Jonah Lehrer's 'Imagine: How Creativity Works,' Animated By Flash Rosenberg (VIDEO)

It seems like everywhere you turn (on the internet), there's a thought piece, review or Q&A about Jonah Lehrer's new book, "Imagine: How Creativity Works." The 30-year-old science writer studied sexy examples of creativity (Bob Dylan) as well as unsexy ones (Swiffer) in his quest to understand that mysterious thing called inspiration, and his work seems to have touched a nerve. Now one of Lehrer's most provocative passages -- a defense of frustration as a necessary phase during problem-solving -- has been transformed into a short movie by animator Flash Rosenberg (side note: great animator name!). Which is great, because who doesn't love big thoughts expressed in drawrings? Rosenberg does the animation equivalent of liveblogging to a narration of Lehrer's words, and as expected, the story of Archimedes in the tub makes for righteous visuals. We've posted the whole thing below.

WATCH:

IMAGINE: How Creativity Works from Flash Rosenberg on Vimeo.

[via BrianPickings]

Comments

[american-dolt]

03:56 PM on 03/28/2012

Not true. Musical creativity usually happens when you are just playing for fun and something emerges. Unless perhaps you have money in mind.

I stopped at 49 secs, I was getting annoyed.

[incink]

01:19 PM on 03/27/2012

Therefore, we should smile upon frustrating circumstances for there's an epiphany awaiting our very discovery.

[Pucker]

07:03 AM on 03/27/2012

This is next on my book queue. I loved Lehrer's last book - "How We Decide".

[Blaze1111]

06:38 AM on 03/27/2012

The Brillance of the past. Were they brillant because they tapped into imagination or did they tap into their imagination because they were brillant?

It is very much how you describe. You wrestle and wrestle and upon your surrender, you recieve a light bulb moment when your mind is wandering....like in the shower or listening to a bird sing....kinda weird how that works...If someone can figure out a way to do that on command....that would be something!

[ericthehalfabee]

06:32 AM on 03/27/2012

There's certainly a lot more to the equation than that. Let me recommend to your readers something with a little more depth: http://getonthepath.blogspot.com/

[Marc Leandro]

11:54 PM on 04/06/2012

Good lord, people, it's a 3-minute promo for a book! I'm sure it gets a great deal more complicated, indeed, within the hundreds of pages of said book. Is nothing too small to criticize?

[ericthehalfabee]

01:29 AM on 04/07/2012

I'm not criticizing, but I've found that Lehrer's previous work was a little limited in scope. I think I offer more: http://getonthepath.blogspot.jp/

[ghee99]

06:18 AM on 03/27/2012

congrats!

you tricked me into watching a 3 minute ad

your reward for that trick?

i will make it a point to NEVER buy your book.

[lastpost]

05:50 AM on 03/27/2012

"defence of frustration as a necessary phase during problem-solving, "
is like cursing a paused kaleidoscope for not displaying the pattern we seek. Far better to dispense with such unproductive emotions. As simply allowing the mechanism to practically turn itself, results in rearrangement of those disparate facets. In a series of new representations. Thereby automatically presenting an almost infinite number of possible compositions for assessment and approbation. Until finally, imagined image and offered image coincide.

[LinusNC]

01:32 AM on 03/27/2012

No wonder IQ tests only test LeftBrainers

[bridgeman]

01:23 AM on 03/27/2012

Read the book saturday...brilliant.

[msrgpubs]

01:34 PM on 03/26/2012

L♥O♥V♥E T♥H♥I♥S!!!!!!!!!!