Developing Ideas Over Time
| English | Chinese | Pinyin |
|---|---|---|
| development | 发展 | fā zhǎn |
| variable | 变量 | biàn liàng |
| motif | 母题 | mǔ tí |
Growth you can read
- Development 发展 — furthering an inquiry through in-depth exploration — is what "sustained" looks like.
- Sequence matters: arrange works so the growth reads from image 1 to image 15.
- Scorers explicitly look for works that show development, not 15 isolated performances.
The rubric rewards development, which means the works show ____.
Development = visible growth of the inquiry.
Fifteen near-identical skilful drawings demonstrate strong development.
That is repetition — development needs change.
Moves that develop
- Development moves: change scale, change viewpoint, combine two earlier works, push one variable 变量 to its extreme.
- Series thinking helps — variations on one motif 母题 show deliberate exploration.
- Mid-course turns are healthy when documented: "the shadows became the subject" is development.
Development or repetition?
Sort each sequence by whether the idea develops.
Select all genuine development moves.
Recopying is repetition, not development.
Compare newest to first
- Compare your newest work to your first — if nothing changed (skill, idea, ambition), push a variable.
- Repetition is not development; variation with a reason is.
- The investigation should end somewhere its beginning could not have predicted.
Pushing one ____ to its extreme is a development move.
Change scale, viewpoint, or another variable.
Match the term to its meaning.
Growth, not repetition.
Fifteen skilful but near-identical drawings show repetition, not development — and the rubric scores development, not repetition. Every new work should move at least one variable a reader can name.
An investigation into solitude: image 1, a figure alone in a big room (small, centred). By image 15, the room has been cropped away entirely and only the negative space around an absent figure remains. The idea developed — you can see the thought move.
Development is visible growth of an inquiry: sequence the works to read as change, move a variable or vary a motif each time, document turns, and make sure the last work could not have been the first.