Sustainable Creativity Workshop / Michelle A. Binczak
Inspiration itself is by its nature green: natural, ever-renewable, authentic. It originates in what might be called “wild mind” – a state where the imagination is free to play and explore. To invite this state, we apply techniques designed to stimulate somatic perception, activate intuition, awaken all the senses, and interrupt the abiding domination of the intellect. We approach the immediate natural environment as teacher and muse. Working with nature-inspired creative pathways, we unearth understanding and ideas that will find their way into a new and infinitely renewable green-energy design language for footwear.
Our feet are our connection to the planet. We begin with the foot itself, walking barefoot and in various fashions: walking on the toes, on the heels, the inner edges of the foot,
the outer edges, walking with toes in, toes out, shuffling, stamping. Using parts of the foot not normally employed for walking, the exercise offers immediate physical awareness of the importance of the foot to the stance, to movement, and to how one feels. At the same time, relearning the grammar of the feet, the foot is awakened; the entire sole feels alert. Rhythmic footstamping echoes traditional rituals found in many parts of the world, in which the energy of the earth is brought up into the body – in the most physical way possible, we activate our direct link to the planet. Our senses extend our connection to the planet. Many of us are accustomed to using mainly our eyes to experience the world, and even our vision is circumscribed by habit: we don’t see all there is to see. In this exercise, we walk quietly into the landscape, awakening and exercising our senses one by one. We listen, we smell, we taste, we touch. We explore and discover the richness of the world, allowing intuition to guide us, noticing colour, pattern, texture, line, hearing the
crisp crackle of a leaf against a background of softly interwoven insect sounds, pursuing new sensory encounters that capture our interest. Our flowing, encompassing multi-sensory awareness opens to all that surrounds us, enabling us to become one with the landscape, to be nature. Align with nature for infinite inspiration. As we walk, we gather objects that appeal to us. Choosing one of these objects for its pattern of energy or growth, we learn the pattern by studying it closely, somatically internalizing its tempo and flow. Then, using both hands, we draw with charcoal on paper, with our eyes closed, expressing the energy in gestural line. The encounter is between the designer and the inner dynamics of natural form. Finally, eyes open, we improvise with the mark, extending it, developing it, exploring it to see where it will lead. The final phase of this exercise consists of taking the mark we have developed, and allowing it to evolve into a shoe, as if the earth itself, and this particular natural force in particular, had given birth to a shoe.
Sourced directly from nature via the conduit of the designer’s imagination, the object emerges as the result of the encounter with the landscape, and appears as inevitable as any tree, fruit, wildflower, or stone. Inspiration-gathering is the first step in the design process. Later come the incubation phase, the refinement stage, testing for functionality, submission to questions of commercial feasibility and technical viability. We must balance the imaginative, the conceptual and the technical to create an object that fulfills
all that is asked of it and more. The shoe born from a sustainable creative process will be both a perfect response to the foot and aligned with the planet across
which we walk.
Michelle A. Binczak
green art expert / editor; International trend consultant, expert in creative processes for design.
Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 10:14 am and is filed under 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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