Mindfully Plorking w/ Dal Park
One of the things I’m keen to do in my research is make sure that it’s not just my opinion, or my experience that I’m learning from. Of course, this research is about experience, and I’m conducting it in an autoethnographic way, so obviously me documenting my experience is going to be central to that. However, it’s also important to understand what other animators and creative practitioners are doing - or rather, how they are playing. As such, I’ve been interviewing other contemporary animators and having conversations about their work, their processes and what’s important to them when they’re making stuff.
Dal Park is a German animation artist of Korean descent who I first met when we were both studying for a Masters in Animation at the Royal College of Art. Park’s work is bold, colourful, experimental, character-driven work that focusses on hand-drawn aesthetics and elements of cartoon-era animation, adopting smear frames, peculiar perspectives and distinct designs to tell often surprisingly personal narratives.
https://vimeo.com/694134896
Hairy Situations (Park 2022)
We spoke at length about Dal’s process for making work, and covered a wide range of topics from her belief that rules and frameworks are vital to her work, the necessity of confidence, and the complex relationships between play, work and social media for creative practitioners. However, one key element of her creative practice and process that stuck with me was her belief in the importance of daily routines and, more specifically, meditation. Dal says she aims to meditate or at least go to the gym every morning before starting work. The meditation is particularly important to her, as she describes it as a way of creating space and clearly her mind before working. That’s not only helpful generally, but provides a specific benefit during the creative development of any project: it allows the emergence of creative ideas and pathways. By focussing on breath work and being able to turn off some of the noise of the real world, she feels that mental space is created in which better, clearer, more interesting ideas manifest.
This idea is supported by the literature on mindfulness, meditation and creativity. Mindfulness - that is “nonjudgmental, moment-to-moment awareness” (Kabat-Zinn, 1990, p2) - and creativity have a “generally positive but also complex...relationship” (Henriksen et al. 2020, p8). While Henriksen et al. do acknowledge the gaps in literature, they also surmise that “much research [suggests] that mindfulness enhances creativity” (ibid). As Justo et al. suggest, “the individual who meditates is able to perceive more and more subtle details of the stream of consciousness and mental processes” which is “typical of creativity states” (2014, p233). Mindfulness meditation (MM) is just one form of meditation - others including but not limited to concentrative meditation, Focused Attention meditation, Open Monitoring meditation (Capurso et al. 2014; Lorenza et al. 2012; Müller et al. 2016). But overall, the research suggests the there is a link between meditation and creativity: meditation enhances cognitive flexibility, and therefore could be used as a means to improve creativity (Müller et. al. 2016).
More broadly, mindfulness (of which meditation is a key tenet) too has key links with creativity. Mindfulness as a “systematic training in knowing what is happening, while it is happening” (Nairn, 1999) allows for a set of skills that include observation, description and accepting without judgment (Baer, Smith, Hopking, Krietemeyer & Toney, 2006; Carmody & Baer 2008; Kabat-Zinn 2010). These skills have been shown to be related to the creative mindset, characterised by intellectual curiosity (Carson 2014), cognitive flexibility (Chambers, Gullone & Allen 2009; Slagter et al. 2007), developing and accepting complex problem-solving skills (Greenberg, Reiner & Meiran 2012) and nurtures the ability to accept ambiguity and complexity (Schoostra, Desichman & Dolgova 2017). Mindfulness increasing our ability to be creative, reduces the focus on judgment and encourages curosity. In these ways, mindfulness is similar to play.
It would, however, be wrong to assume that mindfulness practice, and specifically meditation, are play. Indeed, “A sense of play is certainly absent in meditation…a major cause of frustrating, uninspired practice” according to clinical psychologist Bill Morgan (2016). But perhaps they are both ways, like Park, we can engage with creative practice. Kamaleldin Hassan presents mindfulness and playfulness as part of the same creative toolset:
“…playfulness, mindfulness and improvisation could be considered tools, forces or approaches to enhance the spirit of creativity, to make people discover and enhance their inner potentials to be more creative” (Kamaleldin Hassan 2019, p2)
In fact, they go one step further and practically equate the two:
“Playfulness is a state of a joyful, stimulating and encouraging press that enhances immersion and being at the present moment”(ibid.)
Playfulness, like mindfulness, enhances immersion and centres the practitioner in the present; playfulness is being in, and being able to react to, the here and now. Both practices focus away from thinking about consequence, fear of failing or future repercussions, and instead focus on reacting and responding in the present. While mindfulness cultivates observation and description, playfulness cultivates a sense of joy; but both skills support divergent thought and cognitive flexibility and intellectural curiosity. Mindfulness might not always be playful, but perhaps playfulness is a form of mindfulness.
