Constraints and Creativity

January 21, 2010

I have seen through my experiences, the (good) effect constraints have.

You know what they say – if it (constraints) does not break you, it makes you stronger.

Some of the formal constraints that shape art:

Iambic Pentameter to create sonnets.
Venpa one of the many Tamil poetic forms and expressible as a context free grammar!
Mathematics!
Programming
Western Classical music – (as I understand) music is not about playing any random frequency, but choosing from 12 frequencies (mono-chromatic scale) and their octaves. Even in this, a piece of music is usually made up of only a subset of these frequencies… (pentatonic, diatonic)… It is interesting to note that major scales give a happy feel and the minor ones give a sad feel!

Overall – I believe that constraints are not stifling, but give a grounding for expression.

Always be coding.

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