alt Hacker NewsI'm struggling to understand what they define "problem finding" to be in this context, did anyone come away with a more concrete definition?
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I took it to mean their process was more divergent than convergent. They explored some branches, felt one had life, or tension, and then unfolded from there.
My first answer was disingenuous, so here's another interpretation.
I didn't see a definition in the article, however I was reading Edgar Payne's Compostion of Outdoor Painting after reading your comment, and I was surprised to find the book talked about problem finding.
"Art is the art of disguising art". This means artists have to make a representation of a material object while obscuring all the rules and principles required to make the representation.
The problem is: how to make art without making it blatantly obvious it was an effort to make?
No.
Here's one interpretation though, for the discourse:
When given a task, some artists focused less on the objective and more on the process of observation. Observation of what, would be a logical next question. And I have to imagine and indulge in some projection here and guess that any of the artists may have been looking for more of a challenge, or more meaning. How to select some combination of objects, relative to the constraints of the circumstances for the task, paired with the skills they possess to produce the task at hand.
Given the proper acumen and a relatively subordinate task, I imagine some would tend towards Parkinson's law.
So following this, maybe problem finding could be seen as: how is this beautiful/aesthetically pleasing, or what do I really want to compose to fulfill this demand? What innate qualities do these things have which express some quality? Or maybe: how can I waste an hour of this man's time?
YMMV