Creative sampling

Creative sampling is a technique most commonly associated with music making, such as changing the pitch of a sample which can be anything from a series of notes to sounds from toys or slamming doors, as long as it does not infringe someone else's copyrighted music. Now could this creative technique be adopted, adapted or modified for generating design ideas? For example, and using the analogy of a music making, take a specific individual element of frequencies, melodies, or lyrics as point of departure. Then change it around using techniques such as iteration, stretching or compressing. Record the process, for example, using pen and paper to create a visual map or diagram that captures the flow and development of the emerging ideas. The creative jumping-off point can be either sampling from an external source, for example, in building design, elements of wood joints, or from an internal source, say elements from your own sketchbook.

Algorithms as ideation tool

When algorithms, the building blocks of programming, are being used to help create, does it mean that software, including mobile apps, turn designers into "editors" rather than "writers" of original script, reacting rather than acting to what the computer generates (unless the designer writes computer codes themselves)? But does it matter whether the design comes from an algorithm or from traditional moves of creativity? But as designing with the help of algorithm depends on computer language, that is, any algorithm's output depends on its input and parameter settings, algorithms can be seen as another ideation tool in the long tradition of artists and designers using a variety of means to help them create, for example, artists using assistants to help them create their works, or, as claimed by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein: "One does not create a work, one constructs it with finished parts, like a machine.”