January 1, 2010

INTRODUCTION

Have you ever experienced moments when you already have spent a lot of time thinking of new ideas and your head feels like explode but still can not generate a new idea for a creative task? Next time when you are stuck in generating new ideas, relax and sleep on it! You may discover that the abundant source of creativity, in fact, is always within us. We spend 1/3 of our time sleeping and our dreams can become our own source of creativity. What makes it stand out from other sources of inspiration is that our dreams are far more original than others. If you learn how to use this 1/3 of time to benefit the creation process, you will realize that your own dream can become your own source of creativity.

A review dated to December 13th, 2005, which referred dreams hold great potential for creativity. The following quote is extracted from a part of an interview at Insight on the News, with Dr. Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D., who is on the psychology faculty of Harvard Medical School and former president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

“Host: ‘Could our brain’s nighttime adventures really be a portal to creativity?’ Dr. Deirdre Barrett, Ph.D.: ‘Yes. Dreams hold important potential. They think so much more broadly, that for many kinds of creative tasks, they may give us some inspiration that we are not going to have awake.’”

It was this quote that attracted my interest on dreams. In order to explore the subject of this matter, I interviewed graphic designers, artists, psychologists and neurologists to discuss the topic of dream and creativity. As we know dreaming is a common phenomena in everybody’s life. Most of us spend 1/3 of our lives asleep and “dream on average four or five times per night”, dreams are considered as part of our life experience without doubt, even for those who don’t recall their dreams and assume they never dreamed at night. Questions like: Why is it considered dreams as portal to creativity?, Do dreams influence people’s thoughts in consequence to influence creativity? will be answered in the followings chapters.

In the beginning of the thesis, it starts by discussing the topic such as what dream is, how dream is formed and how the brain is activated in sleep, in order for readers to have a basic knowledge about dreams. 

Secondly, it follows with the chapter of Understanding Creativity.

Thirdly, in the following chapter it talks about why Dream is connected to creativity. After that, in the chapter of Evidence Found on Dream Inspires Human Creativity it shows artworks which represent dreams from the prehistoric period, surrealism, modern period and in the twenty-first century. Later in the following chapter, it discusses how dreams inspire people’s creativity and why do some people think it is impossible for them to have creative dreaming. After that, there are techniques to help us develop creative dreams, and the last chapters present interviews with graphic designer and neurologist, the results of the questionnaires and the experiments conducted about this topic.

Before going further into the domain of dream, it is recommended readers keep an open mind to look at the possibility of how dreams can affect us and affect our creativity. In the process, the thesis offers reader an opportunity to reconsider his or her own dream theory and to consider dreams may also be his or her portal to creativity, from the angle of the fascinating discoveries of modern sleep science.


Tree of Creation © Copyright 2010, Cristina W

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

what a beautiful blog i will read through it again and again