Mathematical creativity – Milenio.com

During the visit of David Byrne to FIL Guadalajara in 2014, at a press conference in which he was asked a question about his creative process, he explained that the only way to work on several projects at once was to bring meticulous records of the various stages of each, and dedicate a number of hours to go forward step by step in order to bring them to completion. He himself admitted that perhaps his working method might seem boring, and be disappointing for those who have some vision of creativity more associated with a spontaneous outburst which ignores any kind of order, but he said, he in particular had always worked very good work that way. At another point in the same press conference recalled that his favorite book was Alice in Wonderland , which from an early age had influenced because it is written from a high precision work math.

in the documentary Hitchcock / Truffaut that is currently showing in cinemas, over several testimonies of people like Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Wes Anderson and other luminaries contemporary cinema constantly alluded to the mathematical precision of the method of Hitchcock, who regarded with great meticulousness each of the elements necessary to produce the effect sought suspenseful way. In his interview with Truffaut, at a time when Hitchcock himself that in a scene from the movie I confess , when Montgomery Cliff goes into the crowd with his cassock priest refused to follow the indication turn to look towards a bell, because it seemed more interesting to inspect the crowd around him. Hitchcock insisted until then imposed, explains, I needed that look to direct the camera to the top and show the presence of the belfry. “An actor was not coming to break my careful spatial geometry,” he said to Truffaut.

Despite being artists times and vastly different disciplines, the interesting thing is that in both cases, systematic implementation of a creative process that, as you said Byrne, may even seem boring, allowed them to produce artistic expressions that not only are considered among the best of its kind, but revolutionized their fields and influenced later generations as as Scorsese explains in the documentary, Hitchcock them “gave permission” to explore possibilities not previously considered. The same is true with the impact of the assembly Stop Making Sense to the scenic possibilities of a rock concert.

As great his working method counterpoint, when Hitchcock asks for his penchant for sustained and exceptional items in improbable plots, which instead for him are the raw material of his disturbing and terrifying worlds, responds with a simple phrase: “the logic is very boring.”