At nineteen, I went to England
to study music and music production.
And that’s where I really started to discover and understand creativity.
One day, at the University,
the teacher gave us a rather interesting exercise.
He gave us all a very simple sound
of a second. I make you listen.
[Beep]
Then he asked us to make an entire musical composition,
the richest and most interesting possible
using only that sound.
My reaction at the time was to tell me:
“It’s impossible. How am I going to be able to
to compose something beautiful, rich, and interesting
with only that sound? “
Because I had to,
I started to ask myself questions, to test things,
to get out of my comfort zone.
And I ended up doing this exercise.
I show you some examples of what I did
to change the sound.
I put it in my guitar amp with distortion,
to give harmonics.
I re-recorded it with a microphone, and I imported it into a program
which allows me to play as a piano.
I’ll give you the details, I made some changes to the sound,
and I arrived at this result.
[Music]
I left the same sound, and I made it pass in a big reverb.
It gives the impression
that sound is heard in a huge cathedral
which sounds very loud.
Then I just cut the end of the sound to have the part that sounds
and I made it an instrument.
[Music]
Last example: I left the starting sound
but I pitched him several octaves lower
to have a very serious sound that I after very short cut
to be percussive
and that it looks a little like the sound of a big drum case.
[Music]
You see the principle: I continued like this for a moment.
I found a lot of different sound ideas
and I have all gathered them in a final composition.
I make you listen to a small extract of the result.
[Music]
Creativity is often seen as something a little mystical,
as a kind of heaven’s gift
which a small minority of people would have been pardoned and the others not.
Who here in the room sees himself as someone creative?
And yet, this capacity, we absolutely possess it in us.
I will try to convince you today.
There are three basic steps to the creative process:
The first is knowledge.
The knowledge, the more I have,
more opportunities open to me from the start
when it comes to finding original ideas
or solutions to any problem.
For me who composes, records and produces music,
if I know more software,
if I can use more musical instruments,
if my knowledge of music theory is broader,
I would have more ways to start to be creative in my field.
In other words, it’s a bit like my toolbox.
When I learn something new,
it’s like adding a new tool to my box.
The second step is divergent thinking.
Divergent thinking can be defined as the ability
to find a multitude of different solutions for the same problem.
Or a multitude of different answers for the same question.
In the case of my exercise at the beginning,
I just had a sound and knowledge.
With only that, I had to find a maximum of different ideas.
The third step is convergent thinking.
And the convergent thought, it can be defined
like the ability to synthesize all the available elements
to find the best solution.
It was beautiful to have found 1000 sound ideas,
I still had to be able
to bring them together in a final composition.
I recap quickly.
Knowledge puts at my disposal a series of tools.
Divergent thinking allows me to find
a multitude of different uses for these tools.
And finally convergent thinking allows me to gather all
in something coherent or useful.
If I took the musical creation to illustrate my point,
it’s of course because it’s my favorite field.
But I would really like to emphasize that
this creative process applies to absolutely all areas.
Not only artistic fields.
In different proportions, of course,
but to all areas anyway.
If I take the example of a lawyer,
and therefore an area that is not seen as something necessarily creative,
initially, the lawyer needs a lot of knowledge.
He must know, for example, laws, history, precedents,
be able to use a series of tools,
technological, institutional and so on.
Then he must know how to approach this knowledge
from a maximum of different angles
to propose a series of tracks, ideas, solutions.
Finally, he must be able to gather all that
to formulate a strategy, the most coherent, the most effective,
to solve the problem of his client.
We find the three stages well.
So why,
do many of us have trouble being creative?
Well, my guess is that our model of society
relies heavily on two of the three stages of creativity.
Namely: knowledge and convergent thinking.
The educational system.
Almost all of our courses consist of:
one, learn a subject – knowledge,
and two, prove that we have learned
by answering a series of standardized questions
which do not require special creativity.
Convergent thought.
We are asked: 5 + 5 = how much?
What is the capital of such country?
How is this verb in Latin declining?
Not only at almost no time,
divergent thinking is not really valued or stimulated,
but even worse, if a student decides to be creative,
and to interpret an utterance in its own way, or to do anything else
than to give the answer expected by the teacher,
he will often be penalized by bad points, a reprimand,
or worse, by criticism from other classmates.
So, this creative student, after 2, 3 times, he will understand the lesson:
he will put his creativity aside, put himself aside and do as everyone else does.
This hypothesis, it is widely supported
by a study conducted in the 1980s by two American researchers.
What they did was try to measure the divergent thought
of 1600 five-year-olds by giving them a simple test.
They gave them all a banal object, such as a trombone,
and then asked them to find as many uses as possible
for this object.
In reality, the possibilities are endless.
In the case of the trombone,
for example,
we could … the most obvious answer would be to say:
“You can attach sheets of paper with it. “
But we could also imagine:
unfold it, sharpen the tip and make it a needle,
or a fishing hook.
It could be melted, poured into a mold and made another object.
We could even imagine making music with,
but between us, honestly, that would be pretty dumb
than to spend time making music with a trombone?
[Percussion music]
I was a little obliged to do it,
even if it is not very useful to the presentation.
(Applause)
Thank you.
From this study, something really surprising came out.
At the age of five, 98% of children reach the maximum score,
which means that they are considered as geniuses of divergent thought.
But that’s not all.
Five years later, they re-passed the same test, to the same children.
This time,
only 30% of them still achieved this score.
Five years later: 12%.
It is important to note here
that the ability to be creative, we absolutely wear it all in ourselves
since at the age of 5,
98% of us are even experts.
You, in the room, or you who are watching this conference on the internet,
have in you this birth capacity.
That’s the good news.
Only, very often, this creativity, she was restrained and put aside.
It’s a shame, because, what I’m observing is that
we live in a world that is more and more complex and unstable,
which changes at a phenomenal speed.
New trades require new skills
who change themselves constantly.
New social problems also arise
in terms of economics, politics, ecology or others.
It is my deep conviction that we must absolutely release
this creativity that we all carry in ourselves
if we want to be able to find solutions for tomorrow.
We need super-trained citizens with divergent thinking
who will put things in question,
try new systems, innovate, create, shake.
Finally, if I told you about the education system earlier,
it’s not by chance.
I really think that everything must be done to avoid bridling
this creativity that children carry in them.
Whether you are a teacher, educator or parent,
try to encourage children to be creative,
to take confidence in their creativity
because, for me,
if there is really a skill, that will help them to get by in life,
to adapt to the changing situations of life,
to blossom and be happy, that’s it.
Thank you.
(Applause).
”
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