Bringing out the inner witch with “Creative Encounter.“ Image: Mela Kocher, Samuel Marty

Mela Kocher, what is Creative Encounter?

A “Creative Encounter“ describes an encounter with our own and others’ creative power. To me, creativity is an attitude, not a personal trait. As a child, I was not considered particularly creative; creativity was my sister’s domain. However, I still own a picture that I made at primary school: I had glued together a witch from coloured threads, patterned fabric and sunflower seeds. She looks so perfectly “scary“ that I still enjoy looking at the picture today: “Yeah! Creativity is slumbering within me!“

My creativity was reawakened not least by excessively playing adventure games as part of my game design research. Digital adventure games are about solving puzzles. The certainty that there is always (at least) one solution has stuck with me as a basic attitude. Besides, I usually embrace challenges quite playfully: There is a solution, and you simply have to experiment a bit to find it. This also requires courage because often you make “mistakes.“ And yet, precisely superficial failure can be inspiring!

You simply need to be prepared to make creative acquaintances and discover surprising things while roaming around in the style of Guy Debord’s “Théorie de la dérive.“ But since nothing is harder than getting creative in front of a blank sheet of paper or a white canvas, we have launched the online course “Creative Encounter.“ Over the course of ten days, participants receive a daily assignment from experts working in various artistic and design contexts at ZHdK.