Keywords

1 Get Inspired

GET INSPIRED is the provocative and motivational motto that appears when inspædiers (collaborative visual storytellers) access the online platform at <www.inspaedia.com>. InspirationFootnote 1 means “encouragement, enthusiasm, genius, incentive, influence, insight,Footnote 2 motivation, revelation, vision, afflatus, animus, approach, arousal, awakening, brainchild, brainstorm, creativity, elevation, exaltation, fancy, flash, hunch, illumination, impulse, motive, muse, notion, rumble, spark, spur, stimulation, thought, whim, deep thing” [1]. The Visual Thesaurus relates inspiration to “idea, thought, stirring, divine guidance, intuition, brainchild, inhalation, breathing in, intake, aspiration” and inspire to “instigate, prompt, occasion, enliven, exalt, invigorate, animate, revolutionize, breathe in, inhale, cheer, exhort, pep up, root on, urge, urge on, barrack” (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
figure 1

https://www.visualthesaurus.com/app/view.

INSPIRATION and INSPIRE,

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The concept of inspiration makes up part of the word inspædia (inspiration + encyclopaedia). “In-Spiration originally meant receiving a breath of divinity. In modern parlance psychoanalysts refer to it as a ‘moment of insight’ and behaviorists ‘an act of intuition’; most of us rely on the metaphoric ‘bolt from the blue’” [2]. Designers know that inspiration comes from a lot of work. As for the “divine breath”, the allusion comes from the action of the Muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (personification of memory and one of the six female Titans), over poets and musicians. However, none of them inspired the visual arts: Calliope inspired heroic poetry and rhetoric, Clio was the muse of history, Erato the muse of elegy, Euterpe the muse of music, Polyhymnia the muse of lyric poetry, Talia the muse of comedy and Terpsichore the muse of dance. For the Ancient Greeks, poetry was closer to music and dance than to painting, sculpture or architecture [9], i.e. they did not identify the creative act as such (in the same way, the term theory was meant to designate contemplation and research). Let us then think about poetry, music and dance. In dialogue with the rhapsode Ion, Socrates discusses “art” and “divine force”, establishing a parallel between a magnet and the chain of inspiration.Footnote 3

This chain-of-inspiration image is very suggestive for the Inspædia conceptual model, although we do not claim to raise the maximum level of inspiration – which for the Ancient Greeks was equivalent to madness (because “when it comes by a gift of the gods, it is a noble thing”.Footnote 4 The analogy established by Plato (put in Socrates’ mouth) is interesting, since the processes of innovation and design need inspiration to “see” the future. However, to shape the future, contrary to what the Greeks believed, it is not necessary to enter into a trance, or read the birds’ flight or song.

Let us now focus on two other fundamental concepts for inspiration: fantasy and imagination. They are part of the metadiscourse of art, but in the disciplinary field of design they were used very sparingly until the mid-1970s. Let us start with the oldest concept, which is the first one (fantasy). Eustathius of Thessalonica (c. 1110-1198 AD) attributes the narratives that inspired the Iliad and the Odyssey to a woman named Fantasia, who was an Egyptian poet. According to the Latin translation of the Greek word (φαντασία), phantasia means “thing seen”; it is a human faculty that enables us to have a mental representation of an object in its absence, according to the definition by Quintilian (c. 35-c. 100 AD), equivalent to the definition of imagination, although that term is not used. The term fantasy comes from a verb that means “to bring forth”, “to shine”, “to appear before the soul”; the same verb is at the origin of the word phantom, which means “to have memories”, “dreams”, “hallucinations”. The Greek term fantasy is equivalent to the Latin word imagination, which comes from imaginem (the accusative of imago).

It has the same root as imitarii (this is why it was synonymous with imitation by images). The image is not confused with the thing, even when it presents itself to the senses, but is a representation of the thing. Therefore, Plato devalued the image and, by extension, the imagination, because they mislead – the former because it is the lowest degree of the real; the latter because it is the lowest degree of knowledge. However, it makes it possible to produce representations and, as such, it is an activity of the spirit, i.e. it reproduces what is absent and produces new combinations. To combine means mixing, eliminating, adding and reducing, but also establishing associations and analogies. Imagining can be synonymous with guessing, conjecturing, presuming, speculating.

