Lab Rat Experiments

We're building a business, it's video and education based with the main idea being the development and sharing of creativity, it's in early development at the moment and to be honest it feels quite strange sharing the development of the idea on a public blog, were coming to the end of term and the end of this module on our Masters Degree and this blog will be submitted as the main anchor of my submission, and is supposed to be a development blog, sharing the ideas Ive had along the way, the research I've done and how projects have developed, the problem with having this blog as a public blog as well as my student blog is by sharing ideas, there is the issue of copyright, people taking our ideas and making money off of them, in the worst case scenario, before we do.

But what I've come to realise is that firstly, no one actually reads my blog, and if that's not enough, I do believe that posting these ideas online atleast gives some credibility to us coming up with the ideas first with the non-negotiable time stamp that comes with everything posted online, so is posting your developing ideas online actually a a fail-safe option for saving your ideas form becoming subjects of theft?

- I have no idea, legalities bore me.

What I am interested in is seeing the development of peoples ideas, the concept of this website is a place to share unfinished, in development and abandoned projects, I want to share my scribbles that have turned into big projects, and the notes from the note pads I kept in my back pocket. This business might be something that turns into nothing, plenty business ideas that I have had have done that, but I've always gained something out of them as an artist, a greater understanding of myself and what I want to achieve, and documenting that process would have helped in the future, so with this business idea, I want to explore the idea of sharing the whole process from start to finish, and so far I kind of have, starting with it being a fun project, and then getting involved with Sophie who's bringing a much more packaged and professional approach, and with the the legitimacy of it becoming a genuine business opportunity.

What I haven't shared yet are the tests we've done, and the actual idea, and though there will definitely be a lot of things that won't be shared straight away, for reasons such as shock factor, surprises and things that are kept secret for specific reason, the rest of it, I'd like to share from now on.

So with that being said, a lot of this might not make sense, especially if you haven't followed along with the Creative Laboratories progress so far, But for a basic understanding, were taking some of the main ideas that made up the Sculpt Factory project, multiple characters played by myself, in a work setting, but this time there will be other people playing characters too, and were trying to see if these ideas will work as a business that helps people achieve more for themselves. And to do this we will be running a video based training and education system across YouTube, Instagram and a website in which there will be a members section for more in depth creative training. A large part of the YouTube series will be the creative experiments that I've been collecting over the past year, these are little experiments, tasks, challenges and tests to help people to become more creative focusing on a general creative practice rather than specialising it towards specific artists or whatever, were hoping to build something that will appeal to business people, artists, scientists and anyone else who can use a more creative approach in their work, life or practice.

At this early stage I'm just coming from a wide space, collecting ideas, no matter where in the timeline they are, and by this I mean I might have ideas today that are short term, we can start doing them as soon as we launch the business, yet there's other ideas that can't be done right away, and would only come into materialisation after a few months or years even.. This is the idea generation stage of the project, gathering all sorts of ideas together, working out what ideas are good and what might work or not will come in the next stage of the process..

So I’ve been looking at these ideas, and trying to look from a kind of business/marketing point of view, so thinking about social media, what is something we can put out maybe almost daily, that is short and snappy, giving away advice or something, that can be filmed or whatever in bulk and rolled out slowly over time.

Here is an idea on that thinking:

This is The Professor Messer and he prescribes daily thought experiments and small quick challenges, probably not daily though, which got me thinking about how often you would get thought experiments, maybe the Instagram could be marketed as a kind of creative training programme, like the kid of training programme I had as an athlete when I was much fitter and thinner. This moves into the realms of specific practice, maybe that would be an interesting thing to develop, a training programme for creatives..?

I don't believe business's promoting creative thinking should exist without having any kind of creative ideas within their business foundations.. I believe that using these different characters as a foundational part of the business is something that will give it an original identity, and can be instantly viewed as something that is fundamentally creative.. There's too many creative consultant businesses out there that have the most plain and boring websites out there, no face to the business just a contact number and sometimes an incredibly over-priced price list, I just don't see any creative thought gone into the development of these businesses, so all this that were doing now is to actively build a truly 'creative' company.

These are two of the main books in which I want to take thought experiment inspiration from, and are the two main books that inspired our Master Degree to create the thought experiment module, which is what inspired this whole project, what I want to do is take the core ideas of these thought experiments and use them as a base to create our own thought experiments that might have a bit more relevance to our audience or what were trying to achieve with each video etc..

How I'd want to achieve this part of the project is to have Professor Messer (who is one of the shows characters) sit on camera and literally give a thought experiment.. "Hello, I'm Professor Messer and this is your daily thought experiment" then he would go on to say the thought experiment... I did a test..

This is a creative task set by Stefan Mumaw in his book 'Caffeine for the creative mind', this is a starting point, a pilot of my idea, but I will take these creative experiments, thought experiments and tasks and re-write them, make our own, and that's what I've started doing here..

A lot of the experiments and tasks I've found have been very two dimensional, on paper with a pencil, this is the first step I've taken into creating an experiment in the 3rd dimension, using physical objects, still with a pencil and drawing, but adds the 3d element to make it more interesting.

I've added in hints at the bottom, different ways of doing the experiment, new ways of looking at it, and ways to develop the experiment further, I'm thinking that in the show, these could be added in by myself as a creative consultant, I could even relate the experiment to different job roles, "if you're a business man try it this way, if you're a writer, try this.. " I think having me and Sophie do these bits as creative consultants, me more on the thinking different side of things, and Sophie more towards marketing/ advertising/ business side, I'm not sure, but having us as 'real' people step in and give some real good advice each episode I think opens this show up to follow up business opportunities for ourselves, maybe putting ourselves out there as creative consultants, going into businesses, schools, colleges and teaching people how they can look at their business from a different perspective.