Both, however, exist first as a state, something we experience temporarily, then, with nurturing, can become more a part of who we are. In order to increase creativity, as with mindfulness, we need to engage with playfulness as a state - and, as we build on our skills, we shift from a state- temporary “I am being playful” to “I am playful”. The impact this can have on our creativity overall is massive:
“…it is really significant to enhance playfulness as a state and, in turn, as a trait.” (Kamaleldin Hassan 2019, p5)
Creative Meditations
Mindful meditation, in a traditional sense, is not the only kind of mindful - or indeed meditative - practice we can undertake. Creative mindful activities provide an interesting bridge between mindfuless and playfulness in the context of plork, as they use the production or output of creating work as a form of mindfulness. A good example of this is Morning Pages, the practice initially cultivated by Dorothea Brandt in 1934 and later popularised by Julia Cameron in her book The Artist’s Way (1992). Practitioners use a stream-of-consciousness style writing practice every day. Unlike traditional meditation, Cameron says that morning pages “are about action. Unlike conventional meditation, which may lull you out of taking action, the pages magnify our discontent, pointing out actions we could take” (Cameron 2013). Where traditional meditation is about acceptance and balance, Morning Pages is, to Cameron at least, more action.
Drawing, too, can be used as a mindful practice, a practice to bring us to the present and not focus on getting things wrong, or to observe and approach these feelings in a different and novel way. Chris Rusinko, Museum Educator and Program Coordinator at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, discusses how mindful drawing offers him “a sense of respite and escape that fuels other types of creativity and generosity…drawing can help people slow down and relax, embrace playful creativity, and at times even discover emotional catharsis” (Rusinko 2023). Rusinko makes clear his belief that mindful drawing can facilitate playfulness and creativity. He then offers several exercises and prompts for a mindful drawing practice: drawing inspired by music, drawing whilst looking only at the subject, drawing silhouettes, drawing using abstract shapes only and so on. Rusinko provides readers with the tools to play with drawing. This connection between mindfulness, drawing and play is highlighted in Wendy Greenhalgh’s introduction to her book Mindfulness & the Art of Drawing (1995):
“When practised mindfully, drawing has the power to effortlessly lead us into a deeper relationship with ourselves and the world around us, turning a simple act of creativity into play” (Greenhalgh 1995, p1)
Greenhalgh implies that creative acts are not by their very nature play. Perhaps what she is suggesting is that mindfulness, awareness, they are by their nature playful; coupling them with a creative act creates a kind of creative play.
Unknowingly, this kind of meditation is something I have been practicing myself - a practice I have written about in previous posts. By providing myself with some time to draw with next to no value placed on outcome, I begin to place the value in the practice of drawing itself. This in turn has encouraged me to “follow my nose” with aspects of the practice, the drawing practice turning into prototype card games and exhibition proposals. In effect, the playful meditation practice has sparked some output; like Corita’s work, play has led to ‘works’.
Perhaps what is most interesting in Rusinko’s prompts is at the start. He proposes a set of steps to undertake in order to ‘get in the right headspace’ for the drawing practice:
- Focus on your posture. Sit up straight and relax your shoulders.
- Take a deep breath in for five seconds, and then breathe out slowly for five seconds. Repeat this up to ten times.
- Pick up your drawing tool. Take a moment to focus on your grip. If you find that your grip is too tight, loosen it up. Experiment with different ways of holding your drawing tool. For example, if you are using a pencil, try moving your grip away from the page, toward the pencil’s eraser.
- Optional: Write down or say aloud one thing that you appreciate or have gratitude for right now. (ibid.)
Even before undertaking the mindfulness practice itself, Rusinko proposes a form of meditation to make yourself present: to change your stage of being. In terms of play, there is something here akin to Huizinga’s ‘magic circle’ - stepping into the place that is separate from ‘real life’. And in that place, we can meditate, we can draw, we can be playful without judgement; as long as we are kind to ourselves, these places will be places to explore and develop our creativity.
Takeaways
Mindfulness practice can improve creativity. Meditation, too can increase our connection with our creative selves. Dal demonstrates through her own reflection on her practice that meditation and mindfulness practices are strategies being used by contemporary animators to engage with their creativity and engage with their work.
This is, however, not shared with all animators. Discussions with other contemporary animators has raised the point that meditation, recurring practice, physical and/or mental exercise are not for everyone. However, for the animators who don’t practice some kind of mindfulness, they more often than not express awareness of the potential psychological and physical benefit these practices can have, and suggest that perhaps they are practices they should be doing.
As I stumble towards understanding how this research can be of most help to animators (and other creative practitioners), I maintain that creating some kind of manifesto or actionable framework for plork would be a good way to contribute to the knowledge around play and animation. I also strongly believe that any manifesto for plork is going to have to include some reference to mindfulness or meditation. But those terms can feel offputting to the uninitiated. Two things come to mind, then - firstly, perhaps running these as workshops is a valuable tool. And secondly, perhaps these a more playful language that can be adopted to encourage animators, artists and creative practicioners to understand the importance of these tangential, but foundational, practices, and the impact they can have on their creativity.
And underneath all of that, there’s the importance of practice. None of this works if you only do it once - you have to cultivate these practices, cultivate the skills of being mindful and playful just as you would the skills necessary to increase your technical drawing ability. From there, it becomes possible to shift from “being playful now” to “being a playful person”, the benefit of which is to approach everything - all play, all work, all life - more creatively.
Dal Park’s animation portfolio can be seen at https://dalpark.net/
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