Methods of Innovation

Methods of Innovation

The Process of Gaining Inspiration from the Other Side

Are you interested in talking about your ideas with people outside your field of study?  Are you seeking practice in presentation and defense of your research?  Would you like to meet other CGU students and learn what they are studying?  Are you interested in exploring the ways that transdiciplinary approaches to learning can affect ingenuity, innovation, and creativity in your research?  Are you inspired, but not sure how to apply that inspiration to your scholastic work?

A Call for a Meeting of the Minds

We are seeking interested persons (faculty, staff, and students) FROM ALL FIELDS OF STUDY to participate in a reading/research group here at CGU.  We believe that transdisciplinary exploration is a tried and true method for innovation, creation, and successfully inspiring the thought process.  Participants will have the opportunity to share their research and gain feedback from other disciplines, make friends and “resources” in other complimentary fields of study, learn new ways of approaching research by observing methods of others, and ultimately have conversations that brighten your light bulb!

For more information, please contact Jackie Bell (MFA ’13) at:

jacqueline.bell@cgu.edu or 909-438-1811

Ramblings

I had a great conversation today, with my friend and classmate.  She is doing some work that talks about the empathy and lack of empathy for others, even those that you really have no way to relate to.  This got me to thinking (oh, no!) about how empathy is an instinctual part of the human psyche.  It serves as a crucial survival mechanism not for the individual but for the species.  Empathy and sympathy can cause the individual to slow down, to stop and help someone, putting themselves at risk in a threatening situation, but it promotes the "sticking together" mentality and strategy during threats to the species, or to large groups of humans threatened by animals, disease, or even zombies (hey, it's almost Halloween).

Another aspect of the empathize idea is the popularity of such things as film, Television, and even music (specifically vocal).  These are art forms that express the human experience, but these art forms specifically can be more relatable to the masses because of the visual and oral presence of humans, and human emotion.  There is a base level of understanding that the person on screen is happy or sad, regardless of language, due to the visual nature of the medium.  Or, in the case of music, you are compelled to respond to the voice you hear singing.  You don't just hear notes and language, but the emotion expressed.  This is especially true currently, as most music genres have taken on an emotional trend with the vocals, to the point of over emphasizing emotion conveyed by the voice.  As a listener or viewer, you respond in kind by empathy.