The Adjacent Possible Blog
Explore The Adjacent Possible, a foundational pillar for creativity on The Artist’s Journey. Insights into intersections of art, psychology and science.Sign up to get weekly Art & Creativity Blogs from Nancy Hillis
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Creativity & The Journey Of Un-Forgetting
Remembering what you didn’t know you lost can be one of the hardest things you ever do in your life. Water gives us access to our primordial origins- to a state of possibility, infinite in all directions. Creativity is like the un-forgetting of swimming, a liberation into a whole new reality, an ocean of possibility.
Memetic Barium & The Languages Of Creativity
Combining two things to create a new third thing is one of the two pillars of generating novelty in the evolution of ideas, the other being mutation. We build accelerators to smash particles together to divine their inner structure.
What if we could build an accelerator that instead smashed concepts together to create new ones?
We decided to try it out. Come see what we found, no radiation suit required.
Art & Complexity
Art is a kind of poised instability. Art is poised between creation and collapse and the juice is at the edge. Most epiphanies are not sudden and surprising if you dig into them deeply, they basically are the result of lots of previous work which the outside world may not recognize. If you continue exploring with one foot in the known and one foot in the unknown, you will create things that you weren’t able to see before. And in some cases didn’t exist before. That’s the unknown, unknown.
Creativity, the Universe & Nine Billion Names
We live in a world where stepping into the adjacent possible affects the spectrum of possibilities that open up after that, the only concrete question in life is what to do next. Everything else is abstract. But deciding what to do next requires an awareness of what we *can* do next. And this requires search.
Start Your Art Interview & Demo: Misty Olsen & Nancy Hillis
The time to start your art is now. There is an old saying: “Find joy in your life, it’s later than you think”. Dead women don’t paint, write books or play cello.
Procrastination & Creativity: The Hidden Lessons
Procrastination affects us all, but offers insights into creativity. A theory about the origin of life can help us get stuff done.
What You’re Afraid Of Is Where The Juice Is
Trust yourself to explore the things that scare you in your art. These are the nascent, unexpressed, unexplored parts of yourself where your un-lived dreams reside. This is the realm of play, improvisation, and pure creativity. This is where the juice is.
Luck, Time & Creativity
We live in a world where stepping into the adjacent possible affects the spectrum of possibilities that open up after that, the only concrete question in life is what to do next. Everything else is abstract. But deciding what to do next requires an awareness of what we *can* do next. And this requires search.
Creativity & The Menu Of Possibilities
We live in a world where stepping into the adjacent possible affects the spectrum of possibilities that open up after that, the only concrete question in life is what to do next. Everything else is abstract. But deciding what to do next requires an awareness of what we *can* do next. And this requires search.
Tension, Constraint & Creativity
Sometimes your art feels impossible. Other times it feels as if it could be no other way.
Because art imitates life we believe that both of those experiences are inevitable.
Creativity Poised At The Ragged Edge
Sometimes your art feels impossible. Other times it feels as if it could be no other way.
Because art imitates life we believe that both of those experiences are inevitable.
Construction, Deconstruction & Creativity
Have you ever played a game of Jenga? So carefully put together, so suddenly a pile of wooden pieces. Construction, deconstruction and destruction. Why do so many things collapse quickly but grow slowly? Creativity and constraint are guilty suspects.
FREE WORKSHOP: The #1 Secret to Creating Authentic Abstract Paintings You Love!
You question your talent, and painting becomes arduous and painful. You feel lost, wanting to express yourself but not knowing how. But when you learn the #1 secret to creating authentic abstract paintings, it all changes. Finally, you're able to paint with joy and create art you love.
