This accessible page is a derivative of https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2226731/2226732 which it is meant to support and not replace.
This exposition is a report and assessment of the project ‘The Creative Potential of Evolving Constraints in Peer-to-Peer Reciprocal Coaching: A Three-way Investigation’ (hereafter 3WI). This project, supported by seed funding from the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University, Denmark, investigated the use of evolving creativity constraints in the development of individual projects by the three participants (referred to as ‘makers’).
With the term creativity constraints, we refer to deliberately adopted restrictions (whether self-imposed or suggested by another) to available choices in a creative project (Biskjaer 2013). For example: a filmmaker may choose to limit a film to medium or long shots, excluding close-ups (as in Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman of 1975); a writer may choose to compose in passages of equal length, say of one hundred words each (Berlant and Stewart 2019). Such procedures are commonly employed and recognised as generative in artistic and design contexts, but they are also used in experimental academic work, as in the case of Berlant and Stewart’s book, and have obvious relevance for artistic and practice research projects.
The modifier evolving refers to the adaptation of a constraint or set of constraints, or the application of further/different constraints, as a project proceeds, i.e. in response to work-in-progress. Drawing on the Critical Response Process, designed to elicit useful feedback for taking any creative project to its next stage of development (Lerman and Borstel 2003), 3WI employed peer-to-peer reciprocal coaching to feed into the development of the three makers’ creative projects through the generation of evolving (sets of) constraints. The Critical Response Process offered an adaptable template for encounters between pairs of makers who presented work in progress in alternate meetings, hence reciprocal coaching. This reciprocal coaching was peer-to-peer because each maker was expert in their own field and engaged in a creative (or creative-critical) project being offered for discussion and feedback even as each offered formative feedback on the other makers’ projects.
The format of 3WI was as follows. Each maker met once a month in individual meetings with the other two participants over a period of four months from September to December 2021. At the first such monthly meeting, one maker presented work and received feedback from the other participant, with the roles being reversed in the second meeting. All monthly meetings took place over a single day in bookable rooms in Horsens public library.
Table description: A table showing the monthly meeting schedule specifying in which order work is presented and feedback given. Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2226731/2226732#tool-2229263 to see the table.
The goal of each meeting was to generate the informed setting of a constraint or set of constraints that would guide the maker’s work (i.e. they would attempt to work in accordance with, and to ‘satisfy’, the constraints) over the subsequent month. The structure of parallel meetings/coaching partnerships was designed to provide a way of comparing experiences of coaching and constraint-setting for the purposes of 3WI as a whole. All meetings took place in English (O’Leary’s first language, but a second, if very familiar, language for Hallager Andersen and Høybye).
Each maker maintained a reflective analysis of the experience of the meetings and constraints set, as well as documentation of work-in-progress. In addition to maker meetings outlined above and informal catch-up conversations between all three makers, 3WI began and ended with team meetings with project consultant Michael Mose Biskjaer, whose scholarly research on creativity constraints (Biskjaer 2013; Biskjaer and Halskov 2014; Biskjaer and Onarheim 2017; Biskjaer and others 2020) informed the project’s design and goals.
Notably, Biskjaer’s research and familiarity with scholarship in the field of Design Studies suggests that the question of evolving constraints is under-researched. But our purpose in this project was not to generate a theoretical account of the workings of evolving constraints. Our concerns were more procedural than theoretical and revolved around testing and understanding in concrete ways our own practices and those of the other two participants. The design of the project deliberately embraced a certain ‘impurity’: the character of the pre-existing relationships between the makers (O’Leary was, at the time, Høybye’s doctoral supervisor; Hallager Andersen and O’Leary are life partners with two young daughters) was part of the project investigation. It was recognised that these relationships (of power as well as care), along with questions including gender and career status, might impact on the setting and satisfying of the constraints. 3WI was designed to retain and deploy the complexity of the interpersonal encounter in the meetings of the pairs of makers.
This approach contrasts with experimental research on constraints that tends to posit a neutral set of interpersonal dynamics in artificial (lab-like) scenarios. It was instead part of the purpose of 3WI to register rather than disavow the effects, positive or otherwise, of the pre-existing relationships between the three makers. The differences between the three makers, and the relationships between them, were key to the experience of the project; indeed, one may say that the apparatus of the project was the means to put such differences to productive use. What other artists or academics might glean from the experience of the 3WI project is a lesson in how to value and cultivate the particularity of the encounter with the other in the development of creative or creative-critical practice.
O’Leary led the 3WI project. O’Leary and Høybye collaborated on the funding application that paid for the participation of Hallager Andersen in the project. Hallager Andersen, Høybye, and O’Leary worked equally during the project period (September–December 2021). Each contributed to the discussion and drafting of materials for this exposition, which have been revised, edited, and prepared for the Research Catalogue by O’Leary. Input to the exposition can be expressed as O’Leary 50%, Hallager Andersen 25%, and Høybye 25%.
This exposition continues with a description of the procedural and theoretical coordinates of 3WI, describing the Critical Response Process, the film The Five Obstructions (von Trier and Leth 2003), and the creative utility and scholarly study of creativity constraints. Following a description of the individual practices and the projects (or project strands) being developed by the three makers, each maker will then give an individual account of the work on 3WI: the maker meetings and the development of individual projects. The purpose with these accounts (distilled from much longer documentation) is to emphasise the process and the particularity of the 3WI project interactions. These three maker accounts are followed by a discussion reflecting on setting and receiving constraints, and an assessment of the experience of the project. We conclude with some contemplation of the ethics of constraint-setting and the lessons of the 3WI experience for other makers.
Where appropriate, the authors/makers are referred to by their first names in the remainder of the exposition.