The creativity complex : art, tech, and the seduction of an idea / Shannon Steen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Steen, Shannon.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)--History--20th century.

Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.).

Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)--History--21st century.

Creative ability--History.

Creative ability.

Creative ability--Political aspects.

Creative ability--Moral and ethical aspects.

Technology--Moral and ethical aspects.

Technology.

Ethics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (259 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2023.

Summary:

"Creativity" is a word that excites and dazzles us. It promises brilliance and achievement; it is a shield against conformity, a channel for innovation across the arts, sciences, technology, and education, and a mechanism for economic revival and personal success. But it has not always evoked these ideas. Once a term reserved for the ultimate power of the divine, and later associated primarily with the work of the artist, creativity has become attached to ideas about economics, politics, and the self in particular ways. The Creativity Complex traces the history of how creativity has come to mean the things it now does, and explores the ethical implications of how we use this term today for both the arts and for the social world more broadly. Richly researched, the book explores how creativity has been invoked in arenas as varied as Enlightenment debates over the nature of the cognition, Victorian-era intelligence research, the Cold War technology race, contemporary K-12 education, and even modern electoral politics. Along the way, the book turns to a set of art works--from mobile steampunk sculptures to bicentennial adaptations of Frankenstein to a musical about the 2016 US Presidential election--that ask how our ideas about creativity are bound up with those of self-fulfillment, responsibility, and the individual, and how these might seduce us into joining a worldview and even a set of social imperatives that we might otherwise find troubling.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Creativity Complex

1. How We All Became Creative

Creative Imperatives

The Individual and the Imagination

Creativity, Intelligence, and the Nation

Anti-Authoritarianism and Cold War Individualism

Romanticism's Afterlife

2. The Creative Society: Reagan and the California Crusade

Dogwhistle Tunes

Creativity's Institutional Complex

3. Creativity in the Classroom: Maker Education and Labor Precarity

A Minute on Maker Education

Who Are Makers?

Makers in the Classroom

Making the Future

4. Discarded Creativity: Libertarian Mythologizing and Steampunk Nostalgia

Punking Victoriana

Nostalgia and Yesterday's Tomorrows

Libertarianism and the Theaters of Rugged Consumerism

Archeologists of the Present

5. Creativity's Monsters: Frankenstein, Self-fulfillment, and the Art/Tech Interface

Bridging "The Two Cultures"

Self-Fulfillment as Social Peril

Ethical Romanticism

6. Creative Futures: The Pacific Century, the Creative Century

Creative China

America's Creative Failure

The Pacific Century and Creative Democracy

Epilogue: From the Ruins: Reconstructing Creativity

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-242) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Steen, Shannon The Creativity Complex

ISBN:

9780472221233

047222123X

OCLC:

1390560241