What Can be Done with an Egg? Creativity, Material Objects, and the Theory of Affordances

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, ), conceptualized from a sociocultural perspective. From this standpoint, creativity can be defined as a process of perc...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of creative behavior 2012-09, Vol.46 (3), p.192-208
Main Author: Glaveanu, Vlad P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
affordance
Art Activities
Case Studies
Correlation
Creativity
distributed creativity
Easter egg decoration
Foreign Countries
intentionality
material objects
normativity
Role
Romania
Rural Areas
Sociocultural Patterns
Theories
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary: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, ), 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.
ISSN:0022-0175
2162-6057
DOI:10.1002/jocb.13