I don’t know if there is a directly attributable quote by somebody famous. However, “art thrives in its limitations” or “creativity thrives with constraints” are more or less cliches. But a cliche is one for a reason. Most of the time there is a kernel of truth in it. And I think, this is the case here as well.

I find that “artificially” constraining myself helps me to generate ideas. Limitations are not always something to overcome, but they offer a framework for possibilities. They challenge us to push the boundaries in interesting ways. You can only think outside the box if is there is a box.

Constrains also makes problem solving easier, paradoxically. If you can’t use all of the contents in your toolbox, you don’t have to decide which tool exactly is the right one. Just use what is “available”; you will be fine.

Some examples

This was the first time I intentionally restricted myself after doing a complete album based on one synth by “accident”. The idea behind “Tiny Robots” was to only use hardware synthesizers which are smaller than a shoebox:

This was the challenge of putting together a potential live set of electronic music: Create a setup that can be transported and set up easily and create some live, improvised music with it without overdubs and edits:

Here the challenge was “pieces that are two minutes or less, but still feel like finished tracks”. Within that framework there were actually a few sub-challenges like “compose a piece with the whole-tone scale” or “only use freely available sound libraries”.