1. Introduction

2. Protocols and coordinates

3. Three maker practices

4. Marie's account of process

5. Martin's account of process

6. Alan's account of process

7. Reflective discussion

8. Conclusion

9. References & acknowledgements

Protocols and coordinates

The concerns of the 3WI project were fundamentally procedural rather than theoretical, and we were careful to put in place a framework, based on the Liz Lerman Critical Response Process, for the conduct of the maker meetings, described below. At the same time, we had certain models and conceptual points of reference in mind in the design and running of the project, including the film The Five Obstructions and scholarly discussions of the use of creativity constraints, also set out below. We did not think of these as constituting the theoretical ‘foundation’ of the 3WI project, but rather as a set of coordinates that helped us to orient ourselves as the project was ongoing.

Critical Response Process (CRP)

To provide a clear protocol for the provision of feedback in our 3WI maker meetings, we adopted the ethos and adapted the format of the Critical Response Process (CRP), a method to give and receive feedback on creative work-in-progress developed by American choreographer Liz Lerman. The essence of the method is to create a supportive environment in which an artist (or ‘maker’ in our 3WI terminology) has ‘an active role in the critique of their own work’ (Critical Response Process website), and in which feedback serves the creative goals of the artist.

In its original form, the CRP is a four-step process that involves the three roles of artist/maker, responders, and facilitator. In step one, following the sharing of the work-in-progress, responders state what they find striking in the work concerned. In step two, the artist asks questions about the work-in-progress to elicit responses in relation to an aspect they wish to develop. In step three, the audience address neutral questions (questions that do not disguise a value judgement) to the artist. Finally, in step four, the responders may offer to voice opinions about some aspect of the work, but only by invitation of the artist. Trust is built between artists and responders as the steps progress and responders become familiar with the goals of the artist (Lerman 2020a).

For 3WI, we adapted a variation of the CRP called Mutual Coaching that allows a pair to work reciprocally, a format particularly useful in peer-to-peer relations (Lerman 2020b). This reduces the three CRP roles to two: an artist and a coach. Originally developed to facilitate feedback during the practice of dance movement or choreography, here are the steps of Mutual Coaching:

Mutual Coaching offered our project a template for working reciprocally and peer to peer. The ‘wildcard’ in round 3 asks the coach to bring a new idea or a different approach to the work they have witnessed, by challenging the artist to try something they might not have thought of themselves. We exchanged the wildcard in round 3 for the setting of constraints that would guide the work in the month-long gap between 3WI maker meetings.

Here is the protocol for the maker meetings:

The protocol provided an essential scaffolding for our encounters and helped us to navigate our relative status positions (mentioned in the introduction to the article and discussed again in the conclusion) by clearly stating ‘who speaks when’ and ‘about what’. Following the protocol gave a sense of predictability and ensured that constraint-setting would be achieved. It also meant that the experience of giving and receiving feedback with different partners could be compared, even if in practice the protocol was sometimes simplified (work might not be shown a second time, for example) so that productive conversation could proceed unhindered (Marie observes in her account that meetings could be less useful when the protocol was not scrupulously followed). For the sake of brevity, the protocol is rarely mentioned in the maker accounts of process later in this exposition, but it should be assumed as the setting and framework of the encounters described.

The Five Obstructions

A key point of reference for 3WI was The Five Obstructions (De fem benspænd, 2003) by the Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth. In this film, the younger von Trier sets his former teacher, Leth, the task of remaking the latter’s classic short film The Perfect Human (Det Perfekte Menneske, 1967) according to five sets of playful and even perverse constraints — these are the ‘obstructions’ of the title (the Danish benspænd has a stronger sense suggesting a deliberate tripping up). The Five Obstructions shows the meetings between von Trier and Leth during which the obstructions are set, extracts from Leth’s original Perfect Human, the production process of the film remakes (recalling the making-of material found as extras on DVD film releases), and the resulting remakes themselves, as well as interviews with the two filmmakers in which they reflect on their experience or objectives.

The extracts from The Five Obstructions annotated in the video clip indicate the playful character of the encounters between the two filmmakers, but also the aggressively didactic and, in intention, therapeutic intentions of von Trier in his setting of challenging constraints.

The Five Obstructions models a ludic and agonistic dimension (Rodriguez 2008) in the encounters between pairs of makers and the provision of evolving constraints in 3WI. This combative playfulness is quite different from standard coaching, which is typically disinterested and neutral, characterised by an attitude of non-judgemental ‘holding space’. It is different too from the Critical Response Process described above, which is designed to allow the maker to steer the content of elicited feedback in accordance with that maker’s sense of what will be creatively productive. Our project meetings were then a combination of contrasting practices of feedback. But it is important that the trust developed over the course of a meeting through the use of the adapted Critical Response protocol, and the responder’s familiarity with the maker’s work and goals developed during individual meetings and across the 3WI project, informed the setting of constraints that punctuated the encounters. This trust and familiarity formed set the limits of the constraint-setting.

