Why I make - flowing and keeping it simple
Clear goals: it is very clear from moment to moment what you have to do. For example, in tennis, you know where you have to hit the ball. It is not the ultimate goal that counts, but having very clear goals all along the way.
Immediate feedback: you should be able to get very clear feedback, as you go along, whether you are doing the right thing or not.
Balance between challenge and skill: If the challenge is too high then you begin to feel worried and anxious. If the challenge is too low to your level of skills, then you begin to feel relaxed and then bored.
Csikszentmihalyi has gone further and defined the emotions you feel before you eventually find flow. He sees flow as existing on the diagonal between the level of skill and amount of challenge (fig.3).
Keepitsimple, keepitsimple, keepitsimple. In the last few weeks of this Synthesis project, this is the mantra I keep telling myself. I know I over-think things and have many ideas all at the same time. The phrase, ‘keep it simple’ had come up in previous tutorials but it was a tutorial in early July that clarified to me that this should be my guiding force.
From my undergraduate degree in textiles onwards I had thought that in order to show your skill, and what you had learnt, the final piece you make should be time consuming, complex, intricate and make a big statement. This does have its place. Having worked in the contemporary jewellery world, I had seen how it is common for jewellers to have a ‘showstopper’ piece. The ‘showstopper’, often bought by only the most ardent collectors, then draws in people to your work so they buy the more affordable and wearable pieces. For this final Synthesis project, I thought I would need to create a ‘showstopper’. However, I was struggling. I was happily playing with my materials and making some simple, quiet things I liked, but I was unable to visualise a final ‘showstopper’ piece. I didn’t need to. The simple pieces I make show my unconscious thought. When I make them, I am in a state of flow and this flow state is translated into my work. The feeling of flow is what the viewer would want to see. This not only felt like a light bulb moment but as if a weight had been lifted, a warm wave of calm flowed over me. I had heard of flow state, and was pretty sure I knew when I was in it, but I didn’t know anything about the research behind it.
The idea of flow was developed by the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi over almost forty years of experience-based research. He initially looked at artists, musicians and athletes, people who you would expect to experience flow. He soon broadened this out to everyday life and found that anyone can experience flow. He identified the three main characteristics you need to achieve flow.
Csikszentmihalyi explains that in everyday life we are usually in the states of anxiety, worry, apathy, boredom and relaxation. We feel either arousal or control just before we reach the state of flow. These two feelings are pretty good, but the desire to get to flow is what pushes us to either develop more skill or find a bigger challenge (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014, p.139)
It was in our first module, Researching, Mapping and Locating (RML), where I had learned to appreciate the skill I had acquired from almost twenty years of textiles and jewellery making. I had achieved this by going backwards and playing, destroying, reflecting and undergoing a “transformative ruin” (Tsing, 2015, p.20) in order to re-find my love of textiles. I had realised I couldn’t escape from the skill I had acquired, I needed to embrace it, but I didn’t know how.
Looking at Csikszentmihalyi’s research I understood immediately that this was how I was using my skill. To challenge myself to find flow, to work in that “final zone of difficulty” (Esterley, 2012, quoted in Adamson, 2018, p.26). But where would the challenge come from? I decided that it would be from the material I was going to make with.