536/jge.2020.01.06

Music and embodied creative space

Zvonimir Stephen Nagy

Tarleton State University

Abstract

This article places the compositional work of Johann Sebastian Bach in the context of present day practice of creating music. It uses images and places from the art of memory to the act of making music in order to closely examine the relationship between musical creativity and embodiment. While focusing on the central hypothesis that exposure to specific musical practices leads to the formation of multimodal creative agency, an argument is made for the emergence of an embodied creative space. The embodiment of musical creativity is defined as a cognitive and performative causality: a relationship between the cause and effect when composing, performing, or listening to music. Expanding on this model, music making is further considered to be an embodied activity that stems from the causality of these interde-pendent attributes of creativity: the cognitive actions controlled and sustained by our mind, and the performative interactions mediated by our body and the environment. By exploring the actions and interactions commonly associated with composing and performing music, this article defines the embodied creative musical space as an interactive agency that lives at the threshold of cognition and performativity. As a result, the nature of musical creativity as an embodied, lived experience extends the social and collaborative concepts of creativity, as it becomes an interactive creative contingency. Delivered from the perspective of a composer, performer, and music scholar, the paper contributes to the growing interdisciplinary discourse on musical creativity.

Keywords: musical creativity, embodiment, memory, creative space, musical composition and
performance.

Zvonimir Stephen Nagy | Tarleton State University (Texas A&M University) | College of Liberal and Fine Arts, Stephenville, Texas, United States | Correspondence: znagy@tarleton.edu

Note: The author attests that there are no conflicts of interest, that the data reported here are not used in any other publications and, there are no infringements on previous copyrights.

The Finnish Poet Pentti Saarikoski (1937-1983)

  • Amar Annus

JOURNAL OF GENIUS AND EMINENCE, 5 (1) 2020

Article 3 | pages 2236

Issue Copyright © 2020 Tinkr

Article Copyright © 2020 Amar Annus

ISSN: 2334-1149 online

DOI: 10.18536/jge.2020.01.03

The Finnish Poet
Pentti Saarikoski (1937-1983)

Amar Annus

University of Tartu, Estonia

Abstract

The poet Pentti Saarikoski (1937-1983) was one of the most significant Finnish writers of the 20th century. He was also a prolific translator, who received many prestigious awards for his literary production. Throughout his life Saarikoski showed evidence of a certain psychopathology and mental complications for which he was twice hospitalized. The paper argues that Saarikoski possessed a large number of autistic traits and elevated symptomatology of ADHD. The traits of these conditions are often found in persons with high creative achievement. The works of the psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald provide the theoretical background, on which the biographic evidence from Saarikoski’s childhood and adult life is analyzed. The identity diffusion under which the poet suffered can be shown as beneficial to this level of creativity. Saarikoski was an autistic writer, who visualized his poetry which eventually provided him with artistic identity. In addition to autistic traits and high intelligence, Saarikoski also sought novelty and sensation, which can be attributed to his ADHD traits.

Amar Annus | University of Tartu, Estonia | School of Theology and Religious Studies
Ülikooli 18-310, Tartu 50090 | Correspondence:
amar.annus@ut.ee

Note: The author attests that there are no conflicts of interest, that the data reported here are not used in any other publications and there are no infringements on previous copyrights.

The Legendary Creativity of Hayao Miyazaki and Shigeru Miyamoto as a Product of Metacognitive Awareness, Family, and Environment

  • Mike McClelland

JOURNAL OF GENIUS AND EMINENCE, 5 (1) 2020

Article 2 | pages 1521

Issue Copyright © 2020 Tinkr

Article Copyright © 2020 Mike McClelland

ISSN: 2334-1149 online

DOI: 10.18536/jge.2020.01.02

The Legendary Creativity of
Hayao Miyazaki and Shigeru Miyamoto

as a Product of Metacognitive Awareness,
Family, and Environment

Mike McClelland

University of Georgia

Abstract

This article compares two eminent programmers, Shigeru Miyamoto and Hayao Miyazaki, and their respective works, the video game The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time and the film Princess Mononoke. It discusses their creativity in the context of their above-average access and opportunity to metacognitive skill development, ideation, production, and influence in relation to methods recommended in the research on creativity and genius. This article also looks at how their individual creativity was nurtured by family and scholarship, influenced by birth order and parental relationships, and enhanced by their geographic location and work place. The article concludes that all of these factors combined to allow Miyamoto and Miyazaki to reach legendary levels of creativity, with remarkable similarity to one another.

Keywords: Creativity, Metacognition, Gaming, Anime, Japan

Mike McClelland | Department of English | The University of Georgia | 254 Park Hall, Athens, GA 30602-6205

Email: michael.mcclelland@uga.edu | Twitter: @magicmikewrites

Note: The author attests that there are no conflicts of interest, that the data reported here are not used in any other publications and there are no infringements on previous copyrights.

Sympathy for the Devil – The Creative Transformation of the Evil

  • Rainer Matthias Holm-Hadulla

JOURNAL OF GENIUS AND EMINENCE, 5 (1) 2020

Article 1 | pages 414

Issue Copyright © 2020 Tinkr

Article Copyright © 2020 Rainer Matthias Holm-Hadulla

ISSN: 2334-1149 online

DOI: 10.18536/jge.2020.01.01

Sympathy for the Devil –

The Creative Transformation of the Evil

Rainer Matthias Holm-Hadulla

Heidelberg University

Abstract

Mythologies, religions, philosophies, and ideologies show that all cultures are concerned with human destructivity. The same is readily apparent in many modern creative works of eminence. In their famous song, “Sympathy for the Devil,” Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones refer to Goethe’s Faust, where the Devil is characterized strangely as “a portion of that power/ which always works for the Evil and effects the Good … a part of Darkness which gave birth to Light”. These verses remind one of ancient myth but also of modern ideas of the interplay of creation and destruction. The poetry of Goethe, the scientific psychoanalysis of Freud, and the aesthetic enactments of Madonna Ciccone and Mick Jagger show that the creative transformation of destructiveness provides a chance to cope with evil. Through his poetic and autobiographic self-reflection Goethe described how men are composed of constructive and destructive forces, light and dark, good and evil. This dialectic of drives and activities is also fundamental for the Freudian scientific model of the mind and its interrelation with the body and the social environment. Humans can only survive when they transform their destructive inclinations into constructive activities. The creative transformation of destructiveness is also a central issue in today’s pop culture. Paradigmatically the song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ describes the atrocities humans are able to commit. The song is exemplary for the transformation of violence into music, dance, and shared aesthetic experience. This is also valid for the provocative enactments of Madonna. Behind her sometimes seemingly shameless enactments one can find a serious working through of depression and aggression. Fundamental elements of aesthetic pleasure in art, science, and social activity stem from the creative transformation of human destructiveness.

Keywords: Holy Bible, Iliad, Upanishads, Hesiod, Confucius, Laotse, Buddha, Plato, Goethe, Freud, Mick Jagger, Madonna Ciccone, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Creativity, Destructivity, Order, Chaos, Good, Evil, Construction, Destruction, Love, Hate