Thinking “Outside the Box” (Journal 5)

Today, Lisa Frankel came in and taught us about a number of things. The main idea that I learned from her presentation was that perception shouldn’t be confined to a certain definition, or boxed inside an idea of what the answer to a problem is supposed to be, assuming there even is an answer (there may not be sometimes). She taught us how to think “outside the box”, both in a literal sense and figurative sense.

In preparation for today’s class we were asked to try and complete the 9 dots exercise, where the goal is to connect all of the dots in a 3×3 dot square using only 4 straight lines. The square (below) came with the instructions “Connect up all nine dots with four straight lines, without lifting the pencil off the page”.

Now, before you look below at the answer, try it out…

Get it? If you did, you did better than me and you’ll be feeling like this lucky guy on Jeopardy!

If not, well..our ship has sunk:

At first, I couldn’t wrap my head around the puzzle. It seemed impossible, and it turns out it was with my mindset. Without more specific directions, I assumed that my lines had to stay inside the box. This is where I was literally not thinking “outside the box”. However, after getting frustrated to the point of Googling the answer, I learned that I had assumed wrong and by thinking “inside of the box”, I was limiting my success. The answer, shown below, clearly has lines extending outside of the box that my mind confined me to.

Although this was merely a fun puzzle that played with the brain, it pointed out something else which I had never thought about before. It showed me that I wasn’t thinking “outside of the box”.

Thinking outside the box is something that I want to incorporate into my final project. I want to show people something that they haven’t seen before, something that intrigues them. Although I’m in the preliminary/brainstorming stages of my project, I am confident I can show the viewer of my project multiple things within just one visual. I feel that way because more and more I played with perception images and optical illusions, the more I was able to have more of an optimistic view on things, and the more I was able to see multiple things in just one image. This is also another aspect that i want to incorporate into my final project. I am working to take a more open view on life, looking on the outside with different perspectives to different situations. As part of thinking “outside the box”, I now question the assumptions and biases I have been brought up to think of as second nature, and that mindset is bringing me new ideas every second. I would say I can’t wait for the future, but the future is already here, so I leave you with this: I can’t wait for what’s next.

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