Evidence that Cross-Domain Re-interpretations of Creative Ideas are Recognizable
This addresses the problem of understanding cross-domain creativity for researchers in psychology and art, but it is incremental as it builds on existing theories of creativity.
The study investigated whether creative ideas can be translated across domains by testing if people could recognize which paintings were inspired by which pieces of music, finding that participants identified the correct pairings at statistically significant above-chance levels.
The goal of this study was to investigate the translate-ability of creative works into other domains. We tested whether people were able to recognize which works of art were inspired by which pieces of music. Three expert painters created four paintings, each of which was the artist's interpretation of one of four different pieces of instrumental music. Participants were able to identify which paintings were inspired by which pieces of music at statistically significant above-chance levels. The findings support the hypothesis that creative ideas can exist in an at least somewhat domain-independent state of potentiality and become more well-defined as they are actualized in accordance with the constraints of a particular domain.