Brann says that “imagination occurs probably most often in the language of literary criticism, where I. A. Richardson […] distinguishes the following six connotations. The imagination is a capacity for the production of a vivid, usually visual, image; for the employment of figurative language; for empathy; for inventiveness; and for the ordering of disparate experiences in art and in science. Finally, it is […] [the] capacity for unifying, intensifying, and idealizing the appearances. One might add as a seventh meaning that of sensibility” [13].

The association between the terms imagination and imitation has left behind a trace of faithfulness to the real, while fantasy has become an activity of the spirit that is further from the real, so it is not surprising that it is used in this disciplinary context much more sparingly. The word fantasy designates a type of composition for key instruments in the baroque, classical and romantic periods (harpsichord, clavichord, celesta, organ, pianoforte and piano) and for other instruments in the contemporary era [14]. It involves improvisation (which in baroque music is synonymous with ornamentation and variation within the same main melody). In this context, it is synonymous with ability to invent, applicable both to the musical composition itself and to how it is played. Extrapolating, it can be a way of overinterpreting [15] and, in this sense, it is useful for design thinking.

Let us look using a short memory and wander as nomads instead of delving into history, as Deleuze and Guattari [16] suggested, i.e. avoiding sequential and systematic ordering and favoring erratic paths, making the most of the absence of pre-defined contexts.

2 Changing the Landscape of Cultural Reflection and Influence

Inspædia constitutes a kind of revolution in perception, because it enables a new kind of viewing and use of related content, as well as providing a new kind of interface and interaction. It promotes non-linear thought, productive thought (high creativity) and inspiration – a memorable and playful user experience.

The Inspædia landing page explains the use that one may expect to make of Inspædia, in a two-way perspective of productive collaboration. Scrolling through the landing page reveals a narrative that characterizes a new digital environment to stimulate reflection and cultural influence, which includes the content and the relationships established among the pieces of content, among all the inspædiers, their trails and their collections of favorite things.

Each inspædier proactively contributes to extraordinary curatorship by using Inspædia to establish new improbable relationships with existing content (at least unlikely for other inspædiers), or by creating new ones from which new possibilities for cross-pollination of ideas, cultural reflection, contamination and enlightened influence can occur. At the origin of the Inspædia user experience design (UXD) and interaction design (IxD) concepts were, as sources of inspiration and among many other references [17,18,19,20,21,22,23, 25, 27], the ten laws and the three keys of simplicity [28], the aphorism form follows function [29], the ten principles for good design [30] and the aphorism form follows emotion [31], which can be summarized as simplicity, playfulness and inspiration [32]. Also for this reason, the landing page chromatically spans the (visible) solar spectrum without fixing on any specific color, inviting the community to participate, collaborate and contribute with their knowledge to build a network of collaborative and interactive intelligence.

“(…) Inspiring experiences ‘to be innovation together’ is the Inspædia ethos. (…) Welcome to the world of possible dreams. For the Ones who are intellectually curious. Discover infinite possibilities to update and refine your imagination and build new insights and foresights. Inspire yourself. (…) Be inspired by a memorable experience in a new landscape of cultural reflection and influence. For the Ones who have a passion for being connected to the unexpected. Explore and share improbable relationships between things and people to reach a new level of experience(s). Inspire others. (…) For the Ones who are shaping the future. Some of the Ones are content curators. They are selected experts from different cultural areas that constantly feed Inspædia with new related, meaningful content for the delight of the Inspædier community. Inspædiers are collaborative storytellers who are always looking for the next productive spark. Be One of the Ones. Be an inspædier. (…) Your next move to take part in a meaningful and playful inspiration experience. Join Inspædia” [33]. We hope you will and look forward to your input.