If the agonistic character of the maker meetings in 3WI was inspired by The Five Obstructions, a crucial addition was the reciprocal dimension. In their film, only von Trier sets constraints for Leth: the ‘challenge’ — or ‘serve’ in Leth’s tennis match analogy — goes in one direction. In 3WI, the makers each set constraints for the other two partners. So, any playful, didactic, or therapeutic interventions in the form of constraints set for one partner might be answered in kind by the constraints set by the other partner in return. Any ‘aggression’ in the setting of constraints may become part of, and in a sense necessary to, the appeal (the fun) of the ‘game’ — the experimental situation, that is — just as a competitor in a game will ‘play to win’. At the same time, the game/experimental situation was also a kind of contained and safe space in which failure was allowed. Although we hoped to see if the evolving constraints would help to take our work to unexpected places, the process was at least as important as the outcomes.

Creativity and constraint

3WI was conceived to investigate the experience for the three participant-makers of setting and satisfying evolving creativity constraints in the development of the individual maker projects. The term creativity constraints refers to deliberately adopted restrictions (whether self-imposed or suggested by another) to choices in a given creative (or creative-critical) project: ‘explicit or tacit factors governing what the creative agent/s must, should, can, and cannot do; and what the creative output must, should, can, and cannot be’ (Biskjaer and Halskov 2014: 37). It may seem surprising that constraints can further creativity, and it is sometimes assumed that access to a greater range of creative possibilities equals greater opportunity for expression or invention. But the opposite is more likely to be true: constraints on creative action may be the true spur to originality. As philosopher Jon Elster writes, ‘sometimes there are benefits from having fewer opportunities rather than more’ (2000: 1). And so artists, designers, architects, and even academics have often depended on constraints as an integral part of practice and as a means to produce original insights and results (Haught-Tromp 2017: 10; Keathley and Mittell 2019). As Biskjaer and Halskov put it: ‘experienced creative practitioners are well aware of the complex, dual role of constraints: constraints both restrain and impede and enable and advance a creative course such as a design process’ (2014: 27).

The use and utility of constraints have been closely studied in the field of Design Studies, for example in the work of 3WI project advisor, Michael Mose Biskjaer and his collaborators. (See Biskjaer and Halskov 2014: 30–35, for a summary of research on constraints and creativity.) In a design project, the solution space (the range of possible solutions to a design or other creative problem) can be intimidatingly broad: the sheer number of possible solutions can be paralysing or can lead to hackneyed (obvious or over-familiar) approaches. Accepting a limitation on the solution space by (self-) imposing an initial constraint, which may be radically counterintuitive, can offer a way into the design problem or process, a first step into the unknown — what Jane Darke (1979) has named a primary generator. The application of this primary generator arbitrarily but generatively circumscribes the field of creative action, enabling while forcing a series of subsequent creative decisions.

As the process continues, a whole series of supplementary constraints on creative action may be adopted. Both the primary generator and subsequently adopted constraints can have a determining effect on the quality of the outcome of the design or other creative process: ‘Installing seemingly highly inexpedient constraints in expectance of a more original final outcome may at times affect the design process so significantly that this obstructive act leads to an unforeseen, qualitative forward leap’ (Biskjaer and Halskov 2014: 28). Biskjaer and Halskov refer to such radically inexpedient but generative constraints as decisive constraints, distinguished from trivial constraints that do not significantly affect the outcome.

At the same time, the act of constraining must strike a balance to be most generative. A creative process can become over-constrained, just as it may (initially) be under-constrained: a ‘too high level of constrainedness (too little creative freedom) will make it hard for the person involved to initiate a resolution of a creative task, since it is cognitively more difficult to process all the given task constraints’ (Biskjaer and others 2020: 6).

A ‘sweet spot’ of constrainedness is preferable, where enough constrainedness is present to help generate an effective solution to a creative problem, and where the lack of creative freedom from excessive constrainedness does not inhibit the process.

This conceptual vocabulary of creativity constraints, decisive constraints, primary generator, under- and over-constrainedness and the sweet spot was useful to us in the running of 3WI, in order to express and to reflect upon our experience of setting and satisfying constraints. The terms recur in the accounts and discussion that follows.

Nonetheless, the project participants were not concerned to restrict the instructions issued during peer-to-peer coaching to some normative form or definition of constraint, such as one might find in theoretical literature. Certainly, the 3WI project was designed to investigate what sort of instruction was experienced as generatively constraining for each of the three 3WI makers. In practice, however, as evidenced in the maker accounts of process, it may be possible to interpret the ‘constraints’ set during meetings as ‘suggestions’ or ‘feedback’, conventionally understood (this may also be a question of how they are phrased). Likewise, the firm or obstructive register of the benspænd dispensed by Lars von Trier to Jørgen Leth in The Five Obstructions was deployed only occasionally in our maker meetings. As such, the instructions issued were not always intended to make the work difficult or frustrating (though they sometimes were), but they were designed to encourage an investigative process rather than a particular outcome. What is important is that the three makers thought of what we were doing in 3WI as setting and satisfying constraints: if certain instructions appear less constraint-like in tone or form, this is because practitioners have different ‘styles’ of constraint-setting and perceive the operation of constraint differently in their own practice.

Continue to Three Maker Practices