Martin Sommerhoff

Martin Sommerhoff (* 1956 in Siegen ) is a German cabaret artist and songwriter .

Live and act

Sommerhoff came to music as a teenager, to the violin at the age of nine, then to the guitar. His first handcrafted instrument from the Irish company Lowden, which cost him 3,000 DM, he earned at the age of 16 in the construction industry. He still plays it today. After studying sport at the German Sport University in Cologne with a degree as a sports teacher and additionally philosophy and music at the University of Cologne , he began developing his own texts and song compositions in 1980, which he then expanded into a first solo cabaret performance from 1986 . When he brought his third program to the stage in 1989, he was accepted as a master student by Lore Lorentz . In October of the same year he received the culture award of the city of Hürth , where he has lived since his studies. In 2005 he brought his thirteenth program “Tagdäumers Nachtgesang” to the stage as a conclusion and musical cross-section from 20 years of cabaret art. His first long-playing record "Salzigsüße Lieder" came out in 1988. His first book "About us out", poems, songs, aphorisms, 1996. After appeared 30 years of stage experience and more than 1200 solo performances and the production of five CDs he founded in 2014 the "Hürther Guitar School" with all issues of guitar lessons on harmony through for improvisation and stage presentations for young and old, beginners and prospective "professionals".

The wheel of creativity

In 2005, Sommerhoff founded the Idea Finder project together with the Karlsruhe philosophy professor Guido Rappe . This creativity development project is the result of a dialogue between philosophy and art. With these ideas, he has been a lecturer at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen since 2007 in the field of “External Competencies”. The project also gave rise to the Creativity Wheel , a creativity technique that aims to stimulate creative inspiration through improvised physical movements. The wheel of creativity was especially designed as a group technique.

overview

The wheel of creativity works with a phase scheme that replaces the classic but passive phase of incubation with the active phase of improvisation. Overall, the wheel of creativity consists of five phases:

• theme
• variation
• improvisation
• inspiration
• Evaluation

The starting point is the topic in which the problem to be solved is determined. In the case of variation , an attempt is then made to penetrate the initial problem analytically in order to specify it and to reveal its facets. In the improvisation phase , creative forms of movement from theater work are used to break up everyday forms of movement and create a creative atmosphere. In this way, creative thinking is to be stimulated in order to collect concrete ideas in the subsequent inspiration (e.g. through classic brainstorming ). Finally, the ideas collected are subjected to an evaluation . The metaphor of the wheel stands for the fact that the creative process does not end after one run, but only gets going when it is run through regularly.

Scientific foundation

The Wheel of Creativity is a scientifically based creativity technique that combines theoretical knowledge of body phenomenology (e.g. the New Phenomenology of the philosopher Hermann Schmitz ) with practical improvisation techniques from theater work. In body phenomenology, the body as the source of subjective feeling is distinguished from the anatomical body . In contrast to the classic juxtaposition of body and mind, this enables an integrative consideration between physical movements and mental activities. The body has its own, subjectively noticeable vitality, which can be understood as physical potential and is expressed not only in a feeling of liveliness, but also in creativity. This enables theoretical access to artistic improvisation techniques to be gained with body phenomenology, with which the effectiveness in relation to the development of creative potential can be phenomenologically proven. Creativity is therefore not only to be understood as a mental act, but arises from the interplay of physical and mental movements. When people break their bodily established forms of movement, the view of the situation is changed and expanded so that creative ideas can be stimulated and provoked. The wheel of creativity is the first creativity technique that is explicitly based on physical phenomenology.

Web links

• Martin Sommerhoff homepage

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bettina Jochheim: Schoolchildren are allowed to make mistakes Sommerhoff founds guitar school in Hürth in Kölner Stadtanzeiger on February 25, 2014
2. ↑ Martin Sommerhoff: The philosopher and the artist. Retrieved September 2, 2015 . 
3. ↑ Christian Julmi, Ewald Scherm: The wheel of creativity . In: IM + io. The magazine for innovation, organization and management . tape 29 , no. 1 , 2014, p. 24 .
4. ↑ Guido Rappe: The nature of humans as moral potential: Concepts of human self-image in ancient China and Greece . Projektverlag, Bochum 2010, p. 23 .
5. ↑ Christian Julmi, Ewald Scherm: The wheel of creativity . In: IM + io. The magazine for innovation, organization and management . tape 29 , no. 1 , 2014, p. 24-25 .
6. ↑ Guido Rappe: Intercultural Ethics, Vol. IV: Ethics as the Art of Living . European University Press, Berlin, Bochum, London, Paris 2010, pp. 196 .