Halfway between ideas - An idea for a creative thinking exercise

As seems to happen more regularly to me every year, I recently had occasion to find myself in an unfamilar building. The building itself is over 123 years old, Grade II listed, designed by Victorian architect Sir John Belcher, and situated in the heart of London. Carved stone friezes by Hamo Thorneycroft adorn the exterior and a lift takes you to one of the most unusual places I've ever been.

Floor 6 and a half was a surprising proposition. Unexpected and simultaneously empty and quiet, I found myself pausing, intrigued. It felt a bit silly, anarchic, playful, surreal. It was a personal first and something I was sure not many people I know will have experienced. It felt strangely exclusive to walk up what was technically 'half' a staircase and through doors into somewhere 'between'.

The experience of this place led me to reflect on 'between-ness' and 'halfway-ness' as facets of creativity. Creativity being fundamentally about moving into strange, unusual, and unfamiliar places, the emphasis in research can often be on transcendent discovery or inventiveness. However, creativity being something that is always derived from or associated with a particular domain or field, is often more subtle and characterised as a slight shift of phase in the shape, organisation or combination of existing things. Creative ideas are more often pleasing, seemingly obvious in retrospect, but slight shifts in orthodoxy.

This is particularly evident in the arts. Musical fusion or the hybridisation of artistic genres is routine. All artistic ideas emerge originally in the mind of one creative individual, and the mixture of personal experience inevitably leads to the crossover of experiences and arrival at pleasing half way places. With due deference to Saussure, Althusser and Lévi-Strauss and post-structuralist and postmodern theory, that the blurring of boundaries between ideas is significant and valuable is well established. However, I wonder simply if many creative ideas defined as 'combinations' of concepts would perhaps be more effectively considered of as halfway places or as creatively 'in-between'.

Why not adapt the classic creative thinking exercise (unusual combinations) and instead try to imagine:

• What is exactly half way between two separate problems?
• If a musical chord and a pirouette were at respective ends of a spectrum, what would be in the middle?
• If a car became an orange, what would it look like mid-way through the transformation?

I'm still working on the last one...