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The Creative Imagination: Tracing Phenomenological Gestures Across Inner Worlds
Conference presentation   Open access

The Creative Imagination: Tracing Phenomenological Gestures Across Inner Worlds

Emil Polyak and Rghad Balkhyoor
28 May 2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00011309
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PresentationOpen Access (License Unspecified),  Open Access

Abstract

Heteromorphic imagination Creative imagination Metamorphic gestures Phe- nomenology Creative ideation
This work presents a theoretical framework distinguishing the fluidity of “heteromorphic imagination” – where mental associations and episodic memories intermingle freely to proliferate atypical possibilities – and the crystallization of "creative imagination," marked by the emergence of compelling, constructible ideas. We propose that the pivot points, where emerging possibilities transform into articulable creativity, are significant metamorphic phenomenological gestures with profound existential implications. Heteromorphic imagination involves unconstrained, radically divergent play across real and unreal combinatory spaces, remembered impossibilities, and speculative blends. This manifests a timeless state balancing past, present, and future scenes as part of unconscious exploration. In contrast, creative imagination emerges from heteromorphic imagination when spontaneously recognized resonant patterns induce metacognitive focus, signifying ideas worth capturing and expressing. We define metamorphic gestures as pivotal phenomenological events where one mode transmutes to the other – heteromorphic into creative. Such gestures hold revelatory potential for tracing the origin of creativity’s spark, where novel patterns self-organize into meaningful ideation. Our methodological approach, blending brain-computer interface technology with qualitative phenomenological research, aims to trace the contours and impacts of these creative gestures. By capturing and analyzing subjective reports and neural signals, we seek to decode the transition points in creative ideation. This work is a continuing effort that holds special relevance given the rapid advances in procedural computational systems designed to automate facets of creativity. Illuminating the pivotal phenomenological gestures and their contours reasserts human elements that automated creativity may augment but likely cannot replicate.

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