Abstract
This article aims to present a critical reflection on the collaborative curatorship of the exhibition “Intersecting Improbable Connections”. It is a transdisciplinary exhibition covering architecture, design, arts, among other fields, and calls for non-linear productive thinking strategies. It explores the intersection of unlikely relationships to inspire memorable visits to museums, and it feeds the Inspædia platform, creating a new landscape of reflection and cultural influence. It advocates a new concept of exhibition curation that minimizes costs (because it does not involve transportation or insurance for the pieces) and is intended to help stimulate creative processes. Based on a selection of content from the participating museums’ permanent exhibitions, duly marked with QR Codes, visitors can access that content that is already available on the Inspædia platform and explore potentially endless connections, without losing contact with the physical object (and vice versa).
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- 1.
“Inspædia is a kind of a revolution in perception, because it enables a new kind of visualization and the use of related contents, as well as a new kind of interface and interaction. It encourages non-linear thought, productive thought (high creativity) and inspiration – a memorable and playful user experience” [11]. Inspiring experiences “to be innovation” together is the Inspædia ethos.
- 2.
The inspædiers are collaborative visual storytellers who are always looking for the next productive spark (designers from a large variety of areas, architects, photographers, film directors, teachers from all teaching levels, researchers, artists from a large variety of areas, curators, entrepreneurs, managers, politicians, philosophers, university students et cetera).
- 3.
The collaboration of Content Curators from different disciplinary areas makes it possible to make numerous connections and configure non-linear itineraries in inspiration processes in the context of productive thinking. “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have” [13].
- 4.
Wertheimer [14] coined the term “productive thinking” and Mari [15] proposed its use instead of creativity, because this term has suffered much wear and tear given its abusive application in common discourse. The context in which we speak of productive thinking is that of high creativity – a concept that is opposed to that of common creativity (Csikszentmihalyi 1997) [16]. Rudolf Arnheim (1904–2007) grasped the essence of the concept in the same sense we intend to use it: “Productive thinking is characterized, in arts and in sciences, by the interplay between the free interaction of forces within the field and the more or less solidified entities that persist as invariants in changing contexts” [17].
- 5.
Inspiration means: encouragement; enthusiasm; genius; incentive; influence; insight; motivation; revelation; vision; afflatus; animus; approach; arousal; awakening; brainchild; brainstorm; creativity; elevation; exaltation; fancy; flash; hunch; illumination; impulse; motive; muse; notion; rumble; spark; spur; stimulation; thought; whim; deep thing; inflate. The Visual Thesaurus [18] relates Inspiration with: idea; thought; stirring; divine guidance; intuition; brainchild; inhalation; breathing in; intake; aspiration and Inspire with: instigate; prompt; occasion; enliven; exalt; invigorate; animate; revolutionize; breathe in; inhale; cheer; exhort; pep up; root on; urge; urge on.
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Acknowledgements
This research is financed by national funds by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, in the scope of the projects SFRH/BPD/98427/2013, UID/EAT/04008/2019, and UID/AUR/04026/2019. The authors are grateful to the following institutions and people: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal; Programa Ciência sem Fronteiras CAPES, Brazil; CITAD – Centro de Investigação em Território, Arquitetura e Design, Universidades de Lusíada, Lisboa, Portugal; CIAUD – Centro de Investigação em Arquitetura, Urbanismo e Design, Faculdade de Arquitetura, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal; CHAIA – Centro de História de Arte e Investigação Avançada da Universidade de Évora, Évora, Portugal; Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; Fernando Moreira da Silva, António Pinto Duarte, António Câmara, Nuno Correia, Fábio Teixeira; Pablo Ermida, Maria Passos, Rita Noronha, Pedro Silva, Rui Dias, Carlos Bártolo, Pedro Cortesão Monteiro, Inês Simões, Mário Matos Ribeiro, Graziela Sousa, Marco Neves, Pedro Oliveira, Verónica Conte, Raquel Webber, Bruna Gugliano, Felipe Viaro, José Rocha and Marcelo Halpern.
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Maldonado, P., Ferrão, L. (2020). Inspiration Mining: Intersecting Improbable Connections in a New Landscape of Cultural Reflection and Influence. In: Charytonowicz, J., Falcão, C. (eds) Advances in Human Factors in Architecture, Sustainable Urban Planning and Infrastructure. AHFE 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 966. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20151-7_45
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