Creativites (2017)

Creativity is essential in the scientific, artistic and economic fields

What conditions favour the development of new ideas? What happens in the brain when our ideas are born? How can we encourage the expression of ideas, move from a mental model to a concrete reality, or rally support for our ideas?This series of lectures will bring together the views of sociologists, philosophers, engineers and psychoanalysts on the question of creativity.

A series of public lectures organised as part of the teaching programme "La recherche dans tous ses états"

Organisation: Delphine Preissmann (FBM, Sciences au Carré, delphine.preissmann@unil.ch)

Creativity of concepts, creativity of forms: the philosophy of art

Carole Maigné (Philosophy Section, Faculty of Arts)

The aim will first be to understand what brings the creation of forms in art and the creation of concepts in philosophy closer together, but also what distinguishes them. If artistic form is not purely conceptual, if the concept in philosophy is not a purely sensible form, the fact remains that we can think through art. The challenge remains to question the production of the new: does inventing a form mean doing so ex nihilo or as part of a reformulated continuity? Morphosis and morphology will be at the heart of our reflection.

Y. Pigneur (Information Systems Department, HEC)

 Creativity and corporate design

How do you transform your business ideas into creative value propositions and successful business models? The aims of this presentation are to (a) cover the Business Model Canvas and the Value Proposition Canvas, visual creativity tools for identifying, questioning and outlining business models and their value propositions, (b) provide a better understanding of the business model and the value proposition, and (c) provide a better understanding of the business model and the value proposition;value propositions, (b) gain a better understanding of some outstanding examples of innovation through business models, and (c) éve some approaches to creativity; applied to the design of business models.

J. Besson (Service de psychiatrie communautaire, Département de psychiatrie, FBM UNIL-CHUV)

Addiction and creativity

What is the secret link between addiction and creativity? Is there not some malédiction à être artiste  in the public imagination? Many famous artists, painters, writers, actors and musicians have suffered from various addictions to alcohol, drugs or pathological gambling.

The conference will address the links between psychoactive substances and changes in perceptions and their expression. But the causal relationships will be questioned in a non-linear way, looking for common underlying factors in addiction and creativity. The following will be explored: bipolar disorders, personality disorders and their psychotraumatic antecedents, not forgetting psychoses.

Finally, in the brain-mind-culture loop, we will investigate the fate of the drive à through sublimation and the rôle played by psychoactive substances in spiritualityé and religions in a tension between the Dionysian orgy and the Apollonian poeacute;sie.

Francesco Panese (Laboratory for the Study of Science and Technology, Institute of Social Sciences, SSP and University Institute of Medicine and Public Health, FBM)

When engineering makes it possible to solve medical problems

Technical innovations in medicine are very rarely deliberate solutions to clearly defined questions or problems. These were usually imports and adaptations of techniques invented or developed in other, more or less related fields. This was particularly true of medical radiology, which developed from the discovery of X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, a physicist with no particular interest in medicine and even less in the detection of disease. Generally speaking, innovation in medicine often takes the form of technology transfer. But doctors still need to identify the potential of these external developments. To do so requires the happy alliance of chance and wisdom known as serendipity. This presentation will explore some of these transfers in medicine, past and present.

Simon Henein (Laboratory of Micromechanical and Horological Design, EPFL)

Collective creation: between artistic improvisation and technical design

In this lecture, I present a personal point of view derived from my field experience of collective creations in engineering (in particular micromanical design) and in the improvised performing arts (in particular dance and music performances in instant composition). On the surface, the two types of creative process involved seem to be poles apart, and contrasting them seems to me to clarify the question of creativity in general. This exhibition also relates the first observations from the new course Collective creation: arts-impro and engineering that I teach at the Arsenic to students at EPFL. The various approaches are explored through workshops led by professional artists and implemented by the students in a project that will culminate in a public performance at the Arsenic next spring.