On researching this 'Creative Consultant' job role, I really think it suites me, and I've kind of already done this. I worked with a film production company for a few years called 'Broadside films', it was a local company thriving to make short and feature films, but got stuck in the rut of making commercial videos, which was just something no-one really wanted to do. Now, my involvement in this company was on and off, I had a full time job in Dominos and on the side of that was trying to write my own scripts etc, but I would help out filming on some of the commercial gigs now and again, so every time I'd come for a meeting I'd be 'the guy on the outside looking in' which gave me a new perspective, whilst everyone else was working on building a commercial arm to the company, looking at how to expand and built a client base etc, I came into a meeting and suggested we don't bother with that, and fully commit to the fiction film making side of the business since this is where everyone eventually wants to end up, we brainstormed together and came up with a plan for that coming year, we would make a short film every month, that' sone short film a month for one whole year. And we did, we made 12 short films, and has set the company up as a fiction film making company, now producing feature films with pretty decent sized budgets considering where the company is based. I shrugged it off, but has recently come to light when talking to my best mate, writing partner and Director of Broadside, Tom, who kind of reminded me that Broadside would probably still be struggling to make commercial videos if it wasn't for that move a good few years ago, which I didn't really realise what it was until now, what I was doing there was being a creative consultant to broadside films, and I'd say, it paid off big time!

I never thought I'd ever call myself a consultant, but a creative consultant role seems to make sense to me, going to businesses, collages, even individuals and helping with creative block, motivation etc, new ways of thinking and looking at problems has been a trait of mine for a long time, so looking at myself as a creative consultant doesn't seem too far off.

Ok, so this one might be a bit on the younger side, but an idea is that we’d have some challenges on the members part of the site, you know one of the perks of paying for membership, and it could have tasks and challenges like this, this one is more of a bit of fun, but it still has an interesting playfulness in a creative sense, making the head part much bigger, making body parts different sizes, turning them upside down etc.. This can be done with one of the galleries on WIX.

Playing around with the above idea got me thinking about the exquisite corpse game, the one we played as kids, where one person would draw a head, then leave two little lines, and fold it over, the next person would carry on with the upper body, leave some lines, turn it over, and so on...

I thought about a book, something we could publish in the future, it would be a little playful book, pages split into three or four sections, with pre-drawn pieces in there, for people to play around with and create new characters, what would be different with this compared to the versions of these books we had as kids is the blank pages, where you can draw your own creatures, and the scribble pages, where there's a scribble on each section, and with that, the task is to create a body part out of the scribble, and then becoming part of the catalogue to play with, combining three creative experiments into one. On the reserve of these character pages would be prompts/ tasks and challenges to encourage creative play such as write a short story about your character, how did he get to where he is today? create a job for your character, the only rule it that the job can't be a job that actually exists, it must be fictional etc.. It could really fit into the aesthetic of the creative labs, maybe these reverse pages could have images of the characters from the labs, with speech bubbles suggesting new ways of doing tasks etc.. ?

I want these tasks to relate to a lot of people, as we believe that everyone can be more creative and benefit from it. So I'd like to introduce a wide range of experiments and tasks, this one enters the world of poetry..

The context of the starting point of this one being some of the DADA experiments, and the episode this would be in would explore that context too.. This will be easy for me to write the context as it's art based, but where I'll struggle for a bit is the context for the less art related stuff, research into business, science, sales, architecture and all sorts of other areas would be addressed too, again relating these experiments to certain situations, giving perspective for clear understanding and the ability to take these experiments and implement the outcomes into daily life/ work situations.

So I’ve been thinking about where this project came from for me, and it was on the discovery of creative experiments, and since then I’ve collected hundreds, but haven’t actually done them myself, not properly like I planned anyway..

So I thought I’d make myself a little book thing with all different experiments and challenges each day, as well as now and again have a creativity test, which can be graphed at the end, to see improvement in creative thinking..?

I started drawing these pages and thought, again this could be something we publish in the future..

But with or without publishing this as a book, these pages can become incredibly helpful to us, one in organising all our experiments, and two in having these work sheets, hand outs for physical workshops, branded, and also downloadable for the show itself.. Always sending people back towards our pages, keep them in the realm of the creative labs for as long as possible.

Ok, so these are the larger, more in-depth workshops, how to use and implement the 6 hat development method, how to brainstorm, the SCAMPER technique.. these would be long video's, probably less character focused and more lecture/ workshop type things, longer more serious videos featuring me and Sophie much more prominently. Maybe these videos would be the ones on the members site, this is the hardcore information that we wouldn't give away for free, this could work in a way that the members could bring a project and work on it using the methods we do, they do their project along side the video, and then have the opportunity to submit their project for review, all part of being a member, a lab rat? is that what we'd call our members? Lab rats? is that a bit horrible, or a cool thing to call them? Become a lab rat at the creative labs today!

This is a basic run down of the SCAMPER technique, which would be explained in precise detail, offering advice and relating it back to different subject areas.

The SCAMPER technique is more product production based and would be great to have this in depth episode about something not fully art related.

These are just some of the ideas I have created myself, but have collected hundreds of creative experiments/ techniques/ tasks and challenges, that I will be documenting now in a large collection.