All Idea Enhancement artwork is original and can be downloaded for prints, digital sharing, or any other use.

The Idea Enhancement Project is a unique undertaking that explores the use of art as a practical tool for increasing innovative and creative thinking. This project is visionary, but not theoretical: the results must be practical; because the process itself is unknowable to the conscious mind.

The unconscious mind is often portrayed as a wild beast; an uncontrollable and destructive atavism.

Artists and creative people know that this is untrue, and many have personal and individual techniques for exploring this richest part of the human mind; allowing them to achieve what they could not with the conscious mind alone.

The Idea Enhancement Project’s mission is to find ways that have the greatest chance of success; and are the most universally practical.

This process has too many “true” ways of looking at it to have an “explanation” that fits all viewpoints. And it is far too complex to be reduced to quantitative analysis. It cannot be “reverse engineered” because there are no measurable and discrete steps. One way I like to look at it is that art and ideas share the same level in your mind and can communicate and interact directly with each other.

One must leap into the unconscious and grab ahold of some connection to that area where ideas are born — but this is just what art does. With an increase in the frequency of connection; comes the ease of making that connection — until it happens “unconsciously.”

Problems can be left to “simmer” and various solutions will appear for inspection.

Visualizing “quantitative thinking” as a nodule or an accretion of pieces is a useful analogy; because it describes a way in which the results are presented to the thinker. There is no conscious effort involved.

Ideas form like fruit – and harvesting them is like picking apples off a tree.

It’s both practical and useful.

The results of this ongoing investigation are immediately available for “real world” use by everyone. All that is needed is a sustained contemplation of the images.

The unconscious mind is an analog computer of unimaginable power and effortless processing — why not use it?

The Idea Enhancement Project is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). NYFA is a 501(c)3, tax exempt organization founded in 1971. As the project’s fiscal sponsor, NYFA will receive grants on behalf of the Idea Enhancement Project, ensure the use of grant funds in accordance with the grant agreements, and provide program or financial reports as required.

Please donate any amount to the project through the NYFA website. This money will be used to print and mount large pieces of art for public feedback, and also for hosting and maintaining the project website and digital storage of images.

— Doug Baird, December, 2020