Digital Humanities: Week 5 Reflection

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During our class presentation, we talked about how creative spaces (art) can influence technology and innovation, and how technology can also be a muse for storytelling. I really love this cyclical relationship between the two fields. Sometimes they enable one another to exist, expand, and think deeply about various things. They create constraints, but they also create a free space for imagination and creativity to take place.

The most interesting aspect of this is that behind both technological development and creative work, the core idea is imagination. Before any planning, design, process, or fleshing out, it all starts as an idea. And if that idea is truly innovative, it requires some form of imagination from the person who holds it. The innovator must think outside the box to find ways to solve a problem or make life easier in some way, shape, or form—something that hasn’t been attempted before. The creative artist thinks about new and inventive ways to express and reflect real-life predicaments in stories. Both rely on imagination—something intangible, something idealistic—but as the process unfolds, when things come together, it looks as if everything has been meticulously planned.

This thought process fascinates me. Imagination is the key to all problem-solving, innovation, change, and growth—both in creative fields, where it is very much out there, and in technical fields, where technique steals the spotlight. Imagination still exists, which, for some reason, is a pleasant way to think about things.

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