• Q: Have you felt trapped inside of someone else’s imagination? How have you broken free?

Yes, I think I’ve been trapped inside my parents’ imagination for at least ten years. It forces me to be an “ideal daughter” who should have a high GPA, choose a good person with a high salary to be my husband after graduation, and put others’ thoughts and emotions in a higher priority.  I do not “break” free. I just build up my own imagination of who I am by asking myself: what do you want to hear from your friends and families about yourself at your funeral? When my parents found that I could live happily within my imagination, their imagination became the same as mine.

• Q: Do you find any of these principles more challenging to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

For me, “Move at the speed of trust” is the most difficult one to achieve. Under the definition of the speed of trust, speed goes up when trust goes up in a “relationship.” However, a “relationship” is not a one-sided thing. Usually, I can trust my partner/teammate, but they cannot trust me easily. It’s hard for me to gain others’ trust. What’s more, I am easily inferior, so trusting myself is also difficult for me. As a result, the relationship of trust cannot build up quickly, and the speed of trust doesn’t show up in the end.

Introduction 

“I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free” (18)

• • Q: Have you felt trapped inside someone else’s imagination? How have you broken free?
• I have often felt this way growing up. I had felt as though the person that my parents have in their imagination of me, I had to strive to be. I always had to do beyond what was expected of me and nothing else. I often had gotten frustrated because, although I did want to do really well, the pressure became overwhelming. The way I had broken free from that imagination was to have deep conversations with my parents. The process is still ongoing but has improved greatly.

General Questions 

• Q: Do artists, designers, and technology have that same or similar responsibility? What are the nuances between those roles?

Artists, designers, and technology do have a similar responsibility. Their responsibility is to create things that will impact future generations. Artists all try to create pieces that will be viewed as a start to a new era in art, whether it be digitally or physically. Designers are the same, fashion is constant and many are trying to create a piece that will stand out to make a new type of style in fashion. Technology is constantly updating to meet and surpass the expectations and reality of many. Each roll will continue to impact future generations.

Principles

• Q: Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

When I went through the principles of Emergent strategy, I agreed with most of them, but just found two of them difficult to achieve. The first one is “Small is good, small is all.” I believe that small is good and a great work is composed of many small pieces. However, it is also necessary to have a comprehensive understanding of the work or project. And there are rules which might be visible or not, or that manage and integrate all the small ones. 

The second one is “Less prep, more presence.”  This is definitely true for experts who master the skills with rich experiences. Too much preparation might restrain creativity. Being at present can enable the subject to be more focused on the object and his or her senses and feelings. But this doesn’t apply for less skilled or experienced people.

Elements

• Q: Without overthinking it: which of these elements brown describes most immediately feels evident as part of your creative work, and how? Or, if none of them do, which feels like one you might intentionally integrate, and why?

I feel that “Resilience and Transformative Justice” most evident to me. Creation itself entails a long, exhausting and sometimes even miserable process. The creator goes through a repetitive cycle of “self-affirmation and self-denial”, in which Resilience is absolutely a must to regain energy and confidence to continue to create. This is also where the vitality of the art work comes from.

Q: Have you felt trapped inside of someone else’s imagination? How have you broken free?

A: When I was watching a movie, such as Hayao Miyazaki’s anime, I felt trapped inside the director’s imagination. I like to immerse myself in a movie when it is playing. After watching it, if it keeps me thinking about the characters and the plot, I was “caught” by the author’s imagination. To free myself, I have to change the view angle from an audience to a character. Though this change even traps me in the author’s world deeper at first. I can develop the character and break the author’s world. Jumping out of the original imagination this way, I get the space to create my own story.

Q: Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

A: The principle “Less prep, more presence.” I always want to have the work ready to show pre-designed results and get the expected response. But it is impossible. Both impossible and unnecessary. After reading Brown’s article, I feel like I was putting the focus on the result, “the mass”, instead of the process, the connections. This is a mind shift. Especially using a non-native language for me now. However, it is also an opportunity to see the creative process from a different angle.

“A mushroom is a toxin-transformer, a dandelion is a community of healers waiting to spread…” (9)

• Q: In your view, what is a function of humans in the universe?

For my point of view, the function of humans in the universe is helping other people and let other people feel the beauty of the universe. Also, it will be admirable if people leave something and keep have positive impact to the world. It has so tiny chance to be an intelligent life entity in the universe. Therefore, we have to utilize the opportunity to bring happiness and love to other people, and live the the life we will remember.  

From Buddhist ideology, any life will become other life forms after their death. What you will become in the next life loop depends on how much good things you did in the past. If a people do enough good things to the universe, they will live above the universe and no more life loop for them. I believe this could guide us to make our world a better place.

Q: Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

The principle I feel difficult to achieve in my own creative practice is “change is constant(Be like water)”. I remember Bruce Lee also said the similar sentence, “Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.” This is also a key concept from Tao. For my understanding, Water could be different forms in different environment. As humans, if we could be like water we will be adaptive to both negative and positive situation. Our world is constantly changing and our mindset should also keep up with the times. Our life will be easier if we become comprehensive and receptive. 

For myself, I always strictly follow the instruction and flow of work or study, which make me be inefficient and less creative in different aspects. Some times, we have to break rules(it has to be legal), then we could find multiple possibility especially for doing art works.

Q: How would you define emergence? What is its opposite?

A: “The movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication is what we call emergence.”  I think emergence is mainly about a process of a collection or a complex system, but not the individual members. For example, how individual items (e.g. ants) combine to make a super-organism that ‘has a mind of its own’, and how in our human lives such a thing as a city emerges as the product less of planning than of dynamic interaction.

As for its opposite, I believe emergence is quite a subjective topic, the property of emergence often not related to its individual items. So divergent or declined might be the opposite side of emergence.

Q: Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

A: I think the most difficult principle to achieve is “There is always enough time for the right work.” in my practice. It reminds me of the process I spend on my work, if it is not good enough I may always protect my ego with the excuse of limited time. After finishing the project/practice, I would rather spend my time on other different things than reviewing or completing the previous work. The principle inspired me to spend my time appropriately on the right work, the fixed deadlines never account for all the unexpected things that always happen on every project.

“I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free” (18)

• Q: Have you felt trapped inside of someone else’s imagination? How have you broken free?

Design is just a creative discipline that blends art and poetry, which is based on imagination.

Art + Poetry + Design, the most intuitive symptom is buying something out of impulse. When we buy something, in many cases, we are not paying for the function, but for”love at first sight” for that thing, even without any explainable reasons. Because “the beauty of things” touches me, surprises me, delights me, and resonates with me. The moment I see it, a germ called Poetry infects me, allowing me to develop an emotional connection to the object for a short period of time, being trapped in the poetic world the designer depicts. This is a feeling that transcends functions, being an indescribable fate.

This is also the meaning of carrying art and poetry into industrial design.
Using an item that can be bought and owned as a carrier, redefine the surrounding space, let us briefly transcend our daily life, and pull us into a dimension full of imagination and beauty. At that moment, we shortly came into contact with the essence of human nature, looked at ourselves from the inside, made ourselves higher than the level of material existence, and achieved spiritual fulfillment.

With the help of design products,  it is a blessing to indulge in the beauty of the designer’s imagination, without any reasons or necessities to escape.

“I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free” (18)

• Q: Have you felt trapped inside of someone else’s imagination? How have you broken free?

I think in responding to this, I have to consider if I actually have broken free. At the macro level, I think it’s safe to say that I have not. I feel very trapped inside the imagination of a capitalistic, materialistic, progress-for-progress’s sake culture. Despite lofty goals, I find it hard to break from the worn-in paths defined above. But if I have taken anything from this reading, it is that a macro-level reading of experience might not be the most fruitful place to start, so let’s look for some bright spots, shall we?

Being an artist, maker, and designer is a break from some imaginations. Growing up, I knew that I was vocationally called to making things, but it was not clear how that would translate into a career path. It is probably a similar story for many such artists and designers (and peers in this program!), but the imagined state of “starving artist” is pervasive. I was lucky to have a network of support that trusted me as I learned to trust myself, fumbling forward through art, craftspersonship, and several other threads to my current home in the world of design.

Other examples might be found in moments of change — moving to new cities, leaving jobs, leaving boyfriends. Deciding that something different is out there, and that “different” looked promising. I do want to spend more energy imagining futures that I want to see, for myself and for the world around me.

• Small is good, small is all.
• Change is constant. (Be like water.)
• There is always enough time for the right work.
• There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.
• Never a failure, always a lesson.
• Trust the people. (If you trust the people, they become trustworthy.)
• Move at the speed of trust. Focus on critical connections more than on critical mass — build the resilience by building the relationships.
• Less prep, more presence.
• What you pay attention to grows.

Q: Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

I am heartened by the idea that “small is good, small is all.” I hesitate to call what I do a “creative practice,” even though I think that empirically that’s what it is. But the work that I do is sporadic, scattered, and simple. The things that I do feel small. Embracing “small” makes me feel as though I can do work that would fit into something I would call a practice. That it doesn’t have to be daunting, it doesn’t have to be complex, it just has to be, and hopefully be intentional. I am excited to focus on setting intention in order to catalyze small works.

Q: Do you find any of these principles more difficult to achieve than others in your own creative practice? How?

I really struggle with the “change is constant” one. For me it’s less about the change outside of my project and more that I can always change and improve the thing I’m working on. It’s really hard for me to let go of projects because the idea of “improvement” makes me feel like they are never truly finished. I often find myself going back to old projects, even scrapped ones, just to see what I can change and update.

Q: Without overthinking it: which of these elements brown describes most immediately feels evident as part of your creative work, and how? Or, if none of them do, which feels like one you might intentionally integrate, and why?

I would say the one that feels most evident is the element of “Adaptive”. It’s important to be adaptive in the process because the work should evolve as more information/experience is gained. It should also be adaptive to the changes in conditions surrounding the work (example is was supposed to be a physical work that is now digital due to constraints like COVID). Changes will always occur during the creative process and a work needs to adapt to and with those changes.