Brainstorming Lecture

The main theme of the lecture with Dan Graham was about all the aspects of brainstorming. When someone thinks of an original idea, that idea may seem very obvious to other people. Because it may seem too obvious to others, it is best if that person expands on that original idea to make it more complex and interesting. To make the idea or word more complex, the person should look that word up in the dictionary to find its various meanings. This approach will give an artist more ideas off of the one s/he originally had. In today’s class we did an exercise in which we took a piece of paper, folded it in half, and wrote a fairytale on one side. Then we looked at two colors, pastel green and pink, and wrote down words that described those colors on the other side of the paper. The descriptions could have been of a certain taste or smell that reminded you of those colors. Then we unfolded the paper and read the sentences that were made from the fairytale and the descriptive words. All of the sentences sounded very funny and made the story a lot more interesting. Then we got into groups of eight and made a short narrative using one sentence from each person. My sentence in the narrative was “He traveled to a castle with pink panties from Victoria’s Secret.” It was hilarious to hear all of the stories because they were such random ideas and included phrases that did not even make sense. The purpose of this exercise was to start from one idea and branch off and make it more interesting and original. After each group created a narrative, each person had to take their sentence and expand on that idea and turn it into a character. Each of us had to illustrate that character and then combine all the characters to make one big picture. After finishing this big illustration, Dan Graham made it clear that what we were doing was not art. What we were actually doing was brainstorming that could eventually be turned into a work of art.