Category: 2024

Vertical thinking reminded me of biases. I think vertical thinking feels natural because our brains like to use patterns and logic to make things easier. We naturally look for shortcuts to save time and effort (biases like the confirmation, anchoring, etc). Also since vertical thinking can be learned, just as biases. 

The thing is biases can be efficient/fast but incorrect similarly to how vertical thinking can make us miss out on creative solutions and new ideas because we get stuck in the same way of thinking.

Both types of thinking are good and we get different things out of them. We can rely on the logical methods of vertical thinking and also use the flexible approaches of lateral thinking to find new solutions. 

Find the final product here

5 explanations:

1.Trying to make your boring life interesting by adding cute details

2.Political statement against the cleanness of the metro or the way the metro is designed

3.Anti-consumerism

4.Judging our over-reliance on technology and not focusing on the real world

5.Complimenting on the inventory of icons as modern design element, how they simplify our life

5 alternatives on point 4:

1.Photography: printing out large scale of screenshots from google map and take pictures with the screenshots instead of the actual place when they go and visit.

2.Installation: create a space that is super dark with only dim light from different devices spread across the space. As the devices are shut down one by one, more liveness are brought into the space.

3.Performance art: live a day or a week without any technology.

4.Film: A story about someone being absorbed into their laptop. 

5.Collage: Use cut outs of different icons to compose a scene of nature

The book differentiates between the different types of thinking and how we need to use them all to come up with ideas that are creative in a sense that they are created using new patterns we create instead of reusing the same patterns that we usually recognize. In this chapter, the concepts were a bit abstract, and I didn’t fully understand what he meant by “Lateral thinking is needed to handle the perceptual choice.” He doesn’t explain how lateral thinking really works, but from my understanding of his description, it is coming up with different approaches to the same problem, while vertical thinking is used to develop those approaches.

Otis Sandsjö seemed to very passionate about his work, he is very creative and tries to use the saxophone to make music that is inspired from the types of music he enjoys listening to. He experiments with less conventional ways to play the saxophone. I think his music is very interesting, and I like the randomness in some of the beats in his music, because you don’t know what to expect next. This for me sounds like good music to study with or do something that requires more focus while listening to.

5 alternative meanings:

1. A dangerous group of 6-year-old kids decide to vandalize the metro with their art.
2. Google maps was hacked and is giving wrong station names in an attempt to get tourists lost. This is part of their scheme to make berlin harder to navigate, so less people will crowd their favorite doner spot.
3. The metro takes us to an alternate universe and each station is a gate to a new dimension.
4. The government has decided to hire an 8-year-old genius to design the metro lines, since he is the only one capable making the most efficient design. Part of his deal with the government was that he gets to name some of the stations after his favorite things.
5. This was the initial proposal for the berlin station names, but someone spilt coffee on the initial proposal and their plans were all lost. They unfortunately had to come up with a new design for the stations. However, recently a backup copy of the design was discovered in a secret drawer in an abandoned office. Unfortunately, it is too costly to redesign the stations, so we must settle for the less interesting design.

5 alternative things you can make with proposal 1:

1. A wanted poster with a ransom of the group.
2. The group takes over the city and they form an alliance with the street artists. They cover berlin in so much art, people all over the world come to see it, but if you can’t come, here’s a post card.
3. A video game creator takes inspiration from the group’s persistence, and he decides to make the mobile game U-Bahn-Surfer.
4. Walking by a park, you hear a musician playing his guitar, telling the story of the brave young kids who are not afraid to express themselves.
5. The group expands their work and are now changing all the stations.

Implementation of proposal 2: Post Card

Inspiration: The graffiti and paintings on buildings and walls was used as inspiration for the postcard. The images collected for the postcard were primarily from Charlie’s checkpoint and Alexanderplatz. Some of the original images used are displayed below.

Implementation:

Using Canva and a postcard template, the images were placed in a collage and the transparency setting was used to blend them in. Then Berlin was added in different fonts.

Using a photoshop app, PICSART, a HDR1 filter was applied, then a radial blur was multiplied on top of the postcard.

