EXPERIMENT: Limits Breed Creativity
An experiment you should absolutely try at home.
As much as we praise creative freedom, it's often very difficult to create something cohesive without first establishing some kind of framework within which to do it. (Blank canvas syndrome, anyone?) As counterintuitive as it sounds, limits can actually help creativity rather than hinder it. So, for this experiment, we're going to intentionally set ourselves a limit to work with, and put the phrase "limits breed creativity" into practice.
Start with something fairly easy. Whatever your chosen craft, set yourself a specific guideline to work with. Here are some examples to get you started.
FOR COOKS
Create a recipe with a limit on the ingredients or equipment you use. For example, try cooking using only ingredients, methods and utensils that existed in the 18th century, or in a particular region.
FOR ARTISTS
Create a self-portrait without using any references or looking into a mirror. Draw your own face purely from memory.
FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS
Create a photo series based on a very specific subject — trees, shoes, post boxes, bookshelves, etc.
FOR WRITERS
Set yourself a very specific topic to write about, and/or a word limit. For example, write a compelling piece about mosquitoes in under 200 words.
FOR FILMMAKERS
Make a compelling film based on the first thing you see when you look up from this screen.
FOR MUSICIANS
Compose a piece that conveys a very specific mood or situation — for example, standing on the pavement of a city street. In the rain. At night.
Take these ideas as starting points, and feel free to mix and match them to suit whatever craft you practise. Once you've gotten into the groove of it, challenge yourself to come up with more creative limits, or read on to take it a step further.
PUSHING THE LIMITS
Interestingly, the more restrictive limits become, the more innovative they force you to be. As our framework gets narrower, our solutions get wackier, and the results these experiments produce are, more often than not, ideas we would never have come up with otherwise. Here are some suggestions.
FOR COOKS
Create a recipe tailored to a very specific person or situation. Say, a breakfast dish that the most stubborn night-owl in your life would wake up at 5am for.
FOR ARTISTS
Keeping with the self-portrait theme, try creating one without depicting your face at all. Come up with a different way to portray yourself!
FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS
Set your aperture or shutter speed unusually high or unusually low, and create a photo series within that setting.
FOR WRITERS
Set yourself an exact word count to hit — for example, write a short story that's exactly 500 words long.
FOR FILMMAKERS
Make the best quality film you can using only your smartphone and no external hardware whatsoever.
FOR MUSICIANS
Compose a soundtrack for your favourite movie/book using only objects and instruments that are mentioned in said movie/book.
Ironically, setting ourselves a limit that we're not used to working with forces us out of our comfort zone — so one limit helps us overcome another. Rather than curbing our creativity, cleverly applied limits give it direction and allow us to channel it more effectively.
If you give any of these suggestions a try, or if they inspired you to come up with your own, let us see it! Share your creativity with us on Instagram using the hashtag #brazenexperiments and tag us @brazen.mag so our community can see what you've created. Click here to see some of our community’s experiments!
