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What Can be Done with an Egg? Creativity, Material Objects, and the Theory of Affordances
Author(s) -
Glăveanu Vlad P.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
the journal of creative behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.896
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 2162-6057
pISSN - 0022-0175
DOI - 10.1002/jocb.13
Subject(s) - affordance , creativity , situated , sociocultural evolution , action (physics) , perspective (graphical) , epistemology , phenomenon , process (computing) , expression (computer science) , sociology , reflection (computer programming) , psychology , cognitive science , computer science , social psychology , cognitive psychology , artificial intelligence , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , anthropology , programming language , operating system
This article offers a reflection on the role of material objects in the creative process and explores the potential links between creativity and the theory of affordances (Gibson, [Gibson, J.J., 1986]), conceptualized from a sociocultural perspective. From this standpoint, creativity can be defined as a process of perceiving, exploiting, and “generating” novel affordances during socially and materially situated activities. Illustrations are offered for each of the above from a research project investigating traditional Easter egg decoration activities in rural Romania. This brief case study exemplifies the discovery of existing action potentials, the generation of objects with novel affordances, and the transgression of conventional procedures, all resulting in creative forms of expression. In the end, some conclusions are drawn regarding the ways in which an affordance theory of creativity can enrich our understanding of the phenomenon and contribute to the development of a new program of research concerned with situated and distributed creative acts.