The Three Types of Transformation

Many of these blog posts discuss practices you can use to discover singular links. These fall into three categories, each involving a different way of transforming the subject of your work.

They include,

• Expanding, when you transform something by creating new iterations of it.
• Contracting, when you transform something by removing some elements of it. 
• Refracting, when you transform something by changing its purpose.

Expanding is like brainstorming, spitballing, whiteboarding. The process generates multiple variations of your subject until you arrive at a version that is unique. We discussed it in the post about Divergent Thinking.

To understand Expanding, think of an artist who develops a major painting by creating thumbnail sketches, detailed sketches, color studies, and other drafts to determine what will be included in the painting and how it all fits together. Or think of a musician who creates variations on a melodic theme, building a sequence of notes, exploring how the sequence might transform and expand to create new versions of the melody. Think of a data analyst designing a model, starting with a basic algorithm and then tweaking various inputs, weights, and mathematical applications until arriving at a fully optimized version of the model.

The process called Expanding is like a Darwinian evolution that allows the apex version of your work to emerge through successive iterations.

The second transformative process, Contracting, involves reducing, distilling, or narrowing the focus of your subject. It’s about revealing by removing. We discussed this process in this blog about comic books and this one about Seurat and other Pointillist painters. The link between the original work and the final version is a series of deletions or omissions. Work + deletion = new work.

Fantasy stories often use this technique. How often have you heard, “The story takes place in a world just like ours, but with this one small change…” The Twilight Zone series loved this formula. In the episode “Time Enough At Last,” which I saw tonight while flipping channels, Burgess Meredith plays a man who finds himself in a world where all other people have disappeared. In the next episode, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” the loss of electricity leads to chaos and neighborhood warfare. Both episodes create an intriguing twist by removing a single element, people in the first episode and technology in the second.

The transformative process of Contracting is about deconstructing; Xeroxing an image over and over until the final version is pure distortion; re-recording a sound until the noise and distortion become the dominant elements. The game Broken Telephone is enjoyable because it is based witnessing how people misunderstand what’s whispered in their ears. These are all transformations achieved by Contracting.

The third transformation is Refracting, which changes the purpose of the subject. It involves seeing that subject from a new angle. We discussed this process in this post.

Copernicus introduced the heliocentric model of the universe. Einstein explained the nature of gravity as an influence on space and time. Picasso broke down objects and people into geometric shapes and depicted them from multiple perspectives simultaneously. 

One method of Refracting involves transposing. Columns become rows, and rows, columns. Inside becomes outside. Mirrors reflect opposites. A cruise ship looks like a skyscraper turned sideways. 3-D objects can be squashed, and 2-D objects inflated. 3-D objects can also be sliced into thin layers and spread out beside each other. Much of 3-D imaginag involves compiling multiple layers of 2-D images. Motion imaging is the projection of still pictures to create the illusion of movement.

Dreams are refractions because they present the world in ways that are both familiar and mysterious, with their rotating cast of characters, real and imagined, and their own dream logic, as discussed here.

Refracting is the most exciting category of transformation because it delivers an instant payload of gratification. Boom! Here you have one thing, and next… You have another!

The ultimate transformation is the transformation of the self, changing from the person who is actively doing your work to the person who is allowing the work to be done through you. The distinction is subtle, and we’ll explore it in future posts.

Expanding is the telescope, contracting is the microscope, and refracting is the kaleidoscope.