Date: Tuesday Sept 9, 2025 at 2am Central Daylight Time (CDT in the USA)
Facilitator: Francine Smolucha
Summary: Two different activities that can lead to increased creativity and be used as assessment techniques are presented. This research was originally presented in 1983 at the International Conference in Psychology and the Arts in Cardiff, Wales by Larry and Francine Smolucha. The Smolucha Creativity Test consists of 8 blocks in four basic shapes and can be used to assess divergent thinking and visual isomorphisms in subjects aged two years and older. The second activity (designed by Larry Smolucha) is an exercise in learning to see and use visual isomorphisms in visual art. Visual isomorphisms are shape resemblances such as a ribbon and a road that (often referred to as visual metaphors) that underlie linguistic metaphors. Seeing things from different perspectives could facilitate “seeing” different points of view in conflict situations (flexibility in changing frames of reference). A proposal for a research project in the field of International Relations will be put forth for discussion.
Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/98564124237
Meeting ID: 985 6412 4237
Passcode: Vygotsky
Readings:
Smolucha, L. and Smolucha, F. (1983) The Creative Process in Art. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED260008.pdf [files.eric.ed.gov]
Supplemental Readings:
Smolucha, L. & Smolucha, F. (1984) Creativity as a Maturation of Symbolic Play.
https://philpapers.org/rec/SMOCAA [philpapers.org]
Contact: lsmolucha@hotmail.com for a copy
Smolucha, L. and Smolucha, F. (1985). A Fifth Piagetian Stage: The Collaboration Between Analogical Thinking and Logical Thinking in Artistic Creativity. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20715603 [jstor.org]
Contact: lsmolucha@hotmail.com for a copy
Sefer, J. (2013). Symbolic Play and Analogy: A Way to Foster Children’s Creativity.
https://cdn.aaai.org/ocs/5796/5796-24500-1-PB.pdf [cdn.aaai.org]
One of the visual isomorphisms generated by my husband’s art students was a picture of a brass bed juxtaposed with the bars on a ticket counter. The student extended this from just a shape resemblance (visual isomorphism) to a visual metaphor to a verbal metaphor –
saying there might be some meaning here if you think of sex as a commercial transaction.
[What about the bars on a prison cell?]
I just found an interesting conceptual artwork by Mona Hatoum “Divan Bed” (1996) that
suggests the discomfort migrants feel when sleeping in a strange land. This artwork is discussed in a paper titled The Allegory and Metaphor in Visual Arts by Esraa Abdelfatah (2022) that also discusses Medieval paintings https://ivla.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2-The-Allegory-and-Metaphor.pdf
The image of the divan could also elicit visual isomorphisms such as a coffin or a luggage trunk.There are other literary associations, for example in Moby Dick, Queequeg’s coffin becomes a life raft for Ishmael. In the movie “Joe and the Volcano” the large luggage trunks become a raft. The associations between a bed and a coffin are further accentuated
when a pillow is added suggesting that death is like sleep (eternal rest grant unto them) or Shakespeare’s Hamlet ‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come’.
Just tossing some ideas out there . . .