Risky Airplanes

After getting introduced to another awesome workspace in the Science Library, the 8th floor is home to the Human Centered Robotics Lab, we had a fun epistemological activity involving the making of airplanes, paper airplanes.

This well-crafted and well-executed activity showed how, despite Ian's dislike for these expressions, words in the box vs. outside the box thinking translates into creative innovations. I fully understand the limitations of the word "creativity" especially because one could be very creative in a conventional sense and depending on the application and purpose of design creativity happens inside and outside of these intellectually constructed boxes.

I forget the exact phrasing Ian used when describing the transformation our planes underwent through each iteration of the exercise, but after challenging the gut reaction to call the last of the three renditions creative, I fell on the new, and likely better fitting word, risky. 

Round 1: Ian gave us the simple task of creating a paper airplane. We all folded and tested our planes. We reflected on their "success" and discussed that even that word is relative. Maybe the objective wasn't to have a far-flying plane, but one that could do loops.

Round 2: We're asked to make another plane, and go into this folding frenzie excited to try new ideas, new angles, new intention etc. We repeat our trial flights and question "what constitutes a plane?" Does a balled up wad of paper count?

Round 3: One last round where we're allowed to use tape and scissors. I make a teardrop cabin and wide wings, still reminiscent of a plane but much more fun and not designed for distance. Others toss and dart parachute looking, ninja-stars and even squid-like models. 

The sprawl of creations looks different each round and a classmate points out that snippets of observation aren't telling of the expansive ideas produced by the class. I'm eating it up and it's easy to see how "creative" my classmates are and how much in-line this activity is with our creative pocesses for the class we've all just started together.