Here are the results, I wasn’t sure which one to choose as the final implementation

Since what we created yesterday was a short story, I decide that the alternative meaning of a story would then be different perspectives of viewing the same story.

Our original story, in a nutshell, was about destruction: alien throwing bombs on earth then getting into a fight with the protagonists that eventually blew up Earth. To view this story from another standpoint:

This picture serves as a date of this couple. Pictures before this are their moods before date (happy, as illustrated by the happy face) and pictures after this are their moods after date (angry, as illustrated by the unsynchronized lines).

4. It doesn’t have to be a bad ending: our original story ends with the Earth blowing up, which is considered as a bad ending. However, we can see the drawings as what happened to the alien so that the Earth is not what blows up, the alien is.

5. It doesn’t have to be about super power: our original story assumes Alice and Bob to have super power, which is normally not the case for human beings. So, it could be a total loss for the humans and the world is just easily destroyed by the alien.

Five ways of illustrating this

I decide to illustrate my second re-interpretation. The following are possible means I could use:

1. I could tell another full story.
2. I could draw a set of comics
3. I could make a video of this
4. I could make a collage of the key elements presented in the story
5. I could make a small game with the psychopath being the protagonist

I chose the fourth choice, and the following is what I made

Reinterpreting the combined creation yesterday:

1. MAYBE: the guy who threw a bomb to Earth was not there to destroy but to help humans evolve. Their civilization was very similar to the Earth’s civilization, but someday their sun sent out a blast and blew their “Earth” to pieces, and their civilization evolved to live in space. The guy was just trying to replicate the process on humans to help them evolve. Therefore the guy fulfilled his mission.
2. MAYBE: the couple spent all their savings on the car, and they just bought a Mercedes Benz. On their way back home right after they got the car, they had a car crash and they were so grievous that they both went into a coma. This happened in their heads so that they didn’t feel so bad again. And when Earth exploded they both died of grief.
3. MAYBE: superpowers were not awakened but were there all the time. The impact of that bomb made them suddenly know how to control them and use them. It is what all people have to go through before getting to know their inner strength people have: life or death situation with total despair and anger(maybe also a smashed Mercedes Benz.)
4. MAYBE: Amy’s superpower was not to move as fast as lightning but to be able to fission into smaller “Amy”s. Amy was actually on the alien’s side and the one fighting alongside Bob was just a clone. The real Amy was cloning herself into separate smaller pieces and eating away the inner structure of Earth. That is why it was so fragile that it broke only because of people fighting in it.
5. MAYBE: this was what was recorded in historical artifacts. However, this was not the reality back then. The fight was not that simple, and there were also mysteries to the sudden claim of the powers. The alien’s befall was not unwarned, and human beings were not unprepared. The truth of the event lies hidden under the veil of time, long forgotten.

Choosing idea 5, what could be created:

1. Comic series: There could be a comic series with a lot of twists and turns, like the Avengers ones.
2. RPG Game: The player will be a time traveler, and after coming across a relic of the era, decides to find out about the truth.
3. Music: If the story could be filled, the events and the plot could be modified to music.
4. Drawing: A drawing could be built with this story, having space for all that has happened and connecting together to create a full story so that others could behold it.
5. Novel: Could be a trilogy. One about the threat and the preparation of the alien; another about the actual coming of the alien, and the last about the postwar threats and rebuilds.

Drawing: (My drawing is horrible I know)

Top is people fighting the alien, and the guy in the center is the laughing alien, and on the left is the cracked mountain.

• passionate, which is always nice to see
• I’m not into music and instruments but the saxophone was cool, especially with the way he made it sound. I’ve never heard it played like that.
• His music is unique but it is something I would listen to.

At first, I wanted to share my idea-gathering way and ask him whether musicians do the same or have some other ways of gathering ideas and putting them together. But it was answered and I found some sort of resonance towards my own creating process. I also can see his passion when he was talking about his works, and I hope I can be like that too in the future. I would rather die than do something I don’t like for a living.