Week 1 1B

Mitch Ditkoff's article, 14 Ways to get Breakthrough Ideas, offers readers fourteen ways to grasp, hold and generate new ideas or innovative thoughts. Through different approaches, which people do not really use in their daily life, Ditkoff suggests that people can use these ways to brainstorm different ideas. 

Whether these approaches work or not is depending on each individual readers themselves. Personally, I feel these approaches are more likely to teach readers how to grasp or hold the flash ideas people have in their brain rather than really inspiring readers. Or, it is more like practices to think differently and have new ideas through these differences. 

The first suggestion, from my point, is a good one. I agree that many people just let their fascinations go. The nature of fascinations is a charming idea that attracts our own attention first. However, I think many people have a wrong ideology toward our own fascinations. I am a fitting example. When I have some imaginations about some thing that probably will not happen in the real world, I will deny the innovative parts of my imaginations and then totally throw my ideas away because that idea is not practicable in real life. So I will come up with other ideas, then I will throw these ideas away because of the same reason- not practicable in real life. This cycle repeated. My ability to think differently keeps getting fade. How can people develop an idea if that idea even could not attract our attention first? How can other people find our idea fascinated if we are not even fascinated by our idea? I am almost completely agreed with Ditkoff’s opinions about fascinations, which include many potential possibilities. Next time, when I have some ideas really grasp my attention, I will just let my brain works on them instead of letting my ideas be scared away.

The fourth suggestion, which asks readers to make connections, is another smart way to generate creative ideas.  I appreciate the example the author provided in the suggestions. Car plus banking is drive-in banking. We have drive through for many other things that convenient people’s life and bring more business to different companies. I am sure when the drive-through just came to people’s daily life, it gave people a fresh try to something new and also changed people’s traditional ideas of buying things. A lot of time, people are just too lazy to make connections. Also, the ideas or final products generated by making connections are more likely to be practicable than other wild ideas people generated through other approaches. Making random connections on differently things wouldn’t hurt if we only think about them. If we don’t even think in this way, it is not only connections loss, but also innovations loss as well.

Hanging out with different group is the suggestion I don’t really agree with.  I do understand if Ditkoff wants readers get inspirations from other people’s view, from the people that readers don’t really communicate often. I can’t deny there is a chance people can get inspirited by their other friends, but I really how reliable it could be. I believe that many people are inspirited in the conversations or in the communication process. If people don’t really hang out with the other group of people, communication will be a lot harder than we think. If people fail to have good conversations, I doubt the chance for each of them to get very different and charming ideas. I do understand when people are stuck with their ideas; their close friends not really can help them out because they probably hold similar ideologies, life philosophies and worldviews. Other different people’s philosophies, life attitudes can fresh their opinions.  But I just couldn’t understand what if these two different people are not even able to make a conversation to talk those issues, how can they exchange their deep life values? However, I am sure we can never ever eliminate the potential chance.

I am going to do the prompt for suggestion 4.

Laptop IPad Picture Bed Oven Dishwasher Car Plane Moon Ocean

Move Eat Walk Think Read Drive Beat Produce Shake Rise

Stable Beautiful generous useful frequent happy fast unstable different similar

Let’s see what crazy and nonsense connections we can make at here:

The Oven eats the Dishwasher because the Oven is jealously with Dishwasher since the owner thinks the Dishwasher is more useful. Hm, we can have a Kitchen War at here.

The Laptop thinks IPad is beautiful so the Laptop wants to date IPad—Electronics’ romance!

Crazy but interesting ideas.

http://changethis.com/manifesto/49.06.14Ways/pdf/49.06.14Ways.pdf 

Week 1 1A

My creativity works when I am happy. A blue day probably will not wake up the creativity in my brain. But, to be honest, I have very limited creativity. I guess it is because, a lot of times, I find out my imaginations do not fit into this realistic world. It is very sad to see how the real world works in a totally different way than I thought. All of sudden, all the stories I wrote are not valuable because people are too realistic to appreciate naive stories. 

I enjoy to talk with people who are in my age or older than me. I feel their perspectives and ideas keep inspiring me and giving me sparks when I am creating my stories or generating my own perspectives. My peers are really telling me what common people are thinking so that I can avoid some kind of naiveness in my nature when I am creating something. 

Claude Monet is my favorite impressionist painter. This is one of his most famous paintings, Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies. 

This is a view from Monet's private water-lily garden. He has a series of paintings of his garden from different views during different seasons. Among those paintings, this is the most impressive one to me. At the very first time I saw this painting, I was so amazed by Monet's techniques of using the similar colors to draw the layers in the painting that represent the real garden.

It is very easy to make mistakes by using similar colors which will confuse the readers as well. The affinity of green colors is also a challenge for people to carefully appreciate this painting. Light green, dark green, medium green, all these green colors are just right enough to make readers feel the pleasant summer in the painting. Also, contrasting with colors for other objects in the painting, including water lilies and the bridge, the green colors seem overwhelming but even more essential than people expect. The usage of other colors kind of neutralize the overwhelming green colors. 

I definitely appreciate Monet's guts of using similar colors, which encourages me to create on topics that people have already used for many times, because, even they are the similar topics (or similar colors), as long as I have the right technique of using them, I can make a good story or a nice creation anyway. 

Joe Hisaishi, a Japanese composer, probably is the most talent and gifted composer in my perspective. He has been composing music for movies and Japanese animations over twenty years. Hisaishi is not only good at matching the story with the perfect music, obviously, he is good at using the concepts we talked in MDIA 203 class, such as tension and release. 

In this One Summer's Day, there times that tempi are apparently faster than their following parts. The beginning goes quite slow, that gives listeners a peaceful feeling, a beautiful release. At 3:24, the tempo starts to go faster, which creates a sort of tension, then the tempo goes slow again to give listeners another release. Those kinds of techniques are appearing in his music all the time. A lot of times, his music is more than the example of using these techniques but a gorgeous sound from heaven. The repeated cycle of fast and slow tempo keep catching listeners' attention and giving the repeated tension and release. 

James Cameron, the director of Titanic, did a great job on Titanic, though I fail to appreciate Avatar that much. I am sure people know Titanic and, maybe even stereotype this movie. We can't deny the huge success this movie enjoyed when it was released at a global market level. 

There are many touching details and moments that used those concepts we talked in class. The very first one I remember deeply is a scene a old man hugs his wife on bed when water flows under their bed. That is a two or three seconds scene. It goes really fast but it already includes all the information we need. By that time, audiences already know the ship is about to sink and almost every one is trying to get on the lifeboats but there are not enough lifeboats, meanwhile, people from first class have the priority to get on boats first, which means, people from second class or third class don't even have the chance to get on dock. The old couple, who automatically give up the chance to survive, who peacefully wait for their death, now appear in this scene then cut to other people. The text here is the couple hugs on the bed. Then, what about the subtext? It can be diverse, depending on audiences' personal opinions. I will argue the subtext has multiple meanings: the couple's graceful attitude to death, they give the survival opportunities to others, and it even is a suggestion that people from lower class in the society are not as "valuable" as people from the upper class society.