Can Creativity be Measured?

There was a painting and crafts ‘competition’ near my locality and i along with my friends went to see the displays. After the execution time, few gentlemen came with some papers on hand and were discussing about each of the displayed art objects. They were introduced as ‘judges’ and their role dictated them to grant marks for the displays based on some criteria. Finally two of the displays got prizes and had some overall score of 46 and 45.

My friend asked a question. How did they quantify creativity? Well, if I have to apply creativity and find out a business solution, someone might evaluate and say Idea1 will give more profit than Idea2. If creativity has to be applied in an NGO services, the evaluation criteria can be based on “How many people will be benefited by this or the magnitude of benefit per person” and so on for various fields… But Art is something that a person does out of Joy! His involvement makes him feel the most satisfied individual while making it and he continues enjoying that feeling even after creating the art. A person making a painting/craft is reflecting his mood or his mind frame and paints his imagination. This so called mind frame changes with respect to person & time and no two people can have exactly the same frame. An Art has no goals. It is pure imagination and creativity. But still we try to measure and find out which is best out of all. I once asked a judge, very long back, on how did he arrive at selecting a particular painting for the first prize and declared all others are not eligible for that first prize? His reply was quite interesting. The painting he selected was resembling more similar to the actual scenery from which it was ‘copied’ and all others did not have such an actual reference (meaning, all other painters did not show the source that inspired them to make their painting. This first prize painter had also brought the photo of a scenery from which he made the painting). Next time when the same judge comes, I am going to take a color Xerox of a “valley and sunset” photo and keep it for display. If he applies the same logic then… Usssh… Confidential…

This also opened up another thought. In India, we consider discussions on the process of giving birth to another life / art of love making as taboo. This obviously is an art which requires lot of love and creativity. The reason (I read somewhere) as why the art of love making was not included in the 64 defined arts of Tamil Literature was, if that was included the medieval kings and ministers would have just made that as another competitive art like painting or craft!

Another interesting point, if I ask someone whether can you dance or sing, mostly the answer is NO… But everyone can dance and sing to the rhythm of his mind. Some people in the middle ages made procedures for these arts and started acknowledging that a song has to be this way and a dance has to follow all these. From there came the different forms of dances and few also started conducting competition for such arts which has to happen with each individual. My college friend who was acknowledged as a good dancer came back from practice and said he is feeling very tired because the dance movements were heavy? Shouldn’t one feel a burst of energy and enthusiasm after dancing… He would, if he had danced just to the rhythm of his inner beat. Obviously he is dancing to someone else’s beat and pity part is that the one who choreographs also feels tiredness after teaching the group his beats! Conclusion or outcome of this exercise (sorry i am not calling this an art), every dancer has lost the energy and the audience crowd, also watches this performance and
give their claps. They too loose the energy here :(

Of all the martial arts including my Tamil Silambam, i like the Japanese jujitsu because when all other Martial arts preach agressiveness as a way for victory, Jujitsu just says adapt to your inner rythm and move the limbs as per the rythm. From it we learnt, to win a competition, we have to first give up the idea of winning.. Give up the idea of competition.. Just do what brings enjoyment!

I have to associate three people as a reason for this Competition in Creativity.
• The Organizer of such a “Competition”. May be he might have some political mileage by organizing such events.
• The Judge who come and evaluates the art/ creativity works, which has no defined business or engineering outcomes.
• More important, the person who participates in the event (inspite of knowing it is a “Competition” for Art) and insulting his own gift of creativity!!!