IMAGINE! Applied Imagination, Visual Thinking, and Creativity around 1960

languages: german/english

Imagination, visual thinking, and creativity are key issues of current iconic criticism and iconic research. However, sparse research has been done on the careers, genealogies and relevance of specific pragmatic aspects and applied dimensions of these iconic concepts in the course of the 20th century. The workshop will explore the historical sources of the concepts of ‘applied imagination’ and their emerging convergence in the middle of the 20th century; in particular it aims at situating this process within the wider practical, cultural and technical contexts which shaped the emergence of imagination and creativity discourses around mid-century. This will open up new fields for iconic research by including areas of technical development and engineering, but likewise the wider realm of creativity psychology, strategic innovation management, psychedelic experiments, counter culture activities, and therapeutic concepts. 

Through this, the workshop will examine the historical impact of applied concepts of imagination, especially techniques of visual thinking and creativity enhancement (in psychology, business, engineering), on theoretical notions of imagination in the humanities (art theory, philosophy, aesthetics). Despite its chiefly historical focus the workshop also aims to deliver systematic categories for more critically evaluating contemporary claims for a merger of theory and practice, like in artistic research, etc., all of them referring to the imaginative power of iconicity. 

Program
Monday, June 17

14.00 – 14.30	Claudia Mareis, Margarete Pratschke: Welcome and Introduction
14.30 – 15.30	Vera Wolff: Artistic Imagination in the Cold War
15.30 – 16.30	Max Stadler: «What is the grooviest way to use this thing?». Computers, creativity and the arts of pseudo-randomness, 1960s – 70s
16.30 – 17.00	coffee break
17.00 – 18.00	Jamie Cohen-Cole: Psycholinguistics and the Creativity of Language Acquisition
18.00 – 19.00	Sebastian Vehlken, Philipp Hauss: Brain Drain. John C. Lilly's Floating Tanks and the Technologization of Wellness
Tuesday, June 18
09.00 – 10.00	Jan Müggenburg: Seeing Ourselves as Dolphins See Us. John C. Lilly’s Experiments on Interspecies Communication
10.00 – 11.00	Katja Rothe: Familien-Stellen: Zum bildlichen Denken in der systemischen Therapie
11.00 – 11.30	coffee break
11.30 – 12.30	Margarete Pratschke: Experiences in Visual Thinking – Engineering Imagination in Robert McKim’s Imaginarium
12.30 – 13.00	Michael Hagner: Concluding Remarks

Konzept: Claudia Mareis, Margarete Pratschke

eikones NFS Bildkritik, Rheinsprung 11, CH - 4051